The Name of the Game

by Nora Roberts

  Because there was amusement in her voice now, his smile widened. “I can do a little better than that. I only eat in restaurants when it’s necessary.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you end up doing business, or being stared at. I wasn’t in the mood for either tonight.” Pebbles spit from under the tires as he turned to drive through a plain wooden gate.

  “That’s part of the game, isn’t it?”

  “Sure, but there has to be a reason to play it.” He whizzed by a pretty white house with blue shutters, giving two blasts of his horn. “My foreman and his family live there. If he knows it’s me he won’t come looking for trespassers.”

  They passed barns and sheds, and she was surprised that they looked as though they had a purpose other than a decorative one. She spotted paddocks with split-rail fencing and dark, rich dirt. A dog—or what sounded like a pair of them—began to bark.

  The road forked, and then she saw the ranch house. It, too, was white, but the shutters were gray and the three chimneys it boasted were brick weathered to a dusky rose. It was low and spreading, shaped like an H turned on its side. For all its size, it didn’t overpower. There were rockers on the porch, sturdy wooden ones that gave the impression that someone sat in them often. Window boxes had been freshly painted a bright, sassy red. Tumbling out of them were pansies and bushy impatiens. Though the air here was hot and dry, they were thriving and well tended.

  Johanna stepped out of the car to turn a slow circle. It certainly looked like a working ranch. “Quite a place.”

  “I like it,” he said, mimicking her earlier remark.

  She acknowledged that with a quick, though cautious, smile. “It must be inconvenient to commute.”

  “I keep a place in L.A.” He shrugged it off as though it were no more than a storage closet. “The best thing about finishing a film is being able to come back here and dig in for a while. Before I got hooked on acting, I’d wanted to come west and work on a ranch.” He took her arm as they walked up the two wooden steps to the porch. They creaked. For some reason, Johanna found that endearing. “I was lucky enough to do both.”

  She glanced at the pansies, with their arrogant Alice-in-Wonderland faces. “Do you raise cattle?”

  “Horses.” He’d left the door unlocked. It was a habit he’d grown up with. “I bought the place about three years ago. Convinced my accountant that it’d be a great tax shelter. It made him feel better.”

  The hardwood floors were polished to a high gloss, scattered with hand-hooked rugs in muted pastels. In the entrance a collection of pewter—bowls, spoons, mugs, even a dented candlestick—was arranged on a waist-high table. The early twilight crept through the windows.

  It had a good feel, a solid feel. Though she would never had admitted it out loud, Johanna had always felt strongly that houses had their own personalities. She’d selected her own house because it had made her feel warm and comfortable. She’d left her father’s because it had been possessive and dishonest.

  “Do you get to stay here often?” she asked him.

  “Not often enough.” He glanced around at the walls, which he’d painted himself. The house, like his career, was something he never took for granted. Though he’d never known poverty, he’d been taught to appreciate security, and that nothing replaced sweat for earning it. “Would you like a drink, or would you rather go for dinner?”

  “Dinner,” she said firmly. She knew better than to drink, socially or otherwise, on an empty stomach.

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” In the casual way he had, he took her hand and led her down the hall. The wing of the house ran straight. At the end it opened up into a large country kitchen. Copper pots hung from hooks over a center island. The room was flanked by counters and cabinets on one side and a small stone hearth on the other. A ribbon of windows gave an open view of dusk settling over a brick terrace and a mosaic pool. She’d thought to find a servant or two busily preparing the evening meal. Instead, all she found was the scent of cooking.

  “It smells wonderful.”

  “Good.” Scooping up two hot pads, Sam bent down to the oven. “I left it on warm.” He drew out a casserole of bubbly lasagna.

  Food wasn’t something that usually excited her, but now the scent alone drew her over to his side. How long had it been since she’d seen someone take a homemade meal out of an oven? “It looks wonderful, too.”

  “My mother always told me food tastes better if it looks good.” He picked up a long loaf of Italian bread and began slicing.

  “You didn’t cook this.”

  “Why not?” He glanced over his shoulder, amused that she was frowning again. She looked so thoughtful that he was tempted to run a fingertip down the faint line that formed between her brows. “Cooking’s a very manageable skill if you approach it properly and have the right incentive.”

  Johanna stuck with carryout or prepackaged microwave meals. “And you have both?”

  “I wanted to be an actor, but I didn’t have any desire to be a starving actor.” He poured garlic butter over the bread, set the oven, then slid it in. “After I came to California, I kicked around from audition to audition and from greasy spoon to greasy spoon. A couple of months of that and I called home and asked my mother for some recipes. She’s a great cook.” Sam drew the cork from a bottle of wine, then set it aside to breathe. “Anyway, it took me a lot less time to figure out how to sauté trout than it did for me to get a memorable part.”

  “Now that you’ve had a number of memorable parts, what’s your incentive?”

  “To cook?” He shrugged and took a leafy spinach salad from the refrigerator. “I like it. We’re about ready here. You want to grab the wine? I thought we’d eat outside.”

  The trouble with Hollywood, Johanna thought as she followed him out, was that things were never what they seemed. She’d been sure she had Sam Weaver pegged. But the man she’d assessed and dismissed wouldn’t have copied recipes from his mother.

  Nor was he the type, she thought as she set the wine down, who would have prepared a charming dinner for two, alfresco, with pretty blue stoneware plates and thick yellow candles. It was every bit as friendly as it was romantic. The romance she’d expected, and she knew just how to discourage it. The offer of friendship was another matter.

  “Light those candles, will you?” He glanced around briefly, checking the way a man did when he was already certain things were just as he wanted them to be. “I’ll get the rest.”

  Johanna watched him go back inside. Did someone who walked like that, she wondered—as though he were heading toward a shoot-out—really prepare spinach salad? She struck a match and held it to the wick of the first candle. Apparently so. There were more important things to lie about than cooking. She held the match to the second candle, then deliberately blew it out. She wouldn’t have called avoiding three on a match superstitious. Just practical.

  She heard the music he put on, something low and bluesy, with a lot of sax. While he brought out the rest of the meal, she poured the wine.

  His instincts had been right, Sam thought as they settled at the wicker table. He’d been on the verge of making dinner reservations at some tony restaurant when he’d pulled back. He’d cooked for women before, but never here. He never brought anyone to the ranch, because the ranch was home. Private. Off limits to the press and the public, it was both refuge and sanctuary from a world he was a voluntary member of—when he chose to be. At the time, he hadn’t been sure why he’d wanted to break his own rule with Johanna. Now he began to understand.

  At the ranch he could be himself—no pretenses, no roles. Here he was Sam Weaver from Virginia, and here he was most comfortable. He didn’t have to be on here. And he wanted to be himself with Johanna.

  She wasn’t without pretenses, he mused as he watched her. Not entirely. Unless he missed his guess, most of her resentment had faded, but not her distrust. He’d already decided to ease his curiosity and find the reason for it.

&nbs
p; Maybe she’d been stung in an affair that had gone sour. Broken hearts often mended jaggedly. If she had been betrayed by a man she’d cared for and trusted, it would be logical that she would put up some defenses. It might take some time before he could wear them down, but he had a feeling it would be worth it. He’d start with what he believed was the focus of her life: her work.

  “Were you happy with the taping the other day?”

  “More than.” She was too fair-minded not to give him his due. “You were really good, not just as far as the answers went, but overall. A lot of times you can have people zip right through the questions and be a dead bore.” She broke off a piece of bread, then nibbled at the crust. He’d hit the right tone. It was always easy for her to relax when the subject was business. “And, of course, it was a coup to have you.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  She studied him again with those cool blue eyes. “I doubt it would be that easy to flatter you.”

  “An actor always wants to be wanted. Well, to a point, anyway,” he added with another quick grin. “Do you know how many game shows I’ve turned down in the last couple of days?”

  She smiled and sipped her wine. “Oh, I could hazard a guess.”

  “How’d you get into it? Producing?”

  “Heredity.” Her lips tightened only briefly. After taking a second sip, she set her glass down. “I guess you could say I like pulling the strings.”

  “You’d have learned young with Carl Patterson as your father.” He saw it, very briefly but very clearly. More than resentment, less than pain. “He’s produced some of the best, and most successful television shows, as well as an impressive number of features. Being second-generation can be a strain, I imagine.”

  “You get past it.” The lasagna was cheesy and rich with spices. Johanna concentrated on it. “This really is terrific. Your mother’s recipe?”

  “With some variations.” So her father was off limits. He could respect that—for now. “How about the show itself? How did that get started?”

  “With the flu.” At ease again, she smiled and took another bite.

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “I had the flu, a nasty bout of it, a couple of years ago. I had to stay in bed for a week, and since it hurt my eyes to read, I lay there hour after hour and watched television. The game shows hooked me.” She didn’t object when he topped off her glass. The wine was very mellow and dry, and she knew her limit right down to the swallow. “You get involved, you know, in the games, and the people playing them. After a while you start rooting for them, tensing up in an effort to help them. When someone wins, the vicarious thrill is automatic. And then you have the advantage of almost always being smarter at home, because there’s no pressure. That’s a nice smug feeling.”

  He watched her as she spoke. She was animated now, the way she’d been while she’d rushed around the set making sure things fell into place. “So after your bout with the flu you decided to produce one.”

  “More or less.” She could remember running into the brick wall of the network brass and ultimately having to appeal to her father. “In any case, I had the concept, and the experience in producing. I’d done a couple of documentaries for public television and had worked on a prime-time special. With a little string-pulling, we got a pilot done. Now we’re only a couple of ratings points from being on top. I’m waiting for the go-ahead to start evening syndication.”

  “What happens then?”

  “The demographics open. You get the kids who’ve finished their homework, the business crowd who want to put their feet up for a half hour. You up the ante. Give away some cars, bigger bucks.”

  She was surprised to discover she’d cleared her plate. Usually she ate a few bites, then ended up picking at the rest, impatient for the meal—and the time sitting down—to be over.

  “Want some more?”

  “No. Thanks.” She picked up her wine as she studied him. “I know I lost the bet, but it looks as though I got the best part of the deal.”

  “Not from where I’m sitting.”

  The shades came down. Just like that. One compliment, however offhand, and she pulled back. Seeing it, Sam rose and offered a hand. “Want to walk? There’s enough moonlight.”

  There was no point in being ungracious, Johanna told herself. She hated it when she became prickly over something unimportant. “All right. The only ranches I’ve ever seen have been on the back lot.”

  He bundled up the last of the bread, then handed it to her. “We’ll go by the pond. You can feed the ducks.”

  “You have ducks?”

  “Several overfed ducks.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders to steer her. She smelled like the evening they walked through, quiet and promising. “I like looking at them in the morning.”

  “Your Jake in Half-Breed would have eaten them for breakfast.”

  “So you did see my last movie.”

  She took a quick nip at the tip of her tongue. “Oh, was that your last one?”

  “Too late. You’ve already boosted my ego.”

  When she looked at him, his smile was appealing and too easy to respond to. He was too easy to respond to. In self-defense she looked back at the house.

  “It’s lovely from out here, too. You live all alone?”

  “I like a little solitude now and then. Of course, I’ve got a few hands who look after things while I’m working, and Mae comes in a couple times a week to scoop at the dust.” His hand slipped down to take hers. “My family comes out a few times a year and shakes everything up.”

  “Your parents visit you here?”

  “Them, my brother, my two sisters, their families. Assorted cousins. The Weavers are a large and loud bunch.”

  “I see.” But she didn’t. She could only imagine. And envy. “They must be proud of you.”

  “They were always supportive, even when they thought I was crazy.”

  The pond was almost a quarter mile from the house, but the going was easy. It was obvious he walked the path often. She caught the scent of citrus, then the stronger scent of water. The moonlight struck it, highlighting the grass which had been left to grow ankle-high. Sensing an audience, several brown and speckled ducks paddled over to the water’s edge.

  “I’ve never had the nerve to come out here empty-handed,” he told her. “I think they’d follow me home.”

  Johanna opened the linen cloth and broke off a crust of bread. It didn’t even hit the water before it was gobbled up. She laughed; it was a low, delighted sound deep in her throat. Immediately she tore off another piece and, tossing this one farther out, watched a drake zoom in on it.

  “I’ve always wanted to watch them from underneath so I could see their feet scramble.” She continued to break off and toss. Ducks pursued the bread in groups and squabbled over it with bad-tempered quacks and competitive pecks. “My mother and I used to go out and feed the ducks. We’d give them silly names, then see if we could tell them apart the next time.”

  She caught herself, amazed that the memory had surfaced, stunned that she’d shared it. Her hand closed into a fist over the bread.

  “There was a pond about five miles away when I was a kid,” Sam said, as if he hadn’t noticed her change in mood. “We used to ride our bikes to it during the summer, after we’d stolen a pack of crackers or whatever from the kitchen. We’d toss it out for the ducks—and a couple of pushy swans—and accidentally fall in as often as possible.” He glanced out over the water. “Looks like someone’s had a family.”

  She followed his gaze and saw a brown duck gliding along, trailed by a long shadow. As it came closer, Johanna saw that the shadow wasn’t a shadow, it was fluffy ducklings. “Oh, aren’t they sweet?” She crouched down for a closer look, forgetting about the hem of her skirt. The babies followed Mama on their evening swim, straight as an arrow. “I wish there was more light,” she murmured.

  “Come back when there is.”

  Johanna tilted her head up. In the moonl
ight his face was stronger, more attractive, than it had a right to be. The eyes, eyes that invariably drew women in, were as dark as the water. And, as with the water, Johanna didn’t know what lay beneath the surface. Turning away again, she continued shredding the bread and tossing it.

  He liked the way her hair haloed around her face, stopping just inches from her shoulders. A man could fill his hands with it. It would be soft, like the hand she rarely offered but he continued to take. It would carry that same subtle scent.

  Her skin would be like that, on the back of her neck beneath all that heavy blond hair. He had an urge to touch it now, to skim his fingers over it and see if she trembled.

  The ducks stopped their chatter when the last of the bread was consumed. A few hopefuls hung around the edge of the pond for a minute longer, then, satisfied the treat was done, glided away. Into the sudden silence came a night bird’s song, and the rustle of a rabbit running into the brush.

  “It’s a lovely spot,” she said, rising and brushing the crumbs from her fingers. “I can see why you like it so much.”

  “I want you to come back.”

  It was said very simply, so it shouldn’t have meant so much. Johanna didn’t back away, because that would have been admitting it did. If her heart was beating a little faster, she could pretend otherwise. She reminded herself that things often seemed more important in the moonlight than they did in the day.

  “We had a bet. I lost.” She said it lightly, already aware that the tone wouldn’t matter. “But that’s been paid up tonight.”

  “This has nothing to do with bets or games.” He touched her hair as he’d wanted to. “I want you to come back.”