Thrown by Love

by Pamela Aares

“I was just leaving,” Mike said. “I’ll stall the cake cutting—if I can keep Scotty’s boys away from it.”

  Scotty didn’t try to stop Mike from walking out. All he cared about was that his wife, whom he’d last seen laughing and smiling and chatting with their wedding guests, was now sobbing in his arms.

  “Hey.” He tilted her chin. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, maybe.” She sniffed.

  She hadn’t cried during the ceremony, even though he’d felt his own eyes tear up. So he wanted to know what had shaken her.

  He guided her to a short leather couch near the window and tugged her down onto it. He crossed to the desk and grabbed a tissue from the holder. He saw the odd wooden box, open, empty. He hadn’t seen it when he’d been in there before. He’d used the study a couple times—Chloe had insisted. But he’d yet to feel comfortable there. He sat next to her on the couch, pushing the billowing skirt of her wedding dress aside so he didn’t sit on it.

  “Nothing never looked like this,” he said, handing her the tissue.

  She lifted a shaky hand and took the tissue. She started to say something, but instead handed him the paper she held in her other hand.

  “It was in the box.”

  “That box?” He tilted his head toward the desk as he unfolded the paper.

  She nodded and pulled her knees up under the folds of her wedding gown. She was beautiful, this wife of his. Whatever had made her cry on their wedding day, he'd do whatever it took to fix it.

  “Read it,” she said, nudging him with her foot and biting at the inside of her lip.

  He scanned the paper quickly at first, then stopped midpage and reread from the top, slowly. He felt her eyes on him, watching.

  “He knew,” she said. “He knew I’d love you. That you’d love me. He knew.”

  Though she’d told him many times that she loved him, he never tired of hearing it, knew he never would. He handed the note back, treating it as if it were the most precious piece of paper in the world.

  He leaned over the yards of white silk and lace and took Chloe’s face in his hands, looking deep into her eyes. “So did we,” he said. The concern he’d seen on her face faded as she smiled and met his lips.

  Smokey ran through the door, barking when he saw them. He launched himself and landed between them, sinking into the puffed cloth of Chloe’s dress until all they could see of him was the pleased look on his face.

  “Guess it’s time for cake,” Scotty said.

  “More than time, according to the look on your dog’s face.”

  “Our dog, Chloe.” He lifted Smokey out of his comfy white nest and settled him on the carpet, then offered her a hand up. “Our dog. He’s a champ, you know.”

  “In that case, maybe I should sign him to the Sabers,” she said with a mischievous smile.

  “No signing today—no baseball today. Today you’re a bride. My bride. Tomorrow too.” He tilted her chin up and tasted her lips. “And forever,” he murmured against the luscious lips he craved. “Umm . . . who needs cake?”

  Smokey yelped and tugged at Chloe’s dress.

  “He does,” she said, scratching his neck under the spiffy white ring-bearer collar. “Our dog.”

  Smokey trailed them all the way to the wedding cake. And Chloe, glowing in her beautiful fancy gown, her eyes meeting Scotty’s, made sure their dog got the first bite.

  Late that night Chloe and Scotty walked out past Woodland’s carefully tended gardens, past the tents and the bowers of flowers, the remnants of their wedding celebration. When they reached the oldest of the oak trees, surrounded by a field allowed to grow wild, Chloe spread out the afghan she’d snagged from the library. She felt but couldn’t hear the whoosh of air as a great horned owl swooped by, and imagined it casting a curious eye at them. She shivered, with happiness really, but Scotty saw. He removed his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders and pulled her close against him.

  With the lightest of touches, he pulled the collar away and kissed the nape of her neck.

  “Though I didn’t know it at the time,” he said between kisses, “you are what I always dreamed of when I looked out at the stars.”

  Chloe felt the fire his kisses tracked through her, felt the love connecting them, and it dawned on her that though time and space were mysteries, hard to grasp, hard to know, maybe even miracles, one thing she knew beyond all doubt was that the life she shared with Scotty was the most amazing miracle of all. He was the heaven she'd always dreamed of, the now she'd always wished for, the love that even time couldn't touch.

  Ignoring the chill of the night, she tugged him down onto the afghan. Under her palm his heart picked up its pace, matching the fervent thrumming of her own.

  “And you,” she said as she undid the topmost button of his shirt, “you have turned out to be the very heart of the game.”

  He grasped her wrist. “No. No game talk. It’s still our wedding day for . . . ” He glanced at his wrist. ”Well, since I can’t see my watch, until the sun comes up over that ridge behind you. You are officially fined a million kisses. Starting now.”

  And so it began.

  THE END

  Thank you!

  Thank you for reading Thrown By Love. I write so that readers may enjoy the experience of reading my books. I hope you enjoy every one!

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  Ready to keep reading?

  You've just read book two in The Heart of the Game Series. The other books in the series are:

  Love Bats Last, The Heart of the Game, #1 (Alex and Jackie)

  Fielder's Choice, The Heart of the Game, #3 (2014) (Alana and Matt)

  Love on the Line, The Heart of the Game, #4 (2014) (Cara and Ryan)

  Thank you so much for reading and for spending time with me.

  In gratitude,

  Pamela Aares

  P.S. If you'd like to read the beginning of Fielder's Choice (Alana and Matt's story), please turn the page.

  .

  Fielder’s Choice

  Book Three in the Heart of the Game series

  When love’s the game, you can’t play it safe…

  All-Star shortstop Matt Darrington has more than a problem. His wife died, and now he’s juggling a too-smart-for-her-britches six-year-old and the grueling pace of professional baseball. Worse, his daughter is mom shopping. When they explore a local ranch, she decides the beautiful, free-spirited tour guide is premium mom material. Matt thinks the sexy guide looks like Grade-A trouble.

  Alana Tavonesi loves her cosmopolitan life in Paris. But when she inherits the renowned Tavonesi Olive Ranch, she has to return to California and face obligations she never wanted. Selling the place is her first instinct, but life at the ranch begins to crack her open, exposing the dreams hidden inside her heart.

  On a lark she leads a ranch tour, where she meets Matt Darrington. His physical power and a captivating sensual appeal fire her in a way no man ever has, but he has a kid—and being a stepmom is a responsibility Alana will never be ready for. Still . . . she can’t keep her mind or her hands off him.

  When Matt’s daughter goes missing from a kid’s camp at the ranch, Alana organizes the search effort, knowing from experience the areas a bright child would be drawn to explore. As she and Matt work together to search for the little girl, Alana discovers that father and daughter have won her heart. Yet it may be too late for love…

  Fielder's Choice is available online as a print or eBook at all of your favorite booksellers.

  Prologue

  She left me what?” Alana Tavonesi couldn’t believe what her parents’ attorney was telling her. The news of her grandmother’s death last week had come as a shock, but this...this was way beyond shocking. Surely
, she’d misheard him. She’d spent the night café-hopping along the boulevards of Paris, topped with dancing until dawn at Batofar on the Seine, so she wasn’t in prime listening condition. She glanced at the clock—three o’clock already. She bit back a groan.

  “The ranch,” he repeated in that flat, all-business tone of his. “It’s yours. I’ll be faxing over the paperwork shortly from here in the New York office. You can overnight it back to me.”

  Her mind reeled as she clutched the phone and sat up in bed. Nana had lived a long and fascinating life, and Alana had both mourned her and celebrated that life for the past several days, but she couldn’t believe Nana would leave her very dear ranch to Alana. Out of all the Tavonesi grandchildren, she was surely the worst to bequeath the California ranch to. A degree in art history wasn’t exactly useful for managing a world-class olive ranch, certainly not for handling the award-winning vineyard that Nana had painstakingly developed in the hills west of the main house.

  “You’re sure?”

  He sighed. “I’m sure. The property includes . . .”

  Alana listened as he listed the rest of her inheritance. Forty thousand olive trees. The sprawling mansion and ornate pavilions. And the greenhouses and the frantoio, and, oh yes, the art collection. At least that part she was interested in. She’d stopped him from listing the whole inventory, though. He’d probably have told her how many tractors or plows or whatever one used on an olive ranch.

  “Okay, okay,” she said, not knowing what in the world would she do with all that when she lived in Paris now. “I’ll watch for the documents. Thanks.” She hung up the phone with a click, wishing she’d never answered.

  She tripped over her heeled sandals as she made her way to the window and threw open the heavy drapes. Sunlight blazed in, and she squinted at the painful brightness. Paris was already living up to its reputation as the City of Light, but it was the adventure and excitement of the city’s nightlife that called to her.

  With phenomenal clubs to satisfy every taste imaginable, Paris knew how to party. And she wanted to party. Wanted to laugh. Wanted to feel.

  She wanted . . .

  Well, sometimes she didn’t know what she wanted. She was only twenty-one. She was still searching.

  She pulled the drapes back into place, shutting out the sun.

  The attorney’s words stung through her as she fumbled to her kitchen to boil water for coffee. A good strong cup might snap her back to reality. She spilled some of the grounds and wiped them up with her palm. The aroma rose, rich and heady and she remembered that her first cup of coffee had been with Nana, on the ranch. She couldn’t help but think about her now. Until the attorney had called, Alana had thought she’d been the one person in her life who’d understood her. Now she wasn’t so sure Nana had known much about her at all, about what moved her. About what she loved. And as much as she wanted it to be a mistake, the attorney had been very clear: the Tavonesi Ranch was hers.

  The hot coffee burned her tongue. She set the cup onto her table and took a deep breath. Patience had never been one of her virtues.

  She waited a moment and then took a cautious sip of the coffee, fighting back the hollow, bottomless feeling that lurked in her stomach. Even surrounded by the sounds of the city, by the voices of passersby in front of her apartment, by the whizzing and honking of cars along the boulevard, she’d never felt more alone.

  Chapter 1

  How could an innocent windmill, just a couple of slats reaching into the sky, create such an awful mess?

  Of course, the major problem was that the freakin’ windmill was hers. That meant that all the headaches that came with it were hers, as well.

  Alana kicked at the base of the windmill and looked out over the acres of rolling hills and the sun-washed buildings of the Tavonesi Olive Ranch. Had she really only been back in the States for three weeks? It felt like ages since she’d left Paris. Since she’d left her new life behind and trekked back to California.

  She sighed and looked around. Even from a distance she could see men pruning in the orchard just beyond the old barn. She hugged her arms across her chest and stared at them as they worked. Their movements were confident, practiced—the actions of people who knew what they were doing and why.

  The attorney hadn’t told her that when she’d signed the papers deeding the ranch over to her, she’d also inherited the people. The ranch supported more than thirty families year-round and a small army of seasonal workers, men and women whose lives had centered on the ranch for the past two decades.

  Nothing could’ve prepared her for that responsibility. Or for the sidelong, troubled looks the workers had given her since the day she’d arrived at the ranch.

  She didn’t want to be responsible for them.

  That meant their futures, their dreams, were dependent on her.

  She wasn’t good at seeing to her own dreams—it was unthinkable that she’d be responsible for the dreams of others.

  She shaded her eyes from the bright sun and peered up at the windmill.

  Its graceful blades stretched unmoving above her, white curves arcing like a fine sculpture against the brilliant blue sky.

  To her eye, it was beautiful. Yet evidently the locals and the Sonoma County planning commission didn’t agree. Or maybe they just didn’t care. They wanted it down.

  Nana might’ve been a rancher, but she’d had a fine eye for beauty. From the windmill site on the hill, Alana could see the sculpted bronze lizard hugging the roof of the octagonal ballroom her grandmother had built next to the ranch house, his fierce eyes guarding the rooftop and gazing out over the expanse of olive trees that stretched to the horizon. A ballroom. Only her eccentric grandmother would build a ballroom on a ranch. And commission a thirty-foot lizard to top the pagoda-style roof.

  And spend a quarter-million dollars to erect a windmill before the permit for the damn thing had gone through.

  Just another thing for Alana to deal with. She sighed and picked her way down the hill, the buzz of activity increasing with every step. The workers clustered around a knot of trucks parked in front of the building that housed the frantoio and the gift shop. They looked like bees waiting to get into their hive.

  The frantoio was her grandmother’s most-prized creation. It served not only the ranch but also the community, processing olives from other farms during the harvest. The exquisite granite millstones at its heart each weighed nearly two tons, and Nana had sourced them from Italy herself.

  As a little girl, Alana would sit for hours and watch the olives travel up the conveyor and drop into the grinder where they were ground into an aromatic paste before the oil was pressed out. Nothing beat the scent of freshly pressed olives. People used words like grassy or peppery to describe the smell, but those words only pointed to the rich, alluring fragrance. To Alana, the milled olives smelled like a near-magical life force. And with one taste of the swirling oil, the memories of harvests of years past would come rushing back to her.

  Those had been good times, days when her parents would drop her off for a few weeks while they headed off on one of their exotic vacations. She’d always thought she got the best part of the deal. She’d been tutored in the mornings and then had spent languid afternoons trailing her grandmother as she oversaw the harvest. But as a teenager, Alana had stopped visiting for such long periods. Although she’d still loved spending time with Nana, boys and parties had lured her away.

  She looked closer at the trucks in the drive. Peterson and Sons Irrigation was stenciled on the side of two of them. That meant either there was another problem or scheduled maintenance was being done. That part of ranch life she didn’t remember. And why should she? Nana had shared her joy of the place, not the everyday tasks that made that joy possible.

  When Nana had been alive, visiting had been like entering her grandmother’s dream. Only now did she realize how much work Nana had done.

  She took a deep breath and picked up her pace. The other vehicles in the drive be
longed to the ranch. Though she’d read and reread the file of notes Nana had left her, getting a handle on the day-to-day details of running the ranch was overwhelming. There were five different managers on the team that Nana had headed herself, one for each of the ranch divisions.

  The retail and gift store Alana had a sense of, and she even knew a bit about the marketing for the body-care line—years of retail therapy had taught her a lot about how products were bought and sold. But the actual farming aspects of the ranch, the growing of the olives, the massive drip irrigation system, the on-site composting—not to mention the new grape-growing and winemaking initiatives—were way over her head.

  As she neared the frantoio, several more cars she hadn’t noticed—and didn’t recognize—were parked at the far end of the building. The gift shop was open only during harvest season and for special tours so a tour must be scheduled for today.

  She should’ve checked the calendar, had planned to, but her brother had called and distracted her. Nana had always told her that the ability to manage distractions was a key tool for success, yet it wasn’t a tool Alana had ever needed to wield, nor one she’d wanted to master. Distractions had always been part of the fun in her life.

  A white tent stood at the end of the parking lot. It hadn’t been there yesterday. Really, what was going on? A group of staffers stopped their conversations as she approached.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Tavonesi.”

  Alana didn’t need to read the name tag to recognize Peg Martin. Peg had escorted her on her first day at the ranch and though her title was general manager, she filled in wherever help was needed. Today, Peg’s tense voice didn’t match her pasted-on smile.

  “Is something wrong? Alana asked.