The Heart Of The Game (26 page)

“Okay, busted. But I still think you should hold still and—”

At the flash of fire in her eyes, he stopped himself. Hadn’t he sworn off his bad habit of giving advice, even sometimes when it was asked for?

Zoe scowled at Parker, who had dismounted and rushed to them. “Parker Tavonesi, you owe me one.”

Aronelli trailed Parker with an ice pack.

“Put that on Parker’s head,” Zoe said, waving the ice pack away. “I’m fine.”

But Cody saw the way she favored her left ankle as she stood. He offered his arm and she took it.

“Finish them off,” she said to Aronelli with a finger wag to Parker. “There are forty-five seconds left in this chukker.”

“Don’t let her play on your sympathies.” Parker was smiling. “We Tavonesis have used less drastic events to have our way with opponents.”

Zoe let out a series of what sounded like very pointed expletives, in Italian, and Parker grinned first at her, then at Cody.

Evidently Parker thought he had the measure of the situation between Cody and his lovely, fire-spouting cousin.

But as Cody helped Zoe to a bench near the sideboard and replayed his reaction to her fall, he knew he didn’t have a bead on the situation at all. He’d seen many a rider take worse knocks, but never had his heart been in his throat as it had been when he watched her plummet to the ground.

She accepted an ice pack from one of her grooms and stretched out along the bench with her feet up. And cast him one of her easy half smiles.

After Aronelli scored the winning goal, Zoe let Cody help her into the house. She directed him down a long hallway to a set of double doors. “There’s a recliner in here,” she said.

She punched at the keypad and cursed when it beeped at her. She tried again with the same result. Grumbling and muttering, she bent down and lifted an edge of the plush carpet. She unfolded a slip of paper with numbers scrawled across it. “I always forget the code for this room,” she said.

The door clicked. As Cody passed through the doorway, he noticed the barrel locking system. No one could force a door like that.

“This library and the adjacent study are father’s sanctuary,” she said. “But he’s off somewhere.” She tucked the slip of paper back under the edge of the carpet.

Cody noted the unspecific
somewhere
. But his attention was here. Now. On her. “Maybe you should put your foot up in bed?”

“Now there’s an idea,” she said with a sexy smile that he wanted to kiss off her face. He leaned toward her, intending to do just that, when she put a hand to his chest. “But Vico is coming in half an hour to go over notes from class with me. You can stay if you’d like. It shouldn’t take long.”

He heard the offer under her words and wanted more than anything to take her up on it.

“I promised my sister I’d meet her for dinner,” he said, wishing that he hadn’t made the arrangement.

“Ah. So even you make promises.”

His sister hadn’t been happy that he’d refused to join the family at his mom’s house for Thanksgiving. The least he could do was hook up with Kat for a post-holiday dinner at her favorite restaurant in the city.

“Take my car,” Zoe said. “I’d never stand in the way of fun with a sister.”

Right. A car. His brain really was scrambled. He’d completely forgotten that Jake had driven them to Trovare the day before. Had it only been a day? Seemed like ages. And yet not nearly long enough.

“Or Parker can drive you,” Zoe added. “He has to go into the city.”

Lips pursed, she searched the room. She shook her head slightly before turning to him.

“Maybe you could help me settle into the living room. My father’s pretty particular about who comes into this room.” She perched on the edge of a recliner. “He spends hours in here on those computers. I wonder what could possibly command such attention.”

Two big monitors sat on the massive desk. But what caught Cody’s eye was the safe framed into the bookcase behind it. Santino Tavonesi was a mystery. For Zoe’s sake he hoped the truth of the man didn’t pan out to be anything like the picture Cody was forming in his mind.

He settled Zoe on the couch in the living room just as Parker came in with a large ice pack.

“I’ve iced, Parker.”

“Ice again, my darling.”

“God forbid that someone should really be hurt. You two would call in the medical helicopters.”

Cody was relieved when she allowed Parker to tuck the pack around her foot.

With Parker hovering, Cody didn’t feel he could say the goodbye he’d planned to share. He mumbled something about being in touch and didn’t miss the wry smile on Parker’s face. The whole family probably knew he and Zoe had spent the night in her bed.

“Take it easy for a couple of days,” Parker said as he brushed a kiss to Zoe’s cheek.

“I have my scintillating viniculture notes to study,” she quipped.

“
Not
the easiest of patients,” Parker said as Cody walked with him out of the house. “She thinks she’s invincible. Runs in the genes.” He stopped and patted the riding pants he still wore. “Damn, I left my phone. I’ll be right back.”

Cody took the opportunity to wander around the side of the house. And stopped when he saw Vico fiddling with a box near the back entrance.

“Service call?” he said as Vico looked up.

Vico’s pinched expression morphed into an oily smile. “Adrian mentioned that their irrigation system was run by a main system.” He straightened up and brushed off his hands. “I’d like to put one just like it in our vineyard in Sicily.”

“Got it,” Parker said, brandishing his phone as he strode up to Cody. He spotted Vico. “Gualdieri. Didn’t know you were here. Have you two met?”

“Yes,” Vico and Cody replied simultaneously in similar flat tones.

“Great,” Parker said, toying with his phone. “Damn, I was trying to update this thing and I think I just erased all the data.”

Vico thrust out his hand. “Let me see it.”

Parker handed the phone over. Cody watched Vico’s eyes light with an odd intensity. Maybe the guy really was a geek.

“I doubt you erased everything,” Vico said with authority. “The only way to completely destroy information is to encrypt it or incinerate the device. And even with encryption you can usually figure out the key.” He tapped on the screen. “This is the newest model, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

Vico slid screens up and down and side to side, rapidly tapping in information.

“Okay, it’s not going to let me... No, that won’t work. What’s your passcode?” He grinned. “I could probably figure it out, but why waste the time?”

“Passcode?” Parker said, palms lifted.

“The numbers you use for access.”

Parker grinned. “Seven, three, nine. Spells out sex.”

Vico didn’t laugh and neither did Cody. His attention was on Vico.

Vico typed in the numbers and then swiped the screen. He squinted and typed in something else. “No one realizes the power of these small devices,” he said without looking up. “A person could run a war with one of these,
if
they were smart enough. Of course, the devices have limitations. But they’re quite powerful in the right hands.”

Cody watched as Vico continued swiping and typing. A few minutes later and with a triumphant flourish, he handed Parker the phone.

“Updated and all yours.”

“Thanks.” Parker toyed with the phone and then grinned. “You got my photos back. Wouldn’t have wanted to lose all the shots of the events I’ve masterminded. Not as complicated as a war, but if details go wrong, an off-kilter event can feel like one.”

Cody was still having a hard time melding the Parker who rode like a demon and could likely out-bench-press him with the man who got jazzed by helping his friends and cousins plan elaborate parties.

“You should back it up to the cloud at least,” Vico said with a note of condescension.

Parker pocketed his phone. “I heard those things can be hacked.”

“Anything can be hacked,” Vico said.

Was Cody imagining it, or did Vico’s smile hold a hint of pride?

Maybe his rising jealousy was getting the better of him. He didn’t like the idea of Zoe spending the next morning with the guy touring around and drinking wine. Especially after spending time with him today. Hell, he didn’t want her doing anything with the guy. But he had no right to interfere.

“You work a lot with computers?” Parker asked Vico as the three of them walked to the front drive.

“Not really. Just the basics.”

But Cody could see from the dude’s eyes that he was lying. A red warning flag shot up, and Cody did nothing to push it back down.

When Cody returned to his condo, he couldn’t get the scene with Vico out of his mind.

Sometimes, after a tough loss, he’d lay awake in bed and replay the whole game in his mind. Images would layer, one after the other, and though he didn’t know how it happened, eventually some sort of master scene would show him precisely the pitch he should have signaled or the adjustment he needed to make in his hitting. People casually called moments like that epiphanies, but to him the realizations were more a function of pattern recognition than mind-blowing insight.

Zoe’s description of her moment on the hill when the light had shifted and danced and she’d seen the world differently than before—when she’d sworn she’d heard his voice—now
that
sounded like an epiphany. He smiled, remembering the sound of her voice as she’d told him. He might not believe in destiny, but he was damned sure glad the forces of life had brought them together.

Still... his misgivings about Vico Gualdieri turned over and over in his mind. How was it that he’d shown up in the same region as the Tavonesis? And what was with his focus on the mechanical and computerized systems of their household? A pattern began to form, and images and thoughts began to hang from it. But he still couldn’t reconcile the man’s behaviors with his motivations.

Not wanting to lie to himself, Cody again considered whether his suspicions were the product of base jealousy. Maybe they were—they could very well be. But maybe they weren’t.

He knew someone who could help him find out.

He dialed his dad’s number. He answered on the third ring.

“It’s Cody.”

“Cody.”

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“How are you, son?”

Four words. Four. And with them Cody felt a dam break loose.

How had he let pride and fear keep him from confronting his dad for all those long years—from finding a way to relate to him? But back then, his dad hadn’t been the man he was now, now that he’d done the work of cleaning up his life. It didn’t take a trained observer to see the radical change. Since his visit with his dad he’d done some soul searching. And had owned up to his suspicion that his anger had been a crutch for keeping not only his dad but anything he didn’t like about the world at arm’s length.

He filled his dad in on what had transpired at the Tavonesis, about his impossible to ignore impressions of Vico Gualdieri.

His dad asked for names, for specifics, and Cody repeated the conversations and events as well as he remembered them.

“That’s a lot of detail. You might be in the wrong business, Cody.”

“I’d make a terrible spy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I’m pretty lame with gadgets and gizmos. If I could tackle the bad guys, then maybe.”

His dad laughed. The sound slipped through a curtain of reserve Cody hadn’t known he’d kept drawn.

“Like I said before, she must be some woman for you to worry like this,” his dad said.

“I just don’t want to see her in danger.”

Cody didn’t offer details about his relationship with Zoe. What the hell would he have said, anyway? That they’d rocked each other’s world a couple of times? That being around the Tavonesis and their affection-filled family gatherings had made him think about life and family differently? About maybe even considering having a family of his own? Nope. He wasn’t ready to cop to that change. Maybe not even to himself.