Tempted (The Lottery Winners Book 2)

by Elizabeth Lennox

  With that, she stood up, slapped two more twenty dollar bills down on the bar to cover their drinks and nodded towards the man. “The extra twenty is for your next round. I hope to see you tomorrow, Mr. Barnes.”

  With that, she spun on her heel and walked out of the bar.

  Daisy stepped out of the bar and looked around, feeling wonderful. Powerful! The big, muscular jerk was going to work for her. A scam! Ha! If there was anyone who knew how to spot a scam, it was her! A few years ago, she and her four friends had bought one lottery ticket. The following morning, Daisy, along with her best friends and fellow diner employees Ivy, Tony, and Marilee, had woken to find that they were worth approximately two hundred million dollars…EACH! Ivy, Tony, and Marilee all lived and worked in LowPoint now, each living out their dreams.

  They’d been careful though. They’d hired a lawyer that had assisted them in claiming their winnings while maintaining their anonymity. Then they’d traveled. For months, they’d traveled the world, bought clothes, and relaxed, enjoying life for a while.

  Then they’d become bored and weary with the lack of goals in their lives. Daisy had always wanted to learn to decorate, loving the transformation of a dingy, boring room into something more spectacular. So she’d set aside some of her winnings to fund a foundation that bought up the houses in LowPoint and now she spent her days lovingly renovating all the abandoned, deteriorating houses, transforming them into beautiful houses in safe, wonderful neighborhoods.

  The problem she’d run into was the unethical contractors that had overcharged her for supplies and materials. Hence the search for an honest construction manager. She’d come up with the idea of hiring a permanent staff, starting with Rocco Barnes. He would hire the rest of the construction team, allowing her to focus on the decorating aspect of the renovations. Only their lawyer, Jason Rayburn, and their business manager, Heath Sinclair, knew that she was actually the owner and controller of the foundation. She presented herself to everyone as simply an employee and she preferred it that way. It allowed her more autonomy.

  Friend and fellow lottery winner, Ivy Taylor, had taken a completely different route with her winnings. She traveled the world taking pictures, returning to her gallery in LowPoint to sell her photos. They were always hot sellers and brought an almost constant stream of tourists to LowPoint, especially during the big “reveal” weekends when she returned from one of her trips to display her new photos. When she was home, she lived in a tiny, one bedroom apartment above her photography gallery. Her time not spent traveling for new places to photograph was spent training for marathons. Ivy was tall and lean…what most people would call willowy.

  Tony had taken over one of the large buildings on Main Street in LowPoint and opened up his second restaurant, the first being a diner right across the street from the unethical diner the four of them had worked prior to winning the lottery – putting the evil woman out of business. His second order of business…he’d gone to business school, then to culinary school and learned to become a chef. Now his meals were creative, brilliant, and extremely expensive. People from around the country came to LowPoint to taste his cooking, bringing more tourists to the tiny town.

  Marilee had gone a similar route to Daisy, also setting up and funding a foundation, but she focused on renovating the retail stores in LowPoint, hiring local talent to do the work as often as possible. Her foundation spent money beautifying the streets, adding window boxes to some of the stores, planting trees, cleaning up the small town square, and helping the seniors who lived at the senior’s center.

  It was the perfect solution. Her best friends, Ivy, Tony, and Marilee – who were more like family to her than just friends, all lived and worked – most of the time – in LowPoint and enjoyed their anonymous philanthropy.

  But she’d never tell the gruff Rocco who owned the foundation that would eventually employ him. At least, Daisy hoped he would accept the job. He really was the best candidate for what she hoped to create. And she doubted he would overcharge her for anything. From what Heath had uncovered, Rocco was a good, honest man who just wanted to earn a living.

  Once out in the bright sunshine, she looked up at the building under construction across the street, wondering what safety precautions were not in place. Deciding that would be on her agenda this afternoon, she walked towards her Mini Cooper and slipped inside, immediately making a phone call to her business manager.

  “Heath, could you get a building inspector over to the address I’m going to text you? Something isn’t right and I suspect that the workers there are in danger.”

  “Absolutely,” he answered immediately. Heath was tall and lithe and always made her wonder what was really going on behind those sharp, grey eyes. He was also one of the few people who knew her actual net worth. In addition, the man was brilliant at finding solutions to the problems she, Ivy, Marilee, and Tony faced. He’d created and sold off more businesses than they could even imagine and had made millions doing it, which was why he was the perfect man to be their business manager. He was friends with Jason too, which added more credibility to his talent. “What do you suspect is happening?”

  She hesitated as she turned out of the parking lot. “I’m not sure,” she answered. “I get the sense that there are major safety issues, but I wouldn’t put it past the construction site manager to be doing more than just cutting corners on safety.”

  Daisy could picture Heath nodding his head. “I’ll get someone from OSHA over there to look around,” he replied, referring to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the safety inspectors that knew what each employer should be doing to ensure the safety of their workers. “I’ll let you know what the inspectors find as soon as they submit their report.”

  “Thanks Heath. How’s everything else?”

  “So far, all is good. The foundation is fully funded and my assistant will prepare the job offers as soon as you give me names.”

  “Excellent!” she replied.

  Chapter 2

  The following morning, Rocco parked along the curb in front of the address Daisy-Barbie had given him yesterday. Looking around, all he saw were houses that should have been demolished ten or twenty years ago. The town of LowPoint only had one traffic light. One! The storefronts were nice, but many of them were empty, which was a good reason why most of these houses were empty. The few that were in use seemed to be selling artwork or high-end jewelry. He’d noticed one consignment shop and a bakery that was bright and sunny, but not much else.

  What the hell was he doing here? Rocco slammed the door of his pickup, looking around. The tiny town of LowPoint wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d heard. There were several houses that looked nice, but the rest…he shook his head, everything looked so abandoned.

  Years ago, some reporter had done a series of stories about coal mining towns that had died. LowPoint had been one of the featured towns and had appeared to be about to crumble at any moment.

  But as he’d driven through town, he’d seen stores and people walking along sidewalks filled with flowers and trees that had just burst with leaves as the warm spring sun heated the earth. The downtown area definitely was different than the images he’d seen on television so many years ago.

  These houses though? Yeah, they looked ready to be demolished. The whole street looked…abandoned. There were broken windows, lawns filled with weeds, doors and windows missing on some of the houses, and…he did a double take at the house across the street. Was that a toilet on the lawn?

  Rubbing the back of his neck, he wondered what the hell he was doing here. There were no buildings going up, no construction anywhere to be seen.

  It was just a run-down neighborhood. Yeah, his mind immediately began cataloguing all the ways that he could improve the houses. A bit of...

  “You showed up!”

  Rocco turned, looking at the woman approaching him with a breathless smile. She wasn’t wearing a business suit and killer heels like she’d worn yesterday, but the loose je
ans and cotton top were pretty damn nice! Were those steel toed boots? Damn, she looked hot! Much more intriguing that the Barbie-look-alike he’d seen yesterday.

  And much more enticing!

  Keeping his features neutral, he waited for her to approach him, unwilling to give anything away.

  “I’m here,” he agreed, when she was a few feet away although it was obvious.

  She sauntered up to him and he was startled to realize how short she was. Maybe five feet, five? Not more. Since he was several inches over six feet, that caused him to look down at her more than he’d anticipated. He hadn’t noticed the height difference yesterday because she’d been sitting down. And yeah – because he’d been a bit too focused on her mouth.

  His eyes dropped to take in that particular body part, thinking back to his dreams from the previous night. He’d woken up hard and aching and it was due to this woman and her full lips that….

  “Why am I here?” he demanded, sounding a bit more gruff than he’d intended, but those damn lips stretched into a grin.

  Hell, he’d thought that she couldn’t get prettier but that smile lit up her features and…

  He was a gonner. Better to get out of here before he got any deeper. One night of hot and heavy dreams was about all his libido could take. It had been too long since he’d had a woman in his bed.

  “Follow me,” Daisy-Barbie invited.

  If it had been anyone else, he would have just gotten back into his truck and driven away. But one other feature he hadn’t noticed yesterday, besides her height, was her amazing butt! In jeans, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from that enticing feature. It wasn’t even that the jeans she wore were tight. Just the opposite in fact. But if she was trying to hide her figure in those baggie clothes, it wasn’t working!

  So instead of getting into his truck and driving off, as he should, Rocco followed her up the weed-choked lawn and into the dilapidated house, shaking his head. He was following a woman, ignoring his instincts, just because she had a nice ass.

  Daisy pushed open the door and stepped into the dark interior of the house. “This is the job,” she announced, spreading her arms wide.

  He looked around, still thinking about her lips and her ass. “Tearing down the house?” he asked, trying to make sense of everything.

  Daisy laughed, shaking her head and moved deeper into the room. “No, silly! I need a team of people to remodel the houses.”

  He frowned at her and it took all of her concentration to keep from squirming. What was it about his blue eyes that unnerved her so completely? She’d thought she’d just been nervous yesterday about confronting him since he was so big but…maybe there was more to it.

  “Houses…plural?”

  She couldn’t hide her eagerness, even in the face of this man’s derision. This was her passion. Fixing up LowPoint, renovating each of these houses so that people could move in and find a safe place to raise their families. After gaining such incredible wealth with her lottery winnings, her life had changed dramatically. This was her way of giving back to the world.

  “Yes. LowPoint’s population dwindled to about two hundred families several years back. The town was kept going only through low paying jobs. But it wasn’t alive,” she explained, seeing the surprise in his eyes and taking that as a positive sign. “I wouldn’t even say that the town was on life support. It was dying. There were no jobs, no true source of employment, other than commuting to Louisville but many people couldn’t even afford that. Most families left the area for cities that offered more jobs. As you can see from driving down any of the streets, most of the houses haven’t been lived in for about ten years, some longer than that. The owners simply abandoned them when they couldn’t sell them and moved on.”

  He was looking around at the interior now instead of staring at her as if she were a lunatic. That was a positive sign.

  She watched in fascination as he moved over to one of the walls and knocked on it. When it didn’t crumble at his touch, she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “And your company is renovating these houses…why? There still aren’t jobs in LowPoint. Everyone I know lives in Louisville.”

  She laughed, relief surging through her since he hadn’t outright rejected the job or laughed at her dream of revitalizing the town. “LowPoint has two things going for it and the company I work for is banking on that to put this town back on the map.”

  “What are those?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. He moved into the kitchen now, opening and closing the cabinets. One of the cabinet doors fell off in his hand and Rocco jumped back so that the heavy wood didn’t smash his foot, causing a loud clatter to break the tense silence.

  Daisy tried to ignore the tug of something deep inside of her as she took in the lovely view of those muscles flexing underneath the plaid flannel of his shirt as it pulled tight across his broad shoulders. Every time he moved, her eyes were drawn to those shoulders or his trim waist, the impressively tight butt revealed by his soft, well-worn jeans that hugged his butt and strong thighs. Yummy!

  She jerked slightly when he turned to look at her over his shoulder, obviously waiting for an answer. Daisy stepped back slightly, as if that could somehow keep her eyes from roaming. Focus, she admonished herself firmly.

  Blinking, she pulled her eyes away from his butt and focused on his eyes. Okay, actually, she was now looking at the scruff of his jawline. The man hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. It was probably a sign of disrespect, but she loved the rough look.

  His dark eyebrows lifted when she forgot to answer him. Daisy turned away and walked towards a sliding glass door that used to be clear, but was now covered in so much dust, it was just a filmy, cracked piece of glass. “First of all, Ivy Taylor’s studio is here. Ever seen her photos?”

  His expression didn’t change in any way. “Everyone knows of Ivy Taylor’s photos. Every time she comes back from one of her trips, everyone talks about nothing else.” He shrugged. “I saw her gallery when I drove through town.”

  Daisy laughed. “Yep. That’s the one. You can only buy her prints from her gallery on Main Street.”

  He watched her for a moment before one of those massive shoulders shrugged. “Okay, so you got that going for you. What else?”

  “Ever eaten at one of Tony Itola’s restaurants?” she asked.

  Another delicious shrug. She wondered what his shoulders would look like without the flannel covering them.

  “Can’t afford to.”

  She brought her eyes back to his and clapped her hands together. “Well, Tony’s gourmet restaurant is on Main Street, about a block from Ivy’s gallery. In addition to his flagship restaurant, he has a sandwich shop located right next door to Ivy Taylor’s studio. Most people don’t know that the shop is owned by Tony, but it is and people love it. He also owns the diner right off of the highway, but that’s also not a well-known fact.”

  He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Okay, so the town gets art snobs and foodies coming through occasionally. What’s your point?”

  She rolled her eyes. “We don’t just get art snobs and foodies coming through, but those people make special trips out here for the experience. With the help of another foundation, the other shops in town have been refurbished and are filling up with artisans and artists. LowPoint is becoming known as a quaint enclave for artists and dealers. Plus, there’s the warehouse district on the west side of town and the shipping industry is starting to realize that LowPoint is a good midway point for transitioning products.”

  Daisy watched the giant man carefully and she realized that the last point really got to him. Rocco Barnes might not understand art and gourmet food, but he grasped the financial implications of easy highway access and storage facilities, distribution hubs and transition points. He dropped his arms and started looking around the house with renewed interest.

  “Okay, so LowPoint is going to eventually become a thriving metropolis,” he drawled but she heard the sarcasm in his
voice.

  “I don’t think anyone in town wants a huge metropolis, Mr. Barnes. The goal is for LowPoint to retain its small town flair. But in order for people to come back and live here, these houses need to be renovated and cleaned up. That’s where you come in.”

  “Your company wants me to renovate this house?”

  She grinned, suspecting that he was starting to understand her dream. “Not just this house. My company has been hired to renovate all of the houses here in town. There’s a financial team working with the owners of the mortgages on many of the houses. We’ve bought up most of them,” she explained.

  His eyes widened slightly as he took in this new piece of information. “How many?” he asked, stopping his tour through the dingy house to stare down at her.

  She laughed, almost clapping her hands with excitement now that she could see the interest in his eyes. “Well, my company bought up about two hundred houses. Originally, the idea was to tear them all down and build new ones, but we discovered that these houses were made back in the fifties and are surprisingly solid. They just need to be updated, fixed, cleaned, and…well, decorated.”

  He stopped and turned back to her, his hands fisting on his hips. “I don’t decorate.”

  She grinned, trying to avoid another chuckle because he seemed to give her an odd look whenever it happened. In a “tough-guy” way, his disdain was charming. “You don’t need to decorate. That’s my job. You and I will work together to make each house unique. The inside and outside have to be as different as possible, while still buying materials and furniture in bulk to cut down on costs.”