The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers)

by Beth Bolden

  Claire & Sam from AngstyG, for discovering all my typos and missing commas and for making the final version beautiful and easy for everyone to read.

  Nicole, who reached out to me and was such an important cheerleader for the last final last push to get The Lucky Charm finally published.

  I have to sincerely and emphatically thank all my wonderful, invaluable beta readers: Erica, Andrew, Libbi, Judy and Emily. Without them, The Lucky Charm probably wouldn’t exist and you wouldn’t be reading it today.

  I also have to thank Anish vonAhlefeld of Huckleberry Resources, who designed my website and book cover, for suffering through any number of graphics-related neuroses as well as probably hundreds of baseball stock images.

  ABOUT BETH

  Beth Bolden lives in Portland, Oregon with one cat and one fiance. She wholly believes in Keeping Portland Weird, but wishes she didn’t have to make the yearly pilgrimage up to Seattle to watch her Boston Red Sox play baseball. If only the Portland Pioneers weren’t only figments of her imagination.

  After graduating from university with a degree in English, Beth unsurprisingly had no idea what to do with her life, and spent the next few years working for a medical equipment supplier, a technology company, and an accounting firm. Now Beth runs her own business as a Girl Friday for small business owners, assisting them with administration, bookkeeping and their general sanity.

  Beth has been writing practically since she learned the alphabet. Unfortunately, her first foray into novel writing, titled Big Bear with Sparkly Earrings, wasn’t a bestseller, but hope springs eternal. Her first novel, The Lucky Charm, will be available in the beginning of 2014.

  In her nonexistent spare time, she enjoys preparing overambitious recipes, baking yummy treats, cuddling with the aforementioned cat and fiance, and of course, writing. She’s currently at work on the The Lucky Charm‘s sequel, featuring Noah Fox. She hopes he’s a lot easier to wrangle than Jack Bennett was.

  You can find Beth online at BethBolden.com, on twitter @Beth_Bolden, and at Facebook.com/AuthorBethBolden.

  SEQUEL PREVIEW

  Here’s a sneak peak at the sequel to The Lucky Charm, coming in late 2014:

  The Council’s weekly meeting was almost over when Maggie May King heard the knock on the door. She glanced up in surprise at the glass window framed with its frilled red curtain, but couldn’t see enough in the dark shadow of the overhang to identify the knocker. All six hundred or so of Sand Point’s residents, even Drunk Frank, knew that the Cafe wasn’t open for dinner. So whoever was knocking wasn’t from Sand Point, and that fact alone was enough to catch Maggie’s attention.

  Any other night, she might have left the mysterious visitor at the door because the sign clearly read “closed” in the elegant, yet quirky font she’d picked nearly two years ago when she’d first opened the Cafe, but then Cal glanced over at her, always so right and proper and annoyingly perfect, and she knew he was thinking the same thing: new visitors were the whole point of this stupid Council, and if she let the knocker walk away, then they might as well all go home and forget this whole endeavor.

  Maggie remembered fondly a time when all she had to worry about was whether a man would call her after a date. Now all her mental energy was focused on a single overriding quest: to boost business enough that her small, quaint cafe that she’d poured all her heart, her soul and her savings into wouldn’t go under. When you took that into account, Maggie thought with a grimace, it wasn’t all that surprising that she’d said yes when the Council had come calling with their grandiose plans and golden future of a Sand Point literally overrun with tourists.

  “I’ll get it,” Maggie said to nobody in particular, because she was the only one paying attention to the one tourist that had miraculously descended upon them. Ella and Loretta were arguing vociferously over the latter’s idea for a town newsletter in which she could feature her knitting patterns. Anna was slumped on her husband Ethan’s shoulder, three quarters asleep, and Ethan was maybe five minutes away from catching up to his wife. Lucas was absorbed in his blackberry, no doubt catching up on work email, and unsurprisingly, Cal, her best friend of a lifetime, was the only Council member who was even paying attention to the idea Maggie had been trying to present. Not that she’d been saying anything particularly interesting, but the holidays were coming up, and she’d had this crazy, stupid thought to have a special dinner at the café for Thanksgiving, or maybe Christmas. Something homey but gourmet—the concept she’d been aiming for when she’d opened the Sand Point Cafe—that might draw out-of-towners in for the weekend. Naturally, it was the only concrete idea that any one of them had brought to the meeting, and naturally, it had been mostly ignored in favor of the usual in-fighting.

  Maggie had quickly learned in the last two months that the Council, while high on ideas, was almost entirely devoid of any real planning. When she’d vented at Cal after that first disastrous meeting, he’d given her a patient look out of his kind blue eyes, and then asked her if she was really surprised.

  She wasn’t. Not really. A lifetime of living in Sand Point had taught her one thing: the people of this town were her people, but they were also unfailingly stubborn and liked nothing better than arguing—even when there was no argument to be had.

  She reached the door and peered out into the darkness. A tall, male figure peered back, and Maggie only had the briefest impression of hair and eyes that nearly seemed to blend into the night before she unlocked the door and opened it, ushering the man inside.

  Cal had harangued her about security until he was nearly blue in the face, and so she locked the door first thing and then turned to greet the stranger. Her words of introduction died in her throat. If all tourists looked like this, she was going to work ten times harder on her ideas for the Council.

  He was definitely tall, maybe even taller than Cal, and as her older sister might have said, “built”—with rippling arm muscles his loose t-shirt couldn’t hide. His skin was the warm brown of her favorite butterscotch sauce. Her eyes drifted upwards and took in his chiseled jawline and narrow, flawless nose, with dark slashing eyebrows and even darker eyes as the punctuation to his perfect face. Maggie almost wished that Tabitha was here to meet this guy—even if she and her sister talked regularly, Maggie would never in a million years be able to communicate just how handsome he was.

  And then he smiled. “Hi, I’m Noah Fox,” he said, extending his hand, his devastating grin leaving Maggie reeling for words resembling English.

  Cal saved her, of course. She was still groping around in the corners of her brain that hadn’t been short-circuted by Noah Fox’s ridiculous face and clearly even more ridiculous body, but suddenly Cal was right there, emerging from behind her even though she hadn’t even noticed him get up from his chair. He took the man’s hand and shook it firmly.

  “Cal Keller,” Cal said. “How can we help you tonight?”

  “I saw the Cafe was closed,” Noah said with so much disappointment that Maggie briefly considered re-opening, “so I hope I’m not bothering you, but I’m looking for someone. And this is the right address.”

  Maggie found her tongue, because the Cafe was her entire life and she wasn’t about to let Cal speak for her when it came to her business. “I own this building,” she said.

  “Perfect,” Noah said, and it took all her focus to not be blown away again when he turned that mega-watt smile back on her. “Then you’re just the woman I need to talk to. I’m looking for Tabitha King. Maybe you know her.”

  Even though Cal was nearly completely out of her field of vision, she swore he froze. Unfortunately, Maggie was way too familiar with her sister’s antics to be all that surprised. Of course, the one time such an insanely handsome man turned up in their town, it would be because of Tabby.

  “I’m Maggie King. Tabitha is my sister,” she said reluctantly. “What’s this about?” She was unfo
rtunately way too aware that this entire conversation had accomplished what she hadn’t been able to for the rest of the evening—Noah Fox had gained the absolute and undivided attention of the Council and they were definitely staring.

  He must have seen it too, because he glanced over at their keen observers, and lowered his voice. “Is there any way we can talk about that in private?”

  Maggie nodded, despite the disapproval she felt radiating from Cal’s direction. “This way,” she said, and led him right through where the Council was sitting around a group of her small tables to the kitchen. She wasn’t under any mistaken impression that this faux-privacy would actually guarantee that they wouldn’t listen to every word. She could take him back outside, but she knew Cal would throw her another disapproving look if she attempted it.

  Noah glanced around curiously as she flicked on the light switch, and Maggie could almost hear the hundreds of questions he wanted to ask.

  Like, why do you own this tiny little cafe in this tiny little town when your sister’s Tabitha King?

  Or, why are you so plain when your sister’s Tabitha King?

  And maybe even Maggie’s personal favorite: are you even related to Tabitha King?

  She herself had wondered it more than once while they were growing up, and then many more times in adulthood. She and Tabby had so little in common it was amazing to her that they were sisters. But then that was why Tabitha had left Sand Point—she’d had nothing in common with her family or with the rest of the town she’d grown up in.

  But to Noah Fox’s credit, he didn’t ask any of those questions. “I’m looking for Tabitha,” he said carefully.

  “Is she missing?” Maggie asked, leaning against one of the spotless stainless steel work counters that lined one side of the kitchen.

  “I take it you know where she is.” He didn’t sound very happy about that, Maggie thought, and begrudgingly gave him a little more credit. But then, he’d still come here, and that was more than any man had done so far.

  “I might know where she is,” she said, “but if she doesn’t want to talk to you, I can’t help you with that.” Maggie tried to imagine what her older sister might have done to deserve a man literally tracking her down to her childhood town, and came up blank. This was Tabitha, after all. She might, in all truth, do just about anything.

  “Is she here?”

  The man was hot, Maggie thought, but that didn’t make him the brightest bulb in the universe. “You think Tabitha is here? In Sand Point?” she asked incredulously. “You must not know her as well as I thought you did.”

  Noah shoved a hand through his thick, dark hair and left most of it standing straight up, altering him from insanely hot to merely very good looking. “Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if I had other options. But I need to talk to her.”

  “Well, she’s not here,” Maggie said matter-of-factly. “And I can’t imagine she’ll be coming back to Sand Point anytime soon.”

  He gave her a surprised look. “But it’s almost Thanksgiving.”

  “Again,” Maggie said with exaggerated patience, “you must not know Tabitha very well.”

  “Pretty well,” he said and that careful edge was back in his voice. “I had a feeling this might be a wild goose chase.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help,” Maggie said, letting him know that he’d gotten everything he was going to out of her—which was nothing.

  “Can you at least let her know I stopped by? Maybe she’d be okay with you providing a way to contact her.”

  Maggie shot him another incredulous look. “I don’t think so.”

  His handsome face changed almost in an instant, morphing from confidently charming to abruptly lost, and Maggie reeled a little bit. Where had he been hiding all this sadness? She was usually better at reading people.

  “Please,” he said. “All I ask is that you call her and tell her that I’m here and I want to talk to her.”

  In her twenty seven years, Maggie had had a lot of experience with the aftermath of Tabitha. All through junior high and high school, she’d seen the walking wounded who’d been chased, used and left by her beautiful and precocious sister who never seemed to know what she really wanted. Maggie remembered the devastation in so many of those boys’ faces, and their confusion at why Tabitha’s ardent affection had abruptly vanished. So she should have been immune to that pleading look on Noah Fox’s face, but apparently she wasn’t.

  “Fine. Will you be staying in town a few days?”

  “It’ll take that long?” he asked.

  “Despite what you may think you know about family, and especially about sisters,” Maggie drawled, “my sister doesn’t always answer my phone calls or return my texts right away.”

  “Right,” Noah said, and for the first time, Maggie could see he wasn’t surprised. Maybe he wasn’t under Tabby’s spell as much as she’d thought he was. But then what was he so sad about? Maggie wished he’d never shown up here tonight, because now she was curious and like most nosy people, she knew she’d probably never find a satisfactory answer.

  He reached into his back pocket, and pulled out his wallet, the leather the same shade as an expensive Cognac. He handed over a business card, and she took it, surprised again at the symbol embossed into the thick cardstock. “The Portland Pioneers? The baseball team?”

  He grinned. “Obviously, not a baseball fan.”

  “Am I supposed to recognize you or something?” Because she didn’t. But then she didn’t really follow baseball—or any other sport, for that matter.

  “Again,” he merely shrugged, “you’re clearly not a baseball fan.”

  “Not exactly,” Maggie retorted. “Plus I’ve been a little busy the last few years, running this cafe.”

  “I play for the Pioneers,” he said casually, but the shuttered expression on his face told some other story. Maggie made a mental note to definitely google him when she got home. If he was a famous baseball player, then she might be able to figure out why he wanted to talk to her sister so much. And Maggie much preferred to start with some kind of advantage when dealing with Tabitha, even if the advantage was only information.

  “Ah.”

  “Well, thanks for your help.”

  It was wrong but Maggie waited a split second after he departed the kitchen to turn off the light. After all, a butt that excellent deserved an audience, even if it was only her and the grill.