Love Bats Last (The Heart of the Game) (28 page)

Everything went still and hushed, and she simply surrendered.

But Alex wasn’t done.

He eased out of her and pressed against her belly, and she felt the spreading warmth as he shuddered and released against her. He bent and rested his head on her shoulder, the ragged draws of his breath warm against her ear. A moment later, he kissed her, and their lips beat a matched rhythm to the pounding of his heart against hers.

He lifted away, and a clouding came into his eyes.

“I meant to go slow,” he said. “I meant to—”

She pressed a shaking finger against his lips.

“If you had, I might’ve lost my mind,” she said. The answering look in his eyes told her he’d felt the same.

She felt faint, needed to gain her bearings. Never had any experience, any man, rocked her as he had. And though she felt the bottomless, vulnerable feeling starting to slip into her, her body zinged with life. She put her palms against the edge of the counter and leaned back. He had the most astonishing body she’d ever seen. Muscle layered upon muscle, as if motion itself resided deep within, waiting for an opportunity to spring to life. He took a breath, watching her watching him, and the hunger in his eyes sent a shiver along her spine.

When he saw the shiver that racked her, he reached to drag her shirt from where it had landed on the stone island. “You’re cold,” he said.

There was nothing cold about her. She ran a hand along the muscles of his chest, felt the heat there, and the power, and shook her head.

“This is wet,” he said, fingering her shirt. “Wool is better. Best to just have the sweater.”

Her heart did a little flip as he gently pulled her to him and helped her tug her sweater over her head. When she popped her head out, he smiled.

“Better?” he asked as he pulled it down to her waist.

She nodded and wriggled to the edge of the counter, savoring the tenderness of his touch as he leaned down and gently kissed her throat before finding her lips again. He went hard against her thigh, and the power she’d felt just moments before bolted through her and sent a spasm deep into her belly.

“Want to try a softer surface?” he asked as he slid his hands up the bare skin under her sweater.

She nodded. She wanted to try everything.

He took her hand and led her wordlessly from the kitchen and up a curving stone staircase.

Chapter Twenty-one

After making love again, they slept. Jackie woke to find Alex curved around her, his arm draped over her. It was still pitch dark out, but her growling stomach told her that dawn couldn’t be far off. She inched toward the edge of the bed with the hope of getting out without waking him.

He grabbed her wrist. “Not so fast,” he murmured. “You don’t have a map of the castle.”

She tugged free, stood and began to pull on her sweater.

He rolled out of the bed, stalked to her and began to tug it back off.

She wriggled away. “I do think I’d like that breakfast you promised.”

“Breakfast,” he said, almost blankly. “I think I can handle that.”

She watched him pull up his jeans and do up the zipper. It was all she could do to not pull it down again.

She bent over, and their heads banged when they both reached for her jeans. He rubbed her forehead where they’d collided.

“Mustn’t injure your help.” She smiled as she pulled away and then bent down again, eyeing him the whole way.

He stepped back and watched, unblinking, as she pulled her underwear and jeans up her legs.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, brushing a strand of hair from her face when she straightened.

She felt more than beautiful. An exquisite radiance flooded her with near frightening power. And the gaze he held her in was perhaps the kindest, gentlest...
sexiest
that she’d ever experienced.

“Breakfast?” she said, feeling self-conscious as she tucked the sweater into her jeans.

“Or something like it.”

They reached the kitchen and he lifted her onto the granite cook’s island.

“I
am
capable of jumping up onto a counter,” she said, pulling her legs up into a cross-legged position.

“Just watch,” he said, a smile curving into his face. “You’ve done enough for one night.”

More than enough, she thought. She’d leapt into territory for which she had no map.

He opened the wood-paneled fridge and selected ingredients from its shelves.

“I could store a lot of samples in such a massive appliance,” she said, fishing around for something familiar.

“Always the scientist.” He broke eggs into a bowl. Then he grabbed an onion, tossed it in the air and caught it with a jaunty smile.

“Always the ballplayer,” she said, matching his smile.

They ate like two refugees who hadn’t seen food for weeks. Jackie took her last bite of the frittata he’d made her, pressed her napkin to her mouth and sat back with a sigh.

“If I’d known you could cook like that, I wouldn’t have let you waste a moment in the seal pens. I’d have made you my kitchen slave.”

“You’d find my repertoire limited. You’d be bored rather quickly.”

“I think not,” she said. She studied his face—the clear eyes, the firm lips, the unbending jaw. She’d never tire of looking at him. “You have other talents.”

She pushed back from the table, pulled her legs up under her and wrapped her arms around her knees. "You live here alone?”

“Sabrina comes out sometimes, in between film gigs, and sometimes my mother comes out to throw a party, but mostly I have the place to myself. Right now the two of them are in Paris.”

“Sabrina’s an actress?”

“It was a fluke. She acted in an indie film for a friend and it won Sundance. Turns out she’s a natural. The camera loves her.”

“I’m way behind on my film list.” She scanned the massive kitchen. “It must get lonely out here.”

“Normally the crew and staff are around—the winery is out back. And yeah, since Sabrina’s on the road so much these days, it can be lonely. I still love this place though. I only wish it were closer to the coast.”

“Gage told me there are activities concerning the vineyard that keep you sharp for the game, things that give you an edge.”

“He should’ve been an athlete; he has a mind for it.”

“Oh no, you don’t,” she said playfully. “I need him.”

She hugged her knees closer and looked into Alex’s eyes. She thought she’d known passion, known how it felt to love, but as she locked gazes with him, she knew that before now, she’d been clueless.

She was unable to look away, noting that he didn’t turn away either, and her mind registered what her heart already knew. She wanted a man in her life who could meet her, match her, love her—someone who wasn’t afraid of being loved back. It was too late to deny the truth. The floor that had buoyed her for so long had dropped away and she was falling, allowing herself to slip into the deep, vulnerable feeling she’d fought for years to keep at bay.

She pulled her eyes away.

“He said there were
three
things in particular,” she said, trying to steady her breath. “I’d like to know.”

It was true. She wanted to know more, to know all, needed to fathom the depths of him. And it seemed a gentle enough lead-in to her questions about the fertilizer.

“Just the facts?” he said. His smile dissolved some of the tension filling her.

“Facts are good,” she said, knowing that the force pulling her to him was far beyond anything factual. Their connection might be true, but it wasn’t fact and truth that linked them. Theirs was a more fundamental bond—heart to heart and man to woman. And her woman’s heart wanted to know what made his man’s heart tick.

He leaned his elbows onto the granite counter. His lips curved into an almost boyish smile.

“Pruning requires a precise cut that leaves little room for error.” He twisted his wrist and showed the move, his smile broadening as he repeated it a couple of times. Her pulse picked up its beat just watching his mouth, and she had to concentrate to hear his words.

“It hones hand-eye coordination,” he continued. “If the angle isn’t right, the sap from the cuts will run down and ruin the buds. You can tell a vineyard that’s been pruned properly without even seeing it—you can taste it in the wine.”

“I’ve clearly been drinking the wrong wines,” she said, trying to keep her voice from wavering. She held up a finger. “That’s one.”

“Are you always this tenacious?”

“Always. Cory once threatened to have me stuffed and exhibited as
Older Sister Who Asked One Too Many Questions
.”

“I’d like his number.” He lifted her plate from the counter and balanced it on one finger. “Vine work is better than bodybuilding; it requires balance, core strength, constant movement. Some days we’re out there for eight hours. No one would stay in the gym that long, not even me.”

He searched her face. “You can’t possibly find this interesting.”

Oh, but she did. “The third thing, Alex.”

He put down the plate and pulled a towel from the counter. With a deft motion, he twisted it into a silly-looking hat on his head. “Observation, my dear Watson,” he said, pantomiming. “Surveying for birds, watching for subtle changes in the soil and the plants, keeping an eye out for tiny, glassy-winged sharpshooters, insects that can do damage to the crop. I developed keen eyes. Sometimes I see events, actions, as they begin to happen—”

He stopped. “I’m beginning to sound like I’ve lived in Northern California way too long.”

He smiled then, one of those smiles that went straight to the heart. She was perilously close to losing herself in it, maybe already had.

He laid the towel on the counter and drew two tall glasses of water from the faucet.

“Hydration is the key to life,” he said with a flourish as he set one glass in front of her. “Drink up.”

She took a few sips. As she looked over at Alex, at the gentle crinkle of lines framing his eyes, she found she wanted to tell him about her findings, to trust him with her facts, all of them. To ask the many questions she’d avoided for too long.

“I’ve discovered something rather disturbing about the water near here,” she said, turning the glass in her hand.

A brush of warning sailed into her, gentle, like the wing of a butterfly against her cheek, but insistent nonetheless.

“Someone,” she began, not sure how to put it all together, “someone has been using a chemical, a
fertilizer
, that’s tainted with radon. It’s leaching into the river. And we’ve found greater concentrations where the river meets the bay. I’m nearly certain it’s causing the diatom bloom responsible for the harbor seal deaths.”

He didn’t say anything, just watched her face. She ignored the tension fingering through her and pressed on.

“Bradley, my colleague, thinks the fertilizer might’ve come from Russia—the Ukraine, maybe.” She sipped her water. “Whoever’s using it is using it in massive quantities. Or dumping the excess for reasons I have yet to figure out.”

She set the glass next to her empty plate. “I need to run more tests, but the data indicates it’s draining from agricultural land near here, near these vineyards.”

Alex put his glass on the counter and paced to the stove. He fidgeted with the knobs, then turned back to her. He looked nervous, something she hadn’t expected.

“That’s quite a theory.”

He’d said the word
theory
in a way that told her he didn’t believe her.

The room flooded with one of those silences that screams to be broken, one of those silences that tells you more than you want to know.

“It’s more than a theory,” she said, her face heating. “The radon allowed us to track it. We tracked it to this valley. It’s coming from
here
.”

Alex fisted his hand against the waist of his jeans. The little nerve at the side of his jaw tensed.

“One of my father’s greatest achievements was that he persuaded every local grower to go organic. It benefits all of us.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “We’re a pretty tight community.” He picked up a knife next to the stove and held it up, appearing to study it. “I’d have heard if something like that were going on,” he added as he dropped the knife into the sink.

He might as well have said,
Don’t you worry, little lady, you’re hallucinating
or something worse. It reminded her of the way the game warden in Botswana had talked to her when she’d told him she’d discovered that poachers were breaching the boundaries of the wildlife refuge and killing elephants. It’d turned out the warden had known all along. He’d been fired soon after for colluding with the poachers, but his dismissal couldn’t bring the dead animals back to life.

“Your father’s not here,” she said, barely controlling her voice. She hadn’t meant to sound accusing, but anger won out over humiliation. “Evidently he failed to convince someone.”

She stood and started to fold her napkin, but her hands were shaking and she lowered them to her sides. The fist tightening in her stomach was more than anger; a sense of betrayal crept in with it.

She’d trusted him, and he’d just batted her facts away without even considering them.

Then it hit her.

Maybe he had good reason.

She didn’t know anything about his operations. And though she’d used GPS maps to narrow the source of the runoff, until tonight she hadn’t known the Tavonesi property was so close to the river. And was it a coincidence that he’d shown up at the Center, out of the blue, before the lab break-in?

Though every cell of her body said Alex had nothing to do with the radon, her mind was insinuating something else.

She needed to get out of there. She needed to think.

“Look,” he said as he dried his hands. “I didn’t mean any offense. I only meant that Emilio would’ve alerted me if—”

“I have to get back,” she said, grabbing her flashlight from the counter and heading for the door.

He caught up to her and grasped her arm.

“It’s late. You could stay. I’d like it if you’d stay.”

She pulled her arm free.