by Beth Bolden
But she’d seen the edge of his worn baseball cap in the dim morning glow, and everything in her had ached with love.
He glanced over at her, and a long sigh gusted out of him. “I’m sorry,” he offered lamely. “I’m…”
Somehow, she knew he was searching for the words that could possibly express why he’d been such a dick, but there weren’t any. Some things were too big to explain. She could see from the ravages of another sleepless night on his face that he hadn’t exactly been out celebrating his crap behavior.
“I should have called,” he finally finished. “I should have. I know that.”
She walked around to the front of the bench and gazed at him. If he was going to tell her it was all a lie, he would do it to her face. He would look her in the eye and say it. She deserved nothing less.
“You should have.” It was amazing how calm her voice was when there was so much bubbling up inside—love and hate and fear and longing and agony. She’d never truly understood what it meant to love, and while it hurt like a bitch, it was real.
He looked up at her, his eyes as blue as the sky, and she ached. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“You seemed to be doing okay before.”
“I guess you remembered what Foxy said about you being my lucky charm.”
“If you’d listened to any of my messages, you’d know I did. And I think it’s bullshit. You just had an off game. It was only one game, Jack.”
He didn’t say anything in response. Her legs ached with exhaustion and she sank to the bench next to him.
He finally spoke. “I was sitting here, weighing you and baseball.”
“Me and baseball?” Her tone held more derision than she’d intended. “I hardly think you have to choose one or the other.”
“I know. Logically, I know that.” He turned to her then, emotion burning in his eyes, so strong that it nearly took her breath away. Okay, so he hadn’t lied. But he hadn’t exactly been honest either, and more than love or reassurance or apologies, what Izzy wanted right now was the truth.
“I know baseball is your whole life, but that doesn’t mean you can lie so I won’t leave.”
He still wouldn’t look at her. “Is that really what you think?”
She didn’t know what to think anymore—that was the whole problem. It was so easy to profess faith and trust and loyalty, but it was an entirely different proposition to do it with her heart in his hands.
“I never lied to you,” he finally said. “Not directly. But I knew I should have told you that I thought you were lucky for me. And the longer it went on, the worse it became. The more ludicrous I knew it would sound if I said it out loud. I’m sorry for that.”
Izzy supposed love made her instinctively want to sympathize with him, but she held herself back. “Was that why you wanted to date me?”
Jack’s muscles tensed. “Of course not.”
She wanted to believe him—desperately—but she wasn’t sure if she could. She’d opened her entire self up to him, and yet, he’d held back, keeping secret one of the most important facets of his life.
“I really am sorry,” he pleaded, finally glancing up at her. “I never meant to hurt you. That was the last thing I wanted.”
“So you really believe that I was lucky for you,” she stated.
“It sounds crazy, but yeah, I do. All I had to do was think of you, which I couldn’t seem to stop doing anyway, and I’d do stuff that I was never able to do before.”
It was almost romantic, Izzy decided. And it might have been if she hadn’t suddenly become unlucky.
“What about now?” she asked. Because wasn’t that the most important question of all? “Won’t this all pass, like it tends to do?”
He reached for her hands and she didn’t even have a second to protest or pull away before he’d wrapped them in his. “I know you believe that it will. And I do, too, but then there’s something else. Call it superstition or a gut feeling or whatever, but it scares me. And so I’ve been sitting here, struggling with letting half of me go. And I just can’t.” He paused and he squeezed her hands hard, so hard that she knew he hadn’t even realized it. “I can’t, Iz.” And his tone was so pained, her own heart broke. She was still a little mad, but mostly she was scared that the only thing that had kept him around was gone—and suddenly she wasn’t sure she could bear it if he wasn’t around.
“I know you believe, and I know you’ve believed in these superstitions your whole life, but I’ve believed in something, too. My dad taught me that if you want something badly enough, you can make it happen.”
He chuckled wryly, humorlessly and when he glanced up at her, she swore she saw actual tears in his eyes. It didn’t quite eradicate the memory of her own tears, but it was more than enough to see how much he was hurting. “That sounds a little familiar.”
Izzy nodded in encouragement. “You know what it means, though? It means you can get through this. And I want to do it with you. I want to help you, not hurt you.”
He let out another humorless laugh. “God, I do love you.”
“I hope so.”
This time there was the barest glimmer of a real smile on his face, and the tension wracking him seemed to have relaxed a fraction.
“There’s one thing you should know.”
“Tell me.” She gripped his hands harder with her own. He’d been there for her through so many Toby emails and bad nights and stressed deadlines. She could do this for him, or she’d die trying.
“Last week, when we were at the children’s hospital, Ismael Butler told me that he was moving the team.”
“Oh, my God.” It was Jack’s worst nightmare, come to life. She hurt for him.
“He told me there was only one circumstance under which he’d keep the team in Portland. We have to make the playoffs.”
And suddenly, she began to understand some of why he’d been struggling so much. To win, to make the playoffs, the team needed him to play his best, to not strike out, to not get thrown out stealing second. They needed Jack Bennett, All Star. And because of who he was, he’d have put the responsibility on his shoulders, even if he didn’t possess the talent to make it happen alone.
“You’re only two games out of first for the division. There’s over two months of baseball left. I know you can do this.”
He gazed up at her and the unspoken truth resonated between them.
The Pioneers wouldn’t make the playoffs if he continued to be dogged by bad luck.
“Now you understand the dilemma.”
“He’s insane,” she breathed out. “Totally nuts.”
Jack just shrugged. “The point of playing baseball is to win the World Series, Iz. To continue for years and just never make it…I actually understand his reasoning better than I thought I would.”
There wasn’t anything she could say—no meaningless platitudes to reassure him. He was right.
“And that’s why I’ve been sitting out here, trying to live with myself. And right before you showed up, I actually realized that if it meant we couldn’t be together, I wouldn’t want to win the World Series. I wouldn’t want to stay in Portland and play baseball if I couldn’t celebrate with you afterwards.”
She took a deep breath. “And what if your…hunch is right? What if you can’t break the unlucky streak?”
“Then I guess I’ll be moving to Las Vegas.”
She tugged his arm and pulled him into her arms, wrapping herself around him until he was tight against her. “I love you,” she said into the shoulder of his sweatshirt.
It was a lot to ask, to go on faith, but he was doing it anyway. All because he loved her too much to give up. Even if she hadn’t already loved him, she wouldn’t have been able to help herself now.
Finally, she pulled back and
smiled up at him. “So, I hear you’re dating a particularly spectacular redhead. Should I be jealous?”
“Absolutely,” he grinned. “I’m wild about her. I’m taking her to dinner tonight after the game.”
Izzy took a deep breath. She knew this was the moment she should tell him about Toby’s request to find Red’s identity, but he had enough on his plate. All she could hope was that with no developments, Toby would give up and go with the Corey Rood story.
It was also crazy risky to go out as Red again when Toby was on the prowl for her, but considering the commitment Jack was making, Izzy knew she owed it to him.
And plain and simple, she wanted to. She’d denied their connection for so long and she decided, in that moment, that it wasn’t fair or right for her to do it anymore. She’d just cross her fingers and pray that whatever dark corner Jack suggested wasn’t also a favorite hangout of any of Toby’s spies.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
From: Toby Palmer
To: Isabel Dalton
Date: July 29, 2012 @ 7:55 AM
Subject: Progress Report
Isabel,
I’m greatly displeased with the lack of progress that you’ve made on discovering our mystery woman’s identity. You’ve had over two weeks to put together a profile, and Ina informs me that you have not, claiming that nobody knows anything about her.
Actually, this is not entirely true. I have made a study of the facts we do know:
They enjoy going to dark restaurants after evening games in Portland. Jack always calls ahead, and asks for a booth in the back. They have done this at least seven times, to my knowledge, and they do not appear to have any particular cuisine of preference, instead, choosing restaurants that are out of the way, relatively unpopular, and are generally dark in atmosphere. My suggestion is to make a list and cultivate contacts at those establishments, with the hope that Bennett will choose to visit one of them.
During the trip to LA, Jack and the redhead went to dinner per usual. I’ve made a small inquiry with several photo agencies in the Los Angeles area, and it appears they weren’t aware of Jack Bennett’s existence. Apparently he is not considered a “celebrity” by the paparazzi.
I hope you realize that our conversation was not a request but a demand. This is not an optional assignment, Isabel, and while you are typically difficult when it comes to items I assign you—either in your ability to complete the task, or the quality of the finished job—completely ignoring a direct order is unlike you.
With Bennett playing nowhere near the level he was in the first half of the season, my eagerness to discover his mystery woman’s identity and run the story first cannot be emphasized enough.
Going forward, I will require you to submit a status report on this assignment every twelve hours. There should be new developments on each report. Anything less and I will consider you in grave danger of misconduct. As you are aware, grave misconduct is grounds for termination.
Toby
Izzy exhaled shakily, and guiltily glanced over to see if Jack had noticed. He was still mostly asleep, which was a good thing, because the email had upset her enough that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to fake being okay for another few minutes.
It wasn’t even one of the worst of Toby’s notorious emails, but the content terrified her. Sure, there’d been that threat at the end that he’d fire her if she didn’t cooperate, and he’d never actually put the threat into words before, but what upset her most of all was the fact that he hadn’t let go of finding Red.
For a few weeks it had been fun being someone else, letting Red take the heat for being Jack’s new lady friend. They’d been able to go out and date almost like a normal couple. Sure, there’d been a few requirements she’d made, like dark booths and out-of-the-way restaurants, but for the most part, she’d let go of the worry that had dogged her since almost the beginning of the season and just enjoyed being with Jack.
Play time’s over, she thought to herself ruefully. Toby hadn’t given up on his pet project, and they were going to have to be more careful going forward because sooner or later, someone would get a picture of her face and the jig would be up. She’d be lucky if all she got was fired. Blacklisted would be more like it. Toby would not only be furious she was with Jack, he’d believe that she had gone out of her way to personally humiliate him.
Surreptitiously, Izzy glanced over at Jack, and since he showed no signs of consciousness, she clicked open the email and read back through it again, confirming her earlier reaction.
For once, Toby was right. This was the time to run a Jack Bennett story, while everyone still remembered his amazing first half and his first All Star appearance. In a month, if his numbers held steady, he’d be just another infielder on a team trying to make the playoffs.
“You okay?”
Izzy froze, her finger still touching her phone screen, and glanced over at Jack, trying to be as casual as possible. “Fine. Why?”
“You had this horribly tense expression on your face,” Jack said, letting out a great, bellowing yawn half-way through his sentence. “Is it another email from Toby?”
Izzy hesitated. She didn’t want to lie to him. But she couldn’t exactly tell him the truth either. While he’d enjoyed their freedom, too, she couldn’t mistake his own brand of tenseness as of late.
He wanted the Pioneers to win and personally contribute to them winning, and while the former had been happening enough to keep the Pioneers in the thick of the playoff push, the latter hadn’t been much part of it. They’d mostly avoided discussing his slump at the plate and his sometimes clumsy fielding, but she knew it was almost all he thought about sometimes.
“Yes, but it’s not as bad as normal.” Which was technically true. Other than a few nasty quips at her intelligence, her skill as a reporter, and her tendency never to slavishly obey, it had been almost nice as Toby emails went.
Izzy was a pragmatist and deliberately didn’t even think of his closing threat to fire her. While dealing with him was always unpleasant, she’d begun to realize that his bark was truly worse than his bite. He’d threaten her all day long, but there was no way he was going to go out of his way to fire her. Sure, he wouldn’t mind it if all his raging misogyny caused her to quit, but he’d never bother to do it himself.
“A good way to start the morning then,” he quipped, reaching a hand up and running it through his disheveled hair.
She grinned at him. Even though they’d been sleeping together for a month now, she still hadn’t gotten used to how freaking adorable he was in the morning—all slumbering blue eyes, sexy bed head and a thick layer of scruff.
“You keep smiling like that and I’ll have to give you something to smile about,” he remarked with a sly grin of his own, reaching over and wrapping an arm around her waist. He pulled her close and they lay there for a moment, her head resting on his chest, his hand making slow circular movements across her back.
“That feels nice,” she mumbled into his chest. “Don’t stop.”
“Your wish is my command,” he replied, his gruff voice dropping down the usual half octave. A shiver of sexual awareness flickered through her. Between how sexy he was in the morning, and that voice, she was pretty much putty in his hands and he knew it.
His phone rang, and Jack cursed under his breath, muttering something about turning it off.
But he didn’t.
“Hector,” Jack said, his voice raising back up to his normal tone, along with an extra veneer of formality. “No. Sure. I can be there early. Everything okay?”
Izzy tensed. It was unusual for Hector to ask any of the players to come in early. Usually for a 7:00 p.m. start time, the players would trickle in around two or three, for stretching and batting practice. She glanced at the time on her phone. It was only
eight thirty. Pretty early for Hector to be calling. The trade deadline had passed, but she knew Jack harbored a deep, secret horror of being sent down to the minors. Hopefully his recent slump wasn’t enough reason for that to happen.
Jack ended his call and settled back into the mattress, pulling the feather bed over his boxers. He seemed relaxed, but she knew he couldn’t possibly be. All the thoughts that had just run through her head were no doubt sprinting through his, running lap after lap.
She knew what she needed to do, but that didn’t mean she liked the idea of doing it.
“I’ve got to get up anyway,” she announced, sliding her legs out of bed and barely holding back a squeal when they hit the cold hardwood floor. “We need to get you some rugs.”
“This is one-hundred-year-old pine. No rugs for you. Gotta toughen you up,” he announced with zero sympathy. She couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t even protested once about their lack of morning sex. If anything, this strengthened her resolve. Secretly, she was still convinced that the story she wanted to run was going to be good publicity for him. And while baseball was still about winning games, it had also become about stars, and if more fans came to the ballpark to see Jack Bennett, the livewire of the Portland Pioneers, then it wouldn’t matter if he went 0 for 20 at the plate. Management wouldn’t hear of sending him down.
Izzy only hoped she hadn’t waited too long and that today’s meeting wasn’t about Jack and the bench.
“You going to be around this afternoon?” Jack asked, and his own feet hit the floor. If he was getting up now, and not sleeping another hour or two after she left, things were bad, indeed.
“Actually, I’ve got a story,” she said apologetically as she headed toward the bathroom and the shower. She only hoped he wouldn’t ask what it was.
“After the game, then?”
“Sushi?” she asked, cranking the water up to hot.
