Aim For Love

by Pamela Aares

  As he watched the friendly banter between Alex and Scotty as they set up, he knew that following the old ways, the community and teamwork that his own culture cherished, was the way forward. If he made the majors, his teammates would have his back and he’d have theirs.

  If he got his act together.

  Scotty showed him a couple of moves for getting him more freedom on his pull-down, a way to get more power from his release. Though neither Scotty nor Alex said as much, the practice session was probably meant to run the team lesson home as much as to teach him anything about his pitching.

  They took a break and grabbed some water from the cooler at the end of the cage.

  “Now that you’ve got some focus back, maybe you’d better deal with my sister,” Alex said.

  “Sister?”

  “Yeah, sister.”

  Alex slugged back the water. Even late in the evening, the desert heat blew in on the barely perceptible breeze.

  “Your game’s not the problem.” Alex gestured to Scotty and back to himself. “We’ve been through this, so we know the drill. Love will kick your ass if you ignore it.”

  Love.

  Hearing the word from his tough-playing teammate sent a shock of recognition through Kaz’s veins. He’d heard the stories of Alex’s and Scotty’s roads to love. It had taken life-threatening emergencies before either of them got the love thing right. If the drama of the past two weeks was any indication, Kaz was right on target. But he sure as hell didn’t feel like he was.

  And having Sabrina’s All-Star brother helping him get in touch with her floored him.

  He shook his head. “Sabrina’s not taking my calls. Hasn’t for a couple weeks.” He might as well be honest.

  Alex pulled his cellphone from his back pocket. “Use my phone.”

  Kaz swallowed his embarrassment, walked away a few feet for privacy, and punched in Sabrina’s number. When the call went to voicemail, he didn’t leave a message.

  He returned the phone to Alex.

  Alex shrugged. “Guess she’s not taking my calls either. I warned you that she’s got the Tavonesi stubborn gene. I think she got most of it.” He grinned as he shoved the phone into his pocket, and then he picked up the bat. “Let’s see your fastball a couple more times. I need the practice.”

  Stubborn.

  It wasn’t a word Kaz would use for Sabrina. He had a whole roster of words that clustered in his thoughts about her, but stubborn hadn’t been one of them. She’d walked out of his life with a grace he admired. Nothing like a clean break, head held high, to send a damn clear message.

  The irony was, he hadn’t been clear. He’d told her he wasn’t available, knowing he was being vague. He should’ve told her the truth that night they’d made love, told her about his vow and his determination to honor his word. He should’ve been clearer and not made her make the first move away. And in addition to his desire to honor his vow—hidden under that, where he had to be mercilessly honest to even discover it—it bothered him more than he wanted to admit that he couldn’t provide her the lifestyle she was accustomed to. It didn’t matter that she could provide such a life for herself. If he couldn’t, he’d at least want to meet her on near equal ground.

  But he wasn’t from her well-heeled, moneyed world. Hell, who was he kidding? He didn’t fit into her world in any way. It was one thing, a great thing, really, for Alex to mentor him, to help him, even to be okay with the fact that that he loved Sabrina. But equal ground? That was a level he’d never reach.

  He whizzed a fastball past Alex. Scotty nearly hit the dirt trying to corral it.

  “Hey, give him something he can at least get a piece of,” Scotty said as he fired the ball back to Kaz with a comical huff. “We have to ride back to the hotel with him. Maybe you haven’t been in a vehicle with Tavonesi after he’s struck out.”

  Kaz threw another fastball, and Alex clocked it into the net. Scotty took a turn batting. For a pitcher, the guy had a damned solid swing.

  “Sabrina said you can use a sword to slice a BB fired at you from seventy feet,” Alex said as they gathered up the bats and headed to his car.

  That Sabrina remembered and repeated the story gave Kaz a fuzzy feeling that it shouldn’t have.

  “That story gets some mileage.” He tossed his glove in the back and hopped into Alex’s car. “But you won’t be seeing any performance—the sheriff impounded my sword as evidence. Those days are over.”

  Alex shook his head. But then a smile crawled across his face. Kaz had seen that smile from Sabrina. It was one smile he’d never learned to read.

  Five days later Kaz had a good outing on the mound. He used the pointers Scotty had shown him and ramped up his fastball to ninety-eight miles an hour. That something as simple as relaxing into his pull-down could make such a difference didn’t surprise him. What surprised him was that he hadn’t noticed the need for the move himself.

  But more than tuning up his pitching mechanics, he sank into playing as a member of a team. He let a line drive go by him that afternoon—a ball that he’d normally have moved heaven and earth to field—but he trusted that the second baseman would field it. And he did. After the play, Alex tipped his finger to his cap in silent recognition.

  He was fitting in.

  All day those sorts of incidents happened, as if some force were at work, cracking him open to the power of the whole, a power he’d once been in harmony with but had lost touch with in the last few hectic years.

  He knew before his agent called him the next day that he’d made the team. The contract the club offered wasn’t as much as they’d hoped for, but it would do. With the added income from his new contract—and if he took Martin up on his offer—Tokugawa heirloom peaches would have the future they deserved. The future his grandfather had intended so many years before.

  He should’ve been able to sink into the joy of achieving his goals, of realizing his dream. But something was missing. And that something wasn’t a thing at all.

  He wanted Sabrina to share in his success. He wanted her reaction, her delight, in his accomplishments. But she wasn’t there to celebrate with him. And her absence turned sweet success bittersweet.

  Sabrina Tavonesi had stolen his heart, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about getting it back.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Her girls’ weekend with Jackie hadn’t helped to clear Sabrina’s head. Talking with Jackie had just stirred up every image and fantasy she’d fought over the past weeks to shut down. Jackie had taken her to the beach, showed her some surfing moves. They’d drunk one too many margaritas and watched movies late into the night in Sabrina’s cozy living room.

  But the fun hadn’t dimmed the shame she felt for not listening to Kaz and throwing herself at him anyway.

  She was good and haunted now, but not by any specter. Long walks on the beach and late nights rearranging her bungalow only made the loneliness yawn deeper inside her soul. For the first time in her life she felt homeless and unmoored. She couldn’t even touch her own body without sensing Kaz’s touch. The sense of longing, of lack, of something missing, was worse than the nightmares, worse than the pain she’d endured after the attack. How could something that wasn’t even there be so painful and pull her forward more powerfully than any goal or plan? Her shoulder was better and her heart was breaking. Not a very balanced trade-off.

  As she waited for her coffee to brew, she flicked on the tiny television next to her toaster. It was still on the baseball network. She’d tortured herself the previous afternoon watching an exhibition game between the Giants and the Dodgers. Alex had hit a homer and it had barely registered. She’d been watching for shots of Kaz in the dugout, for the next shots of him on the mound. After an hour, she’d forced herself to shut off the television. Kaz had pitched a near-perfect game. And every move he’d made had ramped up the deep yearning she felt each time she thought of him.

  And even when she didn’t.

  Her body remembered h
im without any prompting from her mind.

  And her heart held constant vigil, undeterred by reality.

  The coffeemaker sputtered. The sportscasters were buzzing with the news that Kaz had made the team, that he’d been offered an unheard-of contract for an unproven rookie. One of the announcers surmised that with the big signing contracts for some of the players being brought over from Japan, maybe the Giants brass had hopes that Kaz would be the next Tanaka. The media could make absurd leaps, she knew that from experience. But maybe in this case they were right. She hoped so, for Kaz’s sake. As she sipped her coffee, the announcers segued into speculation about Alex. She knew better than to believe his threats to retire. It’d take more than pain and life complications to get her brother to walk away from the game he loved.

  As she dressed to head over to the film set and gathered her gear, one thing became clear—she was in no mood to act out a love scene with Derrick. Why Natasha decided to shoot the love scenes in the second week made no sense to her. But organizing the shooting schedule was Natasha’s job, not hers. Her job was to show up ready.

  Derrick had made a couple more outrageous statements to the tabloids about their blossoming relationship. If he wasn’t her co-star, she’d sue the jerk. Sure she would. Just as soon as the soft spot she held for him melted away. She’d been wrong about her feelings for him, but that was no fault of his. He’d been her mentor, and she’d been the one who confused the powerful reality of him guiding her into the crazy world of Hollywood for some sort of romantic attachment. And even though she didn’t trust him, she felt affection for him and a deep sense of gratitude. But she knew now that it was the affection of a student for a mentor, nothing more. Maybe they could be friends, but he’d have to stop his antics.

  She didn’t want to out him, but she had to find a way to get him to come to grips and stop using her as a smokescreen. It wasn’t fair. Not to either of them.

  Before she left the house, she chomped down on four cloves of raw garlic. It was a minor retaliation, but it made her feel protected. Maybe that was why in vampire stories people resisting the dark forces wore strands of garlic around their necks.

  She wasn’t going to be a victim, not to Derrick.

  But to her heart?

  Garlic wasn’t going to ward off the urges firing through her every time she thought about Kaz. She’d argued with herself, telling herself that it was impossible to fall in love so quickly, that she wasn’t a nineteenth-century virgin left trembling at a man’s mere touch. But Kaz had scorched straight through her objections. There was no denying it—she’d fallen in love, and now her life felt like a hollow, miserable fiasco.

  Natasha was waiting for Sabrina when she reached the set.

  “Jeez, we won’t need make-up to have you look your part today.” Natasha handed Sabrina a glass of fresh orange juice from the craft services cart. “You okay?”

  “A bad night’s sleep, that’s all.” She didn’t want to pile another worry onto Natasha’s overflowing plate. The film was going over budget and they’d only been shooting for a couple of weeks.

  “Well, go take a nap. My crew just informed me that we have to rewire the set. Fire code or something. You’ve got a couple hours.”

  “I’m sorry, Natasha.”

  “Hey.” Natasha clasped her in a bear hug. “If this electrical snafu is the only problem I have today, I’ll count it as red-letter fab.”

  Sabrina’s stomach roiled with acid as she walked outside. Eating the garlic had been a stupid move. She’d need a hell of a lot more than garlic to keep her boundaries with Derrick.

  She closed the door of the trailer that was fast becoming her second home and then curled up on the bed that stretched across one end of it. But sleep didn’t come. Instead, her mind continued to torture her with exquisite 3D memories of every happy moment, every smile, every touch that she’d shared with Kaz Tokugawa. It was just her luck that her heart opted for the one guy who wasn’t available. And that her soul wouldn’t let go no matter how many rational arguments she trotted out.

  Just what did she have to tell her heart before it would believe Kaz could never be hers? Did she have to keep reminding it that she’d pursued him, that he loved another woman? Surely such reminders were too demeaning and painful to dwell on even in the privacy of her mind.

  Why was her heart so damned slow to learn? It had been hesitant to seek and find love, and now it was slow to release it. But holding tight to a one-sided love was beyond foolish—it was irrational. And yet telling her heart that, even whispering it aloud, didn’t break her grip on love’s memories. She’d done the hard work of facing her fears, of integrating the hidden, shadowed parts of herself and coming out whole. She’d even come to terms with Kristen’s character and could bring her to life without falling off her own center.

  Fab, just fab. She was healthy, whole and brokenhearted. Just great.

  She looked up at the ceiling, ignoring the tears that silently tracked down her cheeks. She didn’t cry often, but she decided a woman was allowed a few tears over her first love.

  Besides, she couldn’t figure out a way to hold them back any longer.

  After an hour of tossing and aching, she gave up and read through the day’s scenes one more time. Then she brushed her teeth in the small sink and gargled half a bottle of mouthwash. The garlic had been a truly desperate measure. A useless desperate measure. She had far better tools for dealing with Derrick. She just needed to wield them.

  But when the make-up assistant came two hours later to prep her for the shoot, she was still a tense ball of nerves. She wasn’t any more psyched to shoot love scenes with Derrick than she’d been earlier in the day. But that was show biz, where the pretend took precedence over the real and invented stories wormed their way into the truth.

  She passed on the lunch the assistant offered. Maybe after she got through the shoot she’d be able to think about food.

  And find a way to ignore the hunger that gnawed louder in her heart every day.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The day after signing with the team, Kaz was just finishing an early breakfast in the hotel café when his grandmother slipped into his booth.

  “I’ve never understood the appeal of American breakfasts,” she said as she tapped her fingers on the menu.

  “How did you get here?”

  “I took the bus last night. It has wheels; it stopped here. This is a very strange town, Kazi-san.” She took a bite of the toast he’d left on his plate.

  “I didn’t know you had such a burning interest in spring training.”

  “I have a burning interest in you. I saw the report on your first game.”

  “How?”

  “The games are reported online. I saw only the report of your first one—that was enough.”

  Kaz raised a brow. She hated computers.

  “And I didn’t need the numbers to see that you’re not right. If your grandfather were alive, he’d have been here yesterday.”

  “I had an off day.” He touched a finger to her arm. “I made the team.”

  She put the toast back onto his plate and covered his hand with hers. Her face softened.

  “Your grandfather would have been very happy, Kazi.” She held him in her penetrating gaze. “But I see no joy about this important accomplishment in your face.”

  Kaz lowered his eyes to the plate of half-eaten toast.

  “It’s time to stop, Kazi-san.”

  She ordered a cup of tea from the server and then sat back in the booth, crossing her arms.

  “You don’t get to be eighty-four and not know something of the world.” She locked him in an inescapable gaze. “It’s time to take down the walls. The vow you made has fenced you in worse than any barbed wire could have.”

  Kaz frowned. Obaa recognized something more confining than barbed wire?

  “Are you talking about the farm?”

  “The woman. You love her.”

  “But I vowed—”
/>   “Your grandfather may have been a samurai master, but he wasn’t a master of the heart. He should never have extracted those vows from you; it wasn’t fair in any way.”

  She must’ve read the astonishment in his face because she reached out and squeezed his arm.

  “The world is changing, Kazi-san. Already has changed. Love knows none of these false boundaries. Koi wa shian no hoka. Love is without reason, it doesn’t heed fences and vows and never did. I have learned to forgive. I do not forget the terrible days in the camps, I cannot. But I forgive. Your grandfather died before he learned that lesson.”

  “She’s ojousama,” Kaz said, using the term for women from extremely well-to-do-families, for women out of reach except to members of their own class. He’d never admitted to anyone the shame he’d faced with Stacy so many years ago. Hell, it felt like a lifetime ago. He’d thought he’d been in love then, but now he knew differently. Not that it mattered much anymore. The shame still lived in him, a shame that had solidified into an impenetrable wall when he’d considered having a life with Sabrina.

  His grandmother scowled. “You reject so you won’t be rejected. You hide behind a vow you shouldn’t have made and conventions that are shadow puppets. Such behavior is cowardly and not worthy of you. Sabrina’s station in life doesn’t matter.” She sat forward and patted his hand. “Sabrina has heart, Kazi.”

  Her words sparked through him as they waited for the server to place her tea in front of her and leave their booth. Hell, he knew that what mattered was true dedication to purpose. He just hadn’t been ready for purpose to have anything to do with his heart.

  “You have a chance for renai-kekkon,” Obaa said quietly, emphasizing the old-fashioned phrase reserved for a marriage union made from love. “I was a picture bride, chosen from a photograph my family sent. Many of us were in those days. It was fortunate that I fell in love with your grandfather and he with me—it could have been different, loveless. But you, you have a choice.”