The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers)

by Beth Bolden

  Charlie will get better, Izzy. I know he will. I know you’re worried all these life changes will be too much for him to deal with, but this is Charlie we’re talking about. I’ve never met the guy, but I know what he did for you when your dad died. He’s not going to give up on everything just because he has to give up bacon.

  This stretch of games is beyond brutal. It’s amazing how much easier you made things without even trying.

  I miss you.

  ———

  From: Isabel Dalton

  To: Jack Bennett

  Date: September 12, 2012 @ 6:46 AM

  Subject: re: Charlie

  Clearly you don’t know how much he loves bacon. To Charlie, it’s practically a sixth food group. I’ve bought some groceries, including turkey bacon, for when he comes home tomorrow. And I threw away everything in his pantry and fridge that were on the doctor’s no-no list, which was pretty much everything he had. I’m preparing myself for a full-on hissy fit, but I have to stand my ground. He’s got to lose some weight and change his bad habits.

  I can’t leave Seattle. I don’t want to say goodbye, so I won’t, but I don’t know what else to say . . .

  “I have exciting news,” Izzy said as she walked into Charlie’s hospital room. He was sitting upright, strapping his watch to his wrist. He was dressed casually, in a pair of khakis and a loose, pale-blue button-down that hid the bandages from the arterial bypass surgery that he’d had two days after the heart attack.

  “I know. I get to go home today,” Charlie grumbled. “It’s about damn time.”

  The TV in the room was unsurprisingly tuned to ESPN, and a casual glance told her that the feature they were running on the Pioneers’ hunt for the playoffs wasn’t going to help her insomnia. Neither was getting a glimpse of Jack turning a double play. She lifted the remote off the table and clicked the power button, hoping that Charlie wouldn’t notice and make a big deal out of it.

  “You had a heart attack, then major surgery,” Izzy pointed out. “I think those are both excellent reasons to stay in the hospital.”

  “I wouldn’t call it major,” he griped.

  “It was major enough for me, thank you very much. You took about ten years off my life.”

  “And don’t think I didn’t catch you turning the Pioneers coverage off. We still gotta talk about that.”

  Izzy flushed. She wasn’t exactly looking forward to that conversation. No doubt Charlie would want her to do something crazy, like fly back to Portland.

  It’s better this way, she told herself. Better for Jack. Better for me. Nice clean break.

  Never mind that it felt anything but clean. Sometimes, she missed Jack so much it felt like a huge, ragged hole had been blasted right through her. But that was a secret for her—and only her—to know. If Charlie even got a hint that she was staying in Seattle for him, he’d never give her any peace.

  “There’s nothing to say,” Izzy retorted pointedly. “I’ve barely returned his phone calls. He’ll give up. I just need to tell him it’s over and I’m staying in Seattle.”

  “Giving up. That doesn’t sound like him,” Charlie said slyly. “At least not the Jack Bennett they’re always prattling on about on ESPN.”

  Izzy tried not to grind her teeth in frustration. Why the hell had she blurted out that she was in love with Jack?

  “We’re not discussing it,” she said with as much finality as she could muster. “This conversation is over.”

  The doctor chose that moment to walk into the room, no doubt for his final lecture. Izzy had begged him to use as much graphic, terrifying imagery and language as he could. She figured Charlie could use as much encouragement as possible to get him to stick to this new lifestyle plan.

  “Ms. Dalton has an excellent head on her shoulders,” the doctor said as she zipped up Charlie’s suitcase. He glanced over at her shyly, and Izzy flushed again. He was tall, dark haired and handsome—pretty much the fantasy of every girl who’d ever watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, but she hadn’t been able to muster the energy to hit the nice, easy, flirtatious lobs he kept sending her way. Maybe I’m just worn out on men obsessed with their jobs, she thought, but she knew it was a lie.

  Her non reaction to the hot doctor had nothing to do with his profession, and everything to do with the fact that he wasn’t Jack.

  “She’s a smart girl,” Charlie agreed, “if a little bull headed sometimes. Got to knock some real sense into her once in a while.”

  The doctor looked mildly alarmed, so she intervened. Charlie’s sense of humor wasn’t for everyone. “We’ll manage just fine,” she said with a reassuring smile. “I’ve got the lists at home, and we’ll be back next week for a checkup.”

  “Lists?” Charlie asked suspiciously.

  “Approved foods, exercises, etcetera,” the doctor said, and Charlie glared at her.

  “What? You didn’t think you were going to continue the bad habits that got you in here in the first place?” Izzy asked.

  “She’s going to kill me,” Charlie said mournfully. “I feel dead already.”

  “Actually, that was the bacon,” Izzy retorted. “The bacon nearly killed you.”

  “I think I’m dying,” Charlie gasped out, and Izzy glanced up from her iPad to where he’d propped himself up on the treadmill after finishing his three-mile walk.

  “No sympathy from this corner,” she said smugly. “And don’t think of it as dying. Think of it as saving your life.”

  “It still feels like I’m dying,” Charlie insisted sullenly. “I hate this.”

  “Exercise isn’t supposed to be easy,” Izzy said, getting to her feet and helping him off the treadmill and to the couch. For all his heft, he felt so weak against her, and fear clutched at her heart. A week and a half of exercise and watching his meals like a hawk, and he didn’t seem any stronger.

  Maybe she hadn’t been able to cure cancer or hack it as a sports journalist, but she sure as hell was going to save Charlie’s life.

  Charlie grabbed the remote from the coffee table and Izzy didn’t have the heart to grab it out of his hands and insist he do another mile first. He was exhausted. She could see it in the slackness of his face and the tremor in his hands. He flicked the TV on. “I’m going to get you a bottle of water,” she announced.

  “Make it an ice-cold Coke instead,” he called out as she left the room.

  Izzy reached the kitchen and pulled two bottles out of the fridge. Even if she’d felt inclined to give him the sugar and the caffeine, there wasn’t a Coke in the house. Walking back to the living room, she saw he’d turned on Baseball Tonight on the MLB Network, and Izzy gritted her teeth. Another segment about the Pioneers was on—though that wasn’t a big surprise. They were in the middle of one of the most exciting playoff hunts in a long time, trading off wins with the Angels, to decide who was going to be the American League’s wild-card playoff team.

  Even if Charlie hadn’t insisted on watching it day after day, in an effort to get her to open up about Jack, she probably would have obsessively followed the race in private. So much for her not being a baseball fan.

  About a week ago, Jack had finally stopped calling, and she desperately hoped that meant he’d given up and would leave her alone. She really wasn’t sure she could live through another batch of voicemails and not call him back.

  “Here,” she tossed the bottle to Charlie. “You need to drink more water.”

  “I don’t like the taste,” he grumbled, and she could only smile.

  “Water doesn’t have a taste. That’s the whole point.”

  “Exactly. Nothing tastes like crap.” He opened the cap and took a sip before gesturing toward the huge flat-screen TV that dominated the far wall of the living room. “Exciting playoff race,
don’t you think?”

  Izzy rolled her eyes at his transparency. “You’ve asked me the same thing every damn day since the hospital. And yes, even though it’s still baseball, it’s exciting. But that doesn’t mean I want to watch hours of coverage about it.”

  “I just thought you’d want to keep up with Jack Bennett. You know, since you’re in love with him and all.” Charlie’s words were deceptively innocent.

  “Just because I’m in love with him doesn’t mean I want to watch him play baseball. Or watch the stupid commentators talk about him playing baseball.”

  Lie, that annoying inner voice announced, you freaking love watching him play. And you’re soaking up every word they say about him like you’re the desert and he’s rain.

  Charlie’s voice grew kinder. “Don’t you want to talk about it, Iz?”

  “No.” Because if she did, she might cry, and she really didn’t want to cry.

  “You can’t run away from your feelings forever,” he said so reasonably she almost hated him. She wondered if real fathers bothered their daughters this much about their love lives.

  “I’m not running away. I’m here to take care of you. And speaking of that,” Izzy said, changing the subject. “I got a job offer. Well, more like my old job back. Mitch called me up and offered it to me.”

  “Is that what you want? To go backwards? Do your old job again?”

  For a long time, she’d thought her old job was amazing and she couldn’t possibly be happier. Then she’d actually become happy, and realized that she’d only been marking time at that job, lonely and afraid of actually living.

  “I thought you’d be happy about this,” she said cautiously.

  “Hell no. I mean, thank you for coming when I had the heart attack, but you’re meant to be more than a nursemaid, Izzy. You know that. Now I know it didn’t work out well in Portland with Toby Palmer…”

  “Understatement of the century,” she interjected.

  “I know, I know. He’s a bit of a diva,” Charlie amended, “but he’s really not that much different than so many of the other executive producers you could have worked under.”

  “Thus, why I’m not going to be a reporter,” Izzy said, holding her breath for a moment. She’d hinted around her future job prospects, but she’d never actually come out and told Charlie that she wasn’t going to go back into journalism.

  “I know. And I’m sorry for that, Iz,” he said softly. “You have a lot of talent.”

  Izzy toyed with the lid to her water. “I do, but I was a mediocre sideline reporter. And I hated it.”

  “So what are you going to do?” he asked, and Izzy told herself that one of the reasons she’d always loved him, both as a boss and as a mentor, was because he never held back from asking the tough questions.

  “I’m not sure,” she said uncertainly.

  Charlie sighed, his lungs not sounding nearly as wheezy as they had only a few months before. “Then I suppose you can work for Mitch while you figure it out. But I promise he’ll make your life so difficult that you’ll be racing to find something else.”

  She couldn’t help but grin. “You’re the best.”

  “You’re not. You suck. You make me eat horrible food, and you put that torture contraption into my living room,” he said, waving at the treadmill. “Talk about gratitude.”

  “Hector wants to see you.” Jack was at the stadium an hour earlier than he’d ever been before, but still one of the clubhouse guys stopped him with the message. He loved being in the stadium, loved hanging out in the clubhouse with the guys, even sometimes sat in the dugout, staring out at the field, communing with the grass and the dirt. But when a playoff berth was at stake, when every second of every game counted, when the Pioneers were fighting to stay alive, the quiet moments he spent here seemed to matter even more. Besides, there didn’t seem to be a reason to stay home. Last time he checked, there wasn’t a beautiful woman in his bed trying to make sure he didn’t get out of it.

  Leaning against his locker, Jack pulled his phone out of his pocket, and thumbed quickly to what he wanted. The movements felt automatic, almost instinctual now, kind of like when he took grounders in the infield. He’d looked at the message so many times over the last two weeks, he didn’t even need to read it anymore. The words were seemed permanently imprinted on his brain. But he looked anyway.

  Charlie’s better, but he needs me here. Not sure when I’ll be in Portland again.

  Had that been her goodbye? She responded in a breezy, casual tone to every third or fourth email, dodging every question he asked about their relationship and never returned any of his phone calls. If he was smart, he would just leave it alone and take what they’d had and not try to make it more, but damn it, it had been more. The very least he deserved was an actual goodbye.

  “Hey, Jack. Glad you came by. Close the door while you’re up,” Hector said so casually that Jack would already have known something was wrong, even if the closed door and Hector’s terrible poker face didn’t give it away first.

  The last time he’d been in this office with the door closed, he’d been terrified that Hector was sending him down to their triple A affiliate in Bend, but with the season on the line, that wasn’t going to happen today.

  “You’ve been hitting better,” Hector said, leaning back in his big chair. “Not great, but better.”

  Jack thought that was a pretty accurate assessment of his last month at the plate. He’d tried to relax, but with all the pressure, relaxation wasn’t exactly in the cards. He still remembered the icy disdain in Ismael Butler’s eyes as he’d told Jack he was moving the team if they didn’t make the playoffs.

  Not hitting and not making the playoffs simply weren’t an option. First off, he still needed to bring Portland that World Series, and second off, Jack was pretty damn sure that Izzy might come down to Portland, but she sure as hell wouldn’t follow him to Las Vegas. It might be crazy to still be harboring hope that he could reconcile his career and the woman he loved, but Jack had never given up in his life, and he wasn’t about to start now. Not when there was more on the line than ever before.

  “I’ve tried,” he said, and they both knew that was a massive understatement. Every single at-bat since Noah Fox had gone down injured had taken a piece of his heart and soul. Nobody had fought harder for every single run the Pioneers scored. He was pretty sure Hector knew he was trying to hold the team together with sheer guts and determination.

  Hector just chuckled. “You’ve done a lot more than actually try. You’ve managed to shoulder it all. I’ll be surprised if you don’t come out and pitch a few innings one night when the bullpen’s exhausted.”

  Jack glanced down at his hands. “I’m a terrible pitcher, sir.”

  “But you’d do it anyway, and you’d find a way to do it better than terrible. Am I right?”

  He could only nod. If it came down to that, Hector probably wasn’t too far off the mark. It was the curse of being who he was and what he had come from. He couldn’t let go for a second, relax into mediocrity for a moment. The fight was bred into his bones.

  “I’ve waited for you to tell the rest of the team about Butler’s ultimatum. You haven’t.”

  Jack glanced up at his manager in surprise. “Butler’s ultimatum?”

  “He gave it to me, too. Also said he’d told you first. I was kind of pissed that you didn’t bring this shit to me right away, but then I figured you’re used to holding it all on your own.”

  A little ashamed that he’d been caught in the half lie, Jack found that it actually felt good to know that someone else knew. It made the burden a little lighter.

  “You guessed right.” His voice was unrelenting. Because if he let up now, they were all doomed.

  Hector let out a deep breath and gave him a hard look. “The team needs t
o know.”

  That sent a gust of panic right through him. This was his fight, damn it. He was going to win this and win it with the pressure on. The rest of the team couldn’t handle that kind of pressure. He knew they’d crumble and break apart. They’d never be able to withstand the weight.

  “No, no. You can’t tell them. They can’t handle it.” Jack could hear the panic in his tone, could sense that he’d let some of the stress show. The concern in Hector’s face was terrible.

  “You’re telling them, or I am. Personally,” Hector paused and leaned back in his chair, propping his feet on the corner of the battered desk, “I think it would go over a lot better if you did it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think those boys know what you’re doing for the team? I have packs of them in here every damn day, telling me that they’re worried. That you’re going to literally kill yourself trying to do too much. And don’t even get me started on Fox. He’s practically haunting me.”

  “Fox?”

  “The boy can’t even play, can’t even get cleared, but I’ve never seen anyone more invested in the team. Or in you.”

  The tightness in Jack’s stomach cranked up another notch. He didn’t want to talk about Foxy. That was one situation he couldn’t power his way out of, one man he couldn’t save. Noah went around the clubhouse every day, telling every damn person that he expected to be cleared soon. He expected to play in the playoffs. No big deal. But Jack had figured out Noah’s tell—the creased, pinched look in his face meant he was in the middle of one of his nasty headaches, and headaches meant one important thing. He wasn’t going to be cleared to play any time soon, not while he was still experiencing concussion symptoms.

  It hit him then. Foxy shouldn’t have to hide his pain. He shouldn’t have to pretend that he was going to get better when maybe he wasn’t. They were a team. They should be taking care of each other. And he should be letting them.