Fielder's Choice (10 page)

The feelings that her brief encounters with him had fired upset her carefree world and brought her prejudices about relationships into fine focus.

She’d had a series of relationships with men that she’d cut off before they’d gotten serious. Keeping a bit of distance allowed her to be in control.

Her parents’ horrid divorce and their ongoing dramas had made her wary of what people called love and had soured her on the whole idea of marriage. Even though her dad and stepmom had a good relationship and had since the beginning, those early years of watching her parents’ marriage slowly disintegrate had left a scar.

She’d never let herself fall in love, wasn’t sure she believed in it. Years of therapy hadn’t convinced her to give marriage or a serious relationship of any sort a go.

But lately her friends had been marrying. Marcel had played that card, dangled that fact in front of her as if it would somehow make his propositions more appealing. But she just didn’t believe that coupling was worth what a woman had to give up to make it happen.

A horn beeped, and she opened her eyes and waved at a ranch hand driving up the hill in one of the electric golf carts they used to carry supplies around the property. She waved him past and then headed down the path to check on the progress of the butterfly garden.

A willow overhung the glassy surface of the pond. As it was every morning before the afternoon winds from the coast kicked in, the air was calm and still.

She sat on the bench next to the tree and breathed in the lush scent of lavender and honeysuckle that grew up the hillside behind her. The perfumed air enveloped her, and she felt her shoulders relax. She closed her eyes and drifted in the bliss of the honeyed scents and the gentle song of birds as they went about their day. She loved lavender. The gown she’d just bought was the color of lavender blossoms right after the first bloom. She imagined the look on Matt’s face if he were to see her in such a gown instead of the sensible pants and long-sleeved shirts she wore at the ranch.
He
would look fabulous in a tux; he had the right shoulders for it. Well, he had the right shoulders for anything. Maybe she should go to a game and see what he looked like in his uniform. It couldn’t hurt just to look. She could call Alex’s wife, Jackie, and drive in with her. They were due for a girl’s afternoon out. Maybe they could even fit in some shoe shopping, although Jackie wasn’t much for shopping of any sort. She could—

“Miss Tavonesi?”

The man’s voice startled her. She focused but couldn’t quite recall the ranch worker’s name. She’d been trying to memorize everyone’s names, to fit them with faces and jobs, but a week in Paris and jet lag had erased most of what she’d tucked away.

“We’re going to set up for the camp games in the east orchard,” the man said. “Peg wants to know if you want one shade tent or two.”

She felt her brain freeze up. It was a simple question, and the man in front of her was waiting for a simple answer. But it was just one more example of how foreign everything about her life here was. She took a sip of her coffee. More was always better when it came to parties, wasn’t it?

“Two,” she said, attempting to sound definitive.

“Great. Maybe even a tent down here, near the pond?”

“Sure,” Alana replied, wondering why he wasn’t asking Peg. Surely it was her job to handle those sorts of things?

Alana had the sneaking suspicion that Peg’s questions were part of a plot to involve Alana further in ranch life. It hadn’t escaped her that since she’d returned, the staff seemed more worried about the ranch’s future. Even she could tell they were trying too hard to make everything appear to run smoothly. She didn’t blame them. It was a beautiful place and a great community. Too bad she felt like she was walking through a film set, even on good days.

“See you at the games?” The man gave a jaunty tip of his straw cowboy hat.

She hadn’t known she’d be expected to attend the games. “Aren’t they for the kids?”

“Oh, no, Miss Tavonesi, we all play—kids, staff, parents. It’s a tradition. The winner gets to choose the charade teams for campfire night.”

Just what she needed—charades.

“Thank you, um...” She looked for a name tag, but his jacket covered it. It was obvious she didn’t remember his name, even though she’d seen the man every day since she’d been on the ranch.

“Gustavo.”

“Gustavo. Thank you. What time do these games start?”

“After the barbecue lunch.” He eyed her woven, multi-colored Missoni blouse. “The ranch team wears white shirts,” he said with a kindly nod before he turned and headed along the path to the east orchard.

She fingered her designer blouse. It’d been her last purchase before leaving for Orly. Games with staff and kids. Tents and barbecues and windmills. Paris felt much more than six thousand miles away.

She returned to the house to change.

Three cups of coffee and the prospect of playing games didn’t prevent her from falling asleep fully clothed on her bed. She tried to resist the tug of drowsiness, but sleep lapped thorough her like a sweet drug and pulled her into a welcoming darkness. She floated, weightless, as a light dawned along the horizon. She stood at the edge of a fence, dressed in the gown she’d had fitted in Paris. The delicate silk caught the breeze and skimmed against the curves of her body. She looked up. Matt walked toward her on the other side of the fence. They stood in a stadium and though she could see the thousands of people in the ballpark, there was no sound. Matt moved in slow motion, the white cloth of his uniform hugging his body and accentuating his muscles as he prowled toward her.

As he came closer, he raised his hand in greeting and the hunger in his eyes held her gaze.

She couldn’t move.

Her body felt heavy, as if she were drugged. When he reached her, he ran his hand along her shoulder and dropped the strap of her gown. It fell to the crook of her elbow and snagged on the fence. A smoldering look came into his eyes, and a wicked smile curved his lips. He pressed his torso against the fence and bent down to her, tracking fire with his mouth along her shoulder and slowly, ever so slowly, up the nape of her neck. His hands rose and cradled her head, his fingers tangled in her hair. She felt the searing heat of his lips against her chilled skin as he traced the line of her jaw with his mouth. His lips found hers, and a shock of desire burst in her, burning, almost painful, when she met his lips with the heat of her own. The fence dissolved, and he pulled her against the hard planes of his chest. A low, hungry moan escaped him. He moved his hand to cup her breast through the thin silk of her gown. Ignoring the people in the stadium, she reached to his waist and pulled his shirt from his pants. She ran her hands up the muscles of his chest, felt him go hard against her hip. Very hard. Wordlessly he lifted her and lowered her to the red dirt and white chalked lines at their feet. His hands tore at her gown, and it fell away. He ran his fingers to the top of her thigh—

“Alana?”

Isobel’s voice drifted to her as if wafting in on a breeze through a dark tunnel.

Alana burrowed deeper into the bed and sought Matt’s lips, but only darkness and a thin shaft of distant light met her.

“Alana?”

Isobel’s voice had the sound of alarm.

Alana dragged her eyes open. Though she loved jet-lag-induced dreams, coming out of them always hurt. Coming out of this one hurt in ways she didn’t want to consider.

“Just a minute, Isobel.” Alana pushed herself to sitting and blinked away the sponginess behind her eyes.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d want to be roused,” Isobel said from where she stood in the doorway. “I brought you a tray. You missed the barbecue.” She put the tray on the table just inside the door.

“Have the games started?” Alana said as she stretched her arms over her head. Perhaps she wouldn’t be a total good-for-nothing.

“In ten minutes. You should eat something. I brought sliced fruit. It always helped Señora Tavonesi with her jet lag.”

She thanked Isobel, wolfed down the strawberries and cantaloupe, then rummaged in the armoire for a white shirt. As she tugged her best T-shirt over her head, she felt Matt’s hands on her body and cursed him under her breath.

She didn’t like to be crept up on, not even in her dreams. But maybe she’d make an exception for Matt, for the delicious heat that flooded her when his lips plundered hers. She closed her eyes, remembering, then she shook her head. No, she’d made up her mind. The man was best kept off limits.

Well, off limits for anything more than a fantasy. And maybe a fling. A fling might sate the desire he’d stirred, and then she could get him out of her mind.

But a relationship with him couldn’t go anywhere. A little girl was in the mix. Even Alana knew such a relationship wasn’t to be taken lightly. And if she were to be really honest, she didn’t need a fling in her life right now either. With Marcel and the ranch and the damned windmill... no, she didn’t need any more distractions, and Matt Darrington would be one hell of a distraction.

When Alana reached the east orchard, Gustavo had already organized the sound-off to determine the teams. Ten adults and twice as many children surrounded him, calling out either one or two as he pointed around the circle.

He saw Alana and pointed to her.

“You’re a two.” He gestured to an orange rope that edged the small meadow and divided it from the surrounding orchard.

Sophie walked up to her.

“I’m a two,” Sophie said. “Two’s are the best. Dad’s a one.” She pointed to where her father stood at the back of the group of ranch hands and older kids on the opposite side of the orange rope.

He wore a pair of jeans in a way that would make marketing people swoon.

“I was going to umpire,” Alana said.

“When you’re seventy.” Peg laughed. “Your grandmother didn’t start umping until she hit seventy-five. Besides, you have to know the rules first.”

Peg had her there. She didn’t even know what the game was.

Gustavo began to rattle off the rules for Capture the Flag. At first it seemed like a simple combination of freeze tag and soccer but as he began to describe how players could tag opposing team members and take them to jail, how players could run and free one member of their team from jail but only one at a time, the details began to blur. The ranch hands and parents nodded. Evidently these people had spent their younger years playing Capture the Flag while she was taking equestrian lessons or learning to waltz wearing pristine white gloves. Another strike against her all-girl boarding school.

“Okay.” Gustavo beamed. “Youngest players are going to guard the flags. Remember—no puppy-guarding.”

“C’mon,” one of the older boys groused.

Gustavo gave him a friendly glare.

“No what?” Alana asked.

“Guarding the flag by standing right on top of it or too close. Makes the game boring,” Gustavo explained. “Guards must stay ten feet from the flag. It’s an honor system. Anyone caught violating the flag-guarding rule goes to permanent jail.” He looked back at the older boy. “
No
exceptions. And remember, touch tags only. And you have to shout 
‘Caught!
’ when you’ve tagged an enemy. Got it?”

Sophie patted Alana’s elbow. “I’ll help you. It’s really easy. You can be a border guard.”

That her consternation showed enough to alert a six-year-old was bad enough, but when she looked over at Matt, his bemused smile made her forget most of the rules she’d just logged.

Gustavo pointed out the
jails
off to the side of the respective fields. Small white tents shaded the benches, and the table alongside each bench held lemonade and cookies. Jail had never looked so good.

“We’ve used these orange ropes to designate the boundaries,” Gustavo said, gesturing.

Alana smiled. He used the same two-finger signal that flight attendants used to point out emergency exits. If there was an emergency exit from the field, she’d use it.

Gustavo nodded to the parents. “Most gopher holes have been filled, but watch where you run. Oh, and watch for low branches, especially around the younger trees. And decide among your teammates who’s attacking and who’s defending.” He put his hands on his knees and crouched down to the younger kids’ eye level. “When you’re across your boundary you’re in enemy territory and you’re vulnerable. Got it?”

The kids all nodded. To Alana it didn’t matter which side of the line she was on, the whole enterprise made her feel vulnerable.

A couple of the ranch hands were stretching and making fake lunges at their kids on the other side of the boundary line. Alana noticed that Matt hung back at the periphery of his team’s territory and didn’t mix with the other parents. But as she took her place for the start of the game, she saw him talking with a couple of very earnest-looking boys. The boys were lapping up whatever he was telling them. Maybe they knew he was a professional athlete. Maybe they could just read competitive excellence in his body and stance. She sure could.

Watching Matt show the boys a couple of moves for evading the enemy fired her up, and her competitive edge kicked in. She might not know backyard games, but she’d played a mean game of tennis in college and still could beat her brother Simon on a good day.