The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers) (10 page)

BOOK: The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers)
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“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 someone 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.

“You okay?” he couldn’t help but ask, even as he was smarting from how quickly she’d extricated herself from his touch.

“I’m fine,” she retorted, as if it was Jack Bennett and not some unexpected dirt that had caused her to stumble.

“Good. The ground on the field can be uncertain.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Doesn’t that make your job a lot more difficult?”

He’d been mostly lying for her benefit. The ground wasn’t uncertain for him at all; he practically had every dirt clod and blade of grass categorized and filed away in his brain for when he might need to deal with them in the middle of a game. But he couldn’t exactly come clean now. “The dirt in the infield can be tricky,” he improvised. “Especially when the ball hits it. Hard to say how it’ll react when someone hits a grounder.”

“How do you know how to play the ball, then?” She seemed genuinely interested. She was either a better actress than he’d given her credit for, or he was a lot more fascinating than he’d given
himself
credit for.

“Practice. Experience. And sometimes, it’s just luck,” he admitted.

“I thought you didn’t believe in luck,” she accused him playfully.

He remembered pretty much every word she’d ever said to him; Jack supposed he couldn’t exactly hold it against her if she did the same when it came to him.

“Superstitions are crap,” he corrected. “But luck, that’s different. Sometimes you’re lucky and you’re in the right position to play the ball. Sometimes you’re not.”

She nodded with understanding, though he wasn’t sure he’d even made much sense. Izzy tended to fry most of his brain cells just with her presence. He wasn’t certain if it was because she was too pretty or too smart. Or maybe it was the lethal combination of both.

“I’d better be getting back to Toby,” she said, and it almost hurt that she seemed so eager to say it. Toby was a world-class prick; she’d rather be talking to that instead of him?

“Any quotes?” she asked with a curve of her lips.

“Best day of the year,” he said with a knowing grin of his own. “All the potential, none of the disappointment.”

She shot him a reprimanding look.

“Think about that,” he smirked, and added, “then think about having dinner with me.”

Her smile turned chilly. “I already told you, Jack. I can’t.”

“I didn’t ask,” he corrected. “I just said think about it.”

“All the potential, none of the disappointment?”

Jack grinned. “Exactly.”

It was the top of the ninth, and the Pioneers were only one out away from winning the first game of the year. Obviously, with 161 games left to play, winning today didn’t mean much in the bigger picture, but Jack liked the optimistic breeze that was currently blowing through Pioneer Park.

The game had been a gritty pitcher’s battle, with the score only 1-0, and even though there was still an out left to get, Jack felt his tense neck muscles begin to relax a little—but he didn’t relax anything else. He still had to be vigilant, still had to make sure the Pioneers closed this game and actually got the win. He’d seen too many leads blown in the ninth to truly rest easy. Jack shifted his feet in the dirt, and squinted at the batter next to home plate.

The
de facto
closer for the Pioneers this year was theoretically good, if not a little untested. From deep in the heart of Texas, Monroe Gilmore was a young twenty one, and hadn’t done enough pitching to convince anyone that he was the right answer during the ninth inning. But, as Foxy had pointed out the other night, the rest of the relief staff had proved over the last two years they were definitely the wrong answer. Better the unknown, Jack guessed, but having a wild-card guy up on the mound didn’t exactly relieve the tense ache in his back as Gilmore wound up to throw.

The pitch didn’t have enough curve, or enough dip or as far as Jack could figure, enough of
anything
, because it floated right down the middle of the plate, and the batter just smiled and punched a shot out toward the left-field fence. Jack watched in mute horror as the ball hit the fence and ricocheted around the left corner of the park before finally getting picked up and thrown to third base.

Jack lifted his face toward the sky, readjusted his cap and swore under his breath. A
triple
. It could have been worse—a game-tying home run—but it also could have been a hell of a lot
better
.

He heard Foxy behind him, shouting the two outs to the other fielders, even though they both knew perfectly well where they were in the inning. The message was really for Gilmore, whose movements at the back of the mound had become jerky and erratic.

A few years ago, Jack might have felt a pang of sympathy for the pressure Gilmore was under, but this was the majors—this was his
future
. If Gilmore couldn’t take the pressure cooker that passed for the closing role, then the team needed to know.

Jack dropped into his pre-pitch crouch, glove extended in front of him and didn’t blink as Gilmore wound up and pitched to the fourth batter of the inning.

Hit it to me
, he found himself chanting internally,
hit it right to me.

Strike one. Maybe Gilmore wasn’t as thrown as he looked. Curving wickedly, the pitch had just grazed the lower inside corner of the strike zone.

A bead of sweat trickled down his back, despite the compression shirt Jack wore under his uniform, and he readjusted his stance, his glove, even the angle of his head, making sure his positioning was as flawless as he could make it.

BOOK: The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers)
2.92Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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