Aim For Love (10 page)

“Walk down those three steps,” he said with what was almost a grin. “And then follow me.”

Sabrina Tavonesi was no easy assignment. He ought to send her back to her castle or her brother or Hollywood—anywhere but the farm.

It was a bad week to have company of any sort. With only two weeks remaining before he left for spring training in Arizona, he should be throwing more than he was. And with Roberto and his crew away for three days, mowing weeds and tending to the irrigation system added to the list of pressing to-dos.

That morning he’d ignored the spreading brown stain on the driveway that told him there was a leak in an irrigation pipe. Fixing it could wait a day, maybe two, but the work was piling up. And he wanted to do some research about the meth labs and stop in the sheriff’s office and see what they had turned up. Finding an abandoned meth lab on his land had spooked him, as if evil forces had come much too close.

Twigs snapped and popped under Sabrina’s feet as she followed him. He knew she felt more comfortable behind, less observed. He’d thought a woman whose face was stretched across screens all over the world would be used to observation. He remembered Alex had said it was a fluke that she’d taken the part that had thrust her into fame, but Kaz had seen
Exigent
. He didn’t think luck had played any part in Sabrina’s gut-wrenching and excellent performance. Performance had its own rules, its own standards. There was no faking excellence.

If he was lucky, he’d figure out what was kinking her up and get her on her way tomorrow, then get back to his chores.

But that wasn’t likely.

Her injury had a physical component, he had no doubt about that. But experience told him a knotted web of emotion was binding her. Even if he released the spasm, without them breaking through the mental and emotional matrix of her problem, the spasm would return and could bring with it spinal or nerve damage.
That
he knew about. If his grandfather hadn’t helped him work through a shoulder injury he’d sustained his first year in the minor leagues, Kaz would’ve been out of the game.

Sabrina hummed a faint tune as they walked under the earliest-blossoming trees. She’d better enjoy the brief time of walking the path behind him—what he had planned for her wasn’t going to be comfortable in any way. To give her a longer warm-up, he headed along the ridge. When he reached the narrower path that led south, toward the stream, he stopped.

“Warn me before you do that,” she said as she bumped into him. “My thoughts were a million miles away.”

“That’s part of your problem.”

Her eyes sparked. “I have an injured shoulder. I didn’t sign up to be analyzed.”

“Then walk down that path, the one to the right.” Words would be no help; he might as well skip those that weren’t necessary.

“Me first?”

“Yes.”

She picked her way along the rutted path. The breeze caught her hair. It gleamed in the sun, strands of amber lacing through rich, deep brown.

Kaz dragged his attention back to her movements. And didn’t like what he saw. Fear lived there, buried deep. What troubled Alex’s sister was more than a few injured muscles and tendons.

Fear was a stubborn adversary.

And a worthy opponent.

He had two and a half days with her to accomplish what should take weeks, if not months. Challenge fired its siren call in him. But caution fired too. He had a taste for the heady energy that came with rising to a challenge—it was one of his weaknesses.

“Your fence is down over there.” Sabrina pointed to the eastern border of the property.

Kaz walked to the fallen section of fence. A steer chewed grass just on the other side of it, as if daring him to complain.

“Why don’t you use barbed wire?”

“My grandmother won’t allow it.”

“It doesn’t hurt the animals, it just keeps them from rubbing on it and knocking the posts over. At least that’s what Alex says.” She made a shooing gesture at the steer, who just stared at her. “Surely your grandmother would understand that.”

“My grandmother faced enough barbed wire as a child,” he said as he put the box and backpack down. “She was locked up in an internment camp during World War II. Barbed wire brings back terrible memories.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

She watched his face and he fought not to wince. Sympathy was not an emotion he trusted.

It hadn’t mattered that his relatives had been in Valley Cross for decades longer than the officers who rounded them up and took them to the camps or that the Japanese farmers were growing crops that fed the community. The Tokugawas and the hundreds of other families locked behind high barbed-wire fences had blood ties to the enemy and so were considered dangerous.

The Tokugawa orchard had nearly gone under before the war ended and the families in the camps were released. If it hadn’t been for their neighbor to the south, a man not blinded by prejudice or fear, every peach tree would have died. Their neighbor had doubled his own work, had irrigated the Tokugawa land and saved the orchard that Kaz’s great-grandfather had planted with his bare hands. When the neighbor died, the Tokugawas were the only Japanese family at his funeral. But that was not Sabrina’s problem, or her business.

He cleared the debris and righted the fallen fence post. Every year there were more and more repairs. His grandmother had eventually conceded to one stretch of barbed wire along the north boundary, out of sight, but that was all. He’d just have to schedule the repairs and put in extra posts to reinforce the fence. Sabrina started toward him, and he waved her back.

“That steer could charge you. Or me. Trust me, death by animal charge is not anything for your bucket list.”

The steer moved off about forty feet and then turned and eyed him and Sabrina again.

Sabrina lifted her hands and hugged her elbows. She now looked doubly uncomfortable.

He nodded toward the path down the hill. “You can follow me again if you prefer.”

They walked in silence. He guessed she expected him to talk about his family’s past, but the topic wasn’t one he pursued.

“Stop here,” he said. He put the backpack and the box in the middle of a patch of wildflowers. “I need to release these ladybugs.”

“Ladybugs?”

“They’re beneficial insects. They keep down aphids and mites and other predators that feed on the young shoots of the peach trees and vines. But you probably know all about that. Alex uses them in your vineyard.”

“But I’ve never seen him release them. I didn’t know you could buy them in a box.”

“Would you like to let them out? He held out the box.

She nodded.

“Open the lid slowly,” he cautioned. “And just settle them in among those blossoms.”

She opened the box and tipped it toward the tiny flowers. In a hover of red, some of the beetles rose and took flight.

“It’s like magic.” Her awed tone and bemused smile only made her more beautiful.

“Nature’s magic—the best kind.” He reached out and brushed a beetle from a strand of her hair. She caught him in her gaze, and for a moment he was transfixed by the delight he saw in her eyes. It took an act of will to look away.

“But I’d prefer if they stayed put,” he said, marshaling words to shield him from the powerful tug of desire sneaking through him. “Ladybugs have been valued since medieval times as farmers’ helpers. Some cultures believed that the ladybug was divinely sent to rid crops of pests. In fact, that’s how it got its name in English. People dedicated the bug to the Virgin Mary and called it the Bug of Our Lady, which got shortened to the present ladybug. My grandmother calls them God’s little fairies.”

She laughed, wrinkling her nose. In that moment, Kaz saw the girl behind the movie star and didn’t like at all the tender feeling sinking into his heart.

“We should shove on,” he said. “That way.” He pointed to the path sloping down toward the stream.

He watched the graceful sway of her hips as she navigated the rutted path. That morning as he’d knelt in the family shrine, he’d asked for guidance.

He’d need it.

Keeping a lid on the sexual energy Sabrina fired in him would be tough practice. He should’ve been ready. He should’ve known. But he’d ignored the pulse of his erotic energy for so long that it had taken him by surprise.
She
had taken him by surprise.

“Stop here,” he said when they reached the stream. He didn’t look her in the eye. Not yet. He needed to focus, and she had an unsettling way of pulling his thoughts off task.

“This is lovely,” she said, toeing the rocks at the edge of the stream.

“It’s spring fed.”

He ran through the sequences he’d planned in his head, adjusted his plan. He’d have to address her fear first.

She picked up a pebble with her free hand and tossed it into the stream. A smile crossed her face as she watched the ripples move across the surface. A woodpecker flew out from the tree above them, and she tilted her head to watch its flight. Sunlight played across her features, and his chest tightened as her enchanting smile lit a path of uninvited yearning in him.

He hadn’t planned on her beauty affecting him. But beauty had its own power, a power he respected. Revered really. But he’d been scorched. Beauty had once thrown him off balance. He had no interest in letting it happen again.

Sabrina knelt at the side of the stream and ran her hands in the gurgling water. Kaz struggled to shove down the desire firing wildly in him. He needed to focus. Needed to decide how much he should tell her about what he would soon ask her to do. Then he reminded himself that the power of the practice had little to do with his words; his words would not dissolve the forces that bound her. Her words,
those
would be a different story.

“Let’s sit,” he said, indicating a level spot just up from the stream.

“So mysterious,” she said as she stood. “Alex didn’t tell me you were a master of that fine art as well.”

“Mystery powers life.”

“And so
serious
.” She sat where he indicated and pulled her legs up into a cross-legged position. “
That
part Alex did warn me about. Although I hardly needed his warning. Your reaction to Derrick handling the sword that day at Trovare told me plenty.”

Heat prickled through him, ramping up the unwelcome tension firing in his gut. “I acted rashly. He was your guest.”

“You don’t have to apologize—”

“I’m not apologizing.”

“Well, I’m sure it did Derrick some good. Few people stand up to him.” She drew a circle in the soil with her finger. “I’d like to know more about the swords, about the samurai. You piqued my interest.” She removed her hat and dropped it to the ground beside her.

Kaz shifted onto his knees and faced her.

“Later, Sabrina, if there’s time. But for now…”

She lifted her gaze to his, and he again felt the mysterious, uncomfortable energy that being near her sparked. He’d had such a clear plan that morning. But that was before he’d sensed her fear. And before he’d felt the power of attraction that he shouldn’t be allowing himself to register.

He focused. It was no time to be distracted. Dissolving the fear that bound her required concentrated skill.

“Will you trust me? Perhaps for an hour to start? I won’t hurt you, Sabrina.”

The sound of the stream passing over the rocks accentuated her silence.

She nodded at the sling holding her arm. “I don’t see that I have a choice.”

“You always have a choice. But sometimes we have to trust elements of life that we don’t understand.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Kaz.”

It was the first time she’d used his name. He didn’t want to welcome the flare of energy that just hearing his name on her lips shot through him.

“It’s that I don’t know what to trust right now. I’m…” She pressed her lips together and looked past him. “I can’t explain,” she said with a shake of her head.

“Then it’s good that you don’t need to.” He reached toward the sling. “May I?”

She nodded.

He removed the sling and tried to ignore her scent. Peach blossoms couldn’t compete with the delicate fragrance rising from her skin.

He rocked back on his heels and dropped the sling to the ground. “I want you to stop wearing that while you’re here.”

“But—”

“And close your eyes. I’m going to touch you.”

Her eyes went wide.

“Like this,” he said, closing his.

“Right.” Her eyelids fluttered shut.

“This is the easy part, Sabrina.”