by Beth Bolden
The intensity of Jack’s moody expression didn’t fade, despite her flippant tone, and he’d become totally absorbed in mashing a twig with the toe of his shoe until all that remained was a handful of wooden bits. “I’d guess that all this is the reason why she got away with so much last year.”
“The reason?”
“His obsession, Iz.” His tone was impatient. Then he glanced up at her, as if curiosity had gotten the better of him. “What did he say when he showed you the picture?”
“Something about how beautiful she was. Mostly in comparison to how beautiful I’m not.” She’d not meant the last part to come out so wryly, and definitely hadn’t meant it to sound like a passive-aggressive plea for validation, but Jack seemed to understand her in an intuitive way that nobody ever had before. Instead of judgment, she got a wry chuckle.
“I bet he’d be pretty damn surprised if I told him that you’re far more beautiful than she ever was.”
Izzy barely refrained from rolling her eyes at his obviously preferential treatment. “Is this your treatise on inner beauty?”
“Hardly.” He paused, pulverizing more of the bark bits until they were nearly dust. “I mean it. You’re gorgeous, and every time Toby makes you question it, I want to slam his head against a wall.” Jack’s fists clenched together, as if he was actually imagining the play-by-play in his head and Izzy realized he really meant it. He believed every single word he was saying, and even though she’d been trying to steel herself against his charm and his ridiculously blue eyes, she felt herself fall just a little deeper. At some point, she knew she’d wake up one morning and she’d be so far gone there was no climbing out.
“Thank you,” she said, though the words didn’t seem adequate.
“You’re welcome,” he said, grinning.
Staring out at the orange-red sky, she couldn’t help but go back to what he’d initially said. “You said Toby let Tabitha get away with everything. What exactly did she do?”
Jack sighed and reached down to intertwine her fingers with his. “Last year was a bad year,” he finally said. “I don’t like talking about it. We lost a lot of games we should have won. I fought with my best friend.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Me, too. It sucked.”
She knew he wanted to leave it at that, but Izzy had gotten just enough tantalizing hints of a juicy story and she wanted details. She might have been growing sick of journalism, but that didn’t make her any less curious. “You and Noah fought over her,” she theorized, ignoring the spike of jealousy she felt at the thought of Jack and the beautiful, cool blonde from the photo.
“Not the way you think,” Jack admitted. “I was pretty much the only one who saw through her act. I disliked her almost immediately and things got worse from there.”
“You tried to talk sense into Noah,” she guessed, “but he wouldn’t listen.”
“He loved her and saw the good in her that nobody else could. But it didn’t change what she did—to him and to everyone else.”
Izzy was almost afraid to ask. “What did she do?”
“Played one man against another, tempting and teasing them until they didn’t even fucking know their own names. Married men, too. We were all friends before; a chill clubhouse. Not when she finished with us.”
It was a horrible story, and Izzy was left reeling at the implications. “She should have been fired.”
“And she wasn’t. Toby’s doing, I suppose.”
“Then what you said makes sense. She had him wrapped around her little finger, too. It’s…” Izzy paused, trying to decide which emotion was prevalent. “Sad,” she finally finished. “It’s sad.”
Jack just snorted. “It’s fucking pathetic, that’s what it is. And I told Foxy that, more than once. The last time I did it, he slammed me up against a wall, and well, let’s just say, I wasn’t sure we’d ever speak again after that.”
“I’m glad you did,” she said, because she’d seen him with Noah and she could tell just how much his friendship meant.
Jack stood up and brushed off his lap with jerky movements, clearly lost in another time and place. “Me, too.”
“I guess I can see why you were hesitant around me, at first,” she said, more to herself than to him. Listening to the story, it was kind of incredible that they’d even managed to be acquaintances, never mind friends. She was Tabitha’s replacement, and not only had he been kind when he hadn’t had to be, he’d given her his trust.
He turned back to her, a cocky smile replacing the moodiness she’d sensed just minutes earlier. “The first time I saw you, I wanted to hate you,” he admitted, “but you made that impossible.”
Izzy couldn’t help but smile at him. Reaching for his hands, she pulled him toward her, until he was nearly tucked into the space between her legs. She tugged his head down, pressing her lips to his in a kiss.
She tried to pour all her sincerity and conviction into the kiss; it wasn’t easy for her to say the words, but she hoped he’d get the message and invite her back to his house. It had been a few weeks since their first kiss, but even though they‘d spent most of their time in a hotel room, with no interruptions and no distractions, he’d yet to make a move past kissing. Once things got hot, he usually stopped them, pulling away from her. Tonight, she vowed, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She thought he might be hesitating because he wasn’t sure of her, but she wanted him to know unequivocally that she was sure of him.
Her hands slipped through his hair, tangling in the windblown strands, until she nearly cradled him in her palms. His hands rested on the back of the bench, gripping the wood on either side of her, and Izzy wanted to pull back and yell at him to touch her already, but he purposefully kept the kiss light and then ended it before she could even start to convince him.
“It’ll be dark soon,” he said casually as he straightened, as if that was any excuse for him to stop kissing her. As if she hadn’t just tried to lay out her feelings for him. As if she hadn’t just tried to seduce him.
Funny how she was able to ask him about Tabitha so easily, but now her words seemed to dry up in her mouth.
Finally, Izzy stood, but she could already feel hesitancy and insecurity blooming inside her. She almost wondered if he didn’t want her—but that was ridiculous. There’d been so many times at least that she’d caught him staring with all the requisite heat in his eyes. At first she’d thought he was just being a gentleman and not rushing her on principle, but they’d been on what amounted to dozens of dates, and at this point, she couldn’t understand his reticence.
They were halfway to his house when Jack pulled his phone out of his pocket and answered it with only a cursory glance at the screen. He tended to not answer calls when they were together, only return text messages, and Izzy tried to work through the sudden burst of annoyance by telling herself that nothing was happening anyway.
Of course, that didn’t improve her worsening mood. Izzy stared ahead, trying not to listen to Jack’s conversation and failing.
“Yeah, that’s great. Thanks for letting me know.” Jack ended the call and turned toward her, a sheepish smile on his face.
“Sorry, I had to take that. It was my agent. He saw some more numbers for the All Star voting and wanted to let me know that the second-base position is pretty much locked up.”
Suddenly, his preoccupation tonight made a lot more sense. “It’s you, isn’t it,” she stated, happiness and pride blooming inside of her. “You’re the starting second baseman.”
His cheeks reddened and he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“That’s wonderful,” Izzy said, but Jack just shrugged noncommittally.
“It’s alright,” he finally said. “It’s honestly not as big of a deal as everyone makes it. The fans l
ove who the fans love, no matter what the players do.”
“That’s not true,” Izzy disagreed. “Where did you end up in the voting last year? Have you ever even been to the All Star Game?”
Jack slid her a sideways grin. “You know I haven’t. It’s not like there’s a huge group of voting fans in Portland trying to get me in.”
“Then you got elected on your own merit,” Izzy insisted, walking over and tangling her fingers with his, giving them a reassuring squeeze. “You got elected because you’re a great player. Everyone who voted for you knows that.”
Jack glanced over at her, his blue eyes suddenly hard at the edges. “I hope it’s reassuring for them, then, because all they see is a few highlights on Sportscenter and they’re convinced. I want something that means something. Something real.”
She couldn’t help remembering the year before, when what he’d wanted had been so close, but ultimately so far. Jack Bennett was a simple man, with simple goals—be the best, and be recognized as the best—but he had a surprisingly complex streak that she couldn’t quite grasp. Izzy thought of the question she’d been rolling around in her head for a week now and almost asked him why he’d been pulling away from her, but before she could, he spoke up.
“But God knows, it’s something,” he said with a gusting sigh. “I suppose I shouldn’t whine about an honor that most people would kill for.”
“Whether you see it or not, it is an honor,” she reminded him.
“I guess I can think of it as the beginning,” he said with a wry smile. “The beginning of things to come.” It felt like only a week or two ago, Jack might have made an innuendo-laden crack about the best still to come, but of course, now he stayed silent, and Izzy didn’t quite have the guts to do it herself. So much of their relationship, she was beginning to realize, had been him pursuing her, and now that he’d stopped, she had no idea what the next move was. She’d never been good at the whole dating-game thing, but at this point, Izzy was convinced she’d hit a new personal low. All she wanted was to beg him to make it easy, but instead, he seemed content to let everything rest on her.
“I’m glad.” They emerged from the forested path, and the bright-blue paint of his house shone in the dusk light. Izzy glanced over at it and strengthened her resolve. She was a grown woman who knew what she wanted, even if she was terrible at communicating it.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” she asked in her most flirtatious tone, trying to communicate with the most seductive smile she could manage just how much she wanted him to.
Jack’s eyes grew serious and Izzy held her breath, all anticipation and apprehension, but he gave a slow shake of his head. Izzy supposed he looked regretful enough, but resentment was boiling away inside her anyway.
“I’ve got some early meetings tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe next weekend.”
It was bullshit, and they both knew it, but Izzy found that it didn’t hurt any less. She wanted to demand why, but fear of the truth stopped her. “Maybe,” she said, hating the distance in her own voice, but she couldn’t seem to help it anymore.
Suddenly, she realized she hadn’t asked him about the children’s hospital next week. Even though the thought filled her with nauseous dread, she’d promised Pilar she’d make the request and she couldn’t back out now.
“I saw Pilar today at the office. Sport Cares is planning a trip to the children’s hospital next week, and she was wondering if you could come.”
Jack narrowed his gaze. “Why wouldn’t Pilar ask me herself? Why have you do it?”
Belatedly, Izzy remembered what she hadn’t managed to confess earlier in the evening. “She didn’t want you to feel obligated to say yes, and you might if it was she who asked.”
“And I wouldn’t if it was you?”
It was one thing to omit a truth; it was entirely something else to lie to Jack’s face, and Izzy found she didn’t have the stomach for it at all. “I think she might know about us.”
The suspicion on Jack’s face was followed almost instantaneously by concern. For her. As if she didn’t already feel guilty enough for not confessing this fact up front. “How could she?”
Izzy shook her head. “I have no idea. She didn’t come out and say she knew, but why else have me ask you? She was tipping me off that she knows. You should have seen her face.”
“Pilar scares me,” Jack said frankly.
“I like her,” Izzy confessed. “She’s nice to me.” She didn’t add that she, too, found Pilar’s seemingly omniscient knowledge a little terrifying.
“We don’t have much choice but to trust her. Do you think she’ll tell Hector?”
Izzy just shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Besides, nobody cares what you do.” She would have to be dead to not resent that a little. “So you’ll go to the hospital?”
“Of course.” Jack paused. “I’ll have to check my schedule to make sure, but I don’t have much going on next week.”
He leaned in and pressed a surprisingly tender kiss to her cheek. “It’ll be okay, Iz. Don’t worry about it.” Izzy glanced up and thought she saw some of her own mixed feelings reflected in his face, but before she could think of what she would say, they were gone.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, and Izzy could only nod helplessly as he casually detached his hand from hers and walked away.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I just found out Ismael Butler is coming today. When you asked me to come, I didn’t expect this to be such a production,” Jack said, glancing up as Izzy entered the conference room that was the meeting place for the group touring Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. “I thought it was just going to be us.”
“I’m sorry,” Izzy said, dropping into a chair and plopping her purse down on the table, “I didn’t know Mr. Butler would be joining us until Pilar’s email this morning.”
“Great,” Jack grumbled. “This is the last time I let you talk me into a good deed.” He glanced over and saw her fighting against a snappy response back. He was pretty sure it was something along the lines of him owing her, which was true enough. He knew he’d confused her lately, but then he’d confused himself. Foxy had been giving him a hard time, pushing him to just let things progress more-or-less normally, but when he’d tried, he’d found he couldn’t when she still kept him at an arm’s length.
Izzy refused to even discuss the future, and he believed that had as much to do with her job as the fear of truly letting him in. He couldn’t let things get physical when she still had every intention of keeping her walls up.
“I’ve never met him,” she confessed. “What’s he like?”
“I’ve only met him once or twice myself. Think rich. Like more money than God.”
Izzy rolled her eyes. “Rich isn’t a personality trait.”
“When you have that much money, it is.”
“It’s not like you’re poor,” Izzy said wryly. “Maybe you should keep more of an open mind.”
He leaned back in the chair and glanced out the window. The hospital perched on one of Portland’s West Hills, and this conference room overlooked the river, the city’s buildings spreading out below them like a handful of scattered jewels. It was maybe a little cynical to look at this view, and the priceless modern art on the walls, and think it was all to put rich donors at ease, but he hadn’t always had money. Maybe it was ludicrous, but he liked to think that money hadn’t changed him all that much. The truth of the matter was that he’d been cast in stone the minute that little-league coach had told him he was too small, and even money couldn’t smooth over the chip on his shoulder that he wore like a badge of honor.
“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 sp
eculatively. “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.”
