The Glory Game (53 page)

“Do you find it amusing the way I learned to read?” he challenged making it apparent that others had.

“No, although I'm surprised you didn't go to school. From what I've seen, Argentina is a very literate country.”

“I went for three years when we lived on the pampas. That's where I learned my letters and numbers.”

“How did you learn English?”

“My employer, Señor Boone, was descended from English settlers who came here to build the railroad. He was educated in England and spoke very bad Spanish. His friends who came to play polo were mostly English, too. This was part of polo, I thought. They became my models. I copied the way they talked and the way they dressed, and when I was a good enough polo player to be invited to their homes, I copied the way they ate and drank.”

Yet none of it meant anything to him, she realized—not the clothes, the fine foods and wines, the plush homes, and the haughty airs. That was the world in which polo was played, and he had adapted to it without embracing it.

“You went through all that just to play polo,” Luz murmured.

“Just to play polo,” he repeated. “Polo gave me freedom. No one tells me what to do. You do not order me to teach your son. It is my choice. I answer to no man.”

“And to no woman.”

“No, and to no woman.” Raul turned and sat down on the edge of the desk, catching hold of her hand and pulling her over to stand between his legs. His hands then curved to her hips while her own settled on his shoulders. “Trisha has gone, no?”

“Yes, she should be landing in Buenos Aires now.” Sensual shudders quivered over her skin as he nuzzled the curve of her neck.

She tunneled her fingers into his dark hair, forcing his head up, but he needed little coercion to find her lips. The hunger of a long wait deepened the kiss to a full-blown mating, and Luz drank in the taste of him, the nicotine flavor of his tongue and the salty tang of his lips. She leaned into him, letting him take her weight while she strained for more.

The warning click of the doorlatch did not alert them quickly enough to break apart. “Raul, lunch … is ready,” Hector faltered over the announcement, but a wide grin sent his upper lip disappearing beneath the heavy mustache. Raul turned from the waist to glare at him, an arm circling her hips to keep Luz from moving away from him.

“It is best if you remember to knock from now on, Hector,” Raul suggested curtly.

“Si
, and maybe we should fix the locks, too.” He pulled the door shut. The pounding of his crutches sounded extraordinarily loud, as though he wanted them to be sure they heard him leave.

Studying the sheen of his dark hair, Luz combed her fingers through it, smoothing down the areas she had previously ruffled. When he tilted his head to look at her, she was filled with a toasty warm feeling. His hold shifted, his hands spreading to cover the rounded cheeks of her bottom and applying pressure to arch the lower half of her body more fully into the open cradle of his hips.

“I had forgotten how very soft you feel to me,” he murmured against her cheek, his accent thickening. “It has been too long.”

“I know.”

“Tonight …” Raul pulled slightly back, letting their noses touch and their breaths mingle. “Shall I come to your room or will you come to mine?”

“I don't know where you sleep.”

“At the far end of the upper hall. It is better that I come to you. No one will think anything if they see me in the hall.” He kissed her again, long and hard.

“Lunch is ready,” she unwillingly reminded him.

“That is not all.” The comment needed no explanation; Luz was fully aware of the bulge in his breeches. But he loosened his hold, setting her away from him so that he could stand up. When she started to move away from the desk, he repeated, ‘Tonight.”

“Yes.”

Long after the last bedroom door had closed, Luz waited in her room, straining to catch the smallest sound in the hallway. All she could hear was the creakings of the house. For the third time, she paced to the window and stared out the dark pane that reflected her image in the lamplight. She glanced at the nightgown draped over the corner chair, debating whether to give up and go to bed. It was late and getting later. The soft makeup, the perfume discreetly dabbed in indiscreet places, the sexy silk peignor—all seemed destined to seduce only her own pillow.

Two light taps sounded on her door, and Luz nearly ran across the room, slowing herself at the last minute. As she opened it, Raul slipped quickly inside, clad only in a terry-cloth robe. After the door was shut, there was an instant when they merely looked at each other, posed like a stag and a doe before the mating ritual begins.

Luz wasn't sure which of them moved first, and it didn't matter. She was in his arms, feeling the heat of his kiss. Her hands slid inside his robe and spread over his chest, discovering the hardness of his nipples. The bedcovers were turned invitingly down, and they gravitated to them, stopping to shed their robes, then gliding onto the sheeted mattress. The bedsprings groaned under their combined weight.

“I should have warned you about the squeaky springs,” Luz murmured as she leaned over him, the tips of her breasts brushing across his smooth chest.

“The house is blessed with thick walls,” he assured her as he pulled her head down to devour her lips.

Her hands caressed him, traveling over the hard planes of his body while she dragged free of his mouth to rub her lips
over his clean-shaven jaw and down the tanned column of his throat. There was none of the hesitancy of the first time, none of the uncertainty and waiting to see what he wanted her to do. Luz did what she wanted, and that was to explore and enjoy this man of muscle and bone and hard flesh.

She was conscious of the stimulating caress of his hands, kneading and stroking her body with building urgency. They aroused her, as he was aroused. Traveling from the hollowed cheek of his flank, her fingers spread into the silken hairs covering his thigh, her arm brushing the head of his erection. She felt his involuntary flinch when she cupped his male sacs in her hand. A low groan broke from his throat as she stroked his engorged flesh, rediscovering the power a woman held equally over a man.

Shifting, Raul lifted her easily and rolled them both over to assume the position of dominance. She saw the desire in his heavy-lidded eyes. It excited her own. Now it was his hands that began the stimulating play while his lips, tongue, and teeth created their own havoc with her senses. Before they were through, she swore he had discovered every perfume-dotted place. When his hand glided between her thighs and his fingers located the swelling bud of her sex, it was she who writhed convulsively under their teasing manipulation, the soft, involuntary cries torn from her throat, as she had done to him.

The satisfying weight of his body at last moved onto her as he sheathed himself in her. Passion moved them together, gloriously out of control. Neither of them heard the rhythmic creak of the bed springs, or the increase of its tempo.

When his seed was spilled and it was over, they lay for a long while lightly cradled in each other's arms, absently kissing and touching, murmuring things that were not as important as the sound of the voice.

Finally, Raul got out of bed and donned his robe. Luz sat up and plumped a pair of pillows behind her, then leaned against them, pulling the sheet and tucking the hemmed facing under her arms. He paused beside the bed.

“I must go. You will sleep well, no?” There was a lazy quality to his look as if all the hard-driving energies had been drained from him. That was what she had done for him, Luz knew.

“Very well,” she assured him, still feeling like thick, rich cream inside.

He pulled the knot of his sash tight. “Tomorrow.”

“Sí
.” The corners of her mouth deepened in a tiny pleased smile.
“Moñana.”
She saw the amused glint in his eyes at her use of Spanish.

Then Raul moved away from the bed, and she watched him leave as silently as he had come. For a little longer, she lay reclined against the pillows, then she reached over and switched off the lamp and snuggled under the covers. The scent of him clung to the sheets. Luz closed her eyes, breathing it in. Sleep came easily to her totally relaxed body.

A pattern was set that night. The days went as they had before, with Raul instructing at the practice field, holding the rap sessions in the game room, and working evenings in his office. Luz saw little of him except at meals in the company of the others. However, Hector had taken it upon himself to change the seating arrangements at the dining table, insisting that Luz sit at the table and act as hostess. With Trisha gone, the change appeared to be a natural one, a courtesy to the only lady present. While Luz liked looking down that long table and seeing Raul sitting at the head of it, the distance limited communication to smiling glances. But they made up for that separation late at night, after everyone else had gone to bed.

September brought sunnier skies and warmer temperatures—and a change in the week's routine. The Argentine polo season was in full swing, which meant weekend competitions at the various polo clubs in the Buenos Aires suburbs. All week they practiced and refined their skills, and on weekends they played polo in earnest. The level of competition, high-goal or low, dictated the makeup of the various teams.

Sometimes Raul and his other professionals made up three of the four. When it was high-goal play, Luis, Carlos, and Raul played with a fourth professional, the Mexican ten-goaler Juan Echevarria. As Raul had explained to Luz, this foursome would compete for the Argentine Open Championship in November, and these preliminary competitions gave them an opportunity to become used to playing together as a unit.

At the Hurlingham Club, Luz stood at the picket line with Rob and watched the four professionals on the field. It was an
aggressively played match marred by frequent fouls that continually halted the flow of action for penalty shots, so no momentum was established by either team. But when the final bell rang, Raul's team, Los Pamperos—the Spanish word for the wild wind on the pampas—rode off the field the victors.

Luz walked forward to meet the four returning riders, applauding their skills. “Congratulations!
Magnífico!”
Raul reined his horse to a halt beside her and swung down, elation tempered by fatigue. “Great game.” With onlookers around, Luz was careful to keep her attitude casually friendly. When Raul rested an arm about her shoulders, she lightly hooked his waist and glanced at Carlos Rafferty. “That was some goal you made, Carlos,” she said as he swung a leg over the front of the saddle and jumped to the ground. “You had hardly any window at all to the posts.” Raul's hand tightened on her shoulder, instinctively fitting her closer to his side and making her conscious of his hard-breathing rhythm, a mark of the physical exertion the game required.

“Sí
, it was something.” Carlos grinned. “I did not think I would make it.”

As they turned in unison to lead the horses to the picket line, Luz noticed the way Rob was looking at her. She became self-conscious about the arm she had around Raul's waist and let it slide away, angling away from him so that it appeared his hand dropped naturally from her shoulders.

“Are we going to have drinks at the club before driving back?” She moved away from Raul, toward Rob.

“Yes.” His glance briefly questioned her action, then darted to her son.

“Rob and I will meet you there.” Linking arms with Rob, she turned him in the direction of the clubhouse. “That was a hard-fought game, wasn't it?”

“I guess.” He shrugged unresponsively and lifted his arm free of hers, shunning the contact. Frowning, Luz studied the tired, brooding look on his face.

“Is your shoulder hurting? That was a nasty spill you took in the fourth chukkar.” Rob had played in an earlier game on another of the club's fields, a game his team had unfortunately lost.

“No. It's all right,” he mumbled.

“What's wrong then?”

“Nothing's wrong. Why does something have to be wrong? Can't a guy just not feel like talking?” he retorted sharply in anger, displaying the foul temper she had sensed. She walked, saying nothing, knowing it would blow over as quickly as it had blown up. “Are you planning to fly home on Friday or Saturday?”

“Neither. I thought I'd stay awhile longer.” She smiled quickly at him, falsely casual. “After all, there's no real rush to get back.”

“What about the horses? I'm not buying more than the nine we've purchased. Aren't you going to ship them back to the States?” Rob challenged.

“Yes, but I decided to send them via Hopeworth Farm. Stan Marshall has imported horses before, so he's familiar with all the paperwork and quarantine procedures. He'll be on hand to accept delivery, so it isn't necessary that I be there.” At this time of year in Virginia, the first hint of autumn colors would be showing, but here the green of spring was all around. Here new life was beginning, and Luz felt it was true for her. “Besides, what would I do in Palm Beach by myself? It would be the same old thing—luncheons, benefits, charity socials, committee meetings. I'd rather stay here with you and make sure you learn something.” The attempt at lightness was deliberate as she tried to imply there was no special significance to her decision.

“Yeah. I know how interested you are in what I do.”

She didn't like his tone. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“You haven't been on the sidelines watching me since before Trisha left, and that's been three weeks ago already,” Rob accused. “You're real interested in how well I'm doing.”

“I am, Rob. It's just that I've been busy getting all the papers transferred and the bills of sale finalized for the horses you bought.” Seven were from Raul and the other two from individual breeders in the area. “Besides …” Luz realized she had to tell him the truth about her absence from his workouts. “Raul felt I was distracting you.”