The Heart Of The Game by Pamela Aares Read Free Book Online Page A

Chloe’s gentle words broke the awkward silence that hung heavy in the skybox.
    A waiter bustled in with a tray of tiny sandwiches surrounded by strips of red peppers and carrots. He glanced from Chloe to Jackie, a question in his eyes.
    “Thank you. Put it over there,” Chloe said, motioning to the bar.
    “Food that I recognize,” Jackie said as she helped herself to a sandwich. She waved it in Zoe’s direction. “We should be bringing Zoe up to speed on the game.”
    Grateful for the shift in energy, Zoe thanked the heavens for Alex’s feisty, perceptive wife. Deep down she hoped to find love like Jackie had found with him. But that would have to wait for another time. A time when life was not so complicated. A time when she could meet love on her own solid home ground.
    “Alex told me that catchers are the brains of a team,” Brigitte said, looking pleased with herself. “They know the patterns of the hitters and work with the managers to call pitches.” She tapped her manicured fingertips against her cheek. “I do love brainy men.”
    “My, my, my,” Alana said as she joined them at the window and peered through her binoculars at the field. “You’ve been studying up, Brigitte. I remember when all you knew about baseball was that the guys had good glutes.”
    Matt, Alana’s husband, had helped Alex brief Zoe on baseball over a game of pool the previous week. But as Zoe stared down at the field, she discovered that none of the rules had stuck in her brain. What with dealing with the fundraiser and absorbing all the details of learning to run a vineyard, she was on more than overload. Her life in Italy seemed more than seven thousand miles away. It felt like another life entirely.
    She flicked her gaze over the fans in the stadium. They held homemade signs, many wore hand-knit caps fashioned with the team colors, and families clustered together, laughing and leafing through their programs—the scene was the opposite of the crass commercialism she’d expected at an American ballpark.
    The strains of an anthem sounded, and the crowd in the stadium rose out of their seats.
    “Show time,” Chloe said as she and Jackie joined them at the window.
    After the anthem, a little boy threw out a pitch—more comical than ceremonial, as Chloe said it was supposed to be—and the Giants players took their places on the field. The easy mood of her cousins and their friends instantly shifted, and a buzz of tension filled the suite. This game would determine whether the Giants went to the World Series or not. Zoe thought it odd that it was called the World Series since it was played only in the States, but she hadn’t said anything. Baseball was sacred to her California family, rather like polo was to her. She could respect passion for a game.
    Cody knelt behind the plate and caught a couple of balls thrown by Chloe’s husband, Scotty Donovan. These were not the same throws Zoe had observed during the warm-up down on the field. The ball flew so fast she had to concentrate to follow it. To even see it. In his padding and helmet, Cody looked like some sort of modern-day warrior. A player walked into the chalked-off box in front of Cody and swung. Zoe sucked in a breath. The bat’s backswing was inches from Cody’s face, but he didn’t flinch. He just caught the ball and fired it back to Scotty. The power of Cody’s throw shot a zing of pleasure straight to her belly. Strong men had always been one of her weaknesses. A weakness she rather enjoyed.
    “Scotty’s timing is good,” Jackie said with a sidelong glance at Chloe.
    “He’s as nervous as a fox circled by hounds.”
    Chloe didn’t laugh at what Zoe thought was supposed to be a joke. Zoe concluded the other woman was worried for her husband.
    “Don’t mind us,” Sabrina said. Her gaze roved over Zoe. “Maybe you’d enjoy the game better if you weren’t watching it with a bunch of over-anxious wives. I have an extra seat down by Kaz’s