Chance of Loving You

by Terri Blackstock

  Nothing had been easy since then. Not only had she been thrown back to the drawing board professionally, but she’d faced the added problem of rising above Jack’s miserable allegations. Plus she had to make a living while she got started. A waitressing job in an upscale restaurant had been the perfect answer. It netted her not only enough to survive but a little something to put into her dresses.

  That was why she had related so well to Blake. They’d each had dreams, and each knew failure. Each had clung to a down-but-not-out demeanor through it all, and remained devoid of bitterness or blame. So what would happen when he collected his winnings and went on with his life, fulfilling his dreams? Would he remember the little blonde waitress he’d butted heads with, the one who gave up her winnings for some hazy principle she didn’t even fully understand? Or would she be filed under “history” and never thought of again?

  The thought depressed her. But if she accepted the ticket, they would be somehow yoked together. She would owe him, and that couldn’t be good.

  Her eyes strayed to the clock again. Eleven thirty-eight. It seemed like no time at all since it had been nine thirty. Where had the time gone? And still Blake made no move to leave. He wasn’t even showing the typical signs of anxiety, as she was. He seemed relaxed, calm, even a little amused.

  “Is it hot in here?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I’m comfortable.”

  He watched as she lifted the hair off her neck and glanced at the clock again. “Blake, it’s 11:38. You’d better go.”

  “Not unless you come with me.”

  “Twenty million dollars, Blake! Just go claim it!”

  “Uh-uh.”

  Julie wiped the perspiration from her forehead and watched as the second hand traveled around the numbers. She snatched up the tickets and handed both halves to him. “Blake, please.”

  He waved her away. “I’m a man of honor,” he said seriously and without any particular urgency. “When I give something to someone, I can’t take it back. Even if it means I lose in the process. You should have learned that about me last night, when I told you about giving the prototype to Paul. I keep my word.”

  “But, Blake . . .” Her plea trailed off as she realized it was futile. Setting the half tickets back on the coffee table, she listened as the clock ticked off agonizing seconds that dragged into minutes.

  At eighteen before twelve, their eyes met. I can’t wait to see him grab those tickets and dart out, she thought.

  But that moment never came. Blake’s eyes were amused, placating, but never anxious.

  Hers, on the other hand, must have been glossy, frustrated, borderline frantic. If he lost twenty million dollars because she refused to take half . . . She clutched the roots of her hair and swallowed hard. Ten million dollars could have gotten her father out from under the debts he had worked at the steel mill to pay off until the day he died. It could have given her mother a new start instead of a grieving end. It could get her church out of debt, feed the poor, support several missionaries. . . . The money would roll over into the next sweepstakes, and they’d never have the chance again. The next winner might gamble it all away. He or she might spend it on drugs or waste every penny.

  The clock’s ticking sounds punctuated Blake’s slow, relaxed breathing. How could he be so calm? If he didn’t run out in the next thirty seconds, she’d have to do something. The second hand descended to the two, the three, the four, and still Blake didn’t move. But his smile grew more pronounced in his eyes as he noted the changes in her expression.

  Twenty million dollars! What kind of person would sit there and let twenty million dollars go down the tubes because of a misplaced sense of honor? What kind of airhead would sit calmly on her couch while—? She caught the direction of her thoughts and hauled them back. She was acting the way he had acted earlier. Calling him names when she was just as foolish as he!

  Suddenly she sprang to her feet. “My shoes!” she shouted in a rush. “I’ll get my shoes and you start the car!”

  Blake was out the door in seconds, leaping over the untended shrubs in her yard and fairly skidding on his feet as he reached his car. She grabbed one shoe, hopped around until she could find the other. Finally she got it halfway on and stumbled to the car. In ten seconds flat they were on their way, each clutching half of the propitious ticket as his car threaded through shortcuts and wove its way toward the television station.

  “We must be crazy!” she mumbled. “Wasting all that time! We’ll never make it!”

  Blake only smiled.

  A car ahead of them insisted on driving the speed limit, and Julie sat forward in her seat. “What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they have anything better to do than ruin the lives of innocent people?”

  Blake laughed.

  He passed the car impeding their progress and made a turn onto a street that would get them to the highway. But half a mile from the on-ramp they heard a loud whistle and a roaring engine. Julie sought the source of the light shining over them. “A train!” she shouted. “Can’t you beat it?”

  “No,” he said. “Just take it easy. It’s all right.”

  “All right?” she bellowed. “How can it be all right? We have eight minutes to get downtown! Eight minutes!”

  “Sixty-eight minutes,” he corrected with a smile. “I turned your clocks ahead when you were paying the pizza man.”

  The emotional bubble in Julie’s chest bobbed between fury and ecstasy, then crashed like a lead ball. “You what?”

  “Hey,” he said with an infuriating shrug, “I may be honorable and all that, but I wasn’t about to take the chance of losing twenty million dollars. Not even for you!”

  “OF ALL THE UNDERHANDED, conniving, manipulative—”

  Her reaction seemed not to surprise Blake, though his annoyance was clear in his voice. “So I tricked you into accepting ten million dollars, Julie. Sue me.”

  Julie set her eyes on the train rumbling by. It was a cool night, and the smell of rain dominated the air, a sign that another storm was not far away. The sound of the heavy train roaring over the tracks seemed to underscore her irritation, though she wasn’t sure why his deception had the power to douse her excitement. “I should have known that you wouldn’t have that kind of honor,” she muttered, “sitting in my living room like you cared whether I took it or not.”

  Blake’s splayed hand raked quickly through his dark hair, then settled back over the steering wheel. “I did care, Julie. I do care. That’s why we’re sitting here arguing. If I didn’t care, I’d have left your house at nine thirty with both halves of the ticket and never looked back!”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I’m a man of my word. I don’t intend to apologize for that.”

  Silence settled between them as the rusty boxcars rattled past, and Julie focused on a spot on the windshield. He seemed much too close in the tiny sports car, and his expression clearly illustrated his bruised feelings. What was it about this man that his surprises, his unpredictability, constantly left her disappointed?

  “Tell me something,” she said after a moment. “What if I had been stubborn right up to the last minute? Would you have left me and claimed the money then?”

  “No.” There was no hesitation in his answer, no doubt in his blue eyes as he regarded her across the darkness. She felt her heart rate speed up, and she wished she hadn’t been so lonely for so long.

  Blake made a big deal of stretching and lowered his arm across the back of her seat, reminding her of the “smooth” ploys of a sixteen-year-old in his dad’s car. He leaned toward her, his lips entirely too close to her ear as he said, “At that point I probably would have picked you up, thrown you over my shoulder, and taken you with me.”

  A tiny smile broke through Julie’s scowl, for his admission restored a bit of her faith. Yes, that was exactly what he would have done, she thought. Finally she allowed herself to look at him, and her heart halted in midbeat. “Why?” she whispered hoa
rsely. “Why didn’t you just take the money and run?”

  “Why did you have to test me?” he parried. “What made you so sure I was a scumbag who wouldn’t have given you a thought if you weren’t the key to my fortune?”

  She gave the idea a moment’s thought. “Because men are usually after something. There’s almost always a motive.”

  Blake cleared his throat as if he couldn’t accept being cleared completely. “Well, I never said I was completely without a motive.” The confession left his eyes smiling. “When I saw you last night, I did sort of hope we could see each other again.”

  “Last night you didn’t even want to have a cup of coffee with me,” she reminded him.

  Blake dropped his left wrist over the steering wheel and leaned even closer, the arm at her back closing in. The breath of his words whispered against her lips, and this time it was not her imagination. “Last night I wanted very much to spend more time with you,” he said. “I wanted to find out everything about you. How many sisters and brothers you have, if you like old movies, where you’re from, whether your parents are still living, what you do during the day, what you would like to do, whether or not you’re seeing anyone . . .”

  “Then why didn’t you just ask?” she whispered, paying careful attention to his lips.

  “Because I felt like a loser,” he said, “and you aren’t the type of woman who deserves a loser.”

  It was too pat, she thought. Too easy. But somehow he seemed sincere. “I’m from a town called Wry Springs,” she said. “It’s about an hour from here. I’m an only child, and my parents aren’t living. Dad worked in the steel mill until the day he died, and we struggled all our lives. I don’t have much faith in money or people who have money, because I never had any, and I was happy anyway. My family always found happiness in our relationships with each other. I guess that’s why the ticket didn’t mean that much to me. I don’t need money to be happy. So now all your questions are answered,” she said, glancing down the tracks where the end of the train was still not in sight.

  “Not all of them,” he whispered. “You didn’t answer the ones about old movies and boyfriends.”

  She struggled not to smile. “Yes and no.”

  He moved even closer. “And which question does the yes answer? Yes, you like old movies, or yes, you’re seeing someone?”

  Julie felt a hot, sweet heat scalding her cheeks. “You’ll have to figure that one out for yourself, Adcock,” she whispered.

  He smiled. “Would you really trust me to form my own conclusions?”

  “I can’t trust you with the time of day.”

  She caught his grin, in spite of her efforts not to. His hand moved to cup her chin. The gentle touch sent a charge through her nerves. “Julie, last night I had a hundred and fifteen dollars and a credit card charged to the limit. My bill was $114.83. I was humiliated that I didn’t have a tip, so I got out of there. I spent the rest of the night more frustrated about the woman I would never get to know than the fact that weeks of my work were down the drain and I was broke.”

  She wet her lips. “You . . . you really thought about me last night?”

  He was watching her lips as if giving serious consideration to kissing her. “Did you think about me?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “And what did you think?”

  Her words came out in a mesmerized whisper. “I thought you were a cheap creep and that I was better off if I never saw you again.”

  His eyes danced as if she’d just given him wild praise. “What else?”

  “That you were a white-collar snob who wouldn’t stoop to dating a waitress.”

  He blew a low whistle and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “And?”

  She struggled not to smile. “That you were a pretty good-looking, cheap, creepy snob.”

  “Pretty good-looking, huh?” he rumbled. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “I know I’ll hate myself for admitting it.”

  “Then I’ll admit something too,” he whispered. “I thought you were worth groveling for. I almost went back after I left, knowing I would humiliate myself even more.”

  “Almost? Is that supposed to comfort me?”

  He moistened his lips. “It’ll have to do for now. You should know that I sold my coffee table this morning to raise money so I could pay your IOU tonight.”

  “Your coffee table?”

  “Yes. It’s a marble-topped antique. Belonged to my grandmother.”

  “And you sold it to pay my tip?”

  “No. I sold it so I’d have a pretense for seeing you again.”

  Julie swallowed. He swallowed. As they looked into each other’s eyes, gone for a moment were thoughts of the sweepstakes, and the money waiting for them, and the time that sneaked by much too quickly.

  Gone, also, was the train.

  A horn behind them blared, and several more in the line of traffic behind them sounded. Someone rolled down his window and cursed.

  “The train’s gone,” Blake and Julie said together.

  Shifting back into drive, Blake jerked the car forward. He reached across the seat and took her hand. And as they drove, Julie thought more about the feel of his hand on hers than she did about the money waiting for them.

  But as soon as they reached the downtown area, the excitement seemed to strike them both. “Ten million dollars,” Julie whispered in awe. “I’m going to have ten million dollars.”

  “I’m gonna buy my neighbor, Mrs. Davis, a big flat-screen TV,” he said. “She’s homebound and half-blind. And I’ll buy Paul a Jacuzzi to help with his circulation.”

  “I’ll be able to quit my job and work full-time on my designs,” she said in a dreamy voice.

  “And I’m getting my mom one of those doorbells that plays some long tune when you ring it. And a new car with Bluetooth.”

  “I can hire an assistant to help me,” she went on.

  “I want the latest iPhone for every one of my nieces and nephews.”

  “I could rent one of those good PA systems for my show,” Julie said.

  “A yacht,” Blake added. “I’ll buy a yacht for my church, for Sunday school parties and retreats.”

  “Ten million dollars,” Julie whispered again.

  “Ten million dollars,” he echoed.

  They reached the street on which the ABC affiliate was located, and a coil of panic rose within her. What if it was a mistake? What if the number wasn’t the winning number? What if there were two million other winners? What if the ticket was a fake? “Are we going to be brave when they tell us it was all a big mistake, or are we going to break down and cry like babies, then trash the place?”

  “I vote for trashing the place,” he said, “but since it isn’t a mistake, it won’t come to that.” He took her hand again and squeezed it as he came to a stop in front of the building. “Well, are you ready for this?”

  She massaged her stomach. “I think I’m going to be sick. Maybe you’d better go in and make sure it’s real. I don’t take disappointment very well.”

  “We’ll both go, and we won’t be disappointed. Trust me.”

  “Trust you?” she asked. “The man who turned my clocks ahead?”

  “It was for a good cause,” he said. “Now come on.”

  Stark terror changed her breathing rate. “I can’t. My legs won’t move.”

  “If your legs don’t move, they won’t be able to walk in there and claim all that money.”

  “They’ll figure out a way,” she muttered. “Just give me a second.”

  She gazed through the window into the lit offices. No one in there knew the winner was here in Detroit. She wondered if anyone of authority was here. Had they been briefed on what to do if the winner appeared?

  “You know, our lives are never going to be the same after tonight,” he said.

  “Probably not,” she agreed. “We’ll always look back and remember the night we thought we’d won ten million dollars and were m
istaken.”

  His deep, melodic laughter relaxed her a little. “We’re not mistaken. We’re rich.”

  Numbly, Julie forced herself to open the car door. Her feet touched the ground, and she managed to make her legs move. Blake was beside her in a moment, with his arm around her shoulders. But his own trembling told her he needed support nearly as much as she did. “You know,” he said with a wry grin as they started up the steps and into the building, “ten million is a lot, but twenty is more. We ought to give some serious consideration to getting married and pooling our winnings.”

  Julie gaped at him. From the laughing look on his face, it was obvious that the idea had been facetious. But she didn’t find it amusing. “Don’t press your luck, Adcock. I haven’t given them my half of the ticket yet.”

  “Well, come on, Julie,” he teased. “How can you not see that this relationship is blessed?”

  Before she could answer, he had swept her into the office and announced their presence.

  “The tickets are bogus,” Julie said a little while later as they sat in the station manager’s office, watching through the glass window as the evening news anchor spoke into the telephone.

  “No, they aren’t,” Blake said. “They’re just checking for authenticity. They can’t just give twenty million dollars to anybody off the street. And then they’ve got to set up the satellite feed showing them giving us the money. This whole thing is for promotion, you know. They aren’t going to do it in secret.”

  Julie glanced at him, and her heart fell when she saw the doubt in his face. “Wouldn’t it be something if we went through all this and weren’t winners, after all?”