The Heart Of The Game (14 page)

She shook her head. What she needed were answers.

After he left she stepped to his desk, feeling like a thief.

A printout of an airline receipt sat on top of a pile of papers. She edged over, read it.
Russia
. He’d been in Russia. Why hadn’t he just said so?

She stopped to have breakfast with Coco in the kitchen. Each bite of the delicious muffins reminded Zoe of her resolve to have a serious talk with her sister. But her emotions were running high after the encounter with their father, and she thought it best to cool off before stepping into that territory. Being both sister and mother to her younger siblings was an emotion-fraught road for which she had no map. Thankfully Leonora’s bright chatter as she rolled out pastry for an apple pie kept the conversation on lighter ground—until Coco once again pressed Zoe about talking Alex and his teammates into posing for the calendar. Leonora didn’t approve of Coco’s calendar project. Selling a product featuring half-naked men was scandalous in the elderly housekeeper’s mind. Zoe had to bite her lip to keep from laughing as Coco pleaded her case.

After breakfast, Zoe loaded her two horses on the trailer and checked her riding gear. She tapped the name of the city her father had flown to into her phone. It was urban. Northern Russia. And there weren’t any wineries there. The thought of her father lying to her pierced the shaky foundation she’d been trying to drag together bit by bit.

But how could she blame him? She was making plans of her own. It was hardly fair to interrogate him about his personal life when she had secrets she wasn’t sharing. Maybe it ran in her blood. Or maybe some dreams only blossomed at the cost of the truth.

Cody spied the flower-draped sign for the Tavonesi Olive Ranch and shifted his truck into first gear. He waited for a semi piled high with hay bales to pass by in the opposite direction before turning off the country road and down the paved drive. Birds flitted across the road in front of him as he crossed an old, single-lane stone bridge. Dusky green olive trees covered the hillsides of the valley ahead. The blades of a white windmill turned lazily on a distant knoll.

He rounded a bend. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see the sprawling mansion that was flanked by well-built outbuildings, greenhouses and barns.

The Tavonesi clan had bucks and taste.

He gave his name at the gate and followed the directions of uniformed valets to a parking area.

Music, talk and laughter filtered up the lavender-banked hillside from a festively decorated tent next to the house.

From the look of the other guests exiting their cars, he was underdressed. He’d taken Zoe’s email literally and worn jeans, boots and a leather jacket. Evidently his idea of ranch casual was a far cry from that of the gussied-up fashionistas.

Waiters stood at the entrance to the tent with trays of beverages. He took what was described as a harvest iced tea and leaned against a pillar to take in the scene. Well-dressed people chattering in Italian, French and strongly accented English clustered between towering urns spilling over with autumn-colored flowers. More waiters sauntered through the crowd of guests offering silver trays of bite-sized food.

No one could’ve designed a setting to make him feel more out of place.

That morning as he’d downloaded the directions onto his phone, he’d told himself that the party was a chance to get to know Alex better. That the event was an off-season opportunity to see some of the other members of his team who’d texted him to say they’d be there.

But he knew better.

He sipped the tea. It tasted of mint and lemon and something he couldn’t identify. Zoe’s sister Coco spied him and rushed over.

“You came!” The ruffled lace shirt she wore, coupled with a very short skirt, made Coco look younger than twenty-one. “I
told
Zoe you would.” She grabbed his hand. “Come with me. She’s in the
frantoio
.”

He had no idea what a frantoio was.

Coco stopped in front of a broad wooden door and pulled two pairs of bright orange earplugs out of a crystal bowl on a shelf next to it.

“Put these in. It’s loud in there.”

He followed her though the door and into a glass-walled hallway that looked out to a vast room filled with machinery. Huge granite wheels the size of his truck turned in a round stainless steel enclosure in the center of the room. Workers emptied oblong baskets of olives onto conveyor belts that carried them to the top of the steel vat surrounding the granite grindstones.

Zoe and her elderly neighbor stood on a set of metal stairs peering into the vat. At the sight of her, Cody’s heart ramped up its beat. She tossed her head back, laughing at something the old man said.

No, he couldn’t fool himself and say he’d come for the team.

Coco waved her arms and caught Zoe’s eye. Then she pointed exaggeratedly at Cody and grinned. In any other circumstance he would’ve felt like a fool. But as a smile spread across Zoe’s face, he didn’t care where he was or what other people were doing; he was focused on the woman who had hijacked his attention.

Coco grabbed his hand and pulled him through the door at the end of the glassed-in hallway. Even with the earplugs, the sounds throbbed. The heady, grassy aroma of the pulverized olives permeated the room.

Several guests eyed him, smiling and pointing as he walked down the ramp with Coco. Though he still wasn’t accustomed to being recognized, wasn’t in any way comfortable with the attention from strangers, public recognition was a price of playing in the major leagues. A price he was more than willing to pay.

But as Zoe made her way down the steps and over to him and Coco, his focus wasn’t on the fancy guests or unwanted attention.

His pulse kicked up a notch when Zoe leaned in close. “I’m so glad you came,” she said.

Even through the biting aroma of the olives, he detected her scent. She smelled like spring, like banks of flowers near a streambed at the height of blooming, like—hell, he couldn’t wrestle the scent into words.

She took his hand in hers. “Come and see.”

The touch of her palm to his was all it took to send blood rushing to places that were better not displayed in public.

In an attempt to distract himself from the surge of want, he waved the hand holding the glass of iced tea toward the massive, grinding-stone wheels. “Who could resist this?”

Who could resist
her
?

Zoe turned to her sister. “You’ll have to find your own date,” she said, laughing as she tugged him toward the metal stairs.

“But I found
this
one,” Coco said. “I relieved him of his duty holding up the tent pillars.”

“Taken,” Zoe said with a sly grin. “You’ll have to fish for your date among Alana’s other charming male specimens.”

Coco laughed and headed out the open double doors at the back of the building, where the workers were unloading olives from small trucks.

Date
.

The word landed. Stuck. And gave the day a whole new meaning.

How long had it been since he’d been on a date? Before the Championship Series. No, maybe a month before that. And that had been a disaster. That evening he’d sworn off both blind dates
and
supermodels.

But he wasn’t sure he liked being compared to a fish or a specimen.

Yet when they reached the top step and Zoe’s hip pressed against his thigh as they peered into the vat of pulverized olives, he really didn’t care about words anymore.

“Alana’s grandmother brought these grindstones over from Italy,” Zoe said. Several guests crowded onto the steps, pushing Zoe closer against him. He tried to focus on her explanation of the workings of the frantoio, but what he really wanted to do was drag her off somewhere, anywhere, and resume the kiss that had been interrupted that day in the stables.

“Those are the grindstones,” she said, pointing with her chin. When he didn’t answer, she peered up at his face. “Are you okay?”

He snapped his attention back from his ramped-up fantasy.

“Great. Fine. You were saying?”

The smile that danced in her eyes didn’t help his focus any.

“Let’s go find something to eat; you must be starving.”

She didn’t know the half of it. Zoe made him hungry in a way he didn’t want to admit. As discreetly as possible, he rearranged his jeans and recited batting statistics to shut down the fire he didn’t want to cop to. So much for thinking that the haunting feelings he had for her would be easily containable.

“Lead the way.”

Sunlight blazed as they exited the frantoio. The bright autumn sunshine that glistened in the breeze-stirred olive groves lit the day with promise. Too bad there were hundreds of other people sharing the day, the place and Zoe.

She snagged a slice of pizza from a table set up in front of an outdoor oven. “This is
divine
,” she said after taking a bite.

A burly chef held out a wooden platter to Cody. “Goat cheese, roasted garlic and herbs from the garden,” the chef said with a touch of pride as Cody took a slice.

“I
love
American food,” Zoe said, her mouth glistening with oil from the pizza. She ran the tip of her tongue along her lips.

He groaned inwardly and fought the urge to kiss her. “Glad there’s something we have to recommend us.” Surrounded by her family, Alana’s guests
and
reporters was definitely not the time or place for serious kissing. “But pizza’s Italian, isn’t it?” he added, unsuccessfully trying to take his mind off her lush mouth.

“Not pizza like this.” She licked her lips.

He wondered if anyone would notice if he dragged her into the rows of grapevines planted between the olive trees.

“Yo!” Jake Ryder clapped him on the back. “Hey, Zoe.” Jake put a finger to the brim of his cap in greeting. “Great party. Your family sure knows how to throw them.” He spoke with his characteristic soft Southern drawl.

In addition to Jake, there were two other guys from the South on the team. They hung out together—not cliquish, just close. Guys tended to cluster with what was familiar. The Dominicans and Venezuelans shared a language, the Southern guys shared a culture. But more than language or customs or culture, the guys on the team all shared a love of the game. It was a language that needed no words.

Jake grabbed a slice of pizza and ate it in two bites.

“Umm... someday you’ll have to come to North Carolina,” he said to Zoe. “We have our own version of this party—not so fancy, but just as good. More cousins, though.” He laughed. “Lots more.” He tapped Cody on the arm. “I saved you a seat at the table out there. Up front. The darned thing is about a mile long.” He stepped back, grinning. “Bet you can’t throw from one end to the other.”

Jake liked making bets, liked it too much for Cody’s taste. He’d become a regular at the wine country casinos as soon as the offseason had started.

“No bets,” Cody said. “Wouldn’t want the ball to end up in someone’s soup.”

“How about you, Zoe?” Jake asked.

“I’m terrible at betting, Jake. I could lose a coin toss if both sides were heads. And, unlike you two, I don’t get paid to aim.”

Jake laughed a little too hard at Zoe’s joke for Cody’s liking. He was in no mood to vie with a teammate he liked for the attention of a woman who’d flummoxed him. Cody offered Zoe his arm and breathed easier when she slid her hand to the crook of his elbow.

“At the Palace Casino last night,” Jake said to Zoe as the three of them walked up the graveled path, “I met a guy that knows you. Vito, I think he said his name was. Or maybe he said Vimo. High-stakes guy.
Really
high stakes. He must have serious bucks to play deep like that.”

“Vico?” Zoe tilted a narrowed gaze to Jake.

“Yeah, maybe he did say Vico. He had a strong Italian accent. He said he’s over here studying wine.” Jake snagged a glass from a passing waiter making his way down the drive with a tray of drinks. “I’d rather drink wine than study it.” He took a long draw from the glass. “And Matt and Alana make good wine.”

When they reached the grove where the luncheon table was laid out, Cody saw that Jake hadn’t exaggerated; the table stretched nearly out of sight. A clear tent had been erected to cover the length of it. There might be a drought, but the weather had been unpredictable. Unexpected short bursts of rain followed by sunshine made correctly guessing the weather an iffy proposition.

“So?” Jake nudged Cody. “Think you could throw that far?”

Infielders rarely had to throw farther than a hundred and twenty feet. But Cody had been a right fielder in college. He studied the long table, calculating.

“Okay, you’re on. But after lunch. And if I win, you stop betting on anything for the rest of the offseason.”

Why he felt responsible for Jake, he couldn’t say. He’d seen Jake around during spring training, but only after Cody had been called up to the majors had they spent any time together. Jake had befriended him and shown him the ropes, kept him from making rookie mistakes. And he knew Jake struggled with his gambling habit. Maybe being accountable to someone would help tone it down.

“Yes, Mom.” Jake turned to Zoe. “Watch out for this guy. He’ll have you walking the straight and narrow in no time.”

At Zoe’s puzzled look, Cody said, “Cleaned up. Not that you need any. Cleaning up, that is.” What was it about her that made his brain go one way and damned near everything else go the other?

Zoe knitted her brows.

“No bad habits,” Cody added quickly. “Being on the straight and narrow means no bad habits.”

Jake peered at him and then laughed. “I take it back. Cody’s off his good-boy game. I give you credit for that, Zoe. There’s a chance we might all have some serious fun today.”