A Very Daring Christmas (The Tavonesi Series Book 8) (21 page)

Dimitri lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug and stood. He pivoted to Parker. “If the ladies are involved, I am in.”

“Not just ladies,” Tyler protested. “Jake and I baked too. Well, we baked one recipe. The
ladies
baked the other.”

Dimitri smiled, one of those toothpaste-whitener smiles that always looked fake to Jake and made him stare at people’s teeth. “You look like a man who can handle this job,” he said to Jake. “I’ll leave you to it.” He tousled Tyler’s hair. “Looks like the hard work of cuisine discernment is up to us, young man.”

Jake heard the prejudice under Dimitri’s words. And hell, it was true—he was a workingman’s son. And proud to be one. He knew how to use a damn drill.

“Do you want me to help?” Tyler asked, pointing to the drill.

“No, go represent us.” Jake crooked a finger and had Tyler bend close. “Make sure Cameron and Sophie don’t cheat.”

“If we win, will you come to the batting cage with me?”

To Jake’s surprise, Tyler had wormed his way into Jake’s heart. “I’ll take you to the batting cage even if we lose, sport.”

It took all Jake’s concentration to drill the bolt holes into the thick plastic of the tree stand. And to ignore the lively laughter and rapport around the table behind him. Cameron seemed to laugh at everything Dimitri said.

Yep. Good thing he didn’t do jealousy.

Parker announced that Jake and Tyler’s snickerdoodles were the hands-down winner of the cookie contest. Parker dragged Jake over to the table. Tyler was so damned excited about winning that Jake tried not to feel ridiculous as Sabrina hung blue ribbons with gold metal snowflakes around their necks.

Sophie protested Parker’s decision. But when Sabrina announced that the second-place prize was hot cocoa at the ice-skating rink the following day, Sophie whooped with glee.

The butler—Spencer—called Sabrina and Alex into the foyer.

“I’ll just be preparing for the evening’s festivities,” Parker said as he followed them out of the room. “And icing down that champagne,” he shot over his shoulder.

Jake’s attention was riveted to the looks being exchanged between Dimitri and Cameron as he fed her pieces of a gingerbread man. Gingerbread man, hell. Dimitri was feeding her a helluva lot more than that.

Dimitri offered Cameron another bite of cookie. “I’d heard you’d be here,” Dimitri said to her in his smooth accent as she closed her lips around the cookie. “I was wounded when you didn’t join us for my father’s coronation. But more wounded when you skipped out on Parker’s polo match in Monaco last spring.”

His father’s
coronation
? The guy was a prince? That was ripe. Just ripe. Monaco, jets and parties—Cameron and Dimitri shared a world Jake wasn’t sure he wanted any part of.

A blush colored Cameron’s cheeks. “I had work, Dimitri. Parties had to take a backseat. But I did write to your father.”

“Ah yes, work.” Dimitri bit the head off the gingerbread cookie he held. “It can be so inconvenient.”

Tyler inserted himself between Dimitri and Cameron. “
Jake
hit the game-winning home run in the World Series.
He’s
going to meet the president. As in of the United States. Aren’t you, Jake?”

Cameron crossed her arms. There was no mistaking the challenge in her eyes.

“No, sport. The team is going to Washington, but I have
work
to do here.” Jake emphasized the word
work
, but what he really wanted to do was vaporize Dimitri and his smooth-talking ways.

“But it’s the
president
,” Tyler protested.

“Not one for pomp and circumstance?” Dimitri’s too-bright-white smile was like a motion-detector light going off in the daytime.

“Something like that.” Jake grabbed a snickerdoodle and downed it, but the cinnamon-laced cookie didn’t settle the roiling in his stomach. Maybe he had indigestion. Whatever the burn in his belly was, he hadn’t felt it before. Maybe he’d call his doctor when he got back to the city. The season had taken a toll, and he needed to get into tip-top shape for the next one. Yeah, he’d get checked out.

Or maybe he should just get the hell out of there and back on familiar ground. His gym in the Embarcadero was sounding really good right now. He could pump some iron. Take a steam. Forget about all this Christmas fuss. Forget about people trying to shoehorn him into doing their bidding. And forget about Cameron and the unfamiliar feelings she revved in him.

Cameron picked up a snickerdoodle from the silver tray and bit into it. She raised a brow as she chewed. “These
are
excellent cookies, Tyler.”

“Ours are
way
better,” Sophie said from where she’d perched herself on the table beside the trays of cookies. “I want a rematch.”

“
We
won,” Tyler said, planting his fists at his sides. “You’re a poor loser. No one likes a poor loser. Adrian says so.”

Cameron leaned over Tyler’s head and toward Jake. “You may have won this round,” she said, “but we’ll see how you do in charades. Winners get to claim a prize.”

“I love a good wager,” Dimitri said. “What’s charades?”

“I’ll teach you.” Cameron shot Dimitri a smile. “It’s acting, mostly. It’s fun.”

To avoid his impulse to touch Cameron, Jake crossed his arms. Dimitri made him feel like staking out territory. But he didn’t stoop to such stupid behaviors, had never felt the need to. Releasing one hand from his elbow, he gestured to the air between him and Cameron. “We’re on the same team, remember?”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Light sparked in her eyes, the light he’d seen when she’d rested in his arms after they’d made love. Was she trying to scramble his brain?

And just like that, Jake knew he was staying, that he wasn’t skipping out to spend time alone in a gym. Staying because he liked the holiday fuss. Because he liked the kids and admired Alex and his sister.

And Cameron?

The trouble was, he didn’t have any words for what he felt about her.

Chapter Sixteen

After dinner, Jake took a long walk through Trovare’s vineyards. The free-flowing banter around the table had made him feel like the outsider he was. As he strolled through the rows of pruned vines, he admired that Alex managed to deal with a huge operation like Trovare and still play in the majors.
Star
in the majors.

A twig snapped behind him and had him pivoting.

“Saw you head out here.” Alex’s voice came out of the darkness before Jake could make out his silhouetted form. “Nice night, isn’t it?”

Stars were just blinking on in the inky sky. The lights from Trovare were the only other visible source of illumination.

“I miss the night sky,” Jake said. “One of my favorite things to do as a kid was head out to the field near our house in the mountains and stare at the stars until my toes got so cold I had to go in.”

He could be honest with Alex. With Alex, what you saw was what he was. No bullshit.

“Jackie loves the stars. When she was in the Galapagos doing research, she said she thought she could see a million.”

“Where is Jackie?”

“Honolulu. Her brother had a bad accident surfing the pipeline. Well, not actually surfing. He was trying to rescue another surfer. They both got shredded by the reef. She’ll be back by Christmas. With Cory, I hope.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Injuries were plaguing athletes more than ever. “Cameron and I went to see him surf down south. I hadn’t realized at the time that he was your wife’s brother.”

“He’s tough. Been through worse. But it scraped up his bow arm. We might not have a cello concert this Christmas.”

“He plays the cello?”

“Like a master.”

Jake kicked at a spot in the dirt. “Is anyone in this family a straight-up single-talent anything?” He said it with a laugh, but the Tavonesis wowed him. There had to be a shadow side. There had to be stuff that they didn’t want seen. But he’d be damned if he’d detected any skeletons in any of the closets.

Alex cleared his throat. Jake’s mind stood to alert. Even though Alex was the team captain of the Giants, he rarely made speeches, but before he did, he made that same sound.

“I wanted to tell you, before it hit the news—I’m retiring after this next year.”

Jake felt that the planet had stopped spinning. Alex was the heart of the team. “You’ve been saying that for years.”

“Yeah, well, I mean it this time. At least I think I do.”

The silence of the night engulfed them, but Jake’s thoughts were racing. He’d never thought beyond baseball; the game was his
life
. It was the organizing principle that everything else hung on. Baseball was how he made sense of everything.

“I want you to take over as captain of the team next year,” Alex continued. “The guys want you to take it on.”

“How do you know?” Not a very diplomatic answer for such an announcement. But he sucked at diplomacy. Which was exactly why the news throttled him.

“I mean, that’s honorable. I mean, it’s an honor—rather, it
would
be an honor. But I don’t even know if I’ll get a deal, if the Giants will renew my contract. You should pick another guy.”

“I like humility,” Alex said. In the darkness Jake couldn’t read his expression. “But don’t be ridiculous. You’re it, hands down. If the team doesn’t renew you, well, what can I say? I’ve been surprised in my life, but that would be a big one. Just think about it. You don’t have to decide until spring training.”

“What would you do? I mean, if you don’t play ball?” As soon as the words left Jake’s mouth, he felt ridiculous. He was standing on the grounds of what Alex would do.

“Before I met Jackie, I had no idea about life beyond baseball. I love Trovare, the vineyards—even some aspects of the business—but none of this could take the place of the game. You know that spot in you that defies description, but you know it’s there? That hole that playing your heart out seems to fill? It’s not exactly the same, but living with Jackie, being married to her... I won’t say we don’t have our rough spots, but I discovered that living beside her pulls me into life like nothing else I can describe. We’ll roll the path out in front of us as we go along. I have faith in that now.”

Jake knew the hole Alex was describing. What baseball didn’t fill—that bit left over—he filled with women and whiskey and gambling. But lately none of those standbys had been reliable. He tried to think back to when the nagging feeling had started in earnest.

In Dominia
.
When he met
Cameron
.

Yup, Cameron.

It was no wonder she was a top Hollywood draw. He’d fallen under her spell just like millions of other people had. Alex’s admission about possibly retiring floored him—but what he felt for Cameron? It scraped at Jake’s bones.

“I was sent out here to fetch you,” Alex said after a few minutes had passed. “Sabrina and Parker have us on a schedule tonight.”

“No getting out of charades?”

“No getting out of anything. Not with those two at the holiday helm.”

“I could fake my own death.”

Alex laughed. “You’ll get the hang of it. Our gang’s grown since dinner. Matt and Alana are staying over for a few days. And we’ve picked up a few more Christmas orphans. Our friend Brigitte is staying with us until after New Year’s Eve. And Coco will join us for the holidays too. She doesn’t like being over at Casa del Sole with everybody else in her family off in Rome.”

“Lead the way.”

“Meant to tell you Matt and Ryan are taking the two of us on in Ryan’s batting cage day after tomorrow.”

“
That
I can look forward to. Maybe we can bunk down in one of the barn stalls and wait out the holidays there.”

“You
are
a dreamer,” Alex said.

Jake heard the tinge of wistfulness in his buddy’s voice. Parlor parties probably weren’t his first choice of activities either, even if he was a happily married man. Hell, to help Alex out, he could buck up for a few holiday activities and be a team player.

When he and Alex entered the Great Hall, they discovered that chairs had been moved from the long table to form two lines off to the right of the towering Christmas tree. Hundreds of white lights sparkled in the branches, illuminating an odd collection of homemade and high-art ornaments.

Sophie hung an ornament with fanfare and then protested being herded off to bed. But her parents held firm. It was adult time, Matt said. Sophie cast Jake a look that pleaded,
rescue me
but Jake shook his head. He pantomimed swinging a bat, reminding her of his promise about taking her to the batting cage. She whooped and marched out of the room.

“What was that all about?” Matt asked as he greeted Jake with a handshake.

“I promised Sophie a cage session.”

“You didn’t,” Alana said. “Jake, you are the
worst
influence.”

Jake lifted a shoulder and grinned. “I try to be.” He spread his hands in a gesture of defiance and pointed to Matt. “You’re the best shortstop in the league, dude. Surely you’ve taught your daughter how to stand in the face of a fastball?”

“Wait till you have kids of your own. I’ll corrupt them,” Matt said.

“
Wait
is the operative word there. As in not going to happen.”

Alana narrowed her eyes, but then a grin broke over her face as she looked over Jake’s shoulder. “Cameron! Sophie said you were here.”

Alana dodged around Jake and hugged Cameron, then looped their arms together.

“I was just about to inform Mr. Know-It-All, when he said he doesn’t want kids, that the universe doesn’t give a hoot about our carefully laid plans.” She spun the two of them to face Jake. “If you’d told me a couple years ago that I’d be a proud stepmom, I’d have laughed. But Sophie’s the best part of my life.”

Matt made a loud show of clearing his throat.

“Okay, she’s
tied
for first place,” Alana said with a light laugh. “These men, they have such fragile egos.”

Cameron nailed Jake with one of her unreadable movie-star expressions. “I’ve noticed.”