The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers) (16 page)

Toby gave her a pointed look, and she picked up the pad. The screen segued into her next segment, and that was easy enough. The green blouse she’d picked up made her look horribly sallow. She scribbled this note, as well as a note that the pop of color she’d utilized in the first interview had actually been effective.

Two hours later, as the last segment finished up, she stretched her legs out and glanced down at the notes she’d made. Or the nonsense she’d written down, more like.

“Let’s hear yours first,” Toby said, his expression implacable.

Great
. “Bright colors,” she stated hesitantly. “No pastels. They wash me out.”

Toby massaged his temples. He didn’t have to say a word, but she knew how he felt all the same. Frustrated with her inability to just
get
it. Sometimes she thought it might be easier if he’d just
yell
at her. Instead, he seemed content to just casually put her down with cutting phrases and perfectly timed eye rolls.

“Anything else?” he asked with exasperation.

“My hair was flat sometimes.”

“Okay, why don’t we just go over my suggestions. Lower-cut shirts. Push-up bras. Shorter skirts. Flashier clothes—you need to look fucking
expensive
. And I think you should consider going blonde.”

Izzy’s blood boiled.

“I’m not dying my hair blonde.” The rest of it—she wasn’t sure she’d look all that much better—but at least she’d be the version of what he thought feminine attractiveness was. It would eliminate what made her
her,
but they were only clothes, she told herself. Only her feathers. She could change those and keep what made her tick inside.

But she fucking drew the line at going blonde.

Toby just shrugged, as if it was the most minor of details. “Your predecessor was blonde; she seemed to do well in the ratings and was well liked. It’s not a bad idea.”

Izzy could see herself from a distance, almost as if she was having an out-of-body experience. She could see herself climbing so far into the black hole with what she wanted to say that she’d never be able to hoist herself back into Toby’s good graces. Before she could decide if that was even desirable, she saw her mouth open and she saw herself begin to speak.

“How do you even know they liked her because she was blonde?” she asked scornfully. “Did you ask them?”

Toby glared at her, but his voice was like ice. “This whole line of questioning is pointless, Dalton. This isn’t your decision.”

She almost laughed. Not
her
decision.

“
My
hair,
my
decision,” she snapped at him, suddenly and inexplicably unafraid of the consequences of arguing with him. She’d sat by and let him insult her for weeks now, never arguing with him once, even at the expense of salvaging her not-inconsiderable pride. Why the final straw seemed to be her hair color was mystifying but it was clear that she’d reached her breaking point.

“Excuse me,” Toby said, sneering down at her, his expression communicating just how little respect he actually had for her. He wanted to turn her into a
blonde
bimbo, she thought with outrage; she’d quit before she let him completely decimate her intelligence as well as her reputation. “Last time I checked, you are
my
employee, and therefore subject to
my
decisions.”

Izzy wavered but held herself firm and resolute, looking him straight in the eye.

“It’s not
my
fault,” he added, “that I was unfortunately stuck with a reporter who not only isn’t much to look at, but knows nothing about baseball and stumbles through even the simplest broadcast. You can’t do much of anything, Dalton, but you can do this. In fact, this is the
very
least you can do for me.”

Staring into Toby’s raging red face, Izzy had a sharp and unpleasant realization. His anger with her had nothing to do with
her
,
really. His stupid, insanely large ego was pricked at the idea that they’d sent him someone who couldn’t really do her job. In the end, it was all about him.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said quietly, the anger defusing out of her like a popped balloon, “but I do beg to differ. I might not be able to do this job to your satisfaction, but I can promise that turning me into a blonde bimbo isn’t going to make me suddenly better. It’s only going to make me worse.”

He looked straight at her, his gaze burning a hole right through her.

“I did ask for your input,” he finally admitted. “We’ll try the clothes first.”

Izzy wasn’t stupid enough to think that his concession was anything more than just a temporary reprieve. If he wanted her to go blonde, she’d end up doing it. Charlie had called this penance. And he’d been so right.

Toby slid an envelope across the desk. “There’s a pre-paid Visa card in here with five thousand dollars loaded on it. Make smart choices.”

She took the envelope and wished she didn’t feel like she’d just compromised every single one of her vaunted ideals—that inner beauty was more important and brains were better than looks—but Toby had all the power and didn’t mind using it. She hadn’t had any real choice, which made the whole thing suck even worse.

“I expect to see the new clothes on the road trip,” Toby said as she gathered her bag together. “So you better get moving.”

“Of course,” she said, but inside, she was cursing a blue streak. Her plane left at six tonight, which left her only a few hours to shop
and
pack. Toby was asking almost the impossible, and she almost said so, but then she shut her mouth. One of these days, he was going to set her on a task and she was actually going to perform it to his satisfaction. So far, she hadn’t been that close, but she had sheer determination on her side. That had to count for something, right?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A
s he clicked through the buttons on the television remote, Jack reminisced about how much he’d missed cable in hotels. And by missed he meant that he’d have been perfectly happy to send this particular TV right out the window in frustration.

“Ten HBO channels, including
three
in Spanish, but no ESPN?” he muttered to himself. “That’s fucking bullshit.”

“What was that?” Foxy asked from the prone position on his own bed. “The TV sucks?”

“As usual,” Jack griped. “I’d almost forgotten about my fondness for bad sitcom reruns and mysteriously disappearing channels.”

“What about basketball? You reach a moral compromise yet?”

“Nope. Basketball still remains the one sport I can’t watch without thinking about shoving a fork in my eye.”

“I’m telling you,” Noah said plaintively. “Let me take you to a Blazers game. Front-row seats. You can practically taste the sweat.”

“And yet I’m not frantic to go. I wonder why
that might be,” Jack replied sarcastically.

“Fine. You stay here and enjoy those
Two and a Half Men
reruns. I’m going to go downstairs to the bar and see if they have the game on.”

Noah shoved off the bed and was almost out of the door when Jack called out, “It’s not a game unless there’s skill involved.”

Foxy closed the door behind him and Jack leaned back on the bed, telling himself that this was fine. No, it was
great
. Spending time in hotel rooms was basically another definition for baseball, and while it wasn’t exactly his favorite occupation, Jack decided it was a decent trade-off with playing the game he loved.

So, it was stupid that he wanted Izzy here with him, her smile lighting up the dim room, and that without her, he felt lonelier than he had in years.

After all, how much time had he really spent with her? A few scattered conversations, three innings at a spring-training game, and a dinner. It wasn’t like he’d allowed himself to get used to her presence.

This is fine
, he told himself,
this is just the way I like it. Peace-and-fucking quiet.

It was a big fat lie and he knew it.

Jack mashed the remote and the channel flipped again, and he’d almost settled down to watch Charlie Sheen and John Cryer when his phone beeped with an incoming text message. He glanced down and was surprised to see it was from Izzy. He’d figured on giving her space after last night, but he couldn’t help but smile that she’d contacted him first. He opened the message and it was short and pretty damn cryptic:

Room number?

He typed in the number and hit send. Clicking the TV off, he lay back on the bed and wondered what it was that had sent Izzy to him.

The knock on his door was faster than he’d imagined it would be. Sliding off the bed, he made his way over to the door and jerked it open, only to suddenly recoil at the picture he was presented with.

Foxy had mentioned offhandedly the weather forecast earlier tonight, but Jack was pretty sure he’d meant it in correlation with the game tomorrow. Rain, he’d said, and they’d exchanged a commiserating grunt at the annoyance of a potentially delayed or canceled game. It seemed the rain had come sooner rather than later, because Izzy stood in the doorway, drenched from head to toe, rivulets of water snaking down her neck, leaving clumps of damp hair clinging to her skin. Her brows were furrowed, and her eyes burned, a fierce, clear gray touched with the barest hint of icy green.

“Don’t say a word,” she practically growled at him and he knew better than to disobey. Holding the door open, he simply observed as she marched into the hotel room. It was only then that he realized she was dragging two rolling suitcases behind her and that her laptop bag was slung over her shoulder.

“You do realize that you can’t stay here, right?”

The bags dropped like rocks from her hands to the floor.
Okay,
Jack thought,
maybe not the best choice of things to say
.

She didn’t turn, and he got a nice visual of wet and clingy fabric wrapped around her slender figure.
Just friends, my ass
, he thought before he could stop himself. “Would you like a towel?” he finally asked, suddenly aware that he was staring at her while she stood there, wet and cold and dripping onto the carpeting.

She turned and her eyes flashed the potential of very painful death. “A towel would be
fantastic,
” she bit off, and Jack took off for the bathroom before she could decide his life was her new favorite toy.

He emerged with the towel outstretched in front of him, like a peace offering. She gave it a look, and Jack was surprised it didn’t spontaneously burn to ash.

“Bad day?” he finally asked as she wiped her face dry.

“You have no fucking idea,” she muttered, her words muffled by the terry cloth.

“You should sit down and tell me about it. Want a drink?”

“They let you use the mini bar?” she asked almost incredulously, and he gave her an odd look.

She looked right back.

“We’re professional ballplayers,” he said slowly, by way of explanation. “We pretty much get to do whatever we want. Of course, Josh Hamilton can’t touch the mini bar, but then he’s Josh Hamilton…”

Confusion blossomed over her features.

“But you don’t know who he is,” he finished. “Josh Hamilton, that is. Between crushing home runs, he’s been to rehab like, I don’t know, half a dozen times.”

“Right.” Izzy glanced away, absorbed with using the towel to dry off any bit of wet skin that was exposed. For half a second, he almost let his testosterone get the better of him and suggested that she take off some of those wet clothes, but then he remembered that they were
just friends
. A particular phrase that was rapidly becoming one of his least favorites.

“What happened?” He sat down on Foxy’s bed, close to her, but not close enough that she’d think he was trying something.

She sighed, brushing damp hair out of her eyes, and for the first time since he’d opened the door Jack realized they were rimmed red. She’d been crying, and suddenly, he felt like the world’s biggest ass for imagining stripping off her wet clothes.

“Toby hates me,” she said shortly. “I spent two hours this morning discovering just how much.”

“I don’t understand.” And he really,
really
didn’t. The concept of hating Izzy Dalton was completely foreign to him. He’d always thought Toby Palmer was kind of a douche, but he’d never realized just how much that was true.

“I’m terrible. I’m ugly and dress badly and they want me to dye my hair blonde,” she said, and while he’d never thought of her as someone who gave up, tonight the defeat in her voice was hard to miss. Her voice cracked at the end, and Jack wanted to look away. He wasn’t great with emotions, and especially with the kind of strong emotions that led to crying. Plus, if he knew her at all, he knew she wasn’t typically a crier. Toby must have really gotten to her.

“You’re
not
ugly,” he said, looking her straight in the eye as a tear trickled out, dampening her cheek again. “And I don’t know what he’s thinking, asking you to dye your hair. You’re beautiful, just like you are.”

Nothing. Another tear joined the first.

So Jack tried again. “How can Toby say you’re terrible when he
hired
you to do this job?”

This brought on a fresh onslaught of tears and Jack was beginning to think he was totally out of his element. He didn’t know
what
to say, only that he needed to say something, because it was ripping him up to see her like this.

But she actually saved him by speaking first. “Toby never wanted to hire me,” she said, and the shame in her voice caused his fists to clench. He wanted to punch whoever had made this strong, brilliant, insanely confident woman doubt her own worth.

“You said that last night,” he said, slowly beginning to realize her excuses last night hadn’t really been excuses at all. She was truly afraid to start something with him and dig herself in deeper.

Izzy nodded. “I wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms in Portland. One of the programming managers sent me down here to test me.”

“And the job is your test?”

“More like Toby’s punishment,” Izzy gave a watery laugh that made it obvious she didn’t find any of this exactly funny. “He was perfectly clear today that he’s suffering a lot more than I am. We actually spent
two
hours going over what I’ve worn on air and how every single molecule of it was pretty much
wrong
.”

He thought about defending her, but the only thing he could remember her wearing was that god-awful pink skirt from the night before. And Jack Bennett wasn’t a guy who hedged around the truth—he told you like it was, even if you didn’t like it.

“So, he gave you some pointers,” he finally said. “That could be a good thing.”

“It wasn’t
entirely
bad,” she conceded. “Except for the blonde part. And the dress-like-a-skank part. Oh, and the here’s-a-bunch-of-money-to-go-fix-the-problem
part.” She gave a frustrated grunt and rubbed the towel over her wet hair.

Jack hesitated. “And did you fix it?”

He’d been pretty sure it was the wrong thing to say; he’d been right. Izzy gave him a look, and he shrugged in apology. “I guess not?”