The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers) Read online

  “What about Jack Bennett?” she asked Toby, who was in the middle of a conversation with himself about a hundred or so players she’d never even heard of.

  “Sweetheart,” Toby smiled down at her with more than a hint of patronizing authority, “are you sure that’s the kind of mountain you want to climb your first time?”

  He had a point. She had almost no experience with interviews—at least the kind she was expected to conduct—and even less experience being on air. But she was Izzy Dalton. She’d tackled a dozen of these mountains when she’d worked for Charlie, and she’d never once failed.

  “Absolutely.”

  “You’re insane.” Toby said it so matter-of-factly, it was like he was already measuring her for the straightjacket.

  “Insane to want to interview the most interesting player on the team?”

  “He’s not interesting, he’s a pain in the ass,” Toby said. “You’re not getting Bennett. Instead, I’ll be nice and give you Foxy.”

  “Foxy?”

  “Noah Fox. The center fielder.” Izzy glanced over to the middle of the field and wasn’t surprised to see that sex-on-a-stick was playing the position.

  “Appropriate,” she murmured.

  “Even you can probably handle him. At least without embarrassing us too much.”

  Almost a compliment, Izzy thought, trying to be pleased that he’d broken out of his nearly solid pattern of insults.

  “You should be happy. I’m going to let you flirt with the cute one.”

  “Right.” She had a horrible vision of gorgeous, charming Noah Fox, and herself—cold, stiff, unyielding. If she couldn’t flirt with him, it was impossible to hope she’d be able to flirt with anyone.

  “Now let’s take you to meet the rest of your broadcast team.”

  Bart Bailey and Jed Gonzalez, the other half of the Pioneers’ broadcast team, were a likable combination of good-ole-boy humor and razor-sharp baseball knowledge. She stood there as they tossed stats and players and trivia back and forth between them, offering their opinion of the coming season, not only for the Pioneers but for half a dozen other random teams. The entire conversation left Izzy overwhelmed and panicked.

  Well, more panicked than before. Truthfully, panic was beginning to be more of a comfortable emotion than Izzy liked.

  Toby left her in the little media trailer, “to watch the workout”, he said, and to become more familiar with the players she’d be covering. Despairing, Izzy wanted to tell him it was completely useless, but after he left and she slumped down in the single rickety folding chair in front of the card table that doubled as a desk, she diligently pulled out the note cards she’d written out on the plane trip to Florida.

  The words and diagrams swam before her, and Izzy felt another droplet of sweat crawling down her neck. There was one crappy fan in the trailer, and all it seemed to do was sluggishly push the hot air around the stuffy interior. Giving up on actually absorbing any of the info on the cards, she fanned them in front of her face, hoping she wouldn’t sweat all over her yellow linen shift.

  She’d just gingerly leaned back in the chair, waving the cards insistently in front of her face, glorying in the slight breeze, when the trailer door swung open. Izzy hadn’t realized just how precarious she’d been balanced, because the surprise caused her to move just the wrong way, and instead of popping back upright, the chair fell backwards. Her arms and legs flew, and Izzy had only a split second to think that pretty much nothing had gone right so far today when the chair came to an abrupt stop and suddenly, she was jerked upright again.

  Up until that moment, she hadn’t contemplated who it was who had interrupted her search for cooler temperatures, but then he stepped around the chair and into her line of sight.

  “Whoops,” Jack Bennett smiled at her. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Izzy self consciously pulled down her skirt, which was showing about two inches more of her upper thigh than was entirely necessary. “Thanks,” she said breathlessly, adrenaline still pounding in her veins from her near tumble to the floor. From a distance, he’d seemed incredibly ordinary, but up close, she supposed he wasn’t bad looking. His eyes in particular were the most intense blue she’d ever seen, and for a split second, she almost wanted to smile back.

  He leaned back against the wall of the trailer, and even though he was undeniably small for a ballplayer, he still seemed too big for the tiny trailer. Or maybe that was just the wide grin that enveloped his features.

  He was amused, she realized, and normally, she might have been amused, too, but she was kind of annoyed that he’d caught her in such an unprofessional situation.

  “Usually, it takes a few more minutes for me to get a woman on the floor.”

  That did it, Izzy thought, he was almost definitely flirting with her, and that was just not going to fly. At least she’d been mentally prepared to deal with Noah Fox, but Jack Bennett was totally throwing her for a loop.

  “Excuse me?” she asked in her frostiest tone. Say it again, she wanted to beg him, say it again and see just how fast I hit you with a sexual-harassment lawsuit.

  He just shrugged, as if he hadn’t said anything at all. “I’d watch out for stray bats and fly balls, if I were you. You seem pretty clumsy.”

  Izzy shot to her feet, giving him her best Ice Queen glare. But it seemed like Jack Bennett had been practically nursed on those, and he just smirked back at her.

  It had been a really rotten week. She was hot enough to melt right through the floor, jet lagged, and was seriously considering the possibility that her boss hated her. Things were looking down, not up, and here was this jerk off laughing at her. Her usually buried temper flared.

  “Thanks again for your assistance and the advice,” she said stiffly. As much as she wanted to insult him right back—were you a water buffalo in a former life?—she knew that Toby probably wouldn’t be very happy about that. It took an effort, but she clamped her lips together, glared, and prayed that he’d see the pointlessness of continuing this and just leave.

  Instead, he bent down and picked up the note cards she’d dropped when he’d startled her. Izzy tasted blood as she bit the inside of her lip and tried to ignore him. It was a battle she was rapidly losing.

  He flipped through them, a thoughtful expression on his mobile face, and then he glanced up at her.

  “You need a definition of a stolen base? Of an RBI? You don’t know what those are?”

  Izzy wanted to lie and tell his nosy ass that the cards were merely a precaution that she was using to hone her already spectacular baseball knowledge, but she was too anal retentive to not prepare completely and the notes on the cards left her no wiggle room. He knew she didn’t know what a stolen base was or an RBI. That much was completely obvious.

  “I do now,” she forced out through uncooperative lips. “Thanks to those.”

  “These are shit,” he said, tossing them onto the card table with a disgusted curl of his upper lip. “You’re never going to learn anything this way.”

  “It’s been working pretty well so far. Let’s see. You’re Jack Bennett,” she sneered, desperately trying to remember exactly what had been written on his card. “Five eight on a good day, 200 pounds if you’ve had a steak dinner the night before. Second baseman for the Portland Pioneers. Bats right. Likes to hit inside fastballs. Finished second in the 2010 Rookie of the Year voting. Won the Pioneers batting title in 2012. Oh, and I can’t forget. A complete jerk.”

  Izzy had told herself during the entire recital that she’d refrain and not add the last part, but his insufferable expression had been too much and she’d capitulated in the end. Besides, whatever chastising lecture Toby gave her over the entire thing was bound to be worth Jack Bennett’s currently slack-jawed expression.

  And then, completely devastating every single exp
ectation she had of him, he laughed. Long and hard and free, the joyful sound bubbling up and echoing off the walls of the tiny trailer.

  “You know, you’re not at all what I expected.”

  She pulled herself up until her back was ramrod straight. “I suppose that’s supposed to be compliment,” she said frostily.

  He smiled again, and even as overwhelmed and angry as she felt right now, she still wanted to smile back. What was with this guy? She was usually a lot tougher to crack than this. She remembered how completely Graham had accepted the Ice Queen act as fact, and couldn’t understand why Jack didn’t do the same.

  “It was, actually,” he grinned. “More than you know. And I think you’re one of those girls that knows a lot.”

  “I usually do,” she agreed, and before she could stop it, she finally smiled back. And to make matters so much worse, she found herself extending her hand toward him. “I’m Izzy Dalton.”

  Jack shook it, and she got a fleeting impression of a rough, calloused hand. A capable hand. “Jack Bennett. What’s Izzy short for?”

  Grimacing, she rolled her eyes. “Isabel.”

  “That’s pretty,” he insisted.

  His frank stare was nerve wracking, plain and simple. She wasn’t used to men seeing beneath the efficient and capable skin she wore like armor.

  “So you’re the new reporter,” he stated without giving her a chance to recover from his last remark. She’d done quite a bit of research on him, but nothing she’d read had quite prepared her for his tenacity.

  “Yes.”

  “I stopped by to give Toby the quote he wanted, but you can let him know I’ll call him instead.”

  “Of course.” The worst was that Jack’s charm had seemingly stolen away her own self possession. She didn’t know what to say to him. The words stuck in her throat, and she could only swallow the lump away.

  He gave her one last devastatingly slow grin. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around, then. Bye, Isabel.”

  “Oh mama, this salsa makes me want a mai tai,” Jack sang off-key to the pounding beat echoing through the clubhouse. “Davey, baby, when we get back to Portland, we gotta get you the locker next to the music.”

  David Rodriguez, starting third baseman, nodded with an ear-splitting grin on his face. English might not have been Davey’s strongest language, but Jack knew he spoke all the languages that counted—he had a rocket for an arm and could send a ball to the stratosphere with a single swing of his bat.

  “You’re mildly ridiculous,” Noah snorted from his other side. “You know that, right?”

  “Oh, I hope I’m a little more ridiculous than that,” Jack tossed over his shoulder as he swung a towel over his head to the beat of the music. “And don’t tell me you’re not enjoying this.”

  “I think you shouldn’t encourage Davey,” Noah retorted. “If you’re lucky, he’ll slip to the press that you’re not really as scary as they think.”

  “Intimidation, not fear,” Jack said jauntily, as he gave a mock salute to Davey, who was still chuckling at his antics. Humor was obviously another language they had in common.

  “That’s not what Toby said to me yesterday,” Noah observed, pulling his jeans up. “In fact, he told me the new girl requested you for her first interview, but he wouldn’t let her have you. Something about you fucking with his reporters too much.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. If anyone was screwing with Toby’s reporters, it wasn’t him. “You should have told him that you beat me to the punch on Tabby.”

  “Quiet,” Noah hissed. “Nobody’s supposed to know about that.”

  “Right. Except somehow, everyone knows. I wonder how that happened.”

  “It was unconfirmed,” Noah said. “The last thing I need is a confirmation from my best friend.”

  “Don’t worry. It sounds like Toby’s not going to let me within fifteen feet of any of his reporters.” Never mind that he’d been way closer than fifteen feet to Izzy Dalton yesterday, and he couldn’t get the vision of her hesitant smile out of his head.

  “That doesn’t bother you?” Noah asked.

  Jack shrugged and pulled a T-shirt over his head, his biceps yelping in protest. The first week of spring training always sucked, no matter how many reps he pulled in Arizona. He’d come to acknowledge it as a fact of life. Of his life, anyway.

  “Even though I’m pretty used to your insanity, sometimes, I still don’t get it,” Foxy sighed.

  “We leave each other alone. It’s a situation that works well enough.” Jack slung his bag over his shoulder and tried not to grimace at the ache in his back. He needed a good hour in the whirlpool if he was going to have a dream of taking a ground ball tomorrow.

  He might not be the most talented second baseman in the game, but damn it, he was going to be the most well-prepared, and part of that preparation was in how careful he was with the raw material he had to work with.

  “You should come to the interview with me,” Noah said, as he, too, pulled his bag over his shoulder. Tall, broad shouldered and well muscled despite drinking and partying and the shenanigans that Jack couldn’t get away with, Noah was the natural baseball player that Jack wasn’t ever going to be.

  “No thanks, man. I like my distance.” That much was true, which didn’t explain at all his bizarre attraction to the prickly Ms. Dalton.

  They stepped together into the sluggish Florida heat. Jack turned toward the parking lot but before he could move in that direction, Noah’s voice made him look back.

  “I know you think I was an idiot. God knows, it was fucking stupid to do what I did with Tabitha. But I was happy, too, happy in a way you can’t be if you keep your distance.”

  Jack froze, absorbing Foxy’s words. He forced himself to go through the mechanics of shrugging nonchalantly, as if what he’d said was like anything else that passed between them. They had a good friendship—sometimes it was even great. He enjoyed bullshitting and talking game with Foxy. Their repartee was solid. If one of them was ever traded away from the Pioneers, he’d miss him. But despite all of Noah’s lighthearted attempts to push girls toward him, this was the first time Jack had felt something. If he was being honest with himself, he’d started feeling it the moment he’d opened the door to the media trailer and she’d practically fallen into his lap, a sweaty, ungainly heap that completely belied her grace when upright.

  He’d thought her eyes were going to be dark—maybe dark brown like the cool hair that had spilled over his arm—but instead they were a grayish-green. Stormy, almost. He hadn’t liked the electrical shock those eyes had given them when they’d met his.

  And if she thought he’d missed the way her skirt rode up on her slim legs or the way she’d flushed in embarrassment, and then heat, the creamy tone of her skin going pink, she was insane. He couldn’t help but notice.

  Maybe that was why he couldn’t tell Foxy about what had happened between them. Because if he told, Jack wasn’t entirely certain he was going to be able to make light of it enough to get Noah off his back.

  “Think about it,” Noah said, his voice lightening up considerably, as if he was asking where they were going to grab a beer.

  Jack wanted to feel the lightness in Noah’s voice, but suddenly, all he could think about was Noah’s bruised heart over Tabby, and that frozen exterior of Izzy’s that begged to be melted.

  Noah would definitely take her off-guard. He was all oozing charm and ingratiating favor. He’d have her eating out of his hand within minutes.

  If he was sane, Jack thought, he wouldn’t even think about it. He would continue walking to his car and drive home to the house he was renting for spring training. He’d get in his big tub with the wondrous jets and put on a Bones marathon. But something was brewing that he couldn’t quite his put his finger on. If he was thinking at all, he’d say
it was jealousy, but he tried to avoid thinking for precisely that reason.

  “Just a sec,” he heard himself say. “How do you think they’d feel about a two-for-one special?”

  As it turned out, Toby wasn’t all that thrilled with the idea. As he watched Noah try to placate Toby, on the edge of the rickety interview set they’d “built” next to the media trailer, Jack realized that for the first time since he’d become a professional baseball player, he wanted someone to pay attention to him that wasn’t a manager or a scout or an opposing pitcher. He could see Noah working overtime with Toby, pulling out all his charm, and finally throwing up his hands and gesturing in the direction of the parking lot.

  Jack had known Foxy long enough to know what that meant, and for the second time in the three years they’d known each other—and for the second time today—he wondered if there wasn’t something to their friendship besides a bag of sunflower seeds and a bucket to spit them into.

  Noah turned from Toby and walked toward Jack, shaking his head with a devious smirk on his face. “That was not easy, man,” Noah said with relish. “But at the same time, I think that’s the most fun I’ve had in months. Toby can be a real tool.”

  “We can just forget it…” Jack stammered out, wondering if he’d worn his heart on his sleeve just a little too obviously.

  “Oh, no,” Noah chortled good naturedly. “You could actually like this girl. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You’re not going anywhere.”

  Jack opened his mouth and snapped it closed before he could come up with even one smart-ass comment. Noah was right. He supposed being intrigued by the one girl he should probably stay away from was just the next chapter in the wild-and-crazy life of Jack Bennett. Not once had he ever done things the easy way.

  “So, Toby made it pretty damn clear he doesn’t want you in this interview, but he’s willing to make an exception to make sure I get in front of her. No doubt he’s going to give her some last-minute instructions to pretty much ignore you altogether,” Noah added with a devious smirk.