The Heart Of The Game (36 page)

Cody sat in the bank, listening to Christmas music while waiting for the manager to return. He wasn’t in any mood for a holiday.

“Mr. Bond, I’ve looked into the transactions,” the manager said as he slipped into the seat behind his desk. “According to our records, you withdrew all the funds from your checking account on Saturday night at”—he looked down at a sheaf of papers he’d spread across his desk—“at eleven thirty. And fifteen minutes later you also withdrew funds up to your borrow limits from the credit cards tied to the account.”

“I did not withdraw any funds that night.” They’d already been through this. Cody held back his anger. It wasn’t the bank manager’s fault, but it sure was someone’s.

“I can file a fraud report,” the manager said. “It might take a day or so for them to get back to you, seeing that it’s the holidays and people are on vacation, but—”

“Just file the report.” Not the kind tone he’d shot for. “Please,” he added.

“Of course your accounts are insured, so you should recover the money if fraud is detected. I can email you this data if you’d like. You’ll see that everything is in order.”

Everything damn well wasn’t in any kind of order. But it wouldn’t do any good to bitch at the banker. He thanked the manager and drove home, determined to find another way to discover what had happened.

Cody’s dad let out a slow whistle after listening to his report about the meeting at the bank.

“I’m opening your email right now, son.”

For a few moments the silence was broken only by the sound of his father tapping at his keyboard.

“At first glance I’d say this is high hack. Not unusual, but clean. Whoever did this knows what he’s doing. I doubt your bank will be able to track it, but I can put a friend or two on this, guys who have more resources at their disposal than any bank does. And I’ll have my guys run Gualdieri. Did he handle your bank card or just your credit card?”

“Just the credit card. And just one of them.”

“We’ll keep on him, but I doubt he’s involved. This is the work of a pro. A really talented pro.”

His father cleared his throat. That meant information was coming. Partial information, if he knew his old man.

“After you and I last talked, I sought info on Santino Tavonesi. He has...” He paused.

Cody knew he was about to hear an edited report, only the part his dad was allowed to disclose.

“Santino has a bubble around him. Not witness protection, but something close to it. And until I have more information, you should consider these events coincidences and avoid speculation.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I’m not sure. But any move that you make could tilt a carefully orchestrated plan. You wouldn’t want to do that.”

It was a warning. Calmly said, but a warning that chilled Cody’s blood. At the level his dad had worked, plans gone awry meant lives lost.

“Your girl’s father has Mafia ties, but so does any influential family in that region of Italy. There don’t appear to be any issues between the Tavonesis and the Gualdieris, not in this century—at least nothing we found any trace of on our end.”

“She’s not my girl.”

“So you say. But I saw the report on your Yosemite escapade.”

“Jeez, Dad, spying on me?”

“The report was right there on the Park Service emergency alerts roster. The headline read:
Cody Bond, MLB player Lost Overnight in a Blizzard
. Sounds like you showed some good backcountry skills.”

Cody hoped that was all the report had said; he was in no mood to discuss his love life.

“How dangerous are Santino’s Mafia ties?” he asked.

“Impossible to calculate. These families have been at their businesses for generations. If they cross one another—well, you’ve seen the movies. The reality’s much more gruesome than Hollywood portrays and usually very well concealed. A family deal gone wrong could explain why Santino moved his family out of harm’s way. Or maybe not.” He paused again. “You know that there’s information I’m not able to share with you?”

“You sound like you’re back in the business.”

“I am.”

Two words. They washed through Cody like a cleansing wave. His dad was back on track.

“I got my job back and then some, but I haven’t quite won your mother back,” his dad said into the silence. “She wants you to come home for Christmas.”

Cell static didn’t break the gaping silence, only served to map its rapidly spreading dimensions.

“I can’t do that,” Cody finally said. “Not now. Not yet.”

“I’m just grateful you’re speaking to me at all. And I’m sorry it has to be on such worrisome topics. I’ll find out what I can. In the meantime, change your bank account passwords. I’m sending you a string to use. And I’ll send a credit card, a special one. If anyone messes with this one, we’ll have them.”

“Thanks.”

“Cody?”

“Yeah?”

“Remember what I said. This could be random, what happened to you. Four million people got hacked from a big box security breach last week. Until I know something concrete, don’t stir things up. There could be consequences.”

“Got it.”

But as Cody clicked off his phone, he couldn’t help but think about Zoe’s plan to return to Rome, and maybe directly into a problem her father had painstakingly pulled the family out of.
Right after the holidays
, she’d said. He pulled up the calendar on his phone.

He had at least three weeks.

If his dad turned up anything definitive, he could stop her. He would stop her, even if he had to kidnap her, tie her up and spoon-feed her until the danger passed.

The idea of tying her up shouldn’t have aroused him.

He needed to get a grip.

The sign for Trovare Vineyards was decked with evergreen boughs and red ribbons. Cody turned his truck up the drive. Static-laced strains of Christmas carols played on his radio, their bright tunes mingled with the songs of birds seeking insects in the nearby bare grapevines. It was hard to believe from the balmy temperature that it was the day before Christmas. Though it had stormed through the night, the sun blazed and there wasn’t a cloud in the arching blue sky.

His gear bag shifted in the seat beside him as he rounded the now familiar bend leading to the stone bridge crossing a stream. He’d thrown an extra glove and some used balls in the bag before he’d left his condo. Alex and Scotty were hosting a pick-up game for a few of the boys they’d mentored over the years. Boys without families. At Christmas. Boys who, unlike Cody, didn’t have a choice about whether to spend the holiday with family or not.

Alex was just that kind of guy, always looking to help somebody out. Just two days before, he’d arranged for Kaz and Scotty to meet up and throw for Cody. Ryan gave him some hitting tips, simple suggestions that had already improved his swing. And hitting against two of the best arms in the game was a hell of a lot more instructive than standing in a cage with a pitching machine.

If somebody had told him that there was a team like the Giants, a team of guys with killer competitive instincts combined with wide-open and generous hearts, he wouldn’t have believed it. Or maybe he would. Baseball was that kind of game. You played as a team or you didn’t win. The best teams had that power, the power of guys doing their best, but paired with the strength that came from helping one another out.

He wanted to stay on the team, and the front office knew it. He’d played damn well in the playoffs; they’d seen what he brought to the diamond. Having his future depend on the decisions of others—on whether the offers from other teams were sweeter than the Giants offers and whether Aderro chose to take one of those offers and leave San Francisco—was worse than frustrating.

After years of having his life in his own hands, of having his decisions and performance map out his future, to now be dependent on the whim of owners and on someone else’s attraction to the lure of money tore him up. And even if Aderro took a better offer and left the team, Thornton was available to slip into the number one spot—the Giants had paid good money for him. But Thornton didn’t have the insight, didn’t have the chops that Cody had. Cody was a better catcher. And that wasn’t arrogance talking—it was fact. But just because
he
knew he had skills and abilities that surpassed Thornton’s didn’t mean the brass knew it. Not yet. If he had to go back down to the minors, at least he’d play every day there and they’d see soon enough.

He huffed out a long breath. The prospect of reentering Tavonesi-clan space fisted a knot in his stomach that wouldn’t dissolve. Zoe would be there, Alex had told him.

She hadn’t been in touch, and he hadn’t expected her to be. The strangest thing about the whole damn dilemma was that he understood her drive to see her project through, to create a worthwhile life in a place that made her happy. But he harbored hope that if and when she worked through her grief for her mom, that she might think differently, feel differently. Yet every time his hope had flamed, teasing him with the future he wished could be, he’d felt damned guilty and selfish for wishing that her life wouldn’t turn out as she planned.

He’d managed to distract himself for two weeks, but his resolve to stay away had crumbled. Staying away, not seeing her before she left, would’ve been easier. But no part of him wanted easy right then. Every bit of his being wanted to talk to her one last time. He’d been taken over by want—wanting to see her, to hear her voice, to feel her touch—and by his desire to meld his body with hers and live again in the mind-blowing, soul-rending reality that making love with her opened and fed.

And wasn’t that sappy. He pounded on the truck’s seat. He’d always thought stories about obsessed lovers were incredulous. He didn’t any longer.

He wanted to play the card he held, tell her that it might not be safe to return to Italy. To plant doubts, delay her and entice her to stay.

But he knew better than to do that. Besides the fact that there might not be any real danger, that he’d be bending the truth to suit his own ends, there was the deeper issue, the truth that gnawed at his gut and dissolved his illusions.

He’d run every scenario in his mind, and every one that ended with her
not
returning to the place she loved, the place that was her heart’s home, ended badly. He’d put himself in her shoes. If someone asked him to leave the country and live somewhere he couldn’t play baseball, he wouldn’t go. Not even for love. Because he would no longer be himself. Though he didn’t have much experience in matters of the heart, he was pretty sure that love would die a fast, messy death in a stunted life.

He parked near the drawbridge, grabbed his gear bag and took a deep breath. Trovare’s castle gleamed in the sunlight. If only there were some sort of magic godfather who could rearrange circumstances so he got what he wanted and Zoe still got to be the person she was destined to be. But there were no fairy godmothers or godfathers to magically straighten out his life. Only hard reality that didn’t care a fig for what individuals wanted.

No, he wasn’t going to use his wiles to try to change the outcome of his relationship with Zoe. The cards had been dealt years earlier when his passion for baseball ignited and Zoe’s love for Italy shot deep roots into her soul.

They’d each get one of their dreams, their first dreams. That would have to be enough.

A Toyota sedan pulled up beside his truck. A young man got out of the driver’s seat, talking to three boys who leaped out dressed in baseball uniforms. One of them wore a jersey with
Donovan
emblazoned across the back.

“Holy smack,” one of the boys said. “It really is a castle.”

“Warned you,” the driver said. He had a broad-shouldered build, lean and muscular. But he still had the body of a boy not quite yet grown into a man. Cody remembered those days, frustrating days when he knew what he wanted his body to do but didn’t yet have the muscle to make happen.

The driver grabbed a gear bag out of the trunk. “Okay, what’d I tell you?” he said to the still-gawking boys.

“No muddy shoes in the castle,” the smallest boy piped up.

“No cursing,” a sandy-haired boy said as he grabbed a worn glove out of the trunk.

“Whoa!” the third boy said, noticing Cody as he came around his truck to where they stood. “You’re Cody Bond.”

The others stopped gathering their gear and stared. Cody was still getting used to the effect that meeting a player had on young fans, especially on those who played the game. He remembered his own awestruck days.

“Cody,” he said, extending his hand to the driver. “Looks like a good crew you have here.”

The boys grinned.

“Max,” the driver said, introducing himself. “And this is Henry, Alfonso and Ben.”

Cody put the face to the name and to stories Scotty had told him. Max had graduated from the mentoring program Scotty volunteered for and had gone on to UC Berkeley with a baseball scholarship. If Max kept pace, he’d have a chance at the minors after college.

Each boy in turn shook Cody’s hand.

“You playing with us today?” Alphonso asked.

“Yep.”

“On
my
team!” Ben said, elbowing the littlest boy out of the way.

“Guys, that’s Alex’s call,” Max said. “And Mr. Bond’s.”

Cody laughed. “Let’s leave that up to Alex. He knows your stats.” The boys practically puffed out with joy. “Let’s head up.”

Cody grabbed his bag and walked with Max up the drawbridge, barely able to hide his grin at the comments ping-ponging from the boys. Crossing a drawbridge and entering a castle weren’t everyday activities.

“Shoes off,” Max said at the door. “I’ll give you guys a tour later.”

“I could show them,” Ben piped up. He looked at Cody. “I’ve been here
three
times.”

“Who has the presents for Alex and Scotty?” Max asked.

“I do.” Little Alphonso beamed.

“Remember—wait until after the game to give them to them,” Max said. “Just put the boxes under the tree for now.”

Cody felt like he was in a Christmas pageant for Little Leaguers. The boys practically danced through the foyer. They entered the great hall and stopped, wide-eyed and momentarily speechless. Even Cody felt his jaw go slack at the sight in front of them.

Twelve-foot ladders were placed on either side of a towering Christmas tree lit with thousands of sparkling white lights. The lights gave the murals in the room an otherworldly glow. For a moment he thought that maybe a fairy godfather might not be totally out of the question.

“You’re early!” Sabrina said from her perch halfway up one ladder.

But Cody’s eyes were on the other ladder. On Zoe as she struggled to balance a lighted angel on the very top of the tree. Bathed in the soft lights, she looked like a damn goddess. When she turned to see who Sabrina was talking to, her eyes went wide. Evidently Cody’s presence at the event was one of Alex’s surprises for the day.

“Holy”—Henry looked over to Max—“holy crap,” he finally stuttered out.

Sabrina scurried down the ladder.

“My God, Max, you’ve grown a foot,” she said as she hurried toward them.

“I wish,” Max said, blushing as Sabrina brushed a kiss to his cheek. Being kissed by a Hollywood movie star would shock color through any guy’s cheeks.

“Hi, Ben.” Sabrina shook the boy’s hand.

“This is Henry,” Ben said, making the most of his status as a seasoned visitor. “And this is Alphonso.”

“We have
presents
,” Alphonso said with a slight stammer.

Sabrina was a beauty, and these boys probably hadn’t seen a real-live movie star up close. Hell, if it weren’t for Zoe sitting perched on the ladder beside the tree, Cody’s eyes would’ve been glued to Sabrina too.

“Put the presents under the tree,” Max said firmly. He looked to Sabrina. “It’s been all I could do to keep them from texting the contents to both Scotty and Alex. They’re pretty proud of their creations.”

“The guys are out raking the field.” Sabrina tossed the red bow she held onto the long table stretching down the length of the hall. “We’ll have a snack after the game. But would you like hot cider and cookies to tide you over?”

A chorus of
yeses
greeted her, and Max and the boys trailed her into the kitchen.

Cody watched as Zoe made her way down the ladder. Each step she took toward him had his heart pounding faster. Every cell in his body strained toward her with its own chorus of
yes
.

“Alex certainly has his ways of stirring us up,” she said with a shy smile when she reached him. “I’m glad you came.”

She stepped back, giving him a near painful view of the way her slacks hugged her hips and the knitted top accentuated the curves of her breasts.

“You must be thirsty after the drive. Was there traffic?”

Thirsty didn’t cover it. He was starving—for her voice, for her hands on his skin. Hell, just seeing her was like a feast. A much more palatable one than the Bracebridge Dinner had been. But he imagined that seeing her this last time, knowing that he was saying goodbye for good, would be much more costly than a fancy meal. He resisted the urge to grab her and never let go. Was this how their final moments would be, they’d talk about traffic? Hot cider? He should’ve stayed away.

She took his hand, and his body lurched.

“Or maybe you’d just like to get some air,” she said. “Stretch your legs before the game? I bet they have you slotted to catch for both sides.”

She squeezed his hand and the war in him started all over again—wanting her to be safe, yet wanting a reason for her not to go and yet knowing
that
was bogus. She had to do what she wanted to do, just as he did. He wasn’t gonna leave baseball and go make pizzas—he wouldn’t be who he was without baseball. And she wouldn’t be who she was without living in Rome, being back in her own circle of friends in the place that called to her soul. The ruts his thoughts had run—and that he was visiting yet again—would reach down to China if he didn’t pull himself together and make the best of these last moments with her.

“Fresh air would be good,” he managed to get out. He couldn’t take his eyes off her lips. He understood how men throughout history had been undone by their love for a woman. He’d read about Mark Antony and Cleopatra, Napoleon and Josephine, Sampson and Delilah, and he’d always believed their stories to be trumped-up tales. Not anymore.

It was torture to walk with her, to smell her, to be so close and not wrap her in his arms. The bare vines in the vineyard around them were more than a metaphor for the vision he imagined of his days ahead.

“You’re not spending the holiday with your family?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

Zoe tilted her head. He knew her signs—and he knew her body so well the knowledge was killing him. He grabbed at his thoughts. And decided that telling her about his family would throw water on the fire simmering in his veins.