The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers) (32 page)

But he could also see the pleasure in her eyes at Foxy’s awe and how she stood a little straighter. It took a concerted effort to not cuss out Toby Palmer for making the most beautiful woman he knew self conscious, but he wasn’t going to let the jerk ruin his night.

“Thank you,” Izzy said. “And thank you for…everything.” She smiled then, the freedom lighting up her face.

“It suits you. I knew it would.”

“Stop flirting with my girlfriend.” Jack stepped up and gloried in the flush that grew across Izzy’s cheeks. He squeezed her fingers to make sure that she knew he’d enjoyed saying it as much as she’d enjoyed hearing it.

Even Noah chuckled, and the glance that passed between them was all the gratitude that Jack needed to share. “You’re breaking my heart,” Foxy proclaimed dramatically, clutching his chest. “Beautiful
and
heartless.”

Izzy positively sparkled at that, and Jack didn’t think she’d ever looked more stunning, confidence brimming from every single pore. He would bring her here every single night if he could, if only to see her glow like this.

“Not entirely heartless,” she smirked, pouring herself a generous glass of vodka and adding a splash of juice and a squeeze of lime from the open bottles littering the surface of the glass-topped table. “I’ve got plenty of heart where it counts.” She sipped her drink and gave him a look from under her lashes that spoke volumes about what else she had that counted.

“Clever, too. I can see why she’s your lucky charm,” Noah said with only the slightest slur to his words. “Whiskey?”

Jack’s heart dropped in a pulpy, bruised mass on the floor and he hoped that the music, pounding away, had been loud enough that Izzy had missed Noah’s comment, but he could see her eyes narrow with interest.

“Whiskey’s fine,” Jack said, reaching for the glass as Noah poured. “Let’s sit.” Shamelessly resting his hand on the perfect curve of her ass, he guided her to one of the low couches, upholstered in the same violet tones as the lights pulsing over their heads.

“Lucky charm?” Izzy asked, her voice deceptively light. “I hadn’t heard that one before.”

Jack tried to keep his shrug as casual as possible but panic was pumping through his veins. “Superstitions. Unfortunately you can’t avoid them in baseball.”

“Perhaps.” Izzy ran her tongue along the rim of her glass and nearly had him panting at the glimmer in her eyes. “But it’s not baseball in general that we’re talking about, it’s you.”

He let his hand fall to the expanse of bare thigh she’d exposed in her skirt and felt her skin tremble under his touch. “I’m only a baseball player, sweetheart. Simple, straightforward.”

“But not superstitious?” she asked archly, sliding just far enough toward him that his hand was suddenly perilously close to making her moan.

“Can you blame me for thinking I’m lucky? I’m here, aren’t I?” He paused, lowering his voice until he was sure that only she could hear, even over the heavy pulse of the music. “And I’ve got you.”

The smoldering look she sent him could have set him on fire before, but now he knew what her skin tasted like, what she felt like, the brush of her hair on his chest. And suddenly, he had to believe it would all be okay.
She’ll forget you ever said it.

“Children, let’s try not to get arrested for indecent exposure.” Noah’s voice broke into the spell that had held them both, and Jack bit his tongue, and wished the jeans he’d worn didn’t feel so tight right now.

“Nobody invited you,” Izzy laughed and tossed the bright-red hair, a temptress in every single way.

Jack gulped down whiskey and tried not to choke at the burning in his throat. He almost never drank anything stronger than beer, but he wasn’t going to embarrass himself in front of the players that had just started to trickle into the cabana. These were his teammates, the very best of the American League, and while he freely admitted the All Star voting system was bullshit, it meant everything that they all looked at him with respect.

Of course, then they all glanced over to the woman at his side, and he saw envy, too.

“Red, darling, someday you’re going to beg me,” Noah said, coming over with the whole bunch of them in tow.

“Red?” she asked with an arched brow.

Foxy just shrugged. “I hate to be cliché, but if the shoe fits. . .”

Jack could only glance helplessly down her long, smooth legs, to the shiny black stilettos she wore. She was suddenly so incandescent he was afraid he’d be burned if he touched her.

Izzy turned and gave him a little sulky pout, and he knew he’d be paying for that one later. In every way, good
and
bad. “I want to dance,” she said, draining the rest of her drink in one long swallow. “Shall we?”

The rest of his whiskey burned down his throat, and Jack let her pull him up from the couch. If she hadn’t figured out that he’d do pretty much anything she wanted, whenever she wanted to, she hadn’t been paying attention.

But the long, speculative glance she gave him from beneath her lashes told him she
had
, and that tonight she was about to cash in on every single chip she’d collected.

Objectively, Izzy knew she wasn’t drunk. At least not very.
Maybe mildly tipsy
, she thought,
but not drunk.

The last time she’d been drunk she’d been in college, and that noxious, horrifying incident had nothing in common with the dreamy elation spiraling through her veins now. She felt hot and relaxed; calm but electrified. And everything seemed to have taken on a rose-tinted hue of perfection that even imperfect sights like Jack’s fairly awful dancing and Noah’s knowing smirks couldn’t dislodge.

And really, that was fine by her. She’d never really gotten to enjoy Jack before, free and clear from all the fear and anxiety that clawed at her, and
God
, she really loved him.

Once she’d realized it, she couldn’t stop thinking it. All the time. Especially when he was gazing at her like he was now, all soulful eyes and hands that never seemed to leave her body.

The music pumped around them, heady and loud and nothing at all like she’d ever chose to listen to, but that didn’t matter right now. Right now, she couldn’t get enough of the sinfully sexy beat that seemed to thump with her heartbeat. She tilted her head back and let the lights and music and Jack wash over her, and resolutely ignored the fact that tomorrow morning all this was probably going to come to a shattering end because nothing had actually changed.

But the reality was dim enough that even it couldn’t stop her from leaning forward and wrapping her arms around Jack as the music slowed to a sensual bump and grind. In the end it was so simple, so ridiculously easy. It was only four little words, whispered from her lips to his ear, and her heart couldn’t help but glory at the way his fingertips tightened on her skin as she spoke them.

“I love you, too.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“S
o, not the greatest All Star appearance, ever.” Noah leaned on the bench built in front of their row of lockers and didn’t even glance in Jack’s direction as he let the bomb fall casually into the quiet of the clubhouse.

Jack didn’t know what to say. Or even how to conceptualize what had happened two days ago. Maybe he could have blamed it on the one-and-a-half whiskeys he’d had at the club while dancing with Izzy, but while totally drunk on passion and love and all those over-hyped feelings romance novels always proclaimed were possible, he’d never felt more sober.

He’d fallen asleep in the arms of the woman he loved, who loved him back, the result being probably the best sleep of his entire life. He’d woken up with the sun shining into the bedroom and the sky a perfectly clear blue—so blue that he’d walked into the ballpark and nearly ached with the blueness of it. He’d reached a professional
and
personal pinnacle at pretty much precisely the same time. His luck, which had held out through so much of the crap that the beginning of the season had doled out, was primed for a performance unlike any other.

Definitely one of a kind,
he thought ruefully.
Unforgettable, actually.
And it had been.

Unforgettably bad.

He’d never expected to play more than a few innings, which was par for the course in All Star Games, because there were so many good players and only so many spots, but when he’d gotten subbed for Ian Kinsler of the Texas Rangers in the bottom of the fifth, he’d collapsed onto the bench in the American League dugout, numb to everything but his disbelief.

Playing badly was one thing. He’d played
historically
bad.

The first time he’d struck out, it had been on exactly three pitches, all textbook fastballs that on any other day, he was sure he’d have been able to crank out of the ballpark. The starting National League pitcher was great at hugging the corners of the strike zone with his blazing fastball, but Jack had never found him particularly challenging and it went to show that up until two days ago, he’d hit .300 off the guy. But on the day when it all counted so much more, when his professional pride
was at stake, he let not one, not two
,
but
three
pitches whizz past his bat.

It was never good to strike out looking. It was kind of embarrassing to do it on three pitches. It was kind of like a car wreck to do it in the All Star Game, with every single one of your peers watching.

“That grounder looked like it had some real nasty spin on it,” Davey Rodriguez added softly, and Jack knew he shouldn’t be mad because he knew Davey wouldn’t hurt a fly and he was only trying to make the wretched slightly more palatable, but his pity twisted the knife inside him.

“The grounder didn’t have shit on it,” he spit out under his breath.

And it hadn’t. It had been a routine grounder, like thousands of others he’d taken during his career at shortstop and second base. It was a grounder practically designed for the scoop and snap motion he’d made as natural as breathing. And he’d fucking
bobbled
it.

It was almost too embarrassing to contemplate, even now. Jack knew he wouldn’t ever be brilliant at that plate—objectively he knew he’d been overachieving during the first half of the season—but he prided himself as a great fielder. One year, he’d broken his ankle, and instead of letting his fielding instincts go soft and limp, he’d taken groundballs from his knees in the outfield for months.

Other infielders talked about him with hushed tones. He had
four
Golden Gloves, for Christ’s sake. One for every year in the big show.

Of course, things had only gotten worse from there. His second strikeout had come on a prolonged at-bat, ten pitches long by the time he’d struck out, this time by feebly swinging at a pitch that had sunk wildly almost the instant it had reached the plate.

It was a testament to how badly the game went that Jack felt he could almost look back on that at-bat and be
almost
glad that he hadn’t gone quietly into the night. At least he’d tried.

“Did you talk to Izzy?” Noah clearly didn’t understand the mood he was in. The mood where Jack didn’t want to hear anybody’s voice, including his own.

He also didn’t want to admit that he hadn’t talked to her. He’d dodged all the press in the locker room, and had headed back to the room to indulge in a little old-fashioned mood enhancing, only to find out she’d already left for the airport to catch her flight. She’d left about a hundred texts and voicemails on his phone since then, but he hadn’t felt up to talking—or explaining. He’d just wanted to be left alone to contemplate the inevitable realization: somehow his luck had turned sour and he didn’t know how to fix it.

“No.”

“You should. There’s…” Jack didn’t even let Noah finish the rest of his sentence. He savagely shoved the rest of his shirt into his pants, grabbed his glove from his locker, and turned and walked out of the clubhouse. Let them talk about him if they wanted—he wasn’t going to listen to Foxy or anybody else speculate.

Everything about the last four months and his crazy lucky streak had foretold that the game should have been one of the greatest of his life. Instead, it had been his worst. And he wasn’t sure what he was going to do about it.

Izzy believed that she was a pretty reasonable person. So, as she tried not to squirm in the chair opposite Toby’s desk, she reminded herself that she
was
reasonable, and that same reasonableness was the only thing standing in the way of her being really fucking pissed off at Jack.

He’s having a rough time
, she thought as she surreptitiously glanced at her phone for the hundredth time in the last six hours;
that’s the only reason he won’t talk to you.

She wouldn’t let herself consider the implication that had hit her somewhere between Nashville and Topeka, right as she’d gotten her beverage service.

She’d just accepted the glass of Diet Coke from the flight attendant when her and Jack’s playful flirtation of the night before came roaring back.

Now she only wanted to forget the nasty thought in the back of her mind that somehow
she
was connected to Jack’s horrific All Star performance.

She never would have even
dreamed
of connecting the two if Noah hadn’t brought up the tiny little factoid that Jack had never mentioned: apparently, he considered her his lucky charm.

Then he’d done the unthinkable and hadn’t answered any of her many phone calls or responded to her frantic texts. Sometime in the middle of the night, 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., the fear and tension had finally coalesced into a hard anger that had burned the rest of the night and bled into today.

He’d said he
loved
her. Had he even meant it? Or had he only meant it as a convenience, some pretty words to keep around the person who he believed guaranteed success on the field?

Izzy found herself rapidly losing grip on her reasonableness.