A Very Daring Christmas (The Tavonesi Series Book 8) (6 page)

“I’ll do what I can for the week.” Jake paused. He wanted to ask Aderro about what he and Cameron had seen in the village, but he didn’t want to embarrass his friend. Poverty was a subject few people liked to discuss. Hell, what if someone asked Jake about the poverty he’d grown up in? Better to stick with hitting.

“I thought I’d work with them on strength exercises, easy things they can do without equipment. Build up their glutes.” Jake ordered a second whiskey, straight. He’d never developed a taste for the rum of the islands. Too sweet and too smooth.

“And don’t forget to mix in some words of wisdom about keeping their grades up and staying in school,” Aderro said, suddenly serious. “Mario told me we’ve had two dropouts since September.”

The band blasted out a fast salsa as the bar filled with men and women out to have a good time, with people out to chase their dreams or to forget that they hadn’t achieved them.

Jake grinned. “Yes, Grandpa.”

Aderro was only four years older than Jake, but the knocks Aderro had taken while putting his life together made him seem much older. And maybe much wiser.

“I thought I’d show them some shots of campuses after hitting practice, get the images in their minds and...”

Aderro’s eyes tracked away from him and shifted to the entrance of the bar. The talk had stilled, and others were also staring.

Jake twisted around to look over his shoulder.

Cameron stood at the entrance in full-on movie star garb. A man in an expensive-looking suit stood next to her, like a sentry guarding a treasure. Jake had thought her beyond gorgeous in the casual clothes he’d seen her wear, but the silky red dress hugging her lush curves and the spiked gold heels that set off those long tanned legs made her look like a goddess. And when the guy in the suit crooked his arm and ushered her toward the dance floor, a familiar spark shot through Jake.

The thrill of the chase.

He hadn’t felt the pull of wanting a woman for a while. Had thought he’d been glad not to. But there was no ignoring the fire that shot into him as he watched Cameron and the man make their way between the dancers.

She didn’t look his way; he’d be damned if he was going to let that irk him. But competition ran in his blood like oxygen, always had.

He’d have her.

Jake turned back to Aderro and tried to shove down the adrenaline rising in him. “I’ll do right by your boys. We’ll run the drills, look at the schools online and—”

“Looks like your lady has found a new friend,” Aderro interrupted, a half smile quirking his lips.

Aderro was a family man. Since signing with Boston, he’d flown back to the Bay Area every chance he could. And when school was out, he’d flown his family with him for the longer road trips. But that didn’t mean the guy had forgotten how hot blood could run.

“She’s not my lady.” Not even close, Jake thought.

“Not yet,” Aderro said with a nod to the dance floor. “We can talk kids and baseball later. I wouldn’t want to compete with
that
.”

Jake downed the last of his second whiskey. He was a gambler. The odds were good that he could snag a dance with Cameron. But he had more in mind than just a dance.

It was payback time.

Cameron shimmied to the alluring rhythm of the salsa. And tried to keep her distance from the Assistant Minister of the Interior, who had lured her from the UNICAN dinner and into the bar. He had an idea, he’d said. But he hadn’t mentioned dancing. He was an excellent dancer. Did all Latin men have that rhythm hot-wired into their blood? But she should’ve just gone up to her room. She’d have to find a way to diplomatically ditch the minister.

The glance she’d caught of Jake before he’d seen her hadn’t helped her nerves any. The linen shirt he wore only made the broad muscles under the finely woven fabric look like they’d been sculpted by a master.

She’d tried not to think about him.

About a hundred times in the last couple of hours.

He was a boneheaded ballplayer, and he wasn’t going to help her. She suspected he was a playboy of the worst sort. She’d looked him up online. There hadn’t been much, but she could read between the lines. Any guy who looked like he did was a player.

“I think this dance was promised to me.” Jake’s voice broke through her thoughts and brought the minister to a halt. Cameron nearly stepped on his feet, he’d stopped so fast.

“Ryder,” the minister said, beaming. “Great hit in the Series,” he added over the sound of the band. “You down here to help the
Estrellas
take the title this winter?”

Jake smiled, but Cameron knew his face well enough to see that it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Nope. Down here to chase pretty ladies. And this one has promised me a dance.”

The minister laughed. His laugh told Cameron that she’d been handed off, like there was an unspoken pecking order and the minister had just lost. And she was the prize.

She didn’t like it.

Before she could protest, the minister walked off the dance floor and Jake took her in his arms, leading her into a dance. A dance that shouldn’t have felt so good. A dance that had her protests dissolving even as she fought to hold on to them.

Jake’s hands were everywhere they needed to be to guide her to the pulsing beat of the music. His touch was light but searing. The fact that he held her only as close as the dance demanded, no more, no less, had her wanting more.

Was she losing her mind? She’d sworn no more shiny men.
He
was a shiny man. The trouble was, he seemed to shine from the inside out. But she’d been fooled before.

But Jake was no actor. His moves were as real as the floor beneath her feet. A floor that barely grounded her as his hand, held gently—perfectly—at her waist, burned through the thin silk of her dress. But just as she told herself to relax, to stop overthinking—it was just a dance, after all—he tightened his grip, pressed his arm firmly around her waist and all but pushed her out the arched doorway leading to the patio outside the bar.

“What are you doing?” she sputtered when he pressed her against the stone wall near a gurgling fountain.

“Kidnapping you.”

She didn’t have time to respond. His lips crushed hers, branding hot. Her traitorous body had her lips opening to the hottest kiss she’d ever felt. She was barely aware of him gliding his hand over the curve of her hip, trailing his fingers against the silk and cupping her bottom.

When he broke off the kiss, she hauled in a shaky breath, and her sensible mind kicked in with it.

“Let me go!”

A slow smile curved into his lips. His eyes twinkled, and she resisted the urge to slap him. She wasn’t a drama queen and wouldn’t let him make her into one. Instead, she tried to dodge around him, but he was fast. Really fast.

He blocked her with his body. His gorgeous body that she was unsuccessfully trying to ignore.

“You won’t be getting past me. I was a tight end when I played football in high school. We were the state champs. No one gets by me. And like I told you, you owe me.”

“I don’t pay debts with kisses.”

“Well, then, it looks like you still owe me.”

He grinned and reeled her in, and this time when he dipped down to kiss her, she didn’t resist. How could she? He kissed her with a tenderness that was far more irresistible than any show of force. His kiss captured her senses and melted into her body, a perfect kiss that felt like one she’d been waiting for her entire life. She slipped her fingers to the nape of his neck. The force of passion that she’d tamped down for longer than she could remember spread through her like hot honey melting in the sun, dissolving away time, worries, carefully held boundaries. A soft moan of pleasure sounded in her throat as he pulled her against the hard plane of his chest, deepened the kiss and sent her floating into a realm she hadn’t believed existed.

When he stepped back from her, she was so stunned she didn’t try to run. But his sexy smile brought her back to reality. She might have traveled to a realm she’d never visited before, but clearly he was accustomed to such journeys. Her throat tightened with her rising and awkward self-consciousness.

“You did a good job out there this morning,” she heard herself say over her hammering pulse. She was sure he could see the effect he had on her, especially the color creeping into her face. “With the kids, I mean. They’ll never forget it.”

“Why, Miss Kelley, are you complimenting me on my benevolent actions? That’s not the usual response I get after kissing a woman senseless.”

Her defenses flared at his teasing tone. Player. She’d allowed herself to be played by a player. Too bad the experience had felt so darn good.

“I’m going in now.” She didn’t owe him an explanation. And if she stayed there for one more kiss, there was no telling where she’d end up. Clearly Jake would like for her to end up in his bed, but nothing doing. The undeniable fact that every cell in her body wanted more of him made it harder to step away.

“I’ll walk you in.” He crooked his arm.

Between his soft Southern accent and his gentlemanly manners, he was nearly irresistible. Ha. The manners and accent had nothing to do with her response. He had the body of a god, and his kisses had lit her up like a holiday candle, a candle that had been waiting in its holder for far too long for a match to light its flame.

And some small part of her wished he had urged her for more, maybe even wrapped his hands along her body and melted her again with his spellbinding kisses. That he hadn’t pushed her carved a hole in her barely held resolve, made her want him even more. But though she was susceptible to the magic of his hands and his lips, to his smooth ways, she wasn’t a fool.

They ducked past a couple coming outside to cool off. The band had started up again, and the air in the bar was thick with heat from the crowd of dancers and the scent of Cuban cigars.

Just inside the door, a beautiful woman with a mane of curly auburn hair stepped up to Jake and put her hand on his arm. Ignoring Cameron, she spoke in sensually accented English.

“I hope this time you’ll spend the night while you’re in town.” Then she turned to Cameron and said in perfect English, “You don’t mind if I steal a dance or two? It’s not often that this one hasn’t made it down here for years.”

This one
. Two simple words that tattooed warning deep into her heart.

“I was just leaving.” Cameron delivered the line with such cool calm, any director would’ve been ecstatic at her performance. She wasn’t going to look at Jake. She didn’t trust her eyes not to betray her confused sense of disappointment. She’d been more than right about him being a player.

With unsteady steps and a still unsettled pulse, she skirted the dance floor, resisting the urge to look back at Jake and the woman who’d claimed him.

She’d be flying out in the morning, Cameron reminded herself. Early. She’d have breakfast in her room, then dash to the limo. She wouldn’t see him again. The memory would fade. She wouldn’t have to admit that he’d slipped past her guard. If she hadn’t seen him with the kids in the village, with the sick toddlers in the clinic—if she hadn’t seen the genuine man under all the flash—she’d never have developed the vaguest interest in him. Well, maybe that dream of the man with the mysterious smile had primed the pump a bit. Or maybe nasty genes for making poor choices ran in her family. If that was true, she was doomed. So she should stick to her plan: go it alone, adopt a child when the time was right and get on with her life.

Yup. That was a good plan.

But as she glanced back at Jake laughing on the dance floor with the beauty, she knew she was telling herself the worst sort of lie.

And it was always bad when you lied to yourself.

Chapter Five

Jake maneuvered the rental car into the only vacant spot near the gallery, taking care not to bump the sleek Porsche behind him as he eased to the curb. He liked to have his car nearby, had no patience for waiting in the endless valet lines that were part of life in Los Angeles.

Had he only been back in the States for two days? Already he missed the sense of community—tight and real—he’d developed with the other players and the kids in Dominia.

He valued teamwork. During the offseason he missed the sense of camaraderie that he had with his Giants teammates. He was lucky to be on a team he loved. Not all teams had the mutual trust, friendship and respect among their players that the Giants did. Those strengths made them great—the glue that held them together and made it possible for each player, in the mix of the whole, to reach down and pull up performances that led to championships.

Aderro would be back in California before Christmas. He’d promised to pop in to Jake’s place in San Francisco after settling back in with his family. Jake wished his former teammate hadn’t signed with Boston, but sometimes a career demanded moves like that. If Jake’s agent succeeded over the next few weeks, Jake would have a five-year contract and be assured of staying put in the Bay Area and playing on the team he loved.

He exited the car and activated the alarm. A couple dressed in black scooted by him on the narrow sidewalk. LA wasn’t a city meant to be traveled on foot. Concrete asphalt and the great indoors—no wonder it was the birthplace of Hollywood. People had to have something to entertain them if they spent that much time inside.