The Glory Game Part 29

"S. Gracias." Luz came the rest of the way into the room and shut the door.

"Por favor." Anna appeared to struggle for the English words and stalked over to the nightstand where a gla.s.s filled with ice and a pale brown liquid sat on a tray. "Mate. Tea." With her hand she gestured toward Luz, indicating it was for her.

"Gracias," she said again.

"De nada." Her curtsying bob appeared out of character. The big-boned, big-bosomed woman backed to the hall door, then turned and left.

Luz walked over to the nightstand and took a drink of the iced mate, a native herbal tea laced with lemon. She had tasted it the previous afternoon when Hector had provided refreshments for them after they arrived. Then she crossed to the closet and traded her towel for a robe.

A door opened and closed in the outer hallway. When she heard someone moving about in Trisha's room, Luz hesitated, then walked to the door of the connecting bath and went through to the opposite door.

"Trisha?" She knocked twice, aware it might be Anna instead of her daughter.

"Yes. Come in," Trisha called in answer. "You're just in time to help me get these boots off," she said as Luz walked into the room.

Luz hesitated, then walked over to the chair where Trisha sat and tugged off first one high boot, then the other. Stepping back, she brushed the dirt from her hands.

"Thanks." Trisha peeled the sweater over her head and tossed it aside. "I smell like horse," she said, sniffing at her hand. "That shower is going to feel good. I hope you didn't use all the hot water."

"Trisha, I want to talk to you," Luz began.

"About what?" Trisha unsnapped her pants and zipped down the fly.

"About the shower, for one thing," she snapped, irritated by her daughter's indifference to her presence.

"It's noisy, isn't it?" She laughed and sat down in the chair to kick off her jeans.

"Trisha, I'm serious."

"About the shower?" She looked at her skeptically, and Luz wondered if she was deliberately being obtuse, or whether she was simply making a mess of this discussion.

"No. Not about the shower. About the way you're behaving around Raul. You're making a fool of yourself, Trish." She saw the hard, stubborn light flash in Trisha's eyes and knew she was taking the wrong tack. She had not intended to start out by accusing. She had wanted to explain-to reason.

"Is that right?" Trisha challenged.

"Yes." Luz attempted to get control of her anger. "I don't think you realize how obvious you look and sound. I find it embarra.s.sing."

"I don't know why you should."

"It's one thing to ask a man to help you off a horse you're perfectly capable of dismounting, but it's quite another to talk about taking a shower. You deliberately invited him to imagine what you look like stark naked in a shower. I'm sure you think it's cute and provocative to arouse a man's interest like that, but I find it coa.r.s.e and tasteless."

"You do?"

"Yes, I do!" she declared angrily.

Clad only in bra and panties, Trisha stood in front of her and rested her hands on her hips. "What makes you think Raul hasn't already seen me naked, Luz?"

Shock drained the blood from her face. "You're lying." But that c.o.c.ky look in Trisha's eyes made her doubt that.

"Am I? Why don't you go ask Raul?" she invited.

Luz backed away from her, then turned sharply and retreated to her bedroom. The minute she stopped, the trembling started. She couldn't believe it. Somehow she had been so certain that this was all one-sided. But she always knew when Trisha was lying. And that hadn't been a lie.

She closed her eyes, and her head swam with images of Trisha and Raul lying naked together. She recoiled from those mind pictures. She didn't want to visualize them together. She didn't want it to be true.

She started laughing and crying at the same time. After all this time, she had still been subconsciously entertaining hopes that someday he might hold her. That face was still part of her secret fantasies.

It was so terribly ironic-so hilariously sad. The first man to arouse her interest after the divorce was involved with her daughter.

It hurt. It hurt almost as much as losing Drew. There wasn't any new beginning, just a repet.i.tion of the past. Luz walked blindly to the bed and sank onto the quilt-covered mattress. She rocked back and forth, silently crying. She could never accept this situation between Trisha and Raul. The jealousy would always be there, making it h.e.l.l. She didn't know what to do. Her life was so confused. If this was what it was like to grow old, she'd rather be dead.

CHAPTER XIX.

The sun warmed the half of her face not shaded by the brim of her lacquered straw hat as Luz stood on the sidelines and watched the action on the polo field. With the afternoon temperature soaring to springtime heights, she had removed her ivory-and-gold sweater and let it hang down her back, tying the sleeves in front. She was conscious of its heavy weight pulling on her shoulders, but it wasn't the cause of her leaden spirits.

A horse and rider broke away from the player they were guarding and charged the oncoming ball. It was Rob who was playing the Number Four position as defensive back for the white-shirted team. He'd had the inside position on the opposing forward, perfectly placed to turn back any pa.s.s to a red-shirted rider. Instead he had turned to meet the ball, leaving the player free and the goal exposed. It was an incautious move that Luz viewed with dismay. He had only one chance at the ball, and if he missed ... but he didn't. He made a splendid neck shot, driving the ball upfield toward the center.

The bold save was taken from him as the ball landed directly in front of an opposing player. He lofted it toward the goal, where his free-running forward had an easy knock-in for the score. Rob was too far out of position to prevent it.

"Rob, why did you do that?" Luz murmured critically, regarding his deflated posture in the saddle as rightfully deserved.

"It is always this way, Seora Luz." Hector Guerrero stood a few feet from her, most of his weight centered on one crutch. A stopwatch was in his other hand, and a whistle hung at the end of the cord tied around his neck. He was acting as the timekeeper, scorer, and the third man, the referee on the sidelines who casts the deciding opinion when the two umpires on the field disagree on a foul or the point at which it occurred. "When new riders play the first game here, they always try to prove how good they are. Raul says he has eight men on the field playing solo polo. That is why he always has them play a game before the training starts so they can show off for him and he can see all the things they do wrong. When one tries too hard, one often looks foolish."

"That's true." She smiled wanly at his consoling remarks.

Yesterday, Sat.u.r.day, had been the arrival day for the rest of the students partic.i.p.ating in the polo program. "Students" was a misleading word, since most of them were in their early to late twenties and two were over thirty. The cla.s.s was international in scope, composed of four Argentines, a Mexican, a German, two Americans, the son of an Arab sheik, and a Texan. The polyglot conversation at dinner last night had been confusing for nearly everyone. Fortunately English was the language in which they could all make themselves understood-eventually.

A fluttering of white near the picket lines caught her eye, and Luz turned her head slightly to identify the source. Trisha had wandered in that direction some time ago, although she wasn't in sight now. The flash of white had come from the two Arabs, garbed in their native flowing caftans and ha'iks, who had accompanied Hanif, the sheik's son. Luz wasn't sure whether they served as his bodyguards, valets, or what, but one of them was always present wherever the Oxford-educated Hanif was. Scanning the picket line, she finally noticed Trisha sitting on the ground talking to the red-shirted Texan Duke Sovine.

A horse and rider crossed her line of vision, then cantered toward the sideline. Luz recognized Raul and felt the wary tautness take hold of her. But he didn't look her way, directing his attention at Hector as he reined his horse in with a barely perceptible check on the bit.

It was difficult not to admire the continuous flow of invisible communication between the hard-breathing horse and the man on its back. Raul said something in Spanish to Hector, who looked at the stopwatch, then responded. Without a break in the animal's stride, he turned the horse in a tight arc and rode to the center of the field, where the players were gathering. In this game, Raul was an umpire, not a player.

"Only three minutes left," Hector said to Luz. "It will be over soon." She nodded to acknowledge she'd heard him, but continued to watch Raul, her errant thoughts visualizing those wide shoulders and tapered back without a shirt-as Trisha must have seen them. "He rides as one with the horse, no?"

Startled, Luz glanced at Hector and realized he'd noticed her watching Raul. Quickly, she looked back at the field, struggling against the sudden self-consciousness. "Yes, he does."

"Do you know the legends of our gauchos? It is said they were half man and half horse. Your cowboys, they caught the cows with la reata. The gaucho, he rode his horse at a full gallop after a wild cow, then cut the hamstring with the blade of his lance. The quickness of the hand and the eye and the horse, all one, it is like polo, no?"

"Yes. El seor de nada," Luz remembered-too well perhaps. After seeing the pampas, it would seem that he was a mounted lord who ruled nothing, and therefore possessed only the arrogance of a lord.

"You have heard the stories." Hector smiled at the discovery.

"Not really. That was just something I picked up somewhere."

The ball was thrown in by Raul, and the last minutes of play were resumed. Thankfully, Rob made no more blatant errors in judgment that Luz observed, but neither did he have the consolation that someone else did during those final minutes, and so his remained the freshest. When the game ended, he separated from the other players and rode off the field by himself.

"No se olvide-do not forget," Hector said to Luz as she started to move away, intent on joining Rob. "We have the big feast in one hour. Then you will taste the asado."

"I'm looking forward to it." She was aware of all the preparations for this festive Argentine-style barbecue that had kept the household staff busy all morning. The smell of smoke from the open fires was in the air, and its gray trail was visible above the treetops surrounding the back lawn. But there were simply too many other things on her mind for Luz to take more than a pa.s.sing interest in it all.

After leaving Hector, she crossed the dirt road that separated the polo field and the stables, angling to intercept Rob while allowing him time for self-castigation. When she met up with him in front of the stables, he dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to a waiting groom. He turned toward Luz, but didn't look at her as he pounded the mallet head on the ground a couple of times, his helmet and riding crop in his other hand. The disgusted expression on his face showed, as plainly as his action, his anger at himself. She didn't need to say anything.

"I thought I could do it," he muttered, keeping his voice down so that the other returning players couldn't hear him. "I knew I could make that shot. If Juan had been in a position to pick it up, we could have had an easy score."

"You were the defensive back. You have to remember the duties of your position. Your priority is to protect the goal, to stop your opponent from scoring, not to set up a score for your side. You left your man uncovered, with none of your other three teammates between him and the goal. You took a risk, and backs aren't supposed to gamble."

"Yeah." His glance flicked to the right of her, traveling upward. "I made one h.e.l.l of an error, didn't I?"

Realizing he was talking to someone else, Luz turned. There had been so much activity around her, riders dismounting, grooms leading horses, and players walking by, she hadn't paid any attention when a horse and rider stopped nearby. As she met Raul's steady gaze, it was evident that he had overheard her lecture on position responsibilities. He towered beside her on horseback, tall and imposing.

"I have no quarrel with any of your mother's statements. You did leave the goal undefended. However, you committed a greater error when you hit the ball," Raul stated. "Where did you intend it to go?"

Rob hesitated, not certain what the right answer was. "Up-field."

"But to no one in particular?"

"No," he admitted.

"That is your error. A player should never indiscriminately hit the ball. Either it should be a pa.s.s to a teammate or an attempt at a goal. When you hit the ball, you must always aim it. Know where your teammates are and pa.s.s to them. Always try to get the ball to a teammate. Possession and control of the ball are the best way to defend a goal."

"You're right." Rob appeared disgusted with himself for not seeing something that now sounded so obvious.

At the same time, Luz realized that she'd been put in her place. What she'd said had been correct-as far as it went. And Raul had subtly made it clear her knowledge was limited.

"You have come here to learn, Rob," he reminded him, then touched a blunt spur to his horse's side, sending it forward.

Her gaze followed him across the stableyard. She was stinging slightly from the encounter although fully aware Raul had not belittled her in any way. Still, he made her advice sound if not wrong, then incomplete.

Then Luz saw Trisha catch the reins of his horse near the bridle and stop him. She laughingly said something to him which Luz couldn't hear. Raul dismounted and loosened the cinch of his saddle. The sight of the two of them together, no matter how aloof to Trisha Raul appeared, was more than she could stand. She turned.

"I'm going to the house," she said to Rob.

"I'll see you there later." He moved off in the direction of his fellow students, now able to face them after his enlightening talk with Raul. And Luz felt a vague resentment at the importance he was gaining in Rob's eyes.

The bonfires on the back lawn continued to blaze long after the meat was roasted, warding off the early-evening chill and throwing light at the encroaching shadows. Sitting at the long table placed outside, Luz looked at the plate in front of her, still mounded with food. It didn't appear as though she'd eaten a bite, but her stomach knew better. She shook her head ruefully. The ends of her hair, falling loose about her shoulders, brushed against the collar of her French linen jacket striped in pencil-thin lines of dusty rose and pink alternating with bands of parchment.

"I honestly can't eat any more," she declared, wiping her hands on the cloth napkin. "There is enough food on my plate for four people."

"We try to fatten you up." Hector sat across from her, his white teeth gleaming beneath his mustache. "Did you like el asado?"

"Muy bueno. Did I say that right?"

"S." The wavering motion of his hand suggested it was perhaps not exactly correct, but that it didn't matter. A young boy from the kitchen staff whisked her plate away, and Luz laid her napkin in its place.

"This is d.a.m.ned good stuff." Duke Sovine occupied the chair on her right. He sawed his knife across the roasted meat and glanced down the table at his Mexican neighbor. "Miguel, I always thought that cabrito you Mexicans cook was the best thing I ever tasted, but this beats it all to h.e.l.l." He forked a piece into his mouth and chewed, his head moving from side to side in appreciation of its savory flavor. "I gotta find out how they do this so I can tell Angie. Angie's my wife," he explained to Luz.

The drawling, loquacious Texan was the oldest of the group at thirty-two, the son of one of the big independent oil producers in the state. There was a big gold ring on his finger designed in the shape of Texas with a two-carat diamond in the center to symbolize the Lone Star State. Polo was a hobby to him, but like most, he was hooked on it.

"That woman throws some of the biggest and best barbecues Houston has ever seen. She loves to have parties." He talked as he ate. "She wanted to come with me, but her schedule's worse than mine. She's so involved in fundraisers, the arts, and the country club, not to mention our three kids." He stopped and laid his silverware down to reach into his back hip pocket. "Gotta show ya a picture of the little ones."

Luz looked at the snapshot he removed from his wallet, wondering if he realized that in describing his wife's life, he had given an apt description of her own before the divorce. The photo showed two boys and a girl, ranging in age from three to seven, all towheads.

"They're lovely."

"Yeah, I'm kinda proud of 'em myself." Duke Sovine returned the snapshot to its plastic packet in his wallet and shoved it back in his pocket. "Lance, the oldest, has the makings of a polo player. He played in his first Little Britches game last spring. Didn't do bad."

"Rob was about that age when he started playing, too," Luz recalled.

"Ya know, Luz, I find it real hard to believe you're their mother. I figured you were an older sister. I swear, I'm just not sayin' that. You're a lovely woman," he insisted, a smile widening his square-jawed face, open and warm like the state he hailed from.

"Thank you." It was nice to hear that compliment again, although it wasn't quite as rea.s.suring as it once had been.

"You're Jake Kincaid's daughter, aren't you?"

"That's right."

"I heard he was quite a wheeler-dealer in his day." When he leaned back from the table, nothing was left on his plate. He rubbed a hand over his stomach and glanced at the other guests sitting at the long table, their faces lighted by the candle flames burning in gla.s.s wells dotted down its length. "It's quite a group we got here."

"Very diverse." Luz avoided looking at the head of the table where Raul sat, aware that Trisha had taken a chair at that end as well.

"I don't know," Duke said, partly disagreeing. "We got Mexican oil, Argentine oil, Arab oil, and Texas oil, not to mention horsebreeders and ranchers." He rested his hands on the edge of the table, preparing to push his chair back. "'Scuse me, would you, Luz? I think I'll have a word with Hanif an' see if he can't give me a clue about OPEC's price plans for this winter."

"Go ahead." She smiled as he straightened, grabbed his beer gla.s.s, and sauntered over to the Arab's chair. Two robed figures stood like statues in the background, watching.

Behind her, Luz heard the strum of a guitar and half turned to glance over her shoulder. Three men, garbed in some native costume, stood near the outer edge of the firelight, guitars slung from their shoulders. They began softly to play a Spanish folk song.

"We have entertainment this evening," Hector said, observing her interest. "They are local musicians, but it is nice, no?"

"It is very nice," Luz agreed.

Nearly everyone at the table was finished eating, and people began to shift places, striking up conversations and getting acquainted, despite the various language barriers. Tired of sitting, Luz stood up and wandered over to Rob's chair. He was talking to Hanif about his recent visit to England and the polo matches at Windsor. She listened for a while, then spoke to the German, Gregor, about horseracing. There was a gradual gravitation away from the table toward the twin bonfires as they stood around in small cl.u.s.ters, talking and smoking their cigars or cigarettes.

"Luz." Trisha touched her arm, claiming her attention away from Hector and a young Argentine player. "Did you notice the clothes those men are wearing?"

"Yes." But she looked again, remembering no more than that they appeared to be wearing some sort of native costume.

"That is the traditional gaucho dress," Hector explained.

"I love it," Trisha declared. "Look at those baggy pants. They look like bloomers."