Fielder's Choice (16 page)

“Not today.”

Matt heard the waver in Alana’s voice.

“But we had her memorial. That’s why I was late.”

“I like my grandma. But she wants to send me to boarding school. We aren’t going to let her, are we, Dad?”

Matt shook his head and took the gooey treat she held out to him.

“I went to boarding school,” Alana said in what Matt recognized as an attempt at a helpful tone.

“Did you like it?”

“Not really.”

“See?” Sophie scooched closer to Alana. “You smell good. Like flowers.” She lifted the second s’more off the plate and took a big bite, chewed thoughtfully and then turned to Alana. “Do you like the way my dad smells?”

“Sophie.” Matt was glad for the dim light. They didn’t need to see the embarrassment creeping into his face.

“Right now he smells like melted chocolate and toasted marshmallows,” Alana answered, dodging Sophie’s ploy.

Sophie licked dripping chocolate from the edges of the graham crackers. “Where’s your guitar, Dad? You said you’d bring it.”

“In the car.”

It was true, he’d promised her on the phone that afternoon. But saying yes on the phone and playing for a group of strangers were two different beasts. Already he regretted his promise.

Though he protested, Alana and Sophie insisted that he fetch the guitar.

When he returned, the two of them were deep in conversation about plans for the butterfly garden.

Well, conversation was stretching it. Sophie was giving one of her running monologues, and Alana was nodding and smiling.

“I happen to know that fairies live in the olive trees,” Sophie went on. “Did you know asps can live in olive trees too? My dad took me to Greece once and we saw them.”

“The fairies?” Alana managed to wedge in.

“
No
. The snakes. They wind around in the branches. The farmers told us you have to learn to think like a snake if you want to get to the olives safely. I can think like a snake.”

Sophie stood, hunched her shoulders and narrowed her eyes, and Alana laughed at her antics. Warmth radiated in Matt’s chest at the sweet sound of her laugh.

“Thank goodness we don’t have olive tree snakes in California.”

“Oh, but you do have fairies. The lady told me—” She stopped. “Oh, I can’t remember.”

“Maybe I can just play quietly over here,” Matt said as he took his guitar from its case. He strummed, searching for an appropriate tune.

“Dad, sing ‘Paint the Sky with Stars,’ ” Sophie said. “It’s so pretty.” She turned to Alana. “Do you like Enya? We have all her songs. I like ‘Dreams’ too, and she sang for the movie of
The Frog Prince
. It’s my favorite.”

Most of the kids were still gathered around Peg, who was pulling roasted marshmallows off skewers and helping them sandwich them between graham crackers and chunks of chocolate bars.

Matt strummed out the first few bars of the Enya ballad. Embarrassment prickled in him as some of the parents moved closer.

Alana hummed and then began to sing in a slightly off-tune but sweet and clear voice.

She sounded like an angel that hadn’t quite managed to make the grade for the heavenly chorus. But angels probably didn’t come with bodies like hers. He finished the song, and the parents and kids clapped.

He was used to thirty or forty thousand fans cheering a good hit, but a handful of people applauding around a campfire made him flush with self-consciousness. Alana, on the other hand, just smiled. At the group’s urging he played another, an Irish ballad with a haunting tune. Alana didn’t sing this time but the way she watched him made his fingers tingle with the desire to touch her. Sophie yawned and laid her head in Alana’s lap. He agreed to play an encore, but just one. Before the song’s end, he saw that Sophie was fast asleep.

“I wish I had talent like that,” Alana whispered.

“You paint beautifully,” Matt whispered back.

She tilted her head. “How would you know?”

One of the camp staff came over, sparing him from having to admit to online snooping.

“Shall I take her?” the staffer asked. At Matt’s nod, she woke Sophie and took her off to her tent.

“Really,” Alana said, “how would you know what I paint?”

He’d hoped she’d forgotten his comment. “I saw your landscape on the Sorbonne site.” He considered stopping there but couldn’t resist adding, “You captured the soul of the place.”

She lowered her eyes. He hadn’t expected her to be uncomfortable with a compliment. He imagined beautiful women were accustomed to compliments.

“I should say thank you.” But she just nodded toward the staffer guiding Sophie along the path. The bobbing flashlight made the retreating figures look like oversized fireflies. “Does she always talk that much?”

“More. But it’s good to see. When her mom died she didn’t talk for a month. I was really worried.”

Alana drew her shoulder forward in an aborted shrug, and he realized she didn’t know what to say. Mothers dying and kids’ emotional responses weren’t anyone’s choice for party talk.

“How’d you know the words to that song?” he asked, changing the subject.

“It’s the only karaoke song I can get through.” She tilted her head and smiled. “Parisians love karaoke. I’m still astonished.”

From the far end of the campfire circle, the camp director announced that staffers would be guiding guests back to the parking area and that the ranch had goodie bags for the departing parents.

He watched as Alana graciously bid them each good night. After the last guest left the campfire circle, she practically fell onto the hay bale beside him.

“My grandmother, God bless her, either didn’t realize what all this entails or she had an overblown idea of my capabilities.”

“She left you this place?”

Alana nodded. “I know she was lucid, but I’m afraid her affection tainted her judgment.”

“Maybe not. Maybe she knew you straight through. Sometimes other people can see latent talents we can’t see ourselves.”

He’d meant it as a compliment, but when she lifted her gaze to meet his, he saw the little muscles around her eyes tighten and her shoulders snap back into a defensive posture.

“Dealing with rigid-minded county personnel about a high-tech windmill was not a talent I honed in art school.” She leaned back on her elbows and shook her head. “Neither was managing a place like this.”

It took some coaxing, but she told him about her troubles over the windmill. He stuffed down his immediate impulse to offer advice and just listened. Alex had told him about his quirky grandmother, but Matt hadn’t realized that she’d put a windmill up without obtaining permits. No wonder the county supervisors were steamed.

“In my darkest moments I’ve considered painting effigies of the supervisors and hanging them from the windmill’s blades,” Alana said with a wave toward the hills.

“It’d be a bold statement.” He knew she was kidding, but under the joking tone he heard her frustration. And her doubt. “Do you still paint?”

She nodded, almost absently.

“I’d like to see some of your work.”

“I left my canvases in Paris.”

She stared out toward the olive grove with a pensive look on her face. He didn’t ask the questions that rose in his mind. Exploring touchy subjects was not high on his list of preferred activities—not tonight.

The light of the lanterns hanging from nearby trees played across her face, and he bit back the urge to reach over and kiss her. A couple of staffers were working at dousing the fire; he didn’t want an audience. Not for what he had in mind.

An awkward silence stretched between them.

Then, to his surprise, she took his hand.

“I have an exquisite bottle of red wine and a desperate need to relax. Would you like to share the wine with me?”

She could’ve said
would you walk over hot coals
and Matt would’ve done it. Drinking great red wine with her was a preferred duty. And he had a good notion of what he’d like to do to help her relax.

Chapter 13

Alana chattered about her grandmother as they made their way to the house. He heard the affection in her voice and under that, a tinge of nervousness. Knowing she was nervous aroused him more than the touch of her hand in his.

Though he wanted to fling her over his shoulder and carry her straight to the closest bed, he told himself he could wait. He wanted to bring her slow, soul-spinning pleasure. He wanted to see the look in her eyes as he took her to that place that women loved to go.

What he didn’t want to cop to was the pleasure of simply being in her company and the warm feeling running through him as he listened to her stories about her early years on the ranch.

Her tumbled combination of bravado and insecurity triggered conflicting and uncomfortable emotions.

The hardest emotion to swallow was how much he liked her.

The depth of his feeling sharpened the edge of his wariness. She was a loose cannon, he reminded himself—a likable, beautiful, intriguing loose cannon. Liking her so much would make it harder to hold to his resolve and keep their affair in the safe, casual zone where he knew it should stay. When she mentioned that Enzo was the olive oil consultant for the ranch and Matt realized the man was not a lover, the fading twinge of jealousy told him that keeping his feelings casual could be tougher than he’d calculated. He didn’t want to think about the many men who’d line up to be right where he was at that very moment.

When they reached the house, she led him to an upstairs study and excused herself to get the wine. Matt saw the corner of an ornate bed frame in the adjoining room. He could only assume it was her bedroom.

“I’m afraid I’ve pushed the cork into the bottle,” she said when she returned. “I knew there was a reason I like champagne. That
never
happens with bubbly.”

She set the bottle on a desk and used her finger to push the cork down in an attempt to open a passage for the wine.

“Let me help,” Matt said as he crossed to her. What he thought he could do, he didn’t know, but anything was better than sitting in the ornate upholstered chair halfway across the room.

“I think I’ve got it, I—”

She stopped as he brushed up against her side. Her hair had fallen away from her neck, exposing creamy skin. He watched her pulse quicken and bent and traced the curve of her neck with his lips. She froze.

“Matt, I think—”

He closed his lips over hers, smothering whatever she was going to say. The last thing either of them needed to do right then was think. He took the bottle from her hands and set it on the desk. Then he ran his hands up under her shirt. Her bare skin was soft and hot under his fingertips. Unable to hold back, he crushed her against him. The honey-sweet taste of her entered him like a drug he’d been pretending he didn’t need.

Their kisses were frenzied as they moved into the bedroom, him stripping off her shirt and her wriggling out of her jeans. He managed to pull a condom from his wallet and unzip his jeans, lower them over his hips, and slip on the condom. When he reached to stroke her between her legs, to slip his finger to her sweet spot and bring her pleasure, she pulled his hand away and told him she’d die if she had to wait a moment longer. He was a man who liked to have clear permission from a woman, and that was about the clearest message he’d ever heard. He tumbled her across the bed and pinned her hands up over her head. The look in her eyes as he entered her with a swift thrust pierced him. He tried to pull back, to go slow, but she begged him not to. As she came, he took her gasps into his mouth. He couldn’t hold off. The guttural growl that came from his throat as he released into her was like no sound he’d ever made.

Panting, he pulled out of her. He’d drilled her when he’d meant to do anything but.

Gasping, he lay beside her and pulled her to him, molding her body against his, and stayed still until he could breathe easily. Until he could think.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice rumbled; he didn’t like it. “I didn’t mean to be rough, Alana.”

He rolled off the bed, pulled his briefs and jeans up his thighs and disposed of the condom.

“You’re kidding, right?” Her voice had a drowsy after-sex purr that made him hard again just hearing it. “I knew it’d be like this with you.”

“Like what?”

She raised her brows and a half smile curved her lips. “Bone shattering.”

“Is that a compliment?” He wasn’t fishing for a compliment. His performance hardly qualified. But he couldn’t deny the raw power they’d shared. He wanted to know—to know how it was for her.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe’s not my style, but if that was maybe sex, I can go with it.” He could more than go with it—he felt that he was channeling all the pent-up erotic energy of a lifetime into these moments with her.

She stood and took hold of his collar in her fisted hands. “Take this off. I’m naked and you’re not.” She slipped her fingers inside his shirt. “I want to see this body.”

He pulled his shirt over his head, inhaling as her fingers traced circles around his nipples. Then she fingered his jeans and undid the button at the waist. Her hair fell in a rippling curtain as she bent and pulled the zipper down. He was hard again, and his erection strained against the thin cotton of his briefs. She ran her tongue over the hood of his shaft, and his wetness soaked through the cotton to meet the warm, slick trail of her circling tongue. She pulled the elastic band of his briefs down just an inch and closed her lips around him.

“No, Alana.” He roped his fingers in her hair and tried to tug her away.

“Yes,” she said, resisting him. He released some of the pressure so he wouldn’t pull too hard at her hair, but he liked the tension of him pulling and her fighting to lick him.

She closed her mouth around his shaft. He moaned as she moved her lips up and down driving ball-tightening pleasure deep.

Without warning, she stopped. She pushed into his belly with her head and nudged him onto the bed.

“Off.”

She pulled off his shoes and then tugged at his jeans. A wicked smile lit her eyes. No woman on earth could possibly look as foxy as Alana did at that moment. Her mouth was slick with moisture from sucking him, her hair fell in tendrils around her neck and her crossed arms accentuated the lush curves of her unbelievable breasts.