The Heart Of The Game (16 page)

“A
nyoki
?” He wasn’t even winded.

“It’s a dumpling,” she said as she leaned her hands against her knees and fought to catch her breath. “What do you say?”

“Rotten egg.”

She screwed up her face. “That’s disgusting.”

“That’s why you never want to be last,” he said.

Without warning he scooped her up in his arms, as if she weighed no more than a sack of feed.

“
This
is what happens to losers.” He carried her into the surf. A wave rolled in, soaking both of them. She inhaled sharply and braced against the cold. Her nipples contracted against the wet cotton of her blouse. He stared down for a moment and then lowered his lips to hers.

Heat branded her as he teased her lips open with his tongue. The sea was bracing, but her entire focus was on the hot, pulsing shock of his tongue exploring hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer. This kiss was nothing like the first one. This kiss had hunger behind it and a power she’d never tasted before. A wave hit them and nearly knocked Cody off his feet. She wiggled out of his arms and splashed through the surf to the tideline. He caught her hand and whirled her to him, his body bracing against hers, his chest pressed against her breasts.

Her breath hitched as his hand cupped her breast and he resumed kissing her.

Something thudded against her hip, startling her. She looked down to see a ball in the sand at her feet. A collie banged into her shins as he tried to retrieve the ball. Zoe looked up to see a girl of about five approaching, her father only a few yards behind.

Cody released Zoe and bent down to pick up the ball.

“That’s mine,” the girl said, fisting her hands to her hips.

Cody handed her the ball. “Your pup thinks it’s his.”

The girl tilted her head. “Well, it is. Sort of. But I bought it with my allowance, so really it’s mine. But we share.” She held out the ball to Cody. “Would you like to throw it for him?”

Cody took the ball, hauled back his arm and sent the ball arcing along the beach.

The girl gaped at his throw.

“You do that better than me,” she said.

“Practice,” Cody said, smiling. “Keep at it and you’ll be throwing like that in no time.”

The father stood a couple yards away, watching. Zoe held her breath, hoping for Cody’s sake that the man wasn’t a baseball fan.

“Thanks,” the man said as he turned back up the beach. “That could’ve been the second ball we lost today. We’re still working on aim.”

“We should head back,” Zoe said as she smoothed a hand over her sodden hair.

Wet and smiling, she looked like a sea nymph. A very sexy and delicious sea nymph.

“Should we?” Though all he wanted was to resume their kiss, he took his cue from her. If the girl and her dog hadn’t come up the beach, he might’ve had the opportunity to test out the power of his fantasies.

“Yes. No.” She hauled in a breath. “Definitely yes. I promised Alana I’d give her a hand with a painting she’s working on.”

“You make a lot of promises.”

“It might be my worst habit.”

“I hope it’s not contagious,” he said, wriggling his brows.

She kept her distance from him as they walked silently back up the beach. They retrieved their boots and socks and sat down on opposite ends of the log. Hell, so much for more contact helping to dilute the haunting feelings he had for her. Most of him wanted to leap over the space separating them and tackle her to the sand. Her pulse throbbed in the creamy skin of her throat, and her breaths were shallow, shaky, both telling of her desire. But her body language as she concentrated on shaking the sand from her socks kept him planted.

“Tell me about riding the rodeos,” she said as she dragged on a boot. “I’ve never been to one.”

Perhaps conversation would lessen the torture of fighting back his impulses to pull her close, their bodies touching, and kiss her senseless.

“It’s a tricky business, riding broncs.”

It had been a long time since his rodeo days, but the images were fresh and strong, as if he’d last entered the arena only yesterday. “Broncs love to buck, the urge is in their blood.”

He kept his eyes on the sand as he shook it from his socks. If he looked at her again before the heat simmering in his veins settled down, words wouldn’t extinguish the urges she fired in him.

“On my best days I could flow with the horse’s power,” he said as the images and the words to match them came rushing back to him. “Too many jacked-up cowboys think bronc riding’s all about them, but they’re wrong. It’s all about the horse. I discovered early on that if I respected what the horse loved, it was like a key to entering a new world. The rides became a partnership, a dance instead of a fight.”

Though he knew it’d be a test of his willpower, he turned to her. A thoughtful look came into her eyes.

“Where did you learn such things?”

Her sweet accent transformed simple words into signals that whipped up his craving. She bit at the curve of her bottom lip as she waited for his answer. The urge to kiss her again shot blood straight to his groin.

He couldn’t tell her that the same pulse of energy that he tapped into for anything important was the same power that had him wanting to make love with her at that very instant.

Control.

It was hard to hold his control around Zoe.

But the one tool he trusted most was his ability to control his emotions, his environment and his actions. That ability had been his escape route out of the misery of his family and his ticket into the world of baseball, the world that kicked him to life again after some seriously dark days. But the power he’d tapped into when kissing her had no regard for his need for control.

“Spend enough time with animals and they start talking.” He laughed halfheartedly. “Makes me sound crazy, I know.”

“No, I know exactly what you mean. I just had never put words to the practice before.”

She shook out her hair, and the sun sent dashes of gold streaming through the strands falling near her face.

If he spoke the words warring in his mind right then, she’d likely be shocked. Kissing her was one thing, but taking their physical relationship to that of lovers? Now that he knew her better, she didn’t strike him as a woman who would cross casually into that territory.

“I spent some time with Monty Roberts,” he said, fighting for more familiar ground. “Have you heard of him?”

“Only that the Queen of England presented awards to polo trainers who had used his methods to train their ponies.”

“I didn’t know about that.”

“It was some years ago. I wanted to meet him, but he never came to Italy.”

“Monty was originally a rodeo guy. But what changed him were the years he spent watching wild mustangs.”

“I’ve had some experiences like those you speak of.” Zoe took up a handful of sand and watched as it trailed through her fingers. “I’ve often thought they were the closest I’ve ever come to knowing magic.”

“The real magic isn’t in taming the wild, it’s in entering the wild world, body and soul.”

“Body and soul.” She stopped moving. “Entering the wild...”

A buzz of self-consciousness zipped through him when she repeated his words.

He picked up a rock that had fallen from the cliff behind them and threw it toward the shoreline. It landed two feet short of the mark he’d intended to hit. In his peripheral vision he saw her get up and walk over to where the horses were tethered.

It really was time to go. If he sat there any longer, he’d be baring his soul—if he had one. Some days he wasn’t so sure.

They rode along the tideline, silently at first. But the hundreds of questions he’d wanted to ask her burned in his mind.

“Are you enjoying learning about the business of making wine?” Asking about viniculture seemed a safe start.

“Some days I can imagine that— Oh, look!” She broke off and pointed into the waves.

He squinted into the glare of the near-setting sun. A seal bobbed up out of the waves, its huge dark eyes trained on them.

“It’s an elephant seal,” he said. “Jackie has several in rehab at the rescue center in Sausalito.”

“I can see where they got the name. I’ve never seen a seal that big.”

The seal dove below the surface. “Adults can grow to be four thousand pounds.”

She studied the waves.

“They can also hold their breath for twenty minutes,” he said, trying not to stare at the way she tugged on her bottom lip with her teeth when she was concentrating. In such a sophisticated woman, the simple habit was surprising. And endearing. It also fired up every urge in his body. “He’s likely long gone from here.”

“There are so many wild creatures on this coast. Even the sea seems wilder here. It’s stunning.”

Not as stunning as she was. To keep his mind off his urges, he repeated his question. “
Do
you enjoy the wine business?”

“I wish I could say yes. I
should
be able to say yes. But no. My brothers love it. Anastasia seems to love it. But it’s not for me. And if I have to spend hours in front of a computer like my father does, I’ll go crazy.”

“He does the accounts?” The practice struck Cody as odd; usually a CEO handed those duties off to a professional.

“Not just accounts. He does some sort of data programming.” She sighed. “I don’t know what he does exactly. And lately he’s been acting strangely, taking off without telling any of us where he’s going. Just last week he went to Russia! He told me he’d gone to London, but I discovered otherwise.” She fingered the dainty gold necklace around her neck. “I thought at first his strange behavior was due to grief over my mother; well, that and the challenge of adjusting to a new home. A new country.” She reined up and turned to face him. “We’ve all had a tough time adjusting. In my heart, I don’t think the move was such a good idea. In Italy we were a family, everybody had their role, their place. I miss those days—more than I knew I could miss anything.”

The hushed sounds of the waves meeting the shore seemed to echo the tinge of sadness in her voice.

He considered her words, but more than that, he thought about what she hadn’t said.

“What do
you
love, Zoe? What makes you want to get out of bed every morning?”

“I thought I knew,” she said, letting out a sad-sounding sigh that made him sorry he’d asked. “I thought it was polo. For most of my life, training horses and winning matches was nearly all I thought about. But since the move, I just feel... lost.”

They’d reached the parking lot.

They dismounted and unsaddled the horses. She handed him a brush from the shelf of the trailer.

“Just give him a quick brush off. My grooms will wash him down properly when I return to the stables.”

He noticed that she didn’t say
home
. Not even the name of the place. He knew what it felt like to be awash in a figurative sea, to feel like no place was home. Baseball had saved him from feeling adrift and homeless.

As they drove back to Alana and Matt’s, Cody pointed out some of the geological sites including the San Andreas Fault. He told her that where any two systems meet, just like the fault, great energies collide and whatever the force of their meeting, there was often no predicting what the results might be. She’d glanced over at him with a wry smile and he’d felt like a friggin’ idiot. Maybe Scotty’s cosmology ramblings were rubbing off on him. Whatever the source, it sure wasn’t very good small talk.

When they reached the ranch, she dropped him off at his truck.

“Thank you, Cody. Today was the best day I’ve had since I came here.”

She brushed a quick kiss to his cheek that made his heart race. He started to reach for her, but she smiled and jumped back into her pickup.

He rubbed at his cheek and watched as she deftly maneuvered the trailer down to the parking lot next to the frantoio. Perhaps his suspicions had been right. Maybe in spite of the signals he’d read, she wasn’t interested in a full-on sexual hookup. A few kisses, yes, but not more than that. Not with him anyway. Maybe she had a boyfriend back in Italy.