The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers) (29 page)

“Except baseball.”

Pilar smiled. “Except baseball.”

“You did good today,” Izzy said, jingling her keys in her hands as she and Jack paused at the front steps of the hospital. “Thank you for coming.”

“I need to do more of this.” Jack turned on the step to look at her, a smile on his face, his happiness at that moment completely transparent. She couldn’t help but wish that she could take as much uncomplicated joy in their relationship as he did, but she was stuck in a rut. She wasn’t sure he was the right person to pull her out of it, but she couldn’t wait and see any longer.

“I can suggest it to Pilar,” Izzy said, then paused, hesitating, wondering if she could really do this.

But it wasn’t only that she could, it was more like she had to. Without it, she might lose Jack, and that was something that
couldn’t
happen. “Let’s go get a cup of coffee.”

Jack smiled at her, his heart practically radiating out of his eyes. “I don’t drink coffee.”

She fidgeted with her keys, suddenly, ridiculously afraid of his rejection. “A beer, then. Is there somewhere really private we can go?”

“I know just the place.”

Jack took her to the bar he’d been going to since he was drafted by the Pioneers—long enough that nobody who frequented the place gave two shits that sometimes Jack Bennett liked to grab a beer after a long day.

Izzy settled into the booth in the back with a slight glance of distaste at all the brown vinyl—an identical look to the one Foxy wore every time Jack insisted they meet here.

“It’s not much,” he apologized, “but you said private. And I’ve been coming here long enough that I can fly under the radar.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I appreciate you being so understanding, considering the circumstances.”

Her formal, stilted tone and the uncertainty in her eyes finally clued him into the fact that the circumstances were much more serious than he’d thought. He was just about to ask what was wrong when she started talking.

“I’m an orphan,” she abruptly confessed, so matter-of-factly that one would have to know Izzy Dalton well to realize how difficult this was for her to say. “My mother died when I was eleven. Cancer. And my dad when I was twenty-one, in a car accident.”

She wouldn’t look at him. Instead she was staring at the brown vinyl-covered wood that passed as a table, picking at the peeling edge. He knew how hard this was for her, but some selfish, needy part of him wanted her to be able to look him in the eyes as she said it. He reached for her hand and tucked it into his, cradling it the way he wished she would let him cradle her.

Izzy Dalton wasn’t the cradling kind—but that didn’t stop him from trying. Today, though, she let him keep her hand, and as he held it, feeling the pulse fluttering underneath his fingertips, she told him the rest of her sad story.

“After Mom, it was just my dad and I. And I was so lonely and I missed her so much. Too much. I didn’t want to get out of bed, or eat or even breathe, really. So one day, my dad sat down next to me and told me that she’d always be looking after me.”

Jack knew from the crack in Izzy’s voice that this particular phrase was one she’d thought about for years—hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times. That maybe this phrase was the key to her entire being, and he wanted nothing more than to finally unlock her secrets.

“She’d always be looking after me, he said.” The sadness in her voice nearly tore him apart. “I was only eleven, Jack,” she said, and for the first time she looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “Eleven years old. I thought it meant she was going to be watching me, and that if I did good, I could still make her proud. I think he just said it because he wanted me to get out of bed and start being a kid again.”

He couldn’t keep quiet. He’d tried, because he knew how hard this was for her to say, but he couldn’t stop himself. “She’d be proud of you,” he insisted. “She couldn’t help it.”

The only acknowledgment was a tiny dip of her head and then she’d stared at the vinyl tabletop again.

“I decided I’d be a doctor,” she said. “A research doctor. And I’d cure cancer.” She laughed then, low and bitter, and he had to resist another urge to comfort her before she was done.

“What happened?”

“I flunked Freshman Bio. I’d taken advanced-track science in high school, and I’d thought I’d prepared enough that I’d be fine. I never imagined that I’d do badly.” Her voice trembled. “But I did. No matter how much I studied, I couldn’t
get
it. So I had to drop the class and move out of the pre-med program.”

Jack couldn’t even imagine if he’d committed himself to baseball then found out he couldn’t play well enough. Simply, he’d have been destroyed. The fact that she was here, sitting in front of him, outwardly normal and well adjusted spoke to how strong she was.

“It was a bad winter,” she admitted, “then I came home for holiday break, and because I couldn’t even listen to my own thoughts anymore, I sat down and watched TV with my dad. He had ESPN on, and they were playing a documentary on Bo Jackson.”

He was pretty certain he’d seen that documentary, one of those long nights on the road and he wasn’t even ashamed of the handful of tears he’d cried.

“Bo Jackson was my father’s hero. And when I saw what had happened to him and how he’d never given up or felt sorry for himself, I couldn’t either.”

“So you decided to become a journalist.”

Izzy sighed, and she gently pulled her hands away, crossing the arms across her chest. “Yes, and no. I got a journalism degree but I never intended to be a sideline reporter. I wanted to produce documentaries. But getting hired by ESPN, who’s pretty much the only name for sports documentaries today, is nearly impossible for someone with no experience. So I went to work for the Pacific Northwest Sports Group. I was the assistant for one of their producers. I worked there for a few years, and was on the fast track to becoming a producer myself, but then my boss had a heart attack.”

“Why would that have anything to do with you?”

“Normally, it wouldn’t. But there’s this manager. A real dick. And he’s in charge of programming, unfortunately. Even worse, he’s been trying to wrest power away from Charlie forever, and he basically forced him to retire and sent me down to Portland so he wouldn’t have to deal with me.” The shadowed look in her eyes told the silent story: if this jerk off caught wind of her becoming involved with a player, he’d have the ammunition he’d need to get rid of her entirely.

“So, you see,” Izzy said, spreading her arms in mute plea, “it’s not just a job for me, Jack. I already failed my mom. I’m doing this for my dad. Right before he died, I showed him the documentary I was working on in college. He was so proud, so certain that this was what I was meant to do with my life. And I was sure of it, too, sure enough that the guilt I’d felt flunking Biology, I was finally able to let it go.”

Izzy twisted her hands together, white knuckles prominent even on her pale skin. “I know this is a lot. And I wouldn’t have even told you, but…I can’t mess this up. Not now.”

Jack knew love was supposed to be a unselfish emotion, and he was supposed to give the person he loved everything they wanted, even at a horrible cost to himself. But even though their entire friendship, never mind any relationship they might have, jeopardized the emotional security Izzy had found after her devastating losses, Jack resented the hell out of the fact that he should give her up and let her go on her own way. He was good for her, he
knew
he was, deep down, in the marrow of his bones.

“What do you want from me?” he asked.

For the first time since they’d sat down, she looked straight at him and the quiet confidence in her eyes was real, not the fake bolstered-up version she showed to the rest of the world. “I can’t pick you, Jack, you know that. This job is too important. But I can’t
not
pick you, either. For the first time in…” She paused, searching her memory, “in probably forever, I want both. My job and a life, too, but we have to be patient. We can’t just leap before we look.”

While he hadn’t exactly been afraid she’d reject him, the certainty and emotion in her words reassured Jack. He was secure. She wasn’t going to leave him. She wanted him as much as he wanted her.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said, wishing he could reach over and hold her hand again.

“I think I might have fixed your problem,” Foxy announced as Jack let him into the house.

“My problem?” Jack asked, detouring into the kitchen to grab two beers, eying the plastic bag his best friend had in his hand. “I’m not sure that’s the solution to anything.”

“No, no, this is great,” Noah insisted. “You’ll love this, and so will Izzy. You said you wanted to invite her to the All Star Game—now you can.”

“I’m listening,” he said, because while they’d agreed on compromise and patience, compromise was hard when you didn’t know what to compromise on.

Losing Izzy wasn’t an option. Not her. Not now. Jack scrubbed a hand over his face and fought against the inclination to actually
apologize
to Foxy for being so damn hard on him last year, when he’d gone through his own relationship issues. It didn’t matter that Izzy was nothing like Tabitha. He felt bad for the guy because Noah was living, walking proof of what happened when you actually
lost
the girl. Jack didn’t want to know what that guy felt like. Ever.

Noah whipped a mass of cherry-red hair from the plastic bag and Jack tried to keep his jaw in place.

“What the fuck is that?”

“This,” Noah said, with way too much glee in his voice, “is the solution to your problem.” He righted the hair and it fell into a much more recognizable form.

“You want Izzy to wear a wig.” Jack was kind of astonished at how calm he sounded. He paused. “Specifically,
that
wig.”

Noah glanced down at the offensive object. “Honestly, I thought about blonde, and well, with everything, decided you might not take too well to that, so I decided red wasn’t a bad idea. She’s got the right coloring for it. And the best part: nobody will recognize her.”

That much was certainly
true. The red hair dangling from Foxy’s fingertips wasn’t a naturally occurring color.

“You actually think Izzy will go for this?” Jack asked.

Noah just shrugged. “I think Izzy would do just about anything you asked her that wouldn’t jeopardize her career. And I mean that in the best way,” he finished lamely, before sending an apologetic look Jack’s way.

It wasn’t Noah’s fault, Jack reminded himself, he was only speaking the truth. And this undoubtedly would make her much harder to recognize. In a dark Miami restaurant, nobody would guess that the beautiful, flamboyant redhead was also the quirky brunette from Portland.

Seeing Jack’s hesitation, Noah added, “Do you have any better ideas?”

He didn’t. Not really. Foxy’s solution was potentially problematic, but he knew it had a better chance of success than doing nothing.

“No,” Jack said decisively, plucking the wig from Noah’s hand. “Thanks. I think we’ll give it a whirl.”

“You should come out with me, after the Home Run Derby,” Noah said, switching gears as easily as breathing. “A bunch of us are going to this great new club in South Beach.”

When Jack had envisioned asking Izzy to go with him to Miami and the All Star Game, he’d thought of a quiet, romantic evening. Dinner out by the water, candles, champagne. He’d planned to really pile on the romance to convince her to give dating a go. Now he thought back to his plan and realized the red wig wouldn’t exactly work in any of the scenarios he’d pictured.

“Sure. Count us in.”

Noah didn’t bother trying to hide his shock. “You’re going to ask her to go?”

Jack nodded. “I hadn’t before only because I knew she’d say no. She won’t like this idea, but I think I can convince her.” He hesitated. “And why are you even going? Any reason to come to Miami?”