The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers) (2 page)

“And because of that, we’re going to have a real talk about your health tomorrow,” Mitch said. “Izzy, make sure he’s free to talk to the board at noon.”

“Of course.” She’d already cleared his schedule first thing this morning, anticipating at least a week of downtime after his hospital stay. She should have known better. Charlie was too much like her. Or was she too much like Charlie? After six years together, it was sometimes difficult to tell.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Charlie. And Isabel, always a pleasure.” With one last possessive glance at her, Mitch was gone.

Charlie gave a heaving sigh and lay back in the bed. “What an asshole.”

“What the hell is going on?” she demanded.

“Oh, he’s going to try to force me out. Make me retire, I guess. He’s been wanting to get some of his guys into my position for a while now, and this is a great opportunity to convince the board that it’s best for everyone if I go quietly.”

It didn’t take Izzy too long to realize the implications of what he was saying.

“Can he do that?”

Charlie leveled a look at her. “You know better than to ask that question, kiddo.”

Well,
shit
.

Izzy plopped down on the chair. “At the risk of sounding horribly egotistical, what’s going to happen to me?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. But it wouldn’t surprise me if Mitch has something planned for you. He’s wanted to steal you from me from the very beginning.”

“Ew. Gross.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter. Just because you had a date last night…”

Izzy rolled her eyes. “Great. Of course, the whole office knows I went out with Graham.”

“What did I tell you? Knowledge is power. Graham works with most of our office in one capacity or another. You agree to go out with him, it’s a natural assumption that everyone will know.” Charlie paused and Izzy could see him shift from concerned mentor to something a little closer, a little more familial. “So, was it worth it? Did you have a good time? Or did I ruin it with all the hospital dramatics?”

“You didn’t ruin anything. It was already ruined.” Izzy hated the pained edge to her voice. She wanted to believe that Graham’s words hadn’t affected her, but deep inside, she still ached at the thought of them.

“So he didn’t see through your heartless workaholic act, then.”

Izzy shot Charlie a venomous look. “I’m not heartless.”

“Exactly.” He tucked his hands behind his head and smiled at her, doughy face mobile from too many years of blue-plate specials and his favorite apple fritters. A pang shot through her heart. She loved him so much. How was she going to lose him and her job in one swift power play and live through it?

Izzy hated playing the waiting game. She hunched over her laptop and examined the spreadsheet like it held the answers to the entire world. Or, in this case, their budget for the next quarter. Charlie had been in with Mitch and the board for the last hour and she was exhausted and freaked, her nerves twisted way past their breaking point.

How much longer can this take?

Maybe the length was a good sign. Maybe Charlie would manage to talk the board out of whatever Mitch had planned. Maybe Charlie wouldn’t have to resign himself to a life of shuffleboard and golf, and she wouldn’t have to revise her résumé after all.

The thought had just barely crossed her mind when her phone rang. She picked it up halfway through the first ring, breathless with anticipation.

“Isabel Dalton.”

“Iz, it’s Charlie. Mitch would like to talk to you.”

She could tell right away from the benign smoothness of his voice that everything had gone to shit. Taking a deep breath, she said the only thing she could.

“I’ll be right there.”

The boardroom was on the next floor of the large office building they rented.
The top floor; talk about ironic
, Izzy sneered as the elevator opened to the atrium. Only executives and board members had their offices on this floor, and the vast expanse of curved glass was a lot flashier than anything she’d seen on the lower levels.

She’d only been in the boardroom a handful of times in the past and it had always been empty. She’d been there to do menial tasks, like stock the water and leave out gold engraved pens when one of the other secretaries hadn’t had time to do it. Her chin twitched higher. She might have started out as the lowest rung of the totem pole, but she’d done good work here.
Great
work, she corrected. They were lucky to have her. After all, they could have hired someone without all the mental hang ups and only gotten forty hours a week out of them. Really, they’d gotten a bargain with her.

She pushed the heavy wood door open, and at the sight of suit after suit, dozens of eyes on her, pressing into her, Izzy’s mouth dried. Swallowing hard, she let the door swing shut behind her with a horribly final sounding click.

“Isabel, so glad you could join us.” Mitch rose, extending a hand toward her. She shook his hand almost automatically, trying not to cringe at his damp, sweaty palms and trying to ignore the possessive sweep of his gaze.

This was why she never could have been an actress. The idea of standing in front of even
twenty
people had her heart pounding and her mouth turning into the Sahara.

Charlie was standing off to the left, and she didn’t miss his swift smile of support. It felt like it was them against the world, but then, that wasn’t a new thing. Her chin lifted and she gave Mitch Hansen a challenging look.

“As you know, Charlie has some truly unfortunate health issues.” Mitch didn’t seem torn up about this at all, and though Izzy tended to give most people the benefit of the doubt, she really hated him in that moment. He didn’t give a shit about anything but his own damn agenda. “He needs to take some time, a
long
time, to address those. As of now, he’s going to part time. A number of his projects have been shifted off his plate, to other producers and other departments.”

Izzy couldn’t help the mute look of sympathy she sent Charlie. His job was practically his whole life. She didn’t even want to imagine what it would feel like to have it all ripped away.

But nothing could stop the inexorable progression of Mitch and his “ideas.”

“Which leaves you at a bit of a dead end,” Mitch said, with another covetous leer. “And it would be such a shame to waste you, Isabel. You’re one of the brightest rising stars at the network. So we’ve decided to present you with a new opportunity. A brilliant opportunity, I might add.”

The fearful anticipation was just about killing her. Izzy briefly wondered what Mitch would do if she, too, dropped to the floor with heart-attack symptoms.

“And what is this brilliant opportunity?”

Later, Izzy would wish she’d never even asked, that she’d just turned and walked away, blown up her career instead of staying and listening to whatever torture Mitch Hansen had devised for her.

“The Portland Pioneers. They lost their sideline reporter and we haven’t been able to fill the position. But now we can.”

It was like facing an oncoming eighteen wheeler with full lights. She was frozen, numb with shock and something that must have been fear and dread combined. She could only stand and watch as it ran her over.

“Sideline reporter?” Her disbelief was horribly blatant, and shock made it impossible to mask.

“I think you’ll be brilliant. You’re attractive and smart as a whip. And so charming.” Mitch’s oily voice rolled over her and she wanted to leap out the window into the Puget Sound and scrub until she was clean again.

“But I don’t have any experience,” she said bluntly. Desperately. After all, she was in the sports journalism business. For years she’d witnessed girls perfect themselves and their visual presentation in order to win these jobs. She was just a workaholic who wanted to be a documentary producer. Their breed and hers had exactly
nothing
in common.

“You have a degree in journalism. Did you not take any classes in broadcasting, Isabel?”

“Of course I did.” Her voice wavered but then she willed it to stay strong. She was a professional, and Mitch wasn’t going to get the best of her. Not today, not
any
day. “It was a requirement.” 

As it happened, she’d taken exactly
one
class, and during it, she’d done everything she could to stay behind the camera. In front of it, she’d been cardboard and stiff, jerky and unpleasant. A frozen bitch, one student had joked. Not exactly the attractive,
charming
reporter that Mitch clearly wanted.

“Well, then,” Mitch said, spreading his hands out in invitation. “Welcome to the Pioneers team, Isabel.”

The end of the meeting passed like a nightmare. The terms presented in the contract were favorable, but not exactly thrilling. She’d get some experience, she supposed, if it didn’t all end in disaster. But she was afraid disaster was exactly what she was courting.

All she wanted to do was climb on top of the vast conference table and scream, “I want to be
behind
the camera, not in front of it!” She didn’t because she was still a professional, and also because she was fairly certain nobody gave a shit what she was
actually
capable of. They only cared about the false front that Mitch Hansen had sold them on. They’d taken one quick look at the list of projects she and Charlie had completed and had assumed she’d be good at anything they threw at her.

It was a fallacy that Izzy wished she could believe, but she’d seen evidence to the contrary. If it would have changed Mitch Hansen’s mind, she would have unearthed her college transcript and pointed to the second and last B she’d received. The first B had been enough to dissuade her from a seven-year dream of being a doctor. The second had convinced her the last place she
ever
needed to be was in front of a camera, but the smug look Mitch gave her said it all.

You can scream, you can protest, you can beg, but I’ve got you now.

“Izzy, this is going to be great for you. I know it seems scary…”

She and Charlie had returned to their regular floor and their regular lives—at least for now—and the first thing he’d done was drag her into his office. Unlike her rickety cubicle, it had a door and he closed it, shuffling over to his chair and plopping down into it.

“Scary?” Her voice was so high pitched she was surprised she didn’t hear any glass shattering. “Scary doesn’t even begin to cover it! I’m not a reporter! I don’t do the camera, Charlie. I’m
horrible
at the camera! And baseball? The Pioneers? In
Portland
?”

“I think you’ll be great,” he said quietly. But even through his support, she could hear the note of doubt in his voice, and that was even more horrifying. Charlie wasn’t even sure she could do this.

“I don’t know anything about baseball,” Izzy spat out. “Like, literally
nothing
.”

“You’ve worked here for six years, how could you not know anything about baseball?”

She could only shrug. “It’s so dull. Endlessly long, with a lot of stupid rules and complicated statistics.”

“You’ll be fine. It’s not that complicated, actually. You’ll catch on in no time.”

Crossing her arms over her chest, Izzy could only glare. “I love how everyone thinks I’m some kind of Wonder Freaking Woman. Just because I’m good at my job doesn’t mean I can do
every other job
in the entire world
.”

Charlie leaned forward, the pressure of his elbows sending the desk into protesting creaks. “I meant it when I said this was going to be good for you. You need experience. You want to stay with this organization. This is your ticket to make your goals a reality.”

“I don’t understand.” On a normal day, she probably could have, but Mitch’s announcement had caused her brain to short circuit.

“You succeed in Portland, I bet you that you could have
any
job you wanted at the network. And Mitch will be the first one to hand it to you.”

“So, this is a test.”

Charlie shrugged. “It’s an opportunity.”