Aim For Love (31 page)

“Then it’s a good thing baseball signs are an international language,” Sabrina said with a light laugh. But her attention was glued to Kaz as he stepped onto the mound. She’d been to a zillion baseball games, but Kaz on the mound made this one so very different.

He didn’t look into the stands. He threw a couple of warm-up pitches to Aderro, the Giants’ catcher, and then the first Dodger batter stepped up to the plate.

“Kaz looks nervous,” Sabrina said to Jackie, who sat beside her. “Almost as nervous as me.”

“Nervous is good,” Jackie said as she signaled for a beer from a vendor in the aisle. “Very good. Alex says it means a player brings everything he’s got to the game.”

To Sabrina’s dismay, Kaz walked the first batter. The runner stole second and then reached third on the next hitter’s single to right. She was sweating, even though there was a chill in the air.

“Kazi likes a good show,” Obaa said. She squeezed Sabrina’s sweaty palm. “You’ll see.”

Kaz walked off the mound and took a breath. Sabrina recognized the hitch of tension in his body. Since meeting him she could read bodies so much better, see things that just months ago would’ve escaped her notice.

The stadium quieted and it seemed as if the fans were breathing for him. He picked up the rosin bag, gave it a toss and then stepped back on the mound.

The Dodger batter connected to his next pitch and smacked a shot over Matt Darrington’s head. But Matt jumped, snared the ball and fired to third, catching the base runner before he could get back to the bag. There weren’t many men in the game who could outrun Matt’s arm at short range.

The next Dodger batter stood ready. Maybe Sabrina imagined it, but as Kaz drew himself up and began his windup, the batter’s shoulders slumped. The ball whizzed past him, and the umpire grunted out the called strike. The player, Johnson, got a piece of the second pitch, and it sailed foul.

Kaz’s third throw went in so fast that Sabrina wasn’t even sure she saw it cross the plate. The crowd cheered as the umpire called the strike and ended the inning.

As he left the mound, Kaz looked over his shoulder at her and the slightest smile crossed over his face.

Kaz’s grandmother chuckled. “I saw that. He should be concentrating on his game, not flirting with his number one fan.”

A tingle of pride mixed with delight rippled through Sabrina as Kaz stepped down into the dugout and was met with congratulatory pats on the back and nods from his teammates.

Obaa peered at Sabrina and patted her hand. “Are you sleeping well?”

Sabrina blushed, even though she knew Obaa was asking about her nightmares. At least she hoped she was only asking about the nightmares. “Gone,” she said.

Obaa chuckled again. “I might start one of those Internet exorcism services. I saw one online. I’d be good at it.”

“Obaa-chan online could disrupt the entire universe,” Nariko said from her seat on the other side of Sabrina. “But you’d have to improve your computer skills, Obaa-chan. You can’t keep on having the new marketing guy help you surf the web. We need him to sell peaches.”

Obaa raised a brow. “I might just stick to family matchmaking. You’re next, Nariko.”

“No way.” Nariko shook out her mane of dark hair and turned back to the field.

Sabrina didn’t mind that Obaa took credit for bringing Kaz and her together. Maybe she had cast a love spell on them that afternoon beside the stream. Whatever she’d done, it had worked.

But the game wasn’t the only challenge on Kaz’s plate that day. Tonight, after the game, was their engagement party up at Trovare. It’d be the first time that Kaz would meet the full-on extended Tavonesi family. That morning, in her apartment up at Trovare, she’d teased him as he’d dressed to head to the stadium and told him there was still time to back out. He’d answered by throwing her on the bed and kissing her senseless.

“Maybe we’ll have ripe peaches for your wedding,” Obaa said to Sabrina, dragging her back from her memories of his blazing kiss.

Before Sabrina could answer, her cellphone vibrated in her pocket. She hurried into the aisle and then into the concourse so she could hear her mother.

“You’re
late
,” her mother said, not hiding her anxiety. “We have one hundred and fifty guests arriving in four hours, Sabrina. I
need
you up here.”

“If you’d kept the party small, you wouldn’t need me.”

“Darling, this
is
small. You have no idea how many excuses I had to make to friends I couldn’t invite. It’s a good thing the wedding will be in Grace Cathedral—I had to promise I’d invite them all.”

Her mother’s idea of a small, intimate engagement party included the core of her social circle, the entire extended Tavonesi clan and Kaz’s whole team. The timing was all wrong, but once they’d looked at the team’s schedule, tonight was the only night open for a month.

Since the tabloids had wasted no time in announcing her engagement to Kaz—and with the wedding coming up in October—her mother had insisted that they simply couldn’t wait until later in the summer. Sabrina had wanted to at least wait until Kaz’s brother and parents returned from Japan, but Kaz had suggested they have another party down in Valley Cross when his parents got back. Sabrina suspected that the castle, the hordes of guests and the raucous energy of her family would’ve overwhelmed his reserved parents.

“Where’s Parker?” Sabrina asked her mother, referring to her cousin who was a wizard at planning and executing parties and who had promised his expertise.

“
He’s
part of what’s driving me mad—with all his last-minute changes, we’ll never be ready in time. I
need
you up here, Sabrina,” she repeated.

At her mother’s tone, her heart broke just a little bit. Since her dad died, even though it’d been nearly seven years, her mother had thrown herself into the social whirl to cover her deep loneliness. Sabrina hadn’t given up hope that her mother would one day find love again.

“Okay, okay, I’ll be there in an hour. I had to stay long enough to see Kaz pitch
one
inning, for goodness’ sake.”

“Darling, you have
years
to watch him pitch. And they have videos of all those games.
I
have the photographer coming in ten minutes and
you
need to dress.”

The only concession concerning the engagement party Sabrina had gotten from her mother was no press. None. It had nearly undone her socially conscious mother, but she’d finally agreed.

When Sabrina arrived at Trovare, she discovered that her mother was right—there were scores of details still to be handled before the guests arrived.

“
Why
I let you talk your mother into using a local caterer is beyond me,” Parker moaned when Sabrina entered the lavishly decorated great hall. Bowers of flowers ran down the table that had been extended to run the entire length of the room. Normally the table sat forty, but tonight it was long enough to accommodate every guest.

“Think globally, hire locally,” Sabrina quipped.

“There are
limits
,” Parker said as he flipped through the seating chart. “Where’s Kaz?”

“Doesn’t
anyone
in this family realize that he has a job? He’s pitching the opening game. In fact, I need to head into the kitchen and turn on the radio. When I parked my car, the game was tied three to three.”

Parker stretched an arm across the door, blocking her way. “You are
not
going in there. One false move and the whole menu could dissolve into chaos. They had to ask me what
chiffonade
was.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. She loved Parker, almost as much as she loved her brother. But he had a skewed idea of what constituted a true disaster.

“Well, I trust you straightened them out,” she said, trying not to smile too broadly. Parker took parties seriously. He would’ve made an excellent courtier in sixteenth-century France.

The photographer shooed one of the catering staff away from the table as he set up a
before
shot of the elegantly decorated setting. Sabrina had lost the battle with Parker to have small, intimate tables set up in a tent in the courtyard. That was the moment she knew that none of the details mattered, not to her. Sharing the evening with family and friends, introducing them to Kaz, that was what was important. And she had complete confidence in her mother’s taste and Parker’s fine eye for seeing to every detail. Parker also would’ve made a great events tsar if he wasn’t so madly involved with his polo team.

The snarling of dogs and loud barking had them both running into the courtyard.

“
Fermarsi
!” her cousin Zoe commanded in Italian. The two Maremma sheepdogs immediately sat and looked dolefully up at her. “They’re still getting accustomed to America,” Zoe said, her look only somewhat less baleful than theirs.

As the rest of the Tavonesi cousins from Italy piled into the courtyard, the dogs ignored the command to stay put and ran to greet them, tails wagging.

“Dogs,” Parker said, as if he’d never seen one. “
Just
what we need right now, Zoe.” He glared at their feistiest cousin.

“We have plenty of room in the paddock, Parker,” Sabrina said. “It’s not as though you have to add them to the seating chart.”

She turned to Zoe. “I’ll make sure there’s cake sent out to them,” she said with a wink.

It wasn’t just the dogs that were unsettled. After Zoe’s mother had died the previous year, Zoe’s family had given in to their father’s insistent plan to move the family to California to start a wine business. He’d bought an established winery in Sonoma as well as the horse ranch and two estates adjoining it. The Italian Tavonesis, except for Zoe’s younger twin sisters who were wrapping up a photo shoot in Greece and two of her brothers, who’d stayed behind to run the family estate and wine business outside of Rome, had arrived from Italy only three weeks earlier. Though they made light of the rushed move, Sabrina knew her cousins were still adjusting to their new home.

“At least you didn’t bring your entire polo team,” Parker said.

“Do
not
tempt me, Parker,” Zoe said with a laugh. She glanced at her watch. “There’s still time. I might call them and tell them to come over just to tease you.”

“What’s this I hear about a polo team?” Alana asked as she sailed into the courtyard looking gorgeous in an Armani cocktail dress. “The
men
? Did you bring men, Zoe, or just the horses? Because if you brought those handsome guys of yours, I’m texting my friend Brigitte.”

Parker snatched Alana’s cellphone from her hand. “No more guests.”

Everyone laughed. Parker was so easy to rile. But the teasing was good-natured. Parker, the family’s favorite cousin, had been doted on since he was born.

“I’m flying the rest of my horses over when I return from Argentina later this summer.” Zoe drew herself up to her full-on five feet two. “You have three months before the first family match, Parker Tavonesi—my Italian mounts and maybe a new Argentinian thoroughbred against your California ponies. No handicap. I’ll bet you a dinner party for twelve—
with
wine—that we beat you by two goals.”

“Better watch out, Zoe, both of my brothers will be here then,” Alana said. “They’re Parker’s three-goal ringers.”

“I’ll invite Alex and Kaz’s new teammate, Cody Bond,” Sabrina added, although she’d been hoping for a much earlier opportunity to introduce Zoe to the young rookie. Sabrina had kept a close eye on her young cousin since she’d arrived. For all her outward bravado, Zoe hadn’t managed to hide her grief. Suffering lingered, barely hidden under courageous smiles. From Alex’s reports, Cody was the sort of man who could make a woman forget she was grieving and homesick. And rumor had it that he rode like a demon. Sabrina was pretty sure it wouldn’t matter that he’d spent most of his younger riding days in rodeos—he was strong, agile and Alex had told her Cody loved any sort of game. A charming man from the wilds of Montana might stir her sweet cousin back to life.

“A man is the last thing I need right now,” Zoe said. The look she shot Sabrina said otherwise.

Sabrina raised a brow. Her matchmaking tendencies went into high gear as she began to scheme a speedier rendezvous.

“Challenge accepted,” Parker said to Zoe. “But you can’t cook.”

Sabrina chuckled. He was obviously weighing the wager seriously.

“I know how to punch in a caterer’s number,” Zoe said with a defiant flip of her hair.

Sabrina had to laugh at the exchange. For a moment Parker had all but forgotten the party. He was too busy focusing on his great passion—polo. His brother and he had played since they could mount a horse. Parker on a horse did not in any way resemble the list-toting, party-planning fiend standing before her.

The caterer rushed over with a sheaf of instructions. Parker barked out assignments to the family, and for the next hour they scurried to his command.

Sabrina arranged the last of the place cards on the table, double checked the seating chart and then leaned against the colorful mural stretching along the wall of the festively decorated room. She loved Trovare best when it was filled with the activities of family and celebrations.

Pleased at last, Parker gathered them all for a toast.

Sabrina’s mother marched into the cluster of cousins. “For goodness’ sake, Sabrina,” she said, waving her hand around as if she could disperse the group with the gesture. “Your cousins will be here all night.” She took the champagne glass from Sabrina’s hand. “You’re not even changed.”

Oh, but she was. Just not the sort of change that her mother had in mind. Meeting Kaz had changed everything.

Loving him had helped her match forces with the shadowy elements that had threatened to knock her off balance and to integrate the hidden parts of her life. Their practice together had taught her that the forces she’d fought to squelch, the forces she’d feared, weren’t trying to come at her from outside, weren’t trying to worm into her, rather she’d learned to greet them as cut-off parts of herself, parts that prejudice, ignorance and habit had long kept hidden. It was as if all the shunned parts of herself she’d ignored had awakened, had come to the table and begun to work together as a whole, offering their gifts and wisdom. Her life was tempered now with the slower, more introspective and practiced awareness she’d learned from Kaz.