The Glory Game Part 31

"Rob?" He hunkered his head into the collar of his wind-breaker. "At the polo pit, I think. That son of yours is real dedicated to the sport. Practices every chance he gets."

"I know." She was proud of that. "See you later. And don't get wet," Luz said from under the dry security of her umbrella.

"Thanks." He laughed wryly and set out for the house at his sloshing jog.

Luz kept to the gra.s.sy edge of the driveway and skirted the stableyard, although her gaze strayed to it. Raul and Trisha were in one of those long, low buildings. She quickened her stride, trying very hard not to interfere.

There were two polo pits on the estancia. One was located outside and the other enclosed for use in inclement weather. Luz headed for the small building at the end of the stable row where the road made its circling bend.

As she entered through a side door, she heard the thunk of the ball slamming into the protective netting, then the sound of it rolling back into the pit. Raindrops tapped on the corrugated iron roof. She closed the umbrella and propped it against the side wall near the door.

The rectangular polo pit itself was surrounded by a wire netting stretched between four corner posts, the lower half lined with a double thickness of netting and cushioned with cloth sacking to break the force of a hard-driven ball. About halfway up the posts, the netting curved in toward the center to turn back the ball, then out again. The flooring sloped downward to a lower platform roughly eight and a half feet by ten. A wooden horse stood in the center, four wooden legs supporting its barrel-shaped body and a board extending from it for the head. A three-foot-wide walkway encircled the pit, providing a spectator area where the onlooker, or instructor, could watch the form of the wooden horse's rider.

Facing the netting, Luz looked into center pit, a foot and a half lower than the floor of the walkway. Rob had the mallet tucked under his arm while he stood on the floor and retied the reins to the cotton threads fastened to the end of the board "head."

"You jerked on the horse's mouth again, did you?" Luz observed.

The cotton strands broke under any strong pull or jerk on the reins, simulating an undesirable jerk on a horse's mouth while the rider hit the ball.

"Yeah," Rob grumbled as he climbed onto the saddle strapped on the wooden horse's barrel. "I can't seem to get my nearside forehand swing right."

"Are you reversing your grip?" Luz walked around to his left side so she could observe his stroking form.

"Yeah, but I keep jerking on the reins. I must have tied those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds four times already." He tapped the ball into position for a hit on the left side, then rose in the stirrups to brace for the shot and brought his right arm over, with the mallet, arcing it behind his head.

Luz watched his swing. "The reins were too loose that time. You had no contact with the horse's mouth. And I don't think you're bringing your right arm high enough. You want your hand level with your left cheek. Your head has to move or your neck will be in the way of your swing." Rob tried it again. "That's better. Now tap the ball up the incline so you can hit it when it rolls back."

Over and over, he practiced the stroke while Luz's observations continued and she warned him against straightening his elbow too soon, swinging too late, and not bringing his hand high enough. She could see his frustration mounting when he broke the reins' strings a fifth time.

"You're getting too tense, Rob. Relax. Try some simple forehand shots, then we'll go back to it," she advised, as he dismounted to retie the reins.

"If I don't, there won't be any threads left to tie," he replied. The strands were getting shorter and shorter with each knot he tied.

With the reins secured to the "mouth" again, he stepped back into the saddle and practiced the basic strokes, sometimes. .h.i.tting the ball when it rolled toward his horse and sometimes letting it go by and up the rear incline to roll back, then hitting it in a simulation of a ball being pa.s.sed to him.

The overhead light was situated in the center of the peaked roof ceiling, focusing its illumination on the wooden horse and rider in the lower pit and letting the walkway receive anything left over. As a result, shadows hugged the walls. When the side door opened, the tall figure of a man was silhouetted against the gray rain. The door swung shut, and it was another second before the figure moved out of the shadows, shaking off the rain.

The thickness of two walls of netting veiled Luz's view of Raul, but she could see the wetness of his hair shining black in the overhead light and the damp patches of rain on his lightweight jacket. So far, he hadn't noticed her, and she didn't draw attention to herself when he walked to the mesh webbing around the pit. Rob drove the ball into the net with a powerful forehand swing, testing the reinforced section padded with burlap.

"I thought you were going to practice the nearside forehand." Raul frowned.

"I was. I did. I couldn't seem to put it all together, so Luz suggested that I switch to something else." The instant Rob mentioned her name, Raul's narrowed gaze sliced across the s.p.a.ce to find her. He appeared to straighten, drawing himself up to his full six-foot height.

"Try it again," Raul ordered, and a muscle flexed along his jawline when Rob darted a quick glance at Luz.

"Sure." Rob tapped the ball to the left side of the wooden steed.

Tense, Luz watched Raul follow the walkway around the webbing, but he didn't come all the way around to where she was standing. Instead he stopped directly in front of the horse, facing Rob head-on, protected by the wall of wire netting around the pit area. Silently, he watched Rob strike at the ball.

"You are turning your body too much," he stated. "Practice the swing in slow motion. Forget the ball. Do you see where you force your bridle hand to move?"

"Yes." Rob sat back onto the saddle seat.

"Try it again, and keep the elbow bent until you have a straight line from shoulder to ball. You are trying to stiffen your arm too soon."

Three more times, he ordered Rob to practice the swing and unlearn the bad habit he'd acquired. He managed to keep from turning his body too far to the left, but he continued to straighten his arm too soon. Luz clenched her teeth together to stop herself from saying anything.

On the fourth swing, the words were forced through. "The elbow, Rob."

"Again," Raul ordered.

"I can't seem to stop it," Rob muttered angrily.

"You're trying too hard. Relax," Luz said.

"No more today," Raul stated, and retraced his path to the rear of the pit where a wood-and-mesh door opened into the pit.

"I'm not tired," Rob said.

"You can work on it tomorrow." Raul took the mallet from him, giving Rob no option.

"Come on, Rob," Luz said as she walked around the pit to the side door. "We'll go up to the house. Maybe we can talk Ramn into fixing us a cup of hot chocolate. How does that sound on this gloomy, rainy day?"

"Just the ticket." Rob smiled, but without enthusiasm, appearing to forget that when he was small, it had been his favorite.

"One moment, Mrs. Thomas," Raul said. "I would like to speak to you."

"Privately" was the unspoken word. "Go ahead, Rob." Luz moved away from the door so he could leave. "I'll meet you at the house."

"Okay." He ducked out the door, closing it quickly behind him.

The patter of the rain on the roof sounded louder in the ensuing silence. Luz hesitated, then walked over to the pit doorway and stepped inside. Raul stood beside the wooden horse and watched her walk down the incline to the platform.

"You wanted to speak to me," she said, reminding him it was his place to begin the discussion.

"Which one of us is the polo instructor?"

"You are, of course."

"Then why are you teaching him? He cannot listen to two people at the same time. Either I am teaching him or you are. But not both of us. Do I make myself clear?" The muscles along his jaw were tautly flexed, standing out in a rigid line.

"I was only trying to help."

"Your help is not wanted." The anger that was trembling just below the surface vibrated in his voice. "You are only confusing him. Every time I say something, he looks to see if you agree. This cannot go on." His hands were tightly wrapped around the body of the stick. "I want you to stay away from the practice sessions and the training work-and from all instruction!"

Incensed by his edict, Luz crossed to the wooden horse, impelled by that inner force that demanded movement. "I am his mother! I have a right to be there. You can't forbid me to watch!" When she stopped, the wooden horse was between them.

"Do the teachers in his schools allow you to sit in their cla.s.srooms?" Raul swung around to face her, one hand letting go of the mallet to grip the neck board while the other still held the polo mallet as it rested on the curve of the saddle seat. "Are you permitted to coach him while they are giving him lessons in history or English? No! And I will not allow it here!"

"You will not allow?" She leaned toward him, pressing her hands against the rough board sides of the structure. "I am paying you! It is not you who dictates to me!"

Only the width of the saddle seat separated them. "Then let me do what you are paying me to do and stay away!" His eyes glittered with anger. "He does not need you to wipe his nose. And he does not need you to tell him what is right and what is wrong. I am paid to do this." Raul drew back, the line of his mouth tight. "I have seen parents like you. You want to control everything that happens in the lives of your children. You know what is best for them, no? But what is best for them is for you to stay out!"

"Is it my son we're discussing here or my daughter?" she demanded.

"You want Rob to learn polo, do you not?" His expression became hard and cold at the mention of Trisha.

"Yes! And I want you to stay away from my daughter!"

"So you have told me. But she is the one you should be telling to stay away from me! I have no interest in her. I have been polite to the daughter of a client, and that is all. I see nothing in her worth having. Would you prefer that I treat her like the nuisance she is?" he challenged.

"Polite? Is that how you describe your actions? Just how far will you go to keep a client happy? Let's see ... I know you've kissed Trisha and you've danced with me," Luz mocked sarcastically. "Can't you make up your mind which one of us you're supposed to please?"

His gaze narrowed on her. "Maybe I have misunderstood. Why do you wish me to stay away from your daughter?"

"Because you're too old for her. She's barely eighteen-'

"-and much too young, no?" The low tone of his voice made her wary.

"Yes, she is. I'm glad you see that." A tension that had nothing to do with her anger rippled through her as she turned and walked slowly around the rear of the wooden horse.

"And you, what of you?"

She halted, stiffening instinctively. "I don't know what you mean."

"I am old enough to be Trisha's father. And you are her mother, divorced, without a man. Lonely, I've noticed. Perhaps I did not make myself clear before you came here to Argentina. My polo skills are always for hire, but when you buy them, my services in bed are not part of the bargain."

Waves of heat seemed to engulf her. "Of all the arrogance! What makes you think I'd want you in my bed?" Hot tears burned her eyes as she angrily denied that she had ever entertained such an idea.

'That night in your hotel room in Paris, you were not inviting me to your bedroom?" he taunted.

"No! And if you remember that night very well, you'd recall that I told you to get out." Luz trembled violently from a mixture of shame and anger.

"You are not the first wealthy woman who has attempted to ... proposition me," Raul countered.

She could feel the tears gathering on her lashes and turned to leave the pit. "There is no point in continuing this conversation," she declared thickly as she moved toward the door cut into the netting.

"You will stay away from the polo lessons in the future," he stated as she ducked through the opening.

The shadows by the wall reached out to enfold her in their concealing darkness. Luz paused by the side door. "I will do as I d.a.m.ned well please. And if you don't like it, Mr. Buchanan, then you can tell me to get out!"

Tears ran down her cheeks, and she bolted out the door while she still had the last word. The heavy drizzle had turned into a downpour that drenched her the instant she stepped outside. Too late, Luz remembered the umbrella propped against the wall of the polo pit. But it would take more than a soaking to make her go back in there. At the moment, she wanted to get as far away from Raul, and everything a.s.sociated with him, as she could.

As she started to run across the road toward the house, a car pulled up and the driver hopped out, one of the stablehands. He dashed through the rain, slowing when he saw Luz. "El seor?" He gestured toward the polo pit, supplementing his question with sign language to ask whether Raul was inside. He said more, but the only word that sounded familiar to her was telefono.

She nodded, her face too wet from the falling rain for him to notice the salty tears mingling with the moisture. As he continued to the polo pit, she glanced at the old car, its fenders dented and its sides splattered with mud. The motor idled, sending a blue-gray trail of vapor fumes from the exhaust. Luz ran to it and climbed quickly behind the wheel.

There wasn't any solid thought in her head except to get away. Her vision was still blurred with tears as she scanned the unfamiliar instrument panel and tried to locate where things were. The second k.n.o.b she turned sent the wipers slapping across the windshield. She shifted the car into drive and stepped on the gas. As the vehicle shot forward, she heard someone shout and pushed the pedal to the floor.

Despite the driving rain and her blurring eyes, she managed to follow the muddy road that circled behind the stables and the gray stone house. She didn't want to go back there, not yet. Another road branched off from the machine sheds, taking off toward some distant point across country where the flat land and the clouds met. The open stretch pulled her, urging her to race across it-to run and run and never look back. She swung the car onto the narrow track and tromped on the accelerator again, spraying muddy water from the wheels.

The wiper blades swished frantically at the rain coating the windshield, but it didn't matter to Luz that she couldn't see. Sniffling, she wiped at the tears on her cheeks. The rain hammering on the car roof seemed to mock her flight, taunting her that she couldn't run far enough. Raul had guessed her interest in him, and she doubted that he believed her denial. It had been a mistake ever to come here.

She felt so vulnerable now, so open to more hurt, yet she didn't see how she could leave. If she changed her plans, it could be construed as an admission that he had been right all along. It would be an admission. She gritted her teeth to hold back the frustrated sobs rising in her throat.

The steering wheel was nearly jerked out of her hands as the front tires. .h.i.t another of the many holes in the rutted track. Luz managed to hold on to it and keep the car heading straight down the muddy road. She had no sense of how far she'd come nor how long she'd been bouncing and sloshing over the track. Gray rain surrounded her, the estancia buildings long out of sight. She felt the pull of the mud dragging at the car and realized she didn't dare slow down.

The road had run straight across the level ground for so long that Luz had become lulled by it. When it made a bend to the right, she wasn't prepared for it. With the combination of speed and obscuring rain, she was on the curve almost before she saw it coming. She couldn't hold the car on the mud-slick track. It skidded off the road into sodden gra.s.s. Instinctively, she let up on the accelerator and turned the car in a swinging arc to get back on the muddy trail. But when the wheels. .h.i.t the thick muck at the car's reduced speed, they lost traction. Without the car's momentum to compensate for the sucking drag, they started spinning. Luz tried to control the wild fish-tailing and keep the car plowing forward, but the speedometer needle kept dipping lower and lower.

Finally, the tires spun uselessly. No matter how much she gunned the motor, the car wasn't going anywhere. It was hopelessly stuck. Luz slumped back in the driver's seat and automatically shifted it into park. The subdued rumble of the idling engine was drowned by the sound of the beating rain and the rhythmic slap-slap of the windshield wipers.

"d.a.m.n." She clenched the steering wheel, shaking the immovable object in frustration while more tears scorched her eyes. "Stupid. Stupid." She cursed the imprudent decision that had taken her down this road.

Blinking to clear the hot tears from her eyes, she looked through the rain veil at the sweep of land in front and to the sides of the car. It was a desolate stretch, completely empty except for a strange-looking tree not far from the road. There was a small adobe dwelling of some sort beneath its branches, and a faint trail leading to it. It was nearly as crude as that shanty section of Buenos Aires they'd driven through. Maybe one of the estancia workers lived there, although Luz couldn't think why anyone would live so far from the headquarters.

The building represented an outside chance for help to get the car unstuck. The alternatives were either to wait for someone to come looking for her or to walk back in this downpour-however far it was-to the estancia. Neither of those appealed to her. She'd gotten herself into this, and she'd rather get out of it on her own.

Luz switched off the motor and took hold of the door handle. After an instant's hesitation, she opened it and plunged into the sheeting rain. Her feet sank into the mire almost to the tops of her shoes. With her head down to protect her eyes from the pelting raindrops, she slogged through the mud to the side of the road and looked up once to get her bearings on the crude dwelling half hidden by the broad tree trunk. When she reached the narrow, overgrown footpath, she ran as fast as the slippery footing allowed.

The large oval leaves of the tree broke some of the rain's force once she ducked under its branches to hurry to the door. The humid air reeked with some strong, offensive odor. Luz unconsciously held her breath as she pa.s.sed the swollen base of the towering tree.

"h.e.l.lo!" When she pounded on the makeshift wooden door, it bounced freely in its rotting frame. It wasn't latched. Luz hesitated only a second, then stepped quickly inside and out of the rain that had soaked her to the skin. "h.e.l.lo." Her voice faded.

The leaking metal roof, the broken window panes and tumbledown benches informed her the place had been long abandoned. The door swung shut with a bang behind her and Luz jumped at the sound. Shaking the rain off her hand and arms, she moved cautiously into the middle of the one-room shack. As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, she noticed a primitive-looking cot in a dark corner, covered with a lumpy straw mattress that seemed a bed more suitable for rodents than for people. A scurrying sound came from a pile of debris on the opposite side of the room, confirming her suspicions. She crossed to the window that faced the road, avoiding the pieces of gla.s.s on the tamped-earth floor. The mired car was a forlorn mudcoated lump against the iron-gray clouds.

The rain splattered loudly on the metal roof, a combination of raindrops and runoff from the crowning tree branches overhead. A steady plop-plop punctuated the heavy patter, the drips of a leaky roof. Luz lifted aside the wet hair plastered to the sides of her face and neck and pushed it back, conscious of her sopped clothes and the wet patch she was making on the dirt floor. She shivered with the damp chill invading her skin and turned, nearly stumbling over a broken chair. Its back was broken and one leg was canted at an odd angle, but its seat and three legs were intact.

It was relatively dry inside the abandoned building, and she had a place to sit. Instead of slogging back to the car in that downpour, she decided to wait in the adobe hut, at least until the rain let up. Cautiously, Luz sat down on the chair, testing its solidness. Satisfied that it would hold her weight, she huddled in the chair and rubbed her arms to stir her circulation.

She thought she heard a noise, and paused to listen, but it was difficult to hear anything but the incessant rattle of the rain on the corrugated metal roof. She huddled into a tight ball again. A second later, Luz was certain she heard someone shouting her name. Frowning, she stood up and moved to the window facing the road. A truck was parked behind her car.

As she turned, the door burst open. "Luz!" Raul stopped abruptly inside the door, his head coming up like an animal unexpectedly finding its quarry.

"How did you know I'd be here?" Of all the people who could have found her why did it have to be him?

"These dirt roads often become impa.s.sable in a hard rain." He stepped farther into the shack and ran a hand over his face, sc.r.a.ping off the rainwater. "When Carlos told me you took this road instead of driving to the highway, I knew you would have trouble. Would you prefer that I had left you stranded here alone?"

"No." Luz swung back to stare out the window and protectively hugged her arms around her middle. "It was stupid of me to drive off like that," she admitted tightly before he could say it.

"It was."

"You didn't have to agree!" She glared at him.

"If I agree, I am wrong. If I disagree, I am wrong, too. No matter which I said, I would be wrong," Raul muttered in exasperation.

"That's true, so you should have said nothing," Luz snapped, then turned aside again, aware of how bedraggled she looked with her wet hair and wet clothes. She wiped at the undersides of her eyes, afraid her mascara had run. "Since you've come to take me back to the estancia, let's go."

"We will wait until the rain lets up. It won't be long."