Julia London

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

LUCKY CHARM

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley edition / 2006

InterMix eBook edition / March 2013

Copyright © 2006 by Julia London.

Excerpt from
The Vicar’s Widow
copyright © 2005 by Julia London.

Cover photos: © Mike Liu/Shutterstock; FXQuadro/Shutterstock.

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ISBN: 978-1-101-63159-1

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Parker Price hadn’t had a hit in two weeks.

It wouldn’t be a big deal if he was
playing in a church league in Hoboken, but he was playing for the New York Mets, who had
inked a deal to pay him one hundred ten million over seven years, plus bonuses, because
they thought he
could
hit, among other things. And furthermore, it probably
wouldn’t have been
that
big of a deal if the Mets had at least won a game in the
last two weeks.

They hadn’t.

Even worse, with the humiliating end to last night’s game—in
which they had been swept by the team nemesis, the New York Yankees—they were on a
downhill slide, picking up steam for a spectacular crash at rock bottom. And for some
reason, all of New York seemed to think it was Parker Price’s fault.

Okay, so he’d
had a couple bad weeks, but he wasn’t the only one swinging at air out there. Their big
hitter, bought from the Angels for almost as much as Parker, hadn’t been able to hit a
damn
thing, either. But did they boo him? No. Yell at him to get back on
his mule and ride for Texas? Hell no. Just Parker.

Maybe these people just hated Texans
in general—there had been some press to that effect when the Mets had lured him away from
the Houston Astros. And maybe he really just sucked. God knew he was wondering of late—no
one was more surprised than him by the base-running error he’d made last night. No wait,
that didn’t do it justice—what he’d done last night had to be the most incredibly
boneheaded base-running error in the history of the sport.

It was bad
enough that he couldn’t get out of the parking lot without hot dogs and beer bottles being
thrown at his car. It was bad enough that his neighbor, Mrs. Frankel, who had to be ninety
if she was a day, was waiting for him at the bottom of the drive when he arrived home. The
old bat was standing in his drive, wearing her Mets jacket and Mets hat perched atop of
her cotton-ball head, carrying a bat that had the words
New York Mets Swing for the
Fences!
emblazoned down the side.

He knew right then it was trouble.

Parker eased
himself out of his Hummer and tried to smile. “Evening, Mrs. Frankel.”

“Don’t
evening
me!” she shrieked and came at him with the bat raised, blubbering something
about how no one was paying
her
one hundred million dollars to hit a baseball, but
she could damn sure hit a head as swollen as his.

Parker gently but firmly took the
bat from her, at which point Mrs. Frankel dissolved into huge crocodile tears and sobbed
how much she loved the Mets and just couldn’t stand to see what was happening to
them.

“Neither can I, Mrs. Frankel,” he sighed, and pointed her in the direction
of her house. As she teetered down the drive, he called out, “You’re sure you’ll be all
right, Mrs. Frankel?”

“Don’t talk to me!” she screeched then paused and turned
partially around to look at him. “May I have my bat? I got that in 1972.”

Parker winced and eased the bat around behind his back. “I don’t think so,
Mrs. Frankel. Think I better hold on to it until you’re feeling better.”

That prompted
her to make a derogatory remark that he heard quite clearly, but she continued her waddle
down the drive, muttering to himself.

And still, that wasn’t the worst of it.

This morning, he
was awakened by his radio alarm just like he was every morning, and surprise, surprise; it
was Kelly O’Shay of
Sports Day with Kelly O’Shay
startling him from a fitful sleep.
Just like she did every freakin’ morning.

“Wait, wait, wait, Guido,” she was
saying to her sidekick, who was, ironically, actually named Guido, “Are you trying to say
the coach
didn’t
signal him?”

“No, no, he
signaled
him. The Priceman either
didn’t see it or didn’t read it right—but in either case, it’s inexcusable for a topflight
professional ball player.”

Parker bolted upright, furious. Like some punk named
Guido
could possibly understand the split-second decision-making skills baseball
required.

“You’re right, it’s inexcusable,” Kelly cheerfully agreed in that drop-dead
sexy voice of hers, and someone played a tape of people booing loudly. “You expect
base-running errors like that in Little League, but not the majors. The Mets can’t afford
to pay some bozo from Texas that kind of scratch and then let him get away with those
sorts of errors, right? I’ll tell you straight up, Guido—losing that game on the error
last night was compounded by the fact that Price obviously can’t hit, has no glove, and is
just wasting an otherwise perfectly good uniform.”

“I agree,” Guido said, and the sound
of a loud cheering section filled the room for a moment.

“I have a suggestion for the Mets,
however,” Kelly chirped, like she was about to impart a decorating tip, which frankly, to
Parker’s way of thinking, she ought to be doing.

“Oh yeah?” Guido
asked, already laughing. “What’s that?”

“Get some giant cue cards that say
something like ‘Hey, Parker, run this way and run now!’ ”

Guido howled.

Parker groaned,
sank back into the pillows, and threw an arm over his eyes.

She did this
every morning, using that sexy voice that she once used to lull him to sleep with the
sports scores every night. But then they moved her to mornings with her own radio talk
show, and dammit, he was convinced that if she’d just
stop,
he’d probably play like
he used to. That woman had
jinxed
him. He was firmly convinced that his slump was
her
fault. Her constant ridicule was killing him, because every day she rubbed it
in, the worse his slump got.

“Hey, let’s go to the phones and see what New York has to say
about the worst Mets ball player in the last one hundred years!” she cried like a
cheerleader with pom-poms. “Okay, we’ve got Paul from Jersey. Hello, Paul! You’re on the
air at
Sports Day with Kelly O’Shay
. What’s up?”

“Yo, Kelly, I first want to say that
I love your show,” a guy with a thick Jersey accent said.

“Thanks!”

“And second, I
saw that base-running error in the seventh last night, and I gotta say, that was the
sorriest excuse for baseball I have ever seen in my fifty-two years of following the
Mets,” Paul shouted over the cheering section the show was playing behind
him.

“Oh yeah, it was bad,” Kelly readily agreed.

“I mean, he
looked like a damn freak. He can’t even
run
, you know what I’m saying? Dude,
I
could run faster than that, and I’m pushing three bills!”