Crossing Hearts

by Rebecca Crowley

  Whereas Hector had artificially tanned skin, light eyes, and all the airs and graces of a royal-blooded European, Rio looked and acted authentically, never contradicting exactly who he was: the son of an industrial port city caught between the desert and the sea, where copper mines made people unbelievably wealthy and crushingly poor by turns. The local soccer star who’d caught the world’s attention—and hers—with his boundless energy and creativity on the pitch. The new signing trying to make his way in a foreign city, in a foreign language.

  Me gustas, Rio. I think we’re going to get along just fine.

  “Oh my God.” Rio pulled open the drawers built into the wall beneath the screen to reveal row after row of DVDs. “I thought I had a big collection but it’s nothing compared to this. Why didn’t he want to take any of these with him?”

  “I don’t think American DVDs work in European DVD players.” She perched on the edge of one of the leather-upholstered theatre seats, trying and failing to settle her internal debate. She should get going, give Rio space to check out his new house, take a nap, have a shower—she slammed on the mental brakes at that last thought, fighting back an image of the chiseled torso he’d shown millions of viewers when he ripped off his shirt after scoring a goal in the South American Cup final.

  She should definitely leave. She’d see him bright and early on Monday morning, and he needed time to decompress after everything that happened today. He was probably jet-lagged, desperate to unpack his essentials, decide which of the seven bedrooms he wanted to sleep in…

  He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Are you hungry? Should we order dinner?”

  “What? Why? Aren’t you tired?”

  “Not really, but I am starving. Do you have to be somewhere?”

  Say yes.

  “No.”

  Dammit.

  One corner of his mouth lifted. “Are you sure? It’s Saturday night. I wouldn’t ask you to cancel your plans.”

  He wouldn’t? Really? Apparently Rio wasn’t just different to Hector, they were total opposites. She doubted it ever occurred to Hector that she had a life outside her employment as his interpreter. If it had, he certainly hadn’t let it bother him.

  Anyway, why shouldn’t she stay for dinner? It would be good for them to get to know each other before he started training with the team on Monday. He’d invited her—why should she feel uncomfortable? Just because he was the hottest man she’d ever been this close to, and she was having intrusive thoughts about touching the bicep tightening the sleeve of his sweater, and she hadn’t gotten any action in over a year, well, unless you counted that guy on Halloween, and she totally didn’t count him, and—

  “So?” Rio’s expression suggested she’d overrun the normal-people time limit on accepting or declining in-person dinner invitations. “Do you have plans?”

  “I do now,” she replied way too perkily, regretting her high-pitched tone as soon as it hit her ears.

  Get a grip, Torres. It was going to be a long season if she couldn’t pull herself together. Where was the immutable professionalism her professors had raved about during her MA in Translation Studies? Where were the discretion and levelheadedness that had launched her career in sports interpreting? Where was the unflappable ice queen who had sat across the desk from Roland, unshaken by his unyielding, pointed interviewing until he leaned back in his chair and announced, “You’re hired”?

  Oh right, she was back at the airport, her knees knocking and her heart racing as weeks of Internet image searches in the name of “research” appeared live, three-dimensional, and even sexier than she imagined.

  “Eva?” Rio waved a palm to get her attention. “You okay?”

  “Yes, sorry, just thinking about dinner.” And your legs. And your chest. And wondering if I should quit now or wait to be fired for sexual harassment.

  “What would you like?”

  She shook her head. “It’s your first night in Atlanta, so you pick. You can get almost any kind of food here. Chinese, pizza, barbecue—Mexican?”

  He rose from his seat on the floor, stretching his arms over his head. Eva tried very, very hard not to notice the way his thin sweater pulled taut against his chest.

  “Are you from Mexico?” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  “I’m from Texas,” she replied stiffly, automatically bristling at the question before considering its context. More gently she added, “My parents are Mexican.”

  He nodded. “I can tell from your accent.”

  “I’m not doing a good job, then.” She smirked. “I spent a lot of years learning to speak with as little accent as possible.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s nice, the way you talk. Fancy. Not like me.”

  His playful grin was back. She swallowed hard.

  “You speak just fine.”

  “Not English, though.” He began a slow wander around the room, pausing in front of each of the expensively framed posters Hector had left behind. “I tried to learn a bit before I arrived, but I hate studying. I was terrible at school. I skipped class as often as I could. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I wasn’t good at soccer.” He traced the letters at the bottom of one of the posters. “Been a miner, I guess.”

  “We’ll work on your English at a pace that suits you,” she assured him. “I’ll teach you differently than you would learn in a class. For a start, we’ll focus on the vocabulary you need on the pitch. Then we’ll look at conversation as it’s relevant to your career, like answering post-match questions from the press. Nothing too technical, at least not until you get the hang of the basics.”

  He turned back to her with a smile. “That’s great. Much better than the ten minutes I spent learning to ask where to board the train.”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to get you too far in Atlanta.”

  “So, your parents.” He was on the move again, continuing his tour of the room’s circumference. “Where in Mexico are they from?”

  “North,” she replied with forced casualness. This was not a topic she liked discussing with anyone, let alone her brand-new client. “In fact, there’s a restaurant in town owned by a family from Monterrey. I don’t know if they deliver, but—”

  “Is that where your parents are from? Monterrey?”

  “Juarez,” she told him quickly. “I’ve got the number on my phone, I’ll give them a quick call to see if they’ll deliver out here. Their beef empanadas are absurdly good.”

  She had scrolled halfway through her contacts when she realized Rio hadn’t responded. She looked up to find him studying her from across the room, his high forehead creased in thought.

  “What?” The single word carried more annoyance than she’d intended, and she pushed her lips into a smile to soften it.

  “I’m just surprised.” He propped one shoulder against the wall. “I didn’t think I’d ever meet a woman more beautiful than the ones in Chile, yet here you are.”

  “Rio,” she chided, praying the heat climbing her neck wasn’t showing on her skin. “Save your smooth lines for the women in the nightclub. They’re wasted on me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m your interpreter, and they don’t pay me enough to be anything else.”

  She hoped her joking tone defused the situation without offending him. It worked—he moved back to the front of the room and flopped down on the floor with an exaggerated sigh.

  “You break my heart, Eva.”

  “You’ll live.” She held up her phone. “Do you want to see the menu?”

  He gestured for her to toss him the phone, but she lowered it instead.

  “Are you kidding? You play soccer, not baseball. I don’t trust those hands.”

  He hauled himself to his feet with a comical groan and crossed the short space between them. He dropped into the chair beside her and reached across the armrest, but instead of taking the phone, he wrapped his hand around hers where she
held it.

  “These are the safest hands you’ll find,” he murmured. He was right beside her now, his face so near she could see the amber flecks in his brown eyes, his body so close she could feel his heat, catch his scent.

  Tea tree oil. Saltwater. Asphalt in the sun. She let her lids fall closed as she inhaled, and when she opened them again he was watching her.

  He slid his thumb over hers. His skin was warm, dry, slightly rough.

  They spent a full minute frozen in this tableau. Her heart raced yet her thoughts had ground to a halt. If Rio had asked her name she probably couldn’t have told him. The only word her multilingual mind seemed to retain was yes.

  Yes.

  He snatched the phone from her hand, shattering the stillness. She dragged air into her lungs as he threw her phone high above their heads and caught it one-handed behind his back.

  “See?” He held it up with a wink. “Hands you can trust.”

  She cleared her throat, tugged at the cuff of her long-sleeve shirt. Hector must have the heating programed on a timer. No way was it this hot when she’d first walked in.

  “Beef empanadas,” she repeated firmly, “With frijoles negros for me. Best in town.” She grabbed her phone from his hand and started dialing, ignoring the way her fingers trembled.

  She raised the phone to her ear. “It’s ringing. Last chance to tell me what you want.”

  He arched a brow.

  She ordered without waiting for his answer.

  Chapter 3

  “Bzzbzzbzzbzzbzz.” The trainer flapped the shapeless, Skyline-red garment in one hand and held up what looked like a remote control in the other.

  Rio squinted at the man’s patient expression, then turned to Eva.

  “What the hell is he talking about?”

  “Performance monitoring technology,” she explained. “The electronic pod has a GPS, heart rate monitor, all kinds of stuff. You put on the vest, tuck the pod into the pouch, and it sends data back to the trainers’ computers.”

  He took the proffered device and, as the trainer disappeared down the hallway, weighed it in his palm. “Heavy.”

  “You’ll get used to it.” Eva plucked the pod from his hand and motioned for the trainer to pass over the vest. “We need to hurry up. Roland likes to start on time.”

  He pulled the tight, mesh garment over his head, realized he had it on backwards, and slid his arms out of the sleeves to twist it into place.

  She tucked the pod into the pouch between his shoulder blades and squinted at the final result. “Does that feel okay?”

  His training kit was a size too big. He’d already rolled the waistband of his shorts so they wouldn’t hang too low between his thighs, but the vest made his shirt tug on his neck and under his arms.

  In Santiago he would’ve changed into an old kit and handed the ill-measured clothes to one of the assistants with instructions to summon the seamstress and have his training gear reissued in the correct size.

  Here in Atlanta he didn’t want to draw more attention to his size, not to mention get a reputation as one of those players who always complained. He nodded and said, “It’s fine.”

  “It’s too big,” she pronounced, rolling her eyes. “The brand who produces the uniforms changed manufacturing plants last year and now nothing is ever right. Go on, don’t miss the start of training. I’ll make a phone call and get you a new set.”

  “I’ll do it,” he offered, the impossibility of that statement dawning on him only after he’d voiced it.

  “She doesn’t speak Spanish,” she replied almost apologetically, gesturing toward the door to the gym. “Go, or you’ll be late.”

  Fear shot through his chest as Eva set him adrift, but he did as he was told. Praying no one tried to speak to him before she returned, he pushed through the glass door to the state-of-the-art fitness facility.

  The full Skyline squad was already in place, lined up along the padded floor at the far end of the gym. The American striker, Deon Ellis, stood at one end. The wingers and central midfielders came next, then the defensive midfielders, followed by wing-backs and central defenders and the goalkeepers. The interpreter for the two Brazilian player center-backs sat off at an angle, and Rio assumed the empty chair beside him belonged to Eva.

  Nerves juddered in his sternum as he jogged to join the team. He didn’t know whether there was a hierarchy as far as who stood where. Not to mention Roland was famous for making players fight for their spots on the first team. When he signed, Roland told him he’d be starting for Skyline, but since he was new he wasn’t sure whether he was technically only a second-team player. As far as he could tell everyone seemed to be ordered by their place on the pitch and then their seniority, which would put him…

  Nico Silva, the Uruguayan winger, called his name and gestured to the gap on his left. “Aquí.”

  “Thanks,” Rio replied, grateful that he and his midfield counterpart had their language in common. He smiled, and his anxiety eased as Nico returned it.

  “What am I in for?” Rio asked as Roland entered with the head trainer, Ross Gould. A former center-back for a famous British team, Rio knew him instantly from his build and his expression, although his long Eighties-style hair had given way to total baldness.

  “You’ll be fine.” Nico waved a dismissive hand. “Mondays we do two rounds of isometrics, then hit the field. Nothing insane.”

  Rio was on the verge of asking for more detail when Roland concluded his chat with Ross and left the room.

  The trainer advanced on the group, tucking his clipboard under his arm and squaring his stance.

  “Bzzzbzzzbzzz! One, two, three! One, two, three!” he barked.

  Rio remained standing as his teammates dropped to the floor, rolling from a left-side to center to right-side plank. He joined them as soon as he figured out the sequence, but the sweat breaking out on his forehead had nothing to do with the intensity of the exercise.

  What if Ross tells me how to correct my form and I don’t understand?

  Rio fretted as they repeated the movement, his stomach in knots. His logical mind insisted that players weren’t kicked off teams for failing to understand a few minutes of instructions during training. The less rational and much louder part of his brain reminded him this was his introduction to his new team, and while messing up may not end his contract, it wasn’t the best way to start off, either. They might think he was incompetent, unprofessional, or—worst of all—lazy and complacent.

  I’m in way over my head, here. Where the hell is Eva?

  As if on cue, the gym door swung open and Eva hurried across the long room. He watched her take the chair beside the Portuguese interpreter, so relieved his arms nearly buckled beneath him.

  She shot him a quick, reassuring smile. It took everything he had not to dart across the room and sweep her into his arms.

  “Bzzz ten. Ten, nine—”

  He glanced at Eva, who murmured, “Hold for ten seconds.”

  He grinned at the floor beneath him. He’d hold for a hundred if she asked.

  By the time the team’s session in the gym finished an hour later, Rio wasn’t sure which had gotten a tougher workout: his body or his ego. Training with Skyline was far more structured and technical than he was used to back home, and although he had no problem keeping up physically, it was a stark reminder of the giant leap he’d taken when he boarded that plane to the United States.

  He’d spent twelve years involuntarily building his reputation in Chile, signing with a professional club when he was still a teenager, earning respect for his drive and commitment, and eventually claiming national-hero status with his performance in the South American Cup. It was only in the last couple of years that he’d become a truly household name, but he hadn’t worried about his status amongst his teammates for just under a decade. Everyone knew how hard he worked, how devoted he was to club and country. He was well-liked, valued, and deeply trusted.
<
br />   His Skyline teammates weren’t rude, but they weren’t warm either. One or two seemed mildly curious, most appeared indifferent, and one—the young, American midfielder, Brian Scholtz—was openly hostile.

  “So you’re from Chile,” Brian stated in simple Spanish, having caught up to Rio as they made their way out to the pitch.

  “Yes. You speak Spanish?”

  “A little. I am from America.”

  Rio nodded. Eva walked a few feet behind them, watching their exchange.

  “I have played for Skyline for a long time. Since I was small.”

  The team was barely twenty years old, but maybe Brian didn’t know the word for young. Rio nodded again, unsure how else to respond.

  “This year, I was going to play your position. Then you came.”

  Rio raised his hands, trying to frame his response in a way Brian would understand. He wasn’t offended by Brian’s statement; in fact he sympathized. It was a big blow to a young player to be replaced by an international signing. He doubted Brian’s Spanish extended to the story about his replacement by a Colombian shortly after he made his professional debut, but maybe if he—

  “You’re so short,” Brian added with palpable disgust.

  Tell me how you really feel, Brian. Don’t hold back.

  Rio grinned automatically. “Short and expensive.”

  Brian muttered something under his breath and jogged away.

  “And I can’t even speak English,” Rio called after him, but if the younger player heard or understood he gave no indication.

  “Don’t worry about him. He’s having a difficult season. His contract expires at the end of the year, and Roland warned him last week that he has three months to improve or he’ll ride it out on the bench.” Eva came level with him as they crossed the threshold onto the immaculately manicured pitch outside the fitness center.

  “He’s young.” Rio shrugged.

  Whether she agreed or disagreed, thought he was being magnanimous or naïve, he had no idea. After those few fleeting glimpses of genuine emotion he’d seen on Saturday, Eva had crawled back behind her shuttered expression and stubbornly remained there. Her manner was so determinedly neutral that he wondered whether he wasn’t making it all up. The hunger that flashed in her eyes, the lingering touch in the theatre room—maybe they were all tricks of his jet-lagged imagination.