The Heart Of The Game (33 page)

She stilled and slid her gaze from his.

And he felt like an idiot. Again.

He’d sworn he wouldn’t come on too strong, but clearly he had.
Stop talking
, a voice whispered in his head.
Kiss her and stop talking
. What was it his sister said about living in the present and not always chasing the next game, the next thrill? Not always trying to nail things down to a definite place, not to chase certainty at the expense of possibility? But he couldn’t stop his thoughts from racing out and pulling toward a life with her, a future with her. Children with her. Family.

Damn, he was losing it and he’d scared her. Sex in a snow cave away from the world that bound them was one thing. Finding a way to an impossible future entirely another.

Her body spoke to his, but he’d had no indication that she wanted more than the coupling of their bodies and crazy-hot sex. And besides, what did he have to offer such a woman? If he didn’t make the team, he’d be back in some minor league town, scraping by. He couldn’t see her in that kind of life no matter how much he might want to paint such a picture. She probably couldn’t see herself in such a life either. How could she?

He framed her face with his hands and kissed her. Felt the change in her response, the reserve.

He dropped his hands to his sides. “I spend so much time working to make things a certain way that sometimes I miss the way they already are, their basic natures. But I’m not missing this, you, or this moment.”

“I will never forget what happened here. Never.”

Her voice wavered, and he felt the emotion behind her words, but her eyes were unreadable.

She was the enigma, not him. The mystery and riddle he likely would never have the chance to solve.

“We should suit up for the night.” He pulled on his shirt. “You wear this,” he said, offering his sweater. “Put it under your jacket. It could get really chilly in here before dawn.”

She unzipped her jacket and slipped back into her silk shirt. The material whispered down her body with a hush that stilled his heart.

“You’re beautiful, Zoe. I just had to tell you.”

She took his hand and turned it over in hers, palm up. She raised it to her lips and pressed a kiss to the center of his palm. “And you are the most amazing man I have ever met.”

He heard the words, but her simple gesture was as good as any eloquent goodbye. The door that she’d opened in his heart was wide open, and the wind blowing through it chilled his soul.

Zoe woke and stretched, surprised that the cave was warm. Well, at least not freezing cold. She turned on her side,
not
surprised that Cody was gone. She pulled on her boots and gloves. And then sat, quiet in the darkness, remembering every moment of the night before. Never would she know love as she’d known it with Cody. How could a heart be happy and so sad at the same time? But hers was. And in spite of the fact that she knew she had to find a way to put distance between them, she couldn’t wait to see his face, to talk with him, to be with him. She’d think about tomorrow when it came. And wished it wouldn’t come as fast as she knew it would.

As soon as low thoughts started to overtake her joy, the walls of the snow cave started to close in on Zoe, making it feel much more like a precarious cavity that would collapse in on itself at any moment and less like a palace. She had to get out.

She grabbed her pack and slid out of the cave into a tranquil white world iced with a cloudless blue sky. The quiet was awesome, almost unnerving. Even her breathing sounded hushed and unfamiliar.

Enchanted, as if she’d passed through the portal Cody had spoken about, she recognized she was seeing true beauty, unvarnished splendor, for the very first time. She knocked snow from a branch, watching it flutter in glittering sparkles to the ground, understanding it wasn’t only the snow and the clear sky that had bewitched her. She’d seen nature’s beauty before, had even been moved by it. Had tried to capture that magnificence through paint and canvas.

No, it was Zoe who was different, now able to see, to process, the depth of the beauty around her. And all because of Cody.

She smiled, hearing him trudging through the snow. But her heart was crying. Cody had introduced her to a beauty that was lacking in her life, and she knew she’d value such a gift forever. Yet at the same time, she knew she couldn’t keep him, the giver of that gift. And he was much more precious to her than even the most exquisite of presents.

Life could be cruelest when it hovered at the peak of joy. That was a wisdom she would rather have never discovered.

Cody strode up the slope. The troubled look on his face melted into a warm smile when he saw her.

“There’s a good spot we can climb not thirty feet from here,” he said.

She didn’t want to leave. She smiled back, doing her best to make it genuine and to cover the sadness tugging at her. The stubble on his chin gave him a rugged, woodsman look, and she shivered, recalling what the body under the parka looked like. But he was much more than an appealing body. She’d come to know him, to know his heart. He was so different from the men she’d known in Italy. He was comfortable in the wild, competent and capable. Under any other circumstances, he was the man she’d want to stay with, live with, nurture a family with. But they couldn’t live in a snow cave—he had to get back to his life, one without a wife and children and close family ties, and she had to get back to hers.

“I wish I could stay here forever.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

His hands stilled. He stopped strapping his skis to his pack and met her eyes. Then he ran a hand through his hair and shrugged.

“That’s your call. But we’d have to bring in more supplies. And I’d have to build a batting cage.”

He bent and gathered her snowshoes and handed them to her. “We should head back. They’ll have a search party out after us.”

And that fast, the world crashed in. She hadn’t thought once about her siblings or friends back at the lodge, that they’d be worried. Her focus had first been on herself and her safety. But the last hours her sole focus had been on Cody.

She strapped on the snowshoes and lifted her pack to her shoulders. He showed her the terraced steps he’d packed into the snow, and she climbed up, away from the cave and onto the relatively level ground above. At the last of the steeper steps, he offered his hand, and even through the gloves she felt the pulse of energy rush from his body to hers.

There were no tracks through the white expanse before them. Surrounded by the towering trees mantled with snow and the crystal-blue sky and the hush of the wild, they could have been the only two people in the world. If only it were so.

They walked in silence, simply enjoying the brilliant morning. Without warning, Cody lunged for her, putting his arm across her chest and backing her against a tree.

She blinked at him, but he was looking over his shoulder.

“Shhhh...” He pointed off to her left.

A black bear lumbered across their path, about twenty meters in front of them. The massive creature sniffed the air, turned, and met Zoe’s eyes. Her heart stopped. Not from fear, but with the awe of being regarded by a wild creature in its home. Then the bear plodded down the incline and out of sight.

Cody released her.

“It’s unusual to see a bear out at this time of year,” he said. “She looks thin. She might be chasing down your rabbit.”

“I thought bears slept all winter.”

“They sleep a lot—but sometimes they do come out for a short wander.”

“She looked right into my eyes. I’ve never felt anything like that before. I’ve felt a beyond-words connection with my horses, but this was different. This was...” She shook her head, turning to look again at the place where the bear had shuffled out of sight.

“I can count on the fingers of one hand the few times I’ve experienced that.”

She thought of her experience with him in the snow cave and felt heat creep into her cheeks. He noticed. He noticed so much, sometimes his attention unnerved her. And just now the look in his eyes made her self-conscious, aware that their night of lovemaking was on his mind too.

“Let’s move on,” he said.

At one point she thought they’d lost the trail, but he pointed out the blaze marks he’d made. And then they rounded a bend and saw the sun reflecting off Half Dome.

“That’s our best marker,” he told her. “As long as we’re headed in that direction, we’re on track.”

The switchbacks that had left her breathless the day before were much easier to navigate going downhill with a solid snow pack under her high-tech snowshoes.

She walked in silence, aware that every step took her away from the wonder they’d shared and closer to the world she’d left behind, if only for a few hours.

A voice inside her, strong and insistent, wanted to tell him that she loved him. But saying the words, admitting the depth of her feelings, would just drive the knife deeper for both of them. She’d be leaving. And soon. The plan she had for her life meant the world to her. She trusted her vision.

She stopped walking, shook the snow off her snowshoes and turned to him. “I’ve been thinking about what you asked me—about what I love. I envy that you know so clearly, that you can pursue your career with such joy. You love the game.”

“More than I imagined loving anything. Before you.”

His words shouldn’t have made her feel dizzy, shouldn’t have made her stomach clench, but she went lightheaded at the simple declaration. It satisfied the part of her that wanted the love of an honorable man. But there were other needs to be seen to, dreams and responsibilities that wouldn’t allow her to fit into his life, and she needed to be honest with him about those things. Since leaving Rome and trying to fit herself into her family’s plans, she hadn’t been honest with anyone. Though she hadn’t toyed with his feelings, hadn’t made promises she didn’t intend to keep, their bodies had spoken well beyond their words. That was a truth she couldn’t deny. He deserved the truth so he could step away before she broke his heart.

She wasn’t a cruel woman. She didn’t need a man pining for her just so she could feel loved.

“I’m going back, Cody. Back to Rome. Right after the holidays. There are... things I have to take care of.”

“But then you’ll come back?”

God, if she was going to tell him the truth, she should have the courage to tell the whole truth. But as he watched her face with an intensity that speared straight to her heart, she wasn’t sure what the truth was anymore.

“No. Well, to visit, yes. I’m setting up a gallery in Rome, in honor of my mother. The exhibit opens in February.”

The little muscles at the corners of his eyes twitched, the only sign that the reality her words were painting was landing home.

“Already I’ve imagined seeing my mother’s art on the walls of the gallery, her paintings receiving the praise they should’ve received before her death.” Her explanation rushed out into the silence. “As the walls of the gallery have gone up, the walls that grief has held me with for so long are crumbling. I can’t explain why, but it has taken more than a year for me to know that life would blossom out again, to begin to feel like myself again. To love life again. I thought I might
never
be happy. Not ever again.”

But honoring her mother and the gallery weren’t the only reasons she wouldn’t return to live in Sonoma.
Tell him
, her rational mind urged. But the voice from her heart reminding her that he was one of the reasons she felt her joy returning made it even harder to tell him the full truth.

“Don’t get me wrong, this is a beautiful country, with wild places like I’ve never seen.” She looked out at the quiet expanse of forest and wanted to add that his wild, amazing heart had captured hers, but she didn’t. Couldn’t. She hauled in a breath. “But it’s not my home, not my place. I don’t want to put down roots here.” She leaned against a tree and closed her eyes. Even with them closed she felt his piercing gaze and the way he held his face expressionless as he listened.

But she needed to see him, drink in these memories. She opened her eyes. He hadn’t moved. Not a muscle. He just stood there, watching her. Waiting.

“My mother married my father when she was nineteen. She left Sonoma and moved to Rome. Made a life there, had all of us children, even adopted Amber, Julia and Gaetano. But I always felt that a part of her was missing, that she was always looking out at the hills and wishing she were somewhere else. But her love for my father was so deep, she stayed and made the best of it.”

He didn’t nod or murmur, gave no sign of his feelings or his thoughts about what she was saying. If only he said he understood. But how could he when she barely understood what she was saying herself?

“I’m not as strong as my mother was, Cody. I couldn’t live in one place while always wishing to be in another.” She felt the tree against her back, bolstering her. “I thought that having my family around me would help me settle in, told myself that helping Papa work through his grief was enough.”

And he didn’t want children or a family life, but she didn’t need to add that. That discussion would be for him to have with the woman he was considering having in his life long-term. She wasn’t that woman. The consuming fire of impossibility needed no more fuel.

She felt the tears pooling and refused them. She wasn’t going to cry. Breaking down wouldn’t be fair to Cody. He’d been nothing but true and kind and honest. She wanted to be strong and clear and not make the truth any harder to hear than it had to be.

“I’ll have to sort out my dream there, where I feel at home.” She lowered her gaze from his, unable to bear the scrutiny. “My roots are there, Cody. My heart. I can’t live a life of split allegiances. I couldn’t. I... I can’t explain it any better than that. Perhaps you see now why I tried to stop seeing you, tried not to care so much for you. We live in different worlds. And always will.”

He backed up a step. The shuttered look in his eyes hurt more than if he’d lashed out at her.

“No one understands the power of a dream better than me,” he said. He crossed his arms, and the muscle at the side of his jaw twitched. “I get it. I might not want to, but I get it.”

He stared at her for a long moment, and she realized that she wanted to kiss him. That she wanted the words to dissolve and the world to just go away. She wanted to crawl back into the cave and be held once again in the golden glow she felt when wrapped in his arms. But she’d made her choice. If she spoke the words in her heart, if she told him that she loved him, it would only jumble everything into one big, messy, snarled mass of mistakes. Mistakes that could suck the life out of one or both of them. Suck it out slowly and painfully. No love could survive such a test. Best not to go any farther down that path.

“Let’s head back.” The condensation of his breath puffed out in a cloud and obscured his face. “You’ve been through a lot. You’ll feel better with a meal in you.”

Did she want him to argue? Want him to say that she was wrong, that they could find their way? That love could leap any gap? Overcome all obstacles? To protest and tell her that she was stronger than she knew? But she wasn’t. And perhaps he knew her better than she thought he did.

The hushed sound of their snowshoes was like a requiem in the forest, a steady rhythm beating out the path under their feet, a path into a future that she’d once been so certain of, so determined to follow. But as she looked ahead into the trackless snow, the certainty she’d counted on melted away like the snow dissolving on the branches in the morning sun. With each hushed step, the future and her dreams lost a bit more of their once bright allure.