The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers) (28 page)

“Money defines Butler. It’s who he is. All he cares about is making more. That’s why he wants to move the team to Vegas. Big money there.”

“Maybe he’ll surprise you,” Izzy said speculatively. “It’s hard to imagine someone who doesn’t care about baseball buying a baseball team.”

“Well, what you and I think doesn’t much matter. He’ll do what he wants, screw how the city or the team feels.”

“You don’t know that,” Izzy said, and he knew she was just trying to diffuse the situation before he confronted Ismael Butler on what was supposed to be a trip for these poor kids with cancer. It annoyed him that she thought he’d be that petty.

He took a deep breath and let it out. “Don’t worry, I won’t cause a scene or anything. This is for the kids. It’s not an arena to air out my grievances.”

Izzy glanced up at him, her silvery eyes cloudy with concern. “I never thought you’d do that.”

The door opened and Pilar and Hector walked in, followed by Ismael Butler.

“Hector, Pilar. Good to see you,” he said, shaking hands with his manager and leaning in to brush a kiss on Pilar’s cheek. He looked past her to Butler, who, as usual, couldn’t be bothered to break his stone-cold expression with a smile.

“Mr. Butler,” he said, “you as well.”

Ismael nodded his head, firmly but briefly. “And who is this lovely lady?” he asked, his gaze immediately locking onto Izzy, who was standing near the head of the conference table, her hands gripping the chair in front of her. Jack could see from her tremulous smile that she was nervous.

“This is Isabel Dalton, the local PSN reporter who’ll be doing the piece on this visit,” Pilar said, smoothly stepping in and giving Ismael one of her brightest, most reassuring smiles.

“A reporter?” Ismael’s voice dripped with distaste and Jack had to swallow any automatic defense of Izzy. Nobody was supposed to know they were anything but passing acquaintances. Still, it hurt to watch her take the insult and give the jerk a reassuring smile in return.

“That’s right,” she said brightly, “a reporter. A busy man like you doesn’t have much time for charity, I’m sure, so it’s best to take advantage when the inclination strikes.”

He shouldn’t have worried. She was a pro. Maybe not on a Tabitha-like level quite yet, but she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, which she acknowledged with a slightest tilt of her head in his direction. He knew her well enough to know it meant, “thanks, but I’ve got this.”

“Beautiful
and
charming,” Ismael said, his own glacial expression threatening to crack into an answering smile. “You have to understand, Ms. Dalton, my concern about media representation. I don’t want anybody to get the wrong idea about me.”

“No need to worry, Mr. Butler. I pride myself on fair-and-honest representation.”

Jack glanced toward Pilar, but he was too late. She’d already intervened. “A representative from the hospital will be here shortly to take us on a tour of the wing. Jack, I’m assuming you brought the usual.”

“The usual?” Izzy spoke up. “I’m sorry, I’ve never done this before.”

Jack waved to the box on the chair next to him. “Balls, posters, cards, a few gloves. Signed. To hand out to the kids.”

“Very sweet of you,” Izzy said, and her smile seemed to warm him up from the inside out.

The door opened again, and a black-haired woman with kind eyes, wearing a gray suit, walked in. “I’m Rhonda, your tour guide today. Welcome to Doernbecher’s.”

Their group was on the way to the first wing, Izzy speaking to Rhonda about the work Doernbecher’s did for the community, with Hector and Pilar chiming in, when Ismael brought up the one subject Jack didn’t want to discuss, with him or really, with anyone.

“Starting second baseman on the American League All Star team. Quite an honor,” Ismael said as they walked down the white, austere hallway.

Jack wanted to ignore him, but it would have been too pointed and he’d already promised Izzy that he wouldn’t make today about his grievances. Still, he could be polite and also keep it short. “Thank you.”

“Did your agent also mention anything about your jersey sales?”

Jack shook his head. “He knows better. I couldn’t care less about that sort of thing.”

“Ah,” Ismael said with a cold, wry smile. “That’s right. That’s not why Jack Bennett plays baseball. Not for the fans or the money or the endorsements. How could I have forgotten?”

He could only shrug.

“Then let me be the first to congratulate you,” Ismael added. “You’re selling fantastically well. Third in the American League, to be precise.”

Jack
didn’t
care about his jersey sales, but that was crazy enough to make even him do a double take. “That
is
well,” he conceded. “I didn’t know.”

But he’d suspected. He wanted to walk up to every single fan wearing his jersey and apologize, telling them the real reason they’d bought his jersey was a girl most of them didn’t even know. The truth was, it was a hell of a lot harder to enjoy his success when guilt kept bubbling up inside him.

He should have told Izzy that first night what she meant to his baseball because now he couldn’t. The luck hadn’t passed, as Foxy had predicted it would, and now there was no way she’d believe that he was with her for
her
. She’d hear the story and see a man manipulating so he could sell the third most jerseys in the American League.

“Your play has been phenomenal, even to a man like me who doesn’t care about that sort of thing. You could say we’re opposites, of a sort. I don’t care about baseball, and you don’t care about money. Normally, we wouldn’t get along very well,” Ismael said, “but in this particular scenario, our purposes seem to have aligned.”

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” Jack lied.

“I know Hector told you. The rumors have been flying for months, and I’m going to confirm them. They’re all true. I want to move the team to Las Vegas. Wait, let me rephrase, I was
going
to move the team to Las Vegas, but then Jack Bennett happened, with his extraordinary plays and his home runs and his jersey sales and his ticket sales. Now, I’m not so sure.” The casual, almost playful tone of Ismael’s voice slid down Jack’s spine and gave him chills.
God, Izzy.
The guilt swelled like the worst heartburn and he felt like he was holding onto her damn hair like a mothballed rabbit’s foot.

“The team should stay in Portland.”

“Then prove to me this isn’t a fluke. Hector’s a good-enough manager, I suppose, but you’re the real heart of this team. You can be the example, set the tone. I want a winner, because a winner makes money. Lots of money. If you get us into the playoffs, I’ll postpone the move indefinitely.”

Jack let out a shaky breath and glanced over at Ismael. “I can’t get over the way this team, and all the people who depend on it, are so trivial to you.”

“I didn’t buy the Pioneers because I cared about
baseball
,” Ismael sneered. “So the team and its employees are just that—
employees
. And I fire employees who don’t do their jobs. In this case, their job was to make me money. So far you’re the only one who’s done that, which is why you’re getting this chance.” Ismael pinned him with his dark stare. “So, don’t fuck it up.”

They reached the cancer-ward door, and Jack tried to pull himself together, but anger was surging like lava.

Izzy seemed to have a sixth sense for when he was about to fuck up, because she glanced back before they went through the door, and he was reminded of his earlier promise.

He let out a shaky breath and clenched his hand into a fist as they passed through the doorway. He wasn’t going to let Butler work him up, and pull his attention away from the ones actually deserved it—the kids in this ward.

Izzy watched as Jack crouched down beside a hospital bed and casually propped an elbow on the mattress next to the little boy who’d lost all his hair. The smile on his face and the light in his baby-blue eyes told the whole story—Jack was his hero, and it meant the world that he was here, just talking with him. Her hand clenched on her notepad and she hoped her skin hadn’t gone too pale.

From the first moment they’d walked into the ward, Izzy had been dying inside. The unfairness of losing her mother so young was something she’d buried so deep it rarely surfaced. She’d survived because she’d kept away from every reminder that might bring hard memories of death and failure to mind.

And this ward was the worst possible reminder that she’d lost her mother and then failed her.

“This is a wonderful thing,” Izzy said to Pilar, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. “A really wonderful thing.”

Pilar’s smile was bittersweet. “It’s never easy to see the kids like this, but I think the players do a lot of good.”

Hector was fitting a glove on the hand of a little girl who could barely lift herself upright, and Ismael was leaning down, talking earnestly to another boy sitting in a wheelchair with an IV following close behind him.

Izzy saw her mother’s face, framed in that crazy colorful cloth, bending low to her, whispering so intently that she had to be brave.

But she hadn’t been brave at all. She’d set out to make sure no daughter lost her mother again, and she’d only buckled under her own expectations. 

“I still can’t believe you brought Ismael Butler,” Izzy said, forcing a subject change before she lost control over the threatening tears. “After all those rumors.”

Shrugging, Pilar tossed another baseball toward Jack and he caught it deftly, scrawling his name across its surface before handing it to another little boy with hero worship in his eyes. “That’s exactly why he’s here. He needs to see how important these players are to this city. And it doesn’t hurt for him to see how popular Jack’s become.”

Izzy forced herself not to flush when Jack’s name came up. It wasn’t easy. Even being in the same room with him raised her internal temperature about twenty degrees.

“Very popular,” she managed. “All Star popular.”

“I thought he’d tell you,” Pilar said matter-of-factly.

“Oh.” Izzy paused, flustered, even though she’d already freaking
known
Pilar knew. “
Oh.
”

Izzy could see Pilar barely restraining an epic eye roll at her lame attempt to deflect. “Isabel,
chica
, you can barely look at him. And he
lights
up whenever you’re anywhere in the vicinity. And never mind what my sister saw in the women’s bathroom at the Met Grill in San Francisco.”

She couldn’t help it; her jaw just dropped. “That was your
sister
? Crap.”

Pilar’s smug little nod was all the confirmation Izzy needed.

Laughing, Pilar turned to her. “It’s not the end of the world. You care for him very much, yes?”

Izzy let her gaze drift to Jack, who was sitting on the corner of a bed, tossing a ball back and forth with its occupant, a boy of about ten, with the telltale bare head that spoke of chemotherapy. They were both laughing as Jack made a big show of bobbling the simple catch. The lump formed in her throat again.

“Of course I do,” she confessed. “I wouldn’t be involved with him if I didn’t.”

Pilar gave a sharp nod of approval. “He is a great favorite of my husband and me. If I thought for a moment you were using him, I wouldn’t stay silent. You’re a good girl, Izzy, and you’ll be good to him.”

Izzy glanced Jack’s direction again. “I hope so.” She paused, wondering if she could confide in Pilar. “He’s been odd lately, almost pushing me away,” she confessed.

“A man like Jack who’s been through the last year wouldn’t take his relationship with you lightly. He trusts you, but it doesn’t come naturally.”

She understood all too well, after hearing the story Jack had just told her about Tabitha’s betrayal.

“I should talk to him about it, I guess.”

“There is no guessing about it,” Pilar insisted. “Jack, he likes honesty. No games.”