The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers) (22 page)

“Oh,” she barely managed when she realized he was waiting for her to give the okay to open the door. No doubt one of the rules she’d repeated to herself until she was blue in the face. Not that she couldn’t remember a single one of them. The heat between them had burned them all to ash. “Oh, of course. Let him in.”

Izzy watched as Jack opened the door and as they held a quick conference, and when Jack turned back to her, she knew what he was going to say.

“The guys are going out,” he said and she gripped the edge of the chair harder.

“Of course,” she repeated, all too aware of how stupidly repetitive she sounded. Her tongue felt heavy and foreign in her mouth. “Of course. I’m just going to take a hot bath and go to bed. It’s late and I’m exhausted.”

“Right,” he said, and she thought she saw a flicker of disappointment in his eyes. It was insane, but she thought he might have wanted her to beg him to stay. But they both knew what would happen if he stayed. 

Nothing good.

Or maybe everything good
, that annoyingly persistent, annoyingly right voice inside her mind chimed in.

“Have fun,” she added, encouragingly, but it sounded fake and wrong to her and probably to him, too.

“Yeah.” He sounded like he was being marched to his death, but Izzy knew she couldn’t keep doing this. She was only thankful that they’d been interrupted before she stepped over the line. Even worse, she’d drawn the damn thing herself, and spent the last three weeks fortifying it, and tonight, she’d forgotten it even existed.

Obviously, she was going to have to work on her self control. Okay, maybe she was going to have to work
more
on her self control.

“Seriously,” she repeated in the brightest voice she could manage. “Go on. And thank you for the pizza.”

“Early game tomorrow then we get to fly home,” he said, hope blooming in his face again and she knew he thought that things would change when they were home, but she couldn’t afford to let them. They were still friends.
Only
friends.

“It’ll be good to be home,” she said and she hated the finality in her own voice.

“See you tomorrow,” he said, and then he was gone.

Only then did Izzy let herself slump against the desk. Wrapping her arms around herself, she wondered what the hell she was going to do about the mess she’d just created.

With a rhythmic thump, the baseball left the pitching machine at ninety-four miles per hour.

One of Jack’s first coaches had told him that facing down anything hurling objects at you at almost one hundred miles per hour was tantamount to insanity and to defend yourself you had to rely purely on instinct.

It was a good thing his instinct was still fairly intact because otherwise his nose would have been broken just about now. Instead, Jack swung the bat in an arc and as the ball connected with a satisfying crack, he felt the jolt of the impact all the way to the marrow of his bones.

He’d been at it for hours, and he still couldn’t get Izzy’s eyes out of his head. He’d once thought they reminded him of a dawn sky, and last night, it had been fucking cloudy. Hot and steamy and electric. Like a summer storm. He still didn’t know how he’d walked away from her.

“A little worked up this morning?” Noah leaned over the fence of the batting cage Jack was taking swings in. “Hector told me you’d been down here for
hours
. I think he’s a little worried you’re going manic.”

“I’m not manic,” Jack growled at his best friend.

“Tell that to the machine,” Foxy said. Hanging unspoken in the air between them was that
Izzy
was both the reason why he’d played amazingly and also why he was down here, putting in yet another batting practice.

Jack rolled his eyes.

“Touchy, touchy this morning,” Foxy laughed, pushing away from the fencing as if Jack was going to come after him with fists cocked. Objectively, Jack knew it was just one of Foxy’s ridiculous acts, a joke that had unfortunate roots in reality. After all, he
had
gone after Noah once, and though they never talked about it, it was still there, hanging between them, like the smell of rank gym socks in the clubhouse. It felt like
d
éjà vu, standing here with him, arguing about another female reporter.

“If you hadn’t showed up when you did,” Jack finally said. “
Then
made me leave her.”

“Bullshit,” Noah smirked, looking way too satisfied with himself. “If you wanted to stay, you could have.”

“It’s not that simple. I’ve cried off a bunch of times in the last three weeks. Everyone was getting suspicious.” But she hadn’t asked him to stay, and though he was doing everything to convince her they weren’t just friends, the call was still hers to make. As it turned out, Izzy Dalton was a little more stubborn than Tabitha King had been.

Jack readjusted his batting gloves and stared down the machine again, willing it to throw something he couldn’t handle. Just once. If only to prove Izzy hadn’t turned his hands to gold.

“You being just friends with this woman isn’t healthy,” Foxy finally said. “You need to get some fucking perspective.”

“What are you, a psychologist all of a sudden? Jesus.”

“Tell her you’re done being just friends. If she turns you down again, then you can stop wasting your time.”

If only it were that easy
, Jack thought as his bat connected with another ball.

“But we
are
friends,” he finally said. “I can’t just stop being her friend because I want more. That wouldn’t be fair to either of us.”

“Meanwhile, you’re about to die of sexual frustration,” Noah pointed out.

“Nobody ever died from a little frustration,” Jack said with a lot more authority than he actually felt. He’d lain awake much of the night, imagining despite all his good intentions what it would have been like if he hadn’t pulled away. Her lips soft on his. His fingers threading through her dark, silky hair. The slender figure that he’d been practically
dying
to put his hands on. He’d been a saint for the last three weeks but he wasn’t about to push and risk losing her completely. He knew he could take it because Izzy deserved his patience. She was worth that and a lot more.

“Here I’d thought you’d forgotten about me completely,” Charlie teased.

“It was three weeks of hell,” Izzy said and she was
mostly
being honest. Of course, she wasn’t about to confess that without a certain second baseman it would have been so much worse.

“That bad, huh?”

Izzy leaned back in her desk chair, so glad to be home. It had been heaven sleeping in her own bed last night—so wonderful that she’d almost forgotten to care that Jack wasn’t sharing it.

Almost.

“Honestly? It was horrible. I don’t know how people do this for a living, for years on end,” she confessed.

“If you were so bored, you could have called,” Charlie pointed out and she flushed guiltily, hating that she was about to lie to him. But she couldn’t exactly tell him the truth either.

Charlie would never betray her to Mitch, but even his disappointment was more than she could handle.

“I was busy,” she improvised. Badly.

It didn’t even take Charlie five seconds to see right through her terrible excuse. “Bullshit,” he barked. “Tell me what’s going on, Iz.”

She just cringed. “It’s nothing, really. Just having one of the guys teach me a little about baseball.” Even put that way, as nonchalantly harmless as she could make it, it sounded bad.

“One of the guys? You mean one of the
players.”
Charlie’s voice rose and disapproval practically dripped from it. “Izzy, you know better.”

“I know, I do. But honestly, he’s just a friend.
Only
a friend.”

“You think the job you have now is bad, but if you compromise your journalistic integrity, Mitch will fire you so fast you won’t even get to blink. And then he’ll make sure you never work in the field again.”

Charlie didn’t have to say that all it had taken was a heart attack that wasn’t even a heart attack, and he’d been pushed out of his job. She’d had to watch and had promised herself then that she’d never give Mitch the leverage to do the same to her. And here she was, practically gifting it to him.

“I’ve been careful. Nobody knows. Nobody
will
know.”

“All it takes is one guy, bragging to one of his friends in the locker room and suddenly, everyone knows.”

Izzy’s throat closed and she had to blink back tears. The disappointment in Charlie’s voice was worse than anything she’d ever imagined. “He wouldn’t do that. And there’s nothing to tell.”

Charlie just sighed and she could feel the gust through the phone, imagined him standing before her, disapproval radiating out of every pore of his body. He’d always been tough on her—fair, but tough—and when she’d complained once he’d said that potential was a terrible thing to waste.

He didn’t have to tell her that she was in danger of wasting hers now. So she changed the subject.

“How’s your diet going?”

He only groaned. “Worse than your road trip. Way worse.”

“And the exercise?”

“I still can’t talk about it. The wounds are too fresh.”

“But you are doing it, right? The doctor…”

“The doctor was clear enough, Isabel,” Charlie interrupted her. “I remember what he said. And I’m trying.”

The joy she’d felt at being home only ten minutes before had totally evaporated and in its stead was worry. Worry that she and Jack would get caught, worry that Charlie hadn’t changed his lifestyle after all.

“Good, good,” she said with a optimism she didn’t feel. She should have known that without her bullying him, Charlie would only return to old habits. And without the job to keep him occupied and busy, he’d probably been filling his empty days with comfort food. Her heart clenched and she wanted to tell him that she couldn’t bear losing him, too, but she just couldn’t. Even the possibility hurt too much. “Just take care of yourself.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

From: Charlie Walker

To: Isabel Dalton

Date: May 17, 2012 @ 11:43 AM

Subject: re: SF

You’ll like San Francisco. Probably even more because you’re only there three days.

I want you to remember Toby doesn’t own you, even though by now I know he’s made it sound like he does. Try to remember that he’s just a man trying to do a job. That might help put some of the shit he says into perspective. And if he tells you that you need to dye your hair again, let him know he’ll be answering to me. You’d look ridiculous as a blonde.

I know I was harsh on you before about your friend. I didn’t mean to be. I just want you to remember that nobody cares what he does, and everyone cares what you do. You can’t be too careful.

Normally, I’d also say that your personal business is your own, and nobody else’s, but Mitch has a way of making that a lie. Chin up.

Charlie

I
zzy read Charlie’s email for what felt like the hundredth time, and tried to see the silver lining. He’d said he’d been too harsh, but also that if she and Jack were caught, she’d be the only one paying the price. It was a horrible situation, and so she’d tried to find some distance the last week, barely answering Jack’s texts, ignoring his dinner invitations, and generally trying to cure him—and herself—of this crazy crush.