The Heart Of The Game (31 page)

With the curved surface of the shovel, he smoothed the ceiling and walls so the melting snow water wouldn’t drip on them.

There was little light. He backed out of the cave to retrieve an emergency candle from his pack and to grab one of his skis. Once back inside and out of the wind, he lit the candle and in the wavering candlelight he used his ski to create an air vent wide enough to ventilate the cave but narrow enough to keep snow from falling in.

Satisfied, he returned to find Zoe still marching. She’d removed his parka and hung it on a tree branch.

“You were right—I’m definitely warm,” she said with a courageous smile.

“Your palace awaits,” Cody said with a bow.

When she didn’t laugh, he squinted at her through the falling snow.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “To have put you through this. I just wanted to—”

“Hey, let’s get in and get warm.” He dragged on his T-shirt and sweater and took the parka she handed him. It’d be a while before his core warmed again. But as he looked at the expression on Zoe’s face, he thought, then again, maybe not.

He crawled in ahead of her and relit the candle so she could see.

She didn’t follow.

“Hey, you coming?” he called out.

Her face appeared in the opening.

“It’s rather small,” she said.

“It is that.”

She tilted her head, as if trying to see deeper inside. “Tiny even.”

“Think of it as intimate.”

“And it’s kind of tight.”

“Hmm... Warm and cozy?”

“And... Cody, I don’t think I can go in there.”

Her voice was shaky.

He crawled back outside. She stepped away, wrapping her arms around herself.

“What is it?”

She lifted her face, and snowflakes sputtered over her eyes and nose.

“I... I don’t do well in tight spaces. I’m kind of wimpy about it.”

She brushed her face clear of snow. But not of fear. And not of embarrassment. Cody cupped her cheeks.

“It’s our only choice, Zoe. You can’t stay outside.”

She said nothing, just blinked up at him.

“How’s this? If you get acting
wimpy
, I’ll share my deepest fear, the one my sister still teases me about. I promise it’s much worse than being afraid of tight spaces.” He tapped her nose. “Okay?”

She nodded.

And he once again led the way.

Inside, he watched as she examined the walls, as she took one deep breath and then another.

“Are we good?”

“I think so, thank you.”

“You sure?” He crossed his arms.

“Y-y-yes.”

“Good. ’Cause I didn’t want to confess my fear. I have a reputation to uphold.”

She smacked at his arm and laughed, and Cody could tell the laughter was genuine.

“Hold this.” He handed her the candle. “And just sit tight for a minute.”

She laughed again.

“What?”

Her eyes lit with amusement. “I wasn’t planning to go anywhere.”

Her appetite for life called out to him. Just being close to her made him want to abandon his carefully structured ideas about how his life should flow and with whom and when.

He backed down the short tunnel and flapped the tarp over the entrance, tucking the corners inside and securing them with mounds of snow. The cave wouldn’t be toasty, but at least they wouldn’t freeze.

He crawled back into the body of the cave and wished he hadn’t seen the tight muscles around Zoe’s eyes. If he’d had time he could’ve made it wider. But there hadn’t been time. He was lucky to have gotten the damn thing hollowed out at all. He was lucky to have found her when he did. Another half hour and her tracks would’ve been obliterated by the blizzard. He shuddered at the thought.

“You’re cold?”

“I’m fine.” He sure didn’t want to scare her with what-could’ve-been scenarios. They’d be fine in the morning. He had the skills to get them back up the cliff and back to his truck. When he got back to the lodge,
then
he could unleash his thoughts about her foolishness, coach her about wilderness skills and precautions. But not now. Right now, they had to get through the night.

She watched as he stuck the handle of the shovel into the wall of the cave, dribbled some wax onto the metal blade and affixed the candle.

“What did you call this?” she asked, looking around their small refuge like it was a true wonder.

“A snow cave.”

“
Caverna della neve
.” Her smile lit her face. “It’s beautiful.”

She wrapped her arms around her chest and held her elbows. It was all he could do not to slide to her side of the cave and kiss her.

“Have you done this before?” she asked. “Built one of these?”

“Once. But I was fourteen. It was harder back then, even though that one was only for one person.”

She blinked, and he held his breath. He didn’t want to talk about the details of that night, maybe never would. It had been the first night he’d run away from home, away from his father, the first night he had realized that life in his family had changed. He hadn’t known why, but he knew nothing would ever be the same. After that night, home had been a place to escape from and family had lost it meaning. Until he met her.

With a tilt of her head she said, “You are a
rompicapo
, Cody Bond.”

He didn’t understand.

“I don’t know the English word; enigma is the closest. You appear one way and then sometimes another.”

He’d never thought of himself as a complicated man. He said what he thought. Usually. Lately, however, and around her, he’d been pulling some punches and avoiding telling full-on truths. That part he didn’t like at all. But until his hunches lined up with some damn clear facts, he sure wasn’t going to sound an alarm. Not about her father.

She dug around in her pack and pulled out a plastic packet marked
emergency
. “I think this counts as an emergency,” she said as she ripped it open. She dragged out a space blanket and held it out.

“That will make an excellent floor,” he said, taking the folded plastic from her. “The metallic surface will reflect our heat up to us. Good going.”

She smiled and dug into the packet again, pulling out a bundle of four stubby white candles and waterproof matches.

“Brilliant.” Then he laughed. “No pun intended.”

She giggled, but he heard the nervousness in it.

“Here, help me spread this.” Activity was always a good way to keep things flowing.

She helped him smooth the space blanket onto the hard-packed snow floor. And then she knelt on it across from him, as if there were a fire or a wall between them.

“Thank you, Cody.”

Her simple thank-you reached in and unhinged him. In the flicker of candlelight, surrounded by the glistening walls of the snow cave, she looked like a creature from a dream. Hell, she was a creature from a dream, from his dreams. He wanted to pull her into his arms and never let go. The thought shocked him.

“What other goodies do you have in there?” he said, steering the energy to safer ground. “A rabbit maybe?”

Her face fell, and to his dismay, she started to cry.

“I was making a joke.” He crossed to her and wrapped his arms around her. “Not a very good one, I see.”

He rocked her and let her cry. He knew it was necessary for her to release the charge of the trauma. Having snow slide out from under you was a horror to anyone. He’d spent years learning to test stability before doing backcountry downhill runs, and knew that even the best skiers sometimes made mistakes that cost them their lives. Being lost in a foreign wilderness in a blizzard only added to the whole trauma package.

He stroked her hair as her sobs quieted and her breathing smoothed. He wished that his erection had waited for a more opportune time to display how badly he wanted her. At least from the angle he held her, she wouldn’t feel his hard-on. The last time he’d seen her, she’d made it pretty damn clear that she wanted to cool it. She was trapped with him for the night. In ridiculously close quarters. But that was only accidental. He would honor her wishes.

Unable to bear the feel of her body molded against his, he gently set her away from him. He might be able to keep from jumping her, but he was no saint.

She wiped at her face with the sleeve of her jacket. “I’m not one to cry. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize. Or explain.”

She lowered her eyes to the pouch she still clutched and began to dig through it with focused intensity. She pulled out a food bar and held it up, triumphant. “Dinner.” Then she scrunched up her nose. “It says twenty-five hundred calories.”

“We’ll burn them off on our hike back to my truck in the morning.” He had better ideas for calorie-burning activities, but those were clearly off-limits. “I have the perfect accompaniment.” He unzipped the front pocket of his pack and pulled out the bottle of water. “Although, while we have the candles, we’d best just use my handy tin cup and melt a bit of our fortress.”

“
Palace
,” she said firmly. “I have a friend who paid thousands of euros to spend a night in an ice palace. I think this is so much better.”

Her accent made the words
night in an ice palace
sound erotic.

“It’s rather small for a palace,” he said, glad to see a real smile on her face.

She laughed, and the lingering smile did all sorts of things to him. He’d spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to forget everything that attracted him to her, tried not to remember the way one side of her mouth tipped up more than the other when she smiled or the feel of her skin against his or the lush curves of her body and how she felt like perfection against him. But the hardest thing to pretend he didn’t remember was the full, rich sound of her laughter. Trying to erase that sound had been as hard as trying to wipe out visions of her letting herself go and giving in to the pleasure of sex. But neither had been as hard to ignore as the fire ramping up in him right now as he recognized her effort to tamp down her fears. Bravery in a woman was a damn strong turn-on.

“It’s the most astonishing palace I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been in many.”

He didn’t doubt that. Nor did he need to be reminded that she traveled in circles most people only read about in magazines. The gap between them was more than a couple of feet—it was an entire culture.

He offered her the cup of melted snow. She shook her head. “No, you drink first. You did the work.”

He took a sip, then handed the cup to her. “You must’ve busted it to make it up this far in such a short time. I had a heck of a time catching up to you.”

“I was motivated.”

“By what?”

“The beauty.”

He knew she wasn’t fessing up to whatever had shot her out into a cold, threatening afternoon. It dawned on him that she might have been nervous about seeing him. The thought shouldn’t have made him feel warm inside.

She handed the cup back to him, being careful not to touch his fingers. “Is it like this in Montana?”

“The snow?”

“The wilderness.”

Small talk. They’d need quite a bit of it to fill the hours before he’d be ready for sleep.
If
he could sleep. It was a damned uncomfortable situation. “Yes. Although there are few places as majestic as this valley.”

“Do you miss Montana?”

It was a fair question. She couldn’t know how desperate he’d been to get away from the place he’d once called home. “When I left all I could think about was making a Major League team, any team. I didn’t think I cared where. But when I came to California, to the Bay Area, I fell in love with the coast, the sea, and San Francisco.”

“Will you stay?”

“That depends on whether the Giants keep me on the roster.”

“Alex says they will. He says you have instincts he’s never seen before in a young catcher.”

“Alex is an optimist.” But hearing the praise gave him hope. And knowing that she’d discussed him with Alex touched him in a way he found unsettling. “It’ll take hard work in the offseason and”—he didn’t want to say the word, but it was the truth—“and some luck.”

She pursed her lips and drew her legs up, resting her chin on her knees. “It must be wonderful to know exactly what you love and to pursue it with passion.”

Even in the dim light, the lush red of her lips called to him. What he wanted to pursue—
who
he wanted to pursue—was two feet from him but might as well have been a world away.

“What about you, Zoe. What is it that you love?” He’d asked before, but she’d never told him what moved her.

She slid her gaze from his and chewed at her bottom lip. Was she trying to torture him? If so, she was doing a mighty fine job of it. He looked away. When he looked back, she was staring at him.

Suddenly thirsty, he melted another cup of snow and drank down the entire cup. It was going to be a very, very long night. If not for the howling blizzard, he’d take his tarp and sleep under a tree. Freezing to death had more appeal than the torture of being confined in such an intimate space with her, unable to touch.