The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers)

by Beth Bolden

  The music pumped around them, heady and loud and nothing at all like she’d ever chose to listen to, but that didn’t matter right now. Right now, she couldn’t get enough of the sinfully sexy beat that seemed to thump with her heartbeat. She tilted her head back and let the lights and music and Jack wash over her, and resolutely ignored the fact that tomorrow morning all this was probably going to come to a shattering end because nothing had actually changed.

  But the reality was dim enough that even it couldn’t stop her from leaning forward and wrapping her arms around Jack as the music slowed to a sensual bump and grind. In the end it was so simple, so ridiculously easy. It was only four little words, whispered from her lips to his ear, and her heart couldn’t help but glory at the way his fingertips tightened on her skin as she spoke them.

  “I love you, too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “So, not the greatest All Star appearance, ever.” Noah leaned on the bench built in front of their row of lockers and didn’t even glance in Jack’s direction as he let the bomb fall casually into the quiet of the clubhouse.

  Jack didn’t know what to say. Or even how to conceptualize what had happened two days ago. Maybe he could have blamed it on the one-and-a-half whiskeys he’d had at the club while dancing with Izzy, but while totally drunk on passion and love and all those over-hyped feelings romance novels always proclaimed were possible, he’d never felt more sober.

  He’d fallen asleep in the arms of the woman he loved, who loved him back, the result being probably the best sleep of his entire life. He’d woken up with the sun shining into the bedroom and the sky a perfectly clear blue—so blue that he’d walked into the ballpark and nearly ached with the blueness of it. He’d reached a professional and personal pinnacle at pretty much precisely the same time. His luck, which had held out through so much of the crap that the beginning of the season had doled out, was primed for a performance unlike any other.

  Definitely one of a kind, he thought ruefully. Unforgettable, actually. And it had been.

  Unforgettably bad.

  He’d never expected to play more than a few innings, which was par for the course in All Star Games, because there were so many good players and only so many spots, but when he’d gotten subbed for Ian Kinsler of the Texas Rangers in the bottom of the fifth, he’d collapsed onto the bench in the American League dugout, numb to everything but his disbelief.

  Playing badly was one thing. He’d played historically bad.

  The first time he’d struck out, it had been on exactly three pitches, all textbook fastballs that on any other day, he was sure he’d have been able to crank out of the ballpark. The starting National League pitcher was great at hugging the corners of the strike zone with his blazing fastball, but Jack had never found him particularly challenging and it went to show that up until two days ago, he’d hit .300 off the guy. But on the day when it all counted so much more, when his professional pride was at stake, he let not one, not two, but three pitches whizz past his bat.

  It was never good to strike out looking. It was kind of embarrassing to do it on three pitches. It was kind of like a car wreck to do it in the All Star Game, with every single one of your peers watching.

  “That grounder looked like it had some real nasty spin on it,” Davey Rodriguez added softly, and Jack knew he shouldn’t be mad because he knew Davey wouldn’t hurt a fly and he was only trying to make the wretched slightly more palatable, but his pity twisted the knife inside him.

  “The grounder didn’t have shit on it,” he spit out under his breath.

  And it hadn’t. It had been a routine grounder, like thousands of others he’d taken during his career at shortstop and second base. It was a grounder practically designed for the scoop and snap motion he’d made as natural as breathing. And he’d fucking bobbled it.

  It was almost too embarrassing to contemplate, even now. Jack knew he wouldn’t ever be brilliant at that plate—objectively he knew he’d been overachieving during the first half of the season—but he prided himself as a great fielder. One year, he’d broken his ankle, and instead of letting his fielding instincts go soft and limp, he’d taken groundballs from his knees in the outfield for months.

  Other infielders talked about him with hushed tones. He had four Golden Gloves, for Christ’s sake. One for every year in the big show.

  Of course, things had only gotten worse from there. His second strikeout had come on a prolonged at-bat, ten pitches long by the time he’d struck out, this time by feebly swinging at a pitch that had sunk wildly almost the instant it had reached the plate.

  It was a testament to how badly the game went that Jack felt he could almost look back on that at-bat and be almost glad that he hadn’t gone quietly into the night. At least he’d tried.

  “Did you talk to Izzy?” Noah clearly didn’t understand the mood he was in. The mood where Jack didn’t want to hear anybody’s voice, including his own.

  He also didn’t want to admit that he hadn’t talked to her. He’d dodged all the press in the locker room, and had headed back to the room to indulge in a little old-fashioned mood enhancing, only to find out she’d already left for the airport to catch her flight. She’d left about a hundred texts and voicemails on his phone since then, but he hadn’t felt up to talking—or explaining. He’d just wanted to be left alone to contemplate the inevitable realization: somehow his luck had turned sour and he didn’t know how to fix it.

  “No.”

  “You should. There’s…” Jack didn’t even let Noah finish the rest of his sentence. He savagely shoved the rest of his shirt into his pants, grabbed his glove from his locker, and turned and walked out of the clubhouse. Let them talk about him if they wanted—he wasn’t going to listen to Foxy or anybody else speculate.

  Everything about the last four months and his crazy lucky streak had foretold that the game should have been one of the greatest of his life. Instead, it had been his worst. And he wasn’t sure what he was going to do about it.

  Izzy believed that she was a pretty reasonable person. So, as she tried not to squirm in the chair opposite Toby’s desk, she reminded herself that she was reasonable, and that same reasonableness was the only thing standing in the way of her being really fucking pissed off at Jack.

  He’s having a rough time, she thought as she surreptitiously glanced at her phone for the hundredth time in the last six hours; that’s the only reason he won’t talk to you.

  She wouldn’t let herself consider the implication that had hit her somewhere between Nashville and Topeka, right as she’d gotten her beverage service.

  She’d just accepted the glass of Diet Coke from the flight attendant when her and Jack’s playful flirtation of the night before came roaring back.

  Now she only wanted to forget the nasty thought in the back of her mind that somehow she was connected to Jack’s horrific All Star performance.

  She never would have even dreamed of connecting the two if Noah hadn’t brought up the tiny little factoid that Jack had never mentioned: apparently, he considered her his lucky charm.

  Then he’d done the unthinkable and hadn’t answered any of her many phone calls or responded to her frantic texts. Sometime in the middle of the night, 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., the fear and tension had finally coalesced into a hard anger that had burned the rest of the night and bled into today.

  He’d said he loved her. Had he even meant it? Or had he only meant it as a convenience, some pretty words to keep around the person who he believed guaranteed success on the field?

  Izzy found herself rapidly losing grip on her reasonableness.

  “Good. You’re here.” Toby’s voice was brusque as he swept into his office with the dourness of a thunder cloud.

  “As summoned, sir.” She tried to keep the sarcasm out of her voice, but she could still hear the sharp edge of it anyway. Unfor
tunately, she couldn’t lay the blame for her foul mood or sleepless night at Jack’s door because nobody, especially Toby, was supposed to know about Jack.

  Toby sat in his big chair and leaned forward across his desk, steepling his fingers while glowering at her.

  “We’ve got something big,” he said, and Izzy supposed it was testament to how much she’d come to hate her job that she couldn’t have cared less. Right now, she was too busy being angry at Jack for not living up to his words.

  After a moment or two of her silence, Toby gave an exasperated grunt. “You should care about this. This could make us both famous.”

  Izzy toyed with the thought of telling him that anything that made him famous wasn’t something she wanted to be a part of, but he was still her boss and she was still the—mostly—dutiful employee.

  “Okay,” was all she said.

  “Jack Bennett was seen with a woman in Miami.”

  This got her attention. Izzy exhaled slowly—slowly enough that maybe Toby wouldn’t sense her sudden tension—and she tried to stay calm. He couldn’t possibly have meant her. Maybe the wig had done its job after all.

  “Who?”

  The frustration on Toby’s face made it clear he had no idea the woman he was after was in fact sitting in front of him. The bands of panic making it impossible to breathe normally loosened a little.

  “Nobody has a picture, only that she was a redhead and gorgeous. And he couldn’t keep his hands off her.”

  “I didn’t realize we were in the tabloid business.” Certainty that Toby didn’t know her secret made her a little punchy. Or maybe it was that everything Toby was saying was true. He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her, damn him. He’d said he loved her and all she’d gotten for saying it back were knots in her stomach from wondering if all he loved her for was luck.

  “We’re not,” Toby said testily. “But this is big news. Bennett’s the biggest thing in baseball right now and this is big for him. He’s not usually seen with women. Especially not this kind of woman.”

  Izzy couldn’t help the fantasy of slowly castrating Toby after he’d so casually dismissed Red as some kind of trashy groupie. So she’d worn cheap red hair. That didn’t mean she was cheap, and she hated him for saying it.

  Of course, if Jack had returned one of her hundred phone calls, Toby’s insinuation wouldn’t have bothered her. She would have been safe and secure in his love and his affection and his loyalty. But he’d made her question and now she couldn’t help but question everything.

  They’d waited long enough, but maybe she’d still sold herself too cheaply.

  Toby drummed his fingers on the desk. “It’s not a story if we don’t find out who she is. She’ll show up again, especially if my contacts were right.”

  “What did they say?” She almost didn’t ask because she wasn’t sure she wanted to know how she and Jack looked to outsiders, but the temptation was too great.

  “They were dancing. Laughing. Wrapped up each in other.”

  “Oh.” She supposed it made sense that they’d looked so happy together, because they’d been so happy together.

  “One person even texted me that Jack Bennett was in love. Which was ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous,” Izzy echoed, feeling sick to her stomach.

  Toby glared at her obvious disbelief, but he couldn’t possibly understand the real reason for her confusion. “Have you been sleeping through this year? Baseball is the most important thing in Jack Bennett’s life. He’d never lose his mind and compromise that.” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “And here I thought you’d made some study of the man. I can’t believe you missed the one thing that makes him tick.”

  Izzy opened her mouth to defend herself, but snapped it shut. It didn’t matter if Toby Palmer thought she did or not; she knew him.

  Didn’t she?

  “I know you. You wouldn’t share this with me unless you needed my help.”

  Toby leaned back in his chair and surveyed her speculatively. “You’re a girl. You know how they think.”

  Izzy rolled her eyes. “It’s not like we’re a separate species.”

  Ignoring her, Toby kept going. “She will show up again, if he does ‘love’ her. The wives talk. Pilar talks. Find out who she is.”

  “Pilar Richardson?” Izzy didn’t like playing stupid but it was kind of fun to bait Toby with inane questions, if only to see him seethe at her supposed idiocy.

  “Yes, Pilar Richardson,” Toby spat out through compressed lips. “What other Pilar would I be talking about? I know you’re friendly with her. Hector is close to Jack. One of them will know who she is, if she’s important.”

  Izzy hated it when Toby was right, even if he didn’t know it. Pilar might not know who Red was, but she definitely knew who Jack was in love with.

  “What are you going to do with the story if I bring her to you?” Hell would freeze over before it happened, but Izzy liked to know the score regardless.

  “Run it, of course.” Toby shot her another irritated glare. “Jesus, sometimes I wonder how I got talked into you.”

  “You didn’t have a choice,” Izzy smiled sweetly while mentally tearing into his jugular.

  “Right. No choice.”

  “Is that all?” Technically they hadn’t had their weekly meeting, but she could see she’d already pushed him to the edge. That was one way she’d learned to deal with him—annoying him so much that he’d begun to ditch their meetings.

  “Make sure Corey Rood is still on the hook. If this doesn’t pan out, I’ll run his story instead.”

  “Personally I don’t think one story has much to do with the other.” Except bad journalism, Izzy thought.

  “Did you forget already? I didn’t hire you to think.” Toby’s smile was almost as poisonously sweet as her own, and she could feel stress churn her stomach to shreds.

  Only three months left, she reminded herself. Then you can go back to Seattle and sanity.

  Izzy left Jack out because she was still pissed as hell, and because she’d suddenly remembered that of the many subjects they’d discussed over the six months they’d known each other, they’d never talked about what would happen when the season ended.

  As she left Toby’s office, she glanced down at her phone again, and saw nothing had come in while she’d been meeting with him.

  Fresh anger bloomed, and she focused on it because, if she was pissed, then at least she wasn’t hurt.

  Her anger lasted through nine innings, in which Jack struck out two more times, and walked once, only to get thrown out reaching at second base.

  She ditched the after-game media coverage, not even giving a shit that she’d get a nastygram from Toby later, and went home early. She didn’t even want to meet Jack across a press conference table in front of a bunch of strangers. Her normally even temper had completely evaporated in favor of a towering fury.

  Fury lasted another twelve hours or so, throughout another sleepless night, but by the time the sun began to rise over the crest of one of the west hills, Izzy couldn’t help but admit that she was tired of being angry. She just wanted an explanation. A reason. Even better, an apology.

  She wanted him tell her that she’d completely misunderstood Noah’s comment.

  Against her better judgment, she’d opened up her laptop, ignored Toby’s angry email about her absence from the post-game press conference, and logged onto ESPN to see what Jack had to say for himself.

  As the most famous player on the team by far, he’d been dragged into more and more press conferences lately. He’d told her that Hector had apologized, but had explained that the media-relations liaison had made it clear the press wanted to talk to him regardless of what he’d done during the game.

  He’d had another bad game, and of course, like the v
ultures they were, the reporters had picked up on his bad mood and had proceeded to pry.

  Unfortunately for them and their column inches, all the reporters had gotten out of Jack were a few clipped clichés.

  I need to play better for the team. We need to win games. No, not injured.

  Swearing under her breath, both at the situation and at him, Izzy had pushed the lid closed on her laptop and had looked out the window at the rising sun.

  He hadn’t given any answers. She wasn’t any closer to understanding why he wasn’t returning her calls. Or why he’d told her he loved her when he didn’t. She was only around as a convenience, as a lucky bauble to be sucked dry. And now that she was empty, he simply wasn’t interested.

  It was the first time she’d actually acknowledged to herself that he must have lied, and just like that, the remaining anger bubbling away insider her vanished, and in the fury’s absence, her heart began to hurt.

  Worse than that, she couldn’t seem to stop the tears that threatened. One by one they dripped down, and even as she tried to hate him for confusing her and leaving her and making her cry, she didn’t. She couldn’t. Mostly because she hadn’t lied that night in Miami; she loved him.

  Izzy had discovered a long time ago that love wasn’t infinite. There were only so many chances and opportunities one had to love and be loved in return. And suddenly, she wasn’t ready to let Jack go quite so easily. She deserved better and it was time she told him that.

  “I thought I might find you here.”

  Izzy was proud of how calm she sounded. Not angry, or hurt or even confused. Just matter of fact.

  The morning sun shone brightly over the winding river below, and if she hadn’t been so focused on the man sitting on the top edge of the wooden bench, his elbows resting on his propped-up knees, she might have noticed how spectacular the dawn was.