“That is not even a possibility, Julie. Just be patient.”
He took her hand, laced his fingers through hers. That calloused touch felt like security, optimism, but its slight tremor kept her from completely abandoning her doubts.
“But what if we don’t win? I’m just trying to prepare myself.”
“If we don’t win, we’re no worse off than we were before,” he said as if he were already beginning to accept the disappointment. “In fact, we’re better off because we met each other. Pretty good deal, if you ask me.”
She looked up at him and saw that he meant it. He considered that a plus, and that knowledge made the situation seem less urgent to him.
“Not much better off,” he added with a grin. “But a little.”
Playfully, she swung at him. The door to the outside opened suddenly, and Brett Bodinger, Detroit’s award-winning meteorologist, came in followed by perky Susan Stevens, Detroit’s award-winning news anchor. A camera crew filed in behind them with tape rolling. Susan Stevens puffed her perfectly coiffed hair and smacked her recently painted lips. “Are you ready?” she asked the cameramen as they flicked on their lights and positioned them over Blake and Julie.
“Anytime you are,” one of them said.
The woman turned back to the baffled couple and grinned from ear to ear, making certain that she never put her back to the camera. “Congratulations, Mr. Adcock and Miss Sheffield. You’re going to be millionaires!”
It took a moment for the words to sink in.
In that moment, Julie realized she had known all along that the tickets were authentic.
Blake realized that he had never really believed it.
Their stunned eyes met as they both rose to their feet, and finally Julie threw her arms around Blake and squealed with delight. Blake lifted her off the floor and swung her around. She laughed like a little girl on a carnival ride. “We won!” she said over and over. “We’re rich!”
The cameras recorded the whole scene without interruption, and then the reporters zeroed in on the way they had gotten the ticket. After the initial feed to New York, the news anchors set them up at their news desk, from which they did satellite interviews with a dozen stations across the country.
“What do you think this win will do to your relationship?” one of the reporters asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t say there really is a relationship,” Julie said. “I mean, we just met last night.”
Blake tried to look wounded. “I’m crushed. We were just talking marriage not twenty minutes ago.”
“Blake!” Julie’s face blushed to crimson. “He was talking marriage,” she corrected. “Something about pooling our winnings or some such nonsense. We hardly know each other.”
“Do you regret giving her the ticket?” the man continued. “You could have had the whole jackpot for yourself.”
“No, I don’t regret it,” Blake said. “I like having women deeply indebted to me.”
Julie caught her breath as the reporters laughed, but the next question left her little time to work her indignation into anger.
“What are you going to do with the money?”
A lyrical note of laughter undulated on Blake’s voice. “It depends on when they plan to give it to us. If we get it tonight, I might go out and buy a restaurant in Greektown or something.” The reporters laughed with a shared exuberance that no one in the room could help feeling.
“And you, Miss Sheffield, what do you plan to do with the winnings?”
“I’m a fashion designer,” she said, “and I plan to invest most of it in my business.”
“But aren’t you going to splurge with any of it?” someone asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Maybe I’ll buy a new pair of shoes.”
Toward the wee hours of the morning, Julie felt as if she and Blake were two aliens in a room full of spectators. She was too distracted to find it odd or awkward when he held her around her waist, and her nerves prompted her arm around him as well. And neither had the slightest suspicion just how far those tiny gestures or their flirtatious teasing would be carried when news of their winnings hit the morning media.
It wasn’t yet dawn when the two weary winners were walked back to Blake’s car, followed by a throng of cameramen. They filmed as the couple waved victoriously and began to drive away, like a bride and groom off to the honeymoon.
“So what do you think?” Blake asked when they were back on the freeway. “Are you glad you met me?”
“Yes, but you may not be so glad you met me. The reporters were right, you know. It could all be yours.”
He chuckled. “I’m glad I met you, Julie. And I’m glad we won together. It wouldn’t have been as much fun without you.” He suppressed a yawn. “So what do you want to do to celebrate? We could go get breakfast. Any restaurants you’d like to buy?”
“I want to get some sleep,” she said. “We have a big day ahead of us.”
Blake snapped his fingers as if to acknowledge defeat. His grin was incorrigible, but he let the teasing drop. “How long before we have to be at the television station?”
She checked the digital clock on the radio. “Five hours. That’ll give me three hours to sleep and two hours to get ready.”
He yawned and stretched. “This’ll be fun. Telling everybody how it feels to be stinking rich.”
“Should be easy enough.”
“Yeah.”
He took her hand and held it. It felt more natural than it should have, and no alarms went off in her head. They were quiet, both lost in dreamy smiles and contented memories of the night as they drove to Julie’s house. Once there, Blake pulled into her driveway and cut off his headlights. “So you’re sure you don’t want to spend any of that tonight, huh?”
“Definitely,” she whispered. He made no move to get out of the car.
“Well,” he whispered, leaning toward her, “I had a really good time tonight. You’re fun to be around. Even when there’s no sweepstakes ticket involved.”
He moved closer, and she didn’t move away. Their lips met in a sweet union that made her heart race. Gratitude welled up inside her, and she wondered if it was really possible for her loneliness to end at the same time as her financial problems. Maybe God really had brought them together. Maybe there was a chance . . .
A light flashed and they jumped apart. Two photographers stood at the window, aiming and flashing, recording their kiss. Just as Blake opened the door to confront them, two cars screeched to a halt at the curb, and more photographers jumped out. “We’ve got to go inside,” he said quickly. “It’s about to get crazy. Come on!”
“No!” Julie said, stopping him before he got out of the car. “You can’t come in. They’ll blow it all out of proportion. Especially after that picture they just took. I have to go in alone.”
“But I can’t leave you here with a throng of madmen outside your door!”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “They want a story, that’s all. They’re harmless enough.”
He surveyed the crowd growing around the car, bulbs flashing. “All right,” he said with a sigh. “I have to go home and change sooner or later. Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, shading her eyes from the blinding flash of the bulbs. “I’ll see you at the television station.”
“Yeah. And, Julie?”
She turned back to him.
“They’re sending a limousine, so don’t take the bus, okay?”
She giggled. “A limousine. Thanks, I would have forgotten. Bye.”
“Bye.”
She climbed out of the car and pushed through the shouting reporters and photographers and ran to her house. It wasn’t until she was safely inside that she heard Blake’s car starting up.
And she had to admit that he had been right. The best thing so far about winning the sweepstakes was that she’d met Blake Adcock.
“SWEEPSTAKES SWEETHEARTS WIN $20 MILLION!”
The headlin
e on the front page of the Detroit newspaper was like cold water flung into a sleepy, groggy face.
“Sweepstakes sweethearts?” Julie cried aloud.
“Pardon?” asked the chauffeur in the front seat.
“Nothing,” Julie said absently as her eyes dropped to the picture of Blake and her in an ecstatic clench as he swung her around. “I . . . I was just . . . never mind.” Suddenly feeling queasy, she leaned forward in the spacious limo to the stack of morning papers. Her banker had given them to her when he had opened the bank early to take care of the wire transfer from New York. Moving the first offensive one off the stack, she glanced at the second.
“Lovers Split Ticket and $20 Million!” was the next headline. The photo below it was of Blake and her with arms clamped around each other’s waist as they laughed together and answered questions.
“Oh no,” she said with a moan.
Reluctantly, she looked at the paper beneath it. “Sweepstakes Winners Talk Marriage.” Beneath the headline was a photo of the two of them in his car, engaged in the kiss that never should have happened.
She brought her hands to her face and covered it as if that could protect her from the wrath of her aunt, who lived across the street from her. “Sweethearts?” Myrtle Mahogan would ask in an accusing, hurt voice. Then she would tell Julie how humiliated she was to see her “little Julie” being mauled by a man Myrtle hadn’t even met. It wouldn’t matter that Julie had won a fortune. To Myrtle, the imagined shame and disgrace would be much more tangible than the concept of lifelong wealth.
The car that was almost as big as Julie’s bedroom pulled in front of the television station, where in moments Julie would be hooked up to an earpiece and broadcast via satellite to a network morning show in New York. The added coverage would force Blake and her into some sort of artificial relationship that would either ruin the delicate feelings they had begun to feel for each other or propel them into something much faster than either of them could handle.
There was only one thing to do, she thought as the chauffeur opened her door for her. She would have to dispel the myth of the “sweepstakes sweethearts” as soon as possible. She decided national television was as good a place to start as any.
Dressed in a blue suit, Blake sat in the television station, where the employees skittered around him like trained penguins, bringing him coffee, doughnuts, and croissants. Chuckling within, he fought the urge to demand a shoeshine and a snack of grapes, hand-fed to him by some awestruck beauties. He didn’t think he had quit smiling since the night before, and the way he figured it, he was probably going to be smiling for the next twenty years—or at least until his money ran out.
He checked the diamond cuff links he hadn’t been able to afford when he bought them and, finding they were still shining like the pleasure in his eyes, reached to the makeup table in front of him, to the newspapers that had been brought in while he was being made up for the lights. Glancing at the headlines, he began to laugh. Well, there were worse images a millionaire could have, he thought. If he was going to be labeled “sweetheart” to anyone, he could do far worse than Julie Sheffield.
He grinned as he looked over the pictures, recalling the ecstasy when he’d swung her around and the euphoria as they’d answered questions. But when he came to the picture of them kissing in his car, his smile faded.
Wait a minute, he thought. This was taking things a little far. How would this look for Julie? She would be humiliated and embarrassed. And he didn’t blame her.
A commotion arose across the studio as the subject of his thoughts entered and was engulfed in a crowd of well-wishers. Quickly he dropped the papers in the trash can and searched for something to cover them with. A sign beside the mirror that read Keep Smiling was all he found, so he tore it down and stuffed it in the wastebasket to hide the papers, in the remote chance that Julie hadn’t seen them yet. Then he stood to wait for her.
Fashion photographers would have killed to get her for their magazine covers if they saw her today, he thought as he watched her smiling and talking with the camera crew. She was attired in a loose-fitting dress, belted at the waist, and it had an original and untrendy style. It was probably one of her own designs, he thought. The purple background of the printed cloth was a nice foil for the blended swirls of yellow, green, red, and black. The silky fringe of her blonde hair teased close to her long eyelashes as she dipped her head shyly and answered questions.
Their eyes met across the room, but hers darted away. Her face flushed the color of young rose petals, and he knew that she had seen the papers. Now she would be uncomfortable just talking to him, he thought with a surge of anger.
His dazed excitement over the money temporarily assuaged, he ambled toward her, hands in his pockets. Was it just the way she looked that was making his heart do an aerobic workout, he wondered, or was it the lady herself?
The crowd seemed to hush as he approached, as if everyone waited to hear the first exchange between the now-famous “sweethearts.”
“Hi,” he said.
She swallowed and glanced away. “Hi.”
“Did you get any sleep?”
“No,” she said. “Too many reporters outside. You?”
“Too excited.”
“Yeah,” she whispered.
Feeling as clumsy as a nerd with the class beauty, Blake sought out the news director in the crowd. “When will we be on?”
“Not for thirty minutes or more,” the man said.
“Then could I have a moment alone with Julie?”
“Certainly,” the director obliged, and everyone smiled with approval. “Right this way to the greenroom.”
The porcelain tightness that passed over Julie’s face told Blake that he’d made a mistake. She didn’t want to be alone with him, and she especially didn’t appreciate his asking for privacy in front of the entire staff of the television station.
The greenroom wasn’t green at all but a bright blue that did nothing to calm the nerves of those waiting to be televised. Soft, overstuffed couches filled the room, and there was a wet bar in the corner and a monitor on the wall so they could watch what was going on in the studio. Julie went in and stood awkwardly in the room. Blake knew that for every step forward he had made with her, the morning papers had pushed him ten steps back.
The news director reached for the door to close it, but Blake stopped him. “Leave it open,” he said. “We don’t need that much privacy.”
“Sure?” the man asked.
“Absolutely.”
When the man had left them alone, Blake turned to Julie. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m tired,” she said. “I’m not used to getting a lot of sleep, but I usually get some.”
“Yeah, me too.”
There was more on Julie’s face than fatigue, Blake thought as he watched her drop her clutch purse on the couch and flop down. She slipped her finger through one of her gold earrings. “Do you know what they’re saying about us?”
He lowered to the arm of the couch across from her. “Yeah. Afraid I do.”
“Well, it isn’t true!”
Blake chuckled. “I know it isn’t.”
“Well, they don’t know it.” She took a deep breath and rubbed her hand over her forehead. “And my aunt doesn’t know it.”
“Julie, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you last night. I should have known—”
Julie nodded as if she agreed with him. “And you shouldn’t have teased about marriage, Blake. That was like throwing a bone to a pack of starving dogs, and now they want even more. But I was as much at fault as you for the kiss. I didn’t exactly fight you off.”
He was silent for a moment as he recalled the kiss that had gotten them into so much trouble. A sly grin crept across his face at the memory, and he turned to a soda machine in the corner as if studying the selection of beverages.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
He gave a shrug. “Nothing.”
“No, tell
me. I want to know.”
He turned back to her and leaned against the machine. “I was just thinking that no matter how much it was blown out of proportion, I think if I had it to do all over—” he rubbed the smile on his face—“I’d still kiss you.”
“Blake . . .”
He shrugged helplessly. “Sorry, but you asked.”
Julie dipped her face and studied the paisley pattern of the carpet, fighting the flattery that nevertheless seemed to calm her. “Well, we have to fix this. We have to make sure that the reporters have nothing else to go on. In fact, we should probably go out of our way to make it clear that we’re not involved.”
Blake slid his hands into his pockets and paced to the window, glanced out, then turned back to her. “What if we did the opposite? What if we gave them what they wanted until it was old news and they left us alone?”
“Absolutely not,” she said adamantly. “I don’t want another failed romance to wind up in the Detroit gossip columns.”
“Another?” he asked. “Has this happened before?”
Julie closed her eyes. “Forget I said that. I just meant that I don’t like to play games.”
“I’m not asking you to. We don’t have to do anything. All we have to do is smile at each other now and then—be ourselves—and they’ll have a field day with it.”
“That’s why we have to go as far to the opposite as we can. We can’t smile at each other, Blake, and we can’t touch each other, and we can’t be in the same car together or the same house. We’ve got to tell these people that we didn’t even meet until the night before last and that there is absolutely nothing between us!”
“Julie, it’ll just make us more mysterious. They’ll hound us until they have something. This is the kind of story people love.”
Julie got up. “I don’t care! It’s my life we’re talking about! My reputation!” She took a breath as if trying to calm herself. “Maybe I should invent a boyfriend. Or you could tell them you’re engaged.”
Blake leaned back against the windowsill, playing along. “You mean lie?”
Chance of Loving You Page 5
