by Beth Bolden
Even with how little Izzy knew about baseball, she knew there was a significant problem with this reasoning. Still, considering how well Toby usually took her innocent and well-meaning questions when it came to his broadcast plans, she hesitated voicing the concern.
“Are you sure that’s going to work out? What if he ends up like most players?” she volunteered with trepidation.
“You mean coast right down the middle, neither extraordinarily good nor extraordinarily bad?”
“Yeah.” Toby stood, the folding chair screeching against the temporary flooring of the media trailer and glanced around with a growing frown. The trailer, never scrupulously neat, was in a state of complete upheaval for the trip back to Portland.
“Jack Bennett isn’t your average ballplayer. He’s never going to be average. He’ll either crash and burn, or go out in a blaze of glory. So, what I want you to do is answer this loser, but keep him dangling along. You know, like you women tend to do with men. You can do that, right?”
Another hypothetical question. Izzy successfully almost managed to ignore the misogynistic jab and nodded in reply. “I’ll email him tonight.”
“Oh, and clean up some of this crap. We need to start packing. You can start on that, too.”
Not even a question, Izzy thought, or a request, the door slamming shut as telling punctuation to the end of Toby’s sentence.
“Sure, boss,” she sighed sarcastically as she turned to view the catastrophe of boxes and papers and film piled up on every available surface. “I have no problem being both your maid and your bitch.”
“You’ll be my bitch?”
Izzy whirled around, heart in her throat. Toby couldn’t have come back and heard the one uncharitable thing she’d ever said about him out loud. That would be too unfair.
But it wasn’t Toby. It was Jack, leaning against the doorjamb, grinning at her.
“Not nice,” she panted in relief. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“I seem to have a pretty strong effect on you,” he said, taking a few steps into the trailer and letting the much-abused screen door slam behind him.
“Don’t remind me,” Izzy said, slumping into a chair. Her knees wobbled a little from the shock of almost telling her boss to his face that he treated her like shit, and a little from the shock of the fact that Jack was here. She’d almost gotten used to seeing him first thing in the morning. There was a safeness in their morning routine; he’d never come to see her in the trailer before, or after a game, and the uncertainty of the situation set nerves fluttering in her stomach.
Then his gaze swung to her, like a magnet drawn to its opposite, the interest in his expression completely naked, and Izzy froze.
Don’t think about him naked, she had to remind herself. Somehow, along the line, she’d begun to find him more attractive than Noah, and suddenly, the trailer felt about half its normally claustrophobic size as he leaned against the corner of the desk and gazed at her.
He’d showered and changed after the media session, and she could smell his soap on the air—something tangy and fresh, like just-cut grass. His close-cropped light-brown hair was still wet on the temples, and had just begun to curl in the Florida heat. He was so close to her chair that she wanted to reach up and smooth it down, so she could feel the damp strands against her skin.
She had to do something to break this spell, before he did anything they couldn’t take back; before he did anything to compromise her career even more than it had already been compromised.
“What can I do for you?” she stuttered out, hating the way he seemingly effortlessly unsettled her.
“Do I need an excuse to see you?” he asked softly, the words hanging in the air. Izzy supposed it was inevitable that matters would come to this; he’d flirted with her from almost the first moment they’d met, but she’d hoped that maybe flirting was all it would ever turn out to be.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t gotten the memo and now she would have to tell him it was pointless. Summoning the icy wall that had worked at driving away every other man, Izzy tried to feign bored disinterest.
“I’m not sure I follow.”
He smiled, white teeth flashing under the fluorescent lights of the trailer. “Don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter, Izzy.” He leaned closer to her and shrugged, so completely confident that she couldn’t help but be envious at his sureness. “You like talking to me.”
Izzy couldn’t deny that she was getting a little desperate. “I’m too nice to tell you to leave me alone.”
He laughed this time, long and loud. “You’re not nice. You’re a lot of things, but nice isn’t one of them.” Jack bent down toward her, the blue of his eyes burning into her skin until she was sure she’d smell ash at any moment. “But as it happens, there is something you can do for me. Go to dinner with me.”
It wasn’t a surprising request, but she’d been hoping so much that he wouldn’t make it. He’d been the closest thing she had to a friend since transferring and once she told him she couldn’t date him, he’d never talk to her again. “I can’t go on a date with you,” she said coolly. “It would be totally inappropriate. Fraternization with players isn’t allowed.” That wasn’t entirely true; at least she’d never seen a formally written rule, but she could only imagine Toby’s reaction to this scene.
“Who said anything about a date?” The wrinkles around his eyes crinkled with his smile, and she wished he would take a step back. She was a terrible liar under ideal circumstances, and his nearness kept making her brain short circuit. “You like me. I like you,” he continued, scooting closer, until his jean-clad knee was almost brushing the bare skin of hers. The temperature inside the trailer rose with nearly every shallow breath she took. “But it would just be as friends.”
“It doesn’t matter what it actually is, it’s what it would look like. And I can’t be seen with you socially. Period,” she insisted as icily as she could. What had ever possessed her to flirt with him? She’d led him on and this whole awkward, uncomfortable conversation was her own damn fault.
“Don’t you ever want to break the rules?” He sounded a hell of a lot more confident than she felt. But then all she was feeling was the heat racing along her skin, the electricity in the air raising goose bumps along her arms.
Sanity. Izzy grasped it and stood shakily, determined to move away from the hypnotic stare that was trying to lure her past the point of no return.
“No. The rules are there for a reason,” she said as firmly as she could, turning away from him and busying her hands in a half-packed box.
“You know as well as I do that the rules are stupid,” he argued so earnestly, the suave confidence giving way to a jumbled yearning, so similar to the butterflies in her own stomach, that she nearly turned back and relented, but something stopped her.
No, not something, someone. Her dad, whose favorite saying had been, “Follow the rules only until you know them.” Izzy could see her dad’s face the last time she’d ever seen him, about eight weeks from graduation, when he’d told her how proud he was. He’d just watched her senior project—a documentary on a club of special-needs athletes—and he hadn’t even had to say the words. The pride was plain in his eyes, his smile. The certainty of his love had almost made up for the fact that she’d never be the one to cure cancer.
The truth was she didn’t have any grasp on the new tangent of her career, never mind any kind of knowledge of the rules. And while she’d resented the hell out of her father’s wisdom when she’d been a teenager, after experiencing something of the world, Izzy was pretty certain he’d been right.
“The rules aren’t stupid,” she corrected in a frosty voice and for the first time in their brief acquaintance, she could hear the ring of truth in her own voice. She sounded like she actually believed her own crap. Finally. “I can’t go to dinner wit
h you. I’m sorry.”
Jack’s expression was full of regret. “I’m sorry, too.”
She wanted to tell him she liked him, too, but she’d already seen his persistence in action. If he got one whiff of her uncertainty, he’d wear her down until she forgot everything she’d worked for.
When she didn’t say anything, he threw his hands up in frustration. “Fine, fine. Go all icy on me, if it helps. But I’m not one of those idiots who can’t see underneath the frost. Just remember that.”
She turned away, this time completely, and the screen door slammed again, a different kind of punctuation. Her eyes shot open to find herself alone again, the smell of Jack’s soap and her shaky knees the only evidence that he’d even been there.
CHAPTER SIX
Opening Day was pretty much the greatest day of the entire season, Jack thought, as he took the dugout steps and gazed around at the bustling field, finally active for the first time after a long winter. Someday, when hell froze over and pigs flew and the Pioneers actually made the playoffs, the beginning, when anything was still possible, wouldn’t be the highlight of his year anymore.
Maybe then he’d finally be able to look his twelve-year-old self in the eye. After the way last year ended, they hadn’t really been on speaking terms. It hadn’t mattered that he’d done everything he personally could to reverse the Pioneers’ losing streak, he still blamed himself.
After all, it was a little hard to blame Foxy when the guy was already a wreck.
“Best day of the year,” Noah said, stretching out his lanky form, echoed as Jack dropped to the outfield grass next to him. For Portland, it was a pretty nice day for April, cloudy with a few tantalizing hints of sun, with none of the clichéd torrential downpours that the city was known for in the spring.
Jack leaned back and squinted as one of the clouds parted and sun dappled the flawlessly maintained swath of green grass. “Only one day that’s better.”
Foxy shook his head ruefully. “Man, you care too much. Just gotta take the cash and the chance to play and let the rest go.”
And that was precisely the philosophy that had landed Noah Fox in Portland. He’d played for the Diamondbacks in Arizona for the length of his rookie contract, then had turned three good years into a lucrative free-agent contract for the Pioneers, catching the team at a point when they’d needed to build some interest from the home crowd. Once, Jack had asked why he’d chosen Portland, and for Foxy, it had been totally cut and dry—they’d been the team to offer the best deal.
Maybe Foxy was right. Maybe he did care too much about winning. Some days, Jack thought he might even be willing to pay the team, if only the Pioneers could get out of their own damn way and figure out how to be the last guy standing.
“It’s abnormal how you don’t care about winning.”
Foxy just shrugged. “It’s not like I like losing. If anyone’s abnormal, it’s you.” He glanced down the first baseline, and Jack didn’t even have to look in that direction to see what had caught Foxy’s eye.
Izzy, her long, dark hair tousled from the breeze, wearing one of those ridiculously hot pencil skirts she tended to favor, making her legs look miles long. Jack looked down at the turf and swore under his breath.
“I told you,” he nearly growled. “She turned me down flat.”
Sighing, Foxy switched from his right to his left side, curling his body across one leg. “Of course she did. You only asked her once.”
He asked the question before he could stop himself. “How many times did Tabitha make you ask?”
There was a long silence.
“A lot,” Noah finally said. “I asked her a lot. Too many times to count. And even the way it ended, it was almost worth it.”
“Almost,” Jack retorted sardonically.
“You know, while they technically aren’t forbidden to date players, it’s really discouraged. I had to convince Tabitha I was worth breaking the unwritten rule.”
Jack shifted and let his head hit the turf, staring up at the sky. “So you think I should ask her out again.”
“Depends on how much you like her. If you’re going to moon after her all season like a pimply teenage boy, then for your sake and mine, you’d better.” Foxy hoisted himself to his feet and walked over to Finn, the right fielder, who’d just made his way onto the field for his own warm up.
Jack stared at the sky as the clouds shifted above him. He wanted to forget Izzy, wanted to pretend that since he’d asked and she’d said no, they owed each other nothing. Not even a stray thought when they passed each other in a random hallway in some random city. But he knew himself better than that.
Even now, he could sense her on the other end of the field, all the way by the plate, her presence plucking at his awareness, reminding him that she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
She’d made an impression on him even in the handful of times they’d spoken. Ambitious, sharp, intelligent—Izzy Dalton was what she presented to the world. And she was more, too. He’d known that from the very first moment he’d seen her, stacking her suitcases by the luggage carousel.
In the end, she was the one woman he should have known to stay away from, and that was what decided it for him. If he hadn’t been able to listen to his own warnings, then clearly, she was worth the risk.
Foxy was right, Jack thought ruefully, sitting up, rotating out the crimps in his neck, as he usually was. It wasn’t himself he needed to convince; it was Izzy.
And no sooner than he’d made the decision, a shadow passed over him, and he squinted into the sun, even though he already knew it was her. It was absolutely crazy, but his skin had practically prickled as she’d approached him.
“Hi, Jack,” Izzy said. He didn’t like the self-conscious edge to her voice, but he supposed that was the price they’d be paying for him asking her out and her turning him down. At least for a little while.
He rose to his feet and couldn’t help the smile as her face came into focus. God, he liked her.
“Happy Opening Day. You ready?”
Jack wondered if anyone else would have seen the panic briefly race across her face. He wondered if she’d let him see or if he was just better at reading her than most.
“Of course,” she said, her tone fully confident. He wouldn’t have expected less of her. “You?” But before he could answer, she laughed nervously, and he noticed she was gripping one hand with the other, her knuckles turning bone white. “But of course you’re ready. You’re Jack Bennett. You were born ready.”
“You caught me,” he said quietly. Carefully. Like she was a horse he didn’t want to spook.
“Toby sent me out here,” she chattered on, confidence betrayed by the slight nervous hesitation in her words. “To get a quote,” she clarified, “but I think because he wanted me out his hair for a moment.”
“You’ll be fine,” he soothed. “No reason to be nervous.”
She looked up at him in surprise, her gray eyes so pale in her tanned face they looked like pools of ice. “Nervous? Why would I be nervous?”
“You wouldn’t be,” he said with as much certainty as he could muster. “You’re wonderful.”
Her hands gripped tighter together and for a moment, she almost seemed to fight with herself over what to say. “You don’t have to be nice to me,” she finally said quietly. “I’d understand if you weren’t.”
Jack held her gaze with his for a long moment and wished he wasn’t such an idiot with his words. He never knew the right thing to say to women, but with Izzy, so far, honesty seemed to be the best policy.
“That’s not something you ever have to worry about,” he told her frankly. “I like you too much to not be nice.”
She laughed at that, and he was inordinately pleased that it hadn’t been that nervous chuckle of hers that seemed to belong to s
omeone else entirely. He liked the confident, brash Izzy—the one who’d freeze you out then thaw you with a charming smile, just because she could.
“I thought we agreed to…” she struggled, trying to find the words for what they’d decided on, but since they hadn’t exactly decided on anything, she came up empty.
“We didn’t decide,” he finally told her, tossing the baseball in his hand up in the air and catching it in the heart of his glove. “You decided.”
“Right.” She’d taken two steps back, in total retreat, either from the conversation or him, he wasn’t entirely sure, and he followed. They were nearly on top of second base, where the flawless stretch of outfield grass turned into the infield dirt.
Izzy took another step back, and Jack decided she was probably running from both—the combined awkwardness of a conversation she didn’t want to have with someone she’d rather have avoided. But he wasn’t going to let her give up that easily. His entire career he’d been credited with an insane determination to get what he wanted, and right now, with her, he was just getting started.
“Have you heard the story about little Jimmy?” he started to ask, but it was at that moment, Izzy retreated another foot and this time, instead of finding the surface she expected, she found the turf edge instead, and she stumbled, catching the spike of one high heel in the dry, clumping dirt.
Jack’s arm shot out instinctively, catching her elbow and righting her before she managed to fall backward.
She looked up at him when she was steady, her heart and a horror story in her eyes. He read every word of it, the humiliation of literally falling over in front of an entire compliment of media, players, coaches, and a mostly full stadium of bored fans looking for momentary entertainment before the game got underway. Taking a deep breath, Jack saw her regain her equilibrium and the second she had it back, she’d pulled her arm away from his grip.