Chance of Loving You

by Terri Blackstock

  She breathed a soft laugh. Opening the box, she took out the sweepstakes card. “Here, at least keep this.”

  He grinned and left it lying on the table. “Yeah, can’t do without my twenty million. I’m holding my breath until Wheel of Fortune tomorrow.”

  She sighed. “Boy, what I would do with that kind of money.”

  “Tell me,” he said, enjoying the dreamy look in her eyes.

  “Well, I’d quit this job because I’d be able to finance the fashion show I’ve been working on to show my designs, and I’d go to New York, to the garment district, and hire designers to work for me, and I could buy all the supplies I need. . . .”

  “You’re a fashion designer?”

  “Yes. I’m working on a line of clothes for women who are tired of the sleazy choices we have in stores today. Modest, pretty dresses for women with integrity and self-respect. But as you can see, I’m just getting started.”

  As he watched the smile work on her glistening eyes, he wondered if he should ask her what time she got off. Should he take her somewhere? Bask in her warmth a little longer? And what if she said no? The disappointment over his failing business he could take. But rejection from her? He wasn’t sure.

  “More coffee?” she asked finally.

  “No thanks. I’ve bothered you enough tonight. I hope sitting here won’t get you into trouble.”

  “It won’t,” she assured him. “My shift ended about thirty minutes ago.”

  “Thirty minutes? And you’ve stayed because I—”

  A coy smile skittered across her lips. “You needed a friend.”

  He found himself struggling for some quick comeback that would make him seem less affected by her. “I appreciate it,” he said finally.

  She stalled for a moment as if waiting for him to make a move.

  Should he ask her out for coffee? Oh, that would be smooth, he thought, considering that he had just refused her offer for more coffee. Maybe they could go dancing. It was only eleven, and Valentine’s Day, after all. . . .

  His thoughts trailed off as he realized he would need every penny he had just to eat for the next week. He could invite her to come watch a movie at his house—but she might find that a little too intimate when she hardly knew him. She didn’t strike him as the type who would go home with a virtual stranger.

  “Well . . .” She stood reluctantly, reached into the pocket of her uniform for his tab, and laid it on the table. “I hope things work out for you. I know they will.”

  Her voice alone soothed him. It had a deep honey sweetness, with a directness that lent it a unique credibility. He took the bill, looked down at the amount, and felt his lungs constrict. A hundred and fourteen dollars! How was he going to pay this? The thought of being thrown with the ruthless servant into debtors’ prison crossed his mind, and he wished he’d never reminded her of that parable.

  While he sat staring at the bill, Julie wandered away toward the kitchen. Blake rubbed his temples. Had he gone insane? Sitting here ordering a meal fit for an Arab prince, all because he was attracted to a waitress who made him feel less alone?

  He left a fifteen-dollar tip—fifteen dollars more than he could afford—and took the ticket to the cash register. His forehead beaded in a cold sweat as he pulled out his credit card and handed it to the cashier. He held his breath as she made the phone call to check his credit limit. And when she looked apologetically at him as she set the phone in its cradle, he realized his problems were rapidly multiplying.

  “I’m sorry,” the young woman said. “But you’ve already reached your limit on that card. Do you have another one?”

  “No,” he admitted with a groan. Until a few weeks ago he hadn’t needed more than one. On the brink of panic, he pulled out his wallet and found the hundred-dollar bill Paul had given him. “How much did you say it was?”

  The cashier checked the bill again. “One fourteen eighty-three.”

  Blake rubbed his eyes. He had only the hundred-dollar bill and . . . and the tip he’d left for the woman who’d been the only bright spot in his night. If he took it back, the possibility of seeing her again would be ruined, for she’d see him as an ungrateful no-account. But if he didn’t . . .

  Heaving a sigh, he went back to the table and grabbed the fifteen dollars. The first woman he had related to in months, he fumed, and he had to stiff her! She had probably anticipated a big tip, and she deserved it. He looked in his billfold again, as if by some miracle he’d find a ten or twenty hidden in the folds. But all he had left was the lone hundred dollar bill. Now he almost knew how helpless Paul had felt today.

  Well, he’d always been good with IOUs. If he at least left that, it would show her that he wasn’t a complete deadbeat. And maybe—when he stopped beating himself up for being an extravagant jerk—it would provide him with an excuse to see her again. He searched his wallet for a piece of paper but found nothing. He looked around on the table and saw the sweepstakes ticket he had left lying there. Hurriedly, he ripped it in half and pulled a pencil out of his pocket. On the back of the ticket, he wrote: IOU $15. Blake Adcock.

  He set it on the table where she’d be sure to see it and shoved the other half into his pocket. As an afterthought, he added a P.S. If this is a winning ticket, I’ll take you to New York.

  Gulping back his humiliation, he straightened and glanced toward the kitchen, hoping he could leave before Julie saw what he’d done. Jerking the money out of his wallet, he hurried to the cash register and dropped it on the counter. “I’m kind of in a hurry,” he said. The cashier gave him a peculiar look that told him one didn’t sit for three hours if one was in a hurry.

  “Need a receipt?” she asked.

  “Why not?” he said, reaching for it. He could at least add it to his loss when he filed his pathetic income-tax return.

  He dropped the few cents in change into his pocket. He stuffed the receipt into his wallet and started for the door. But Julie stopped him as she came out of the kitchen. She had put on a fresh pair of jeans and wore a bright-red sweater. Her coat was thrown over her arm. Her eyes looked even more alive against the bright color, and he suddenly wanted to ask if there was an oven available into which he could stick his head.

  “If you’re up to staying out a little longer,” she said, the words tumbling out as if she’d spent all the time in the back summoning her courage and was afraid it would flee, “I know a quiet little café near here where we could go and talk.”

  With his heart falling to somewhere in the vicinity of his ankles, Blake turned to the glass door and watched the slanted needles of rain cutting down on the pavement. “I-I can’t, Julie. I really need to go.”

  Julie’s face reddened, and Blake wanted to do himself bodily harm. With an exaggerated shrug, she said, “Okay, no problem. I should get home, anyway. I’ve been on my feet for hours, and I have a million things to do.”

  She turned back toward the table, and he hovered at the door, wishing there were some way to keep her from seeing her tip. “Julie?”

  She turned back to him with eyes that hadn’t completely given up.

  “Thanks for . . . for listening.”

  Her smile faded, and he saw her swallow. Her eyes lost their luster as she realized that was all he was going to say. “Sure,” she said quietly.

  He looked down at the floor and called himself every degrading name he’d ever heard, plus a few he invented for the occasion. Then, as she started back to his table, he stepped out into the storm.

  The piercing strength of the icy rain as it hit him felt like the only justice he had experienced that day.

  Julie Sheffield watched through the window as Blake disappeared into the night, his broad shoulders slumped against the rain and his silky hair absorbing the water. She’d read him all wrong, she decided. She had been sure he was attracted to her, yet . . .

  Blowing out a heavy sigh, she told herself that she really did have to get home, anyway. She had a full night of work to do on her dress designs
if she was going to stay on schedule. Working with stitches would be good therapy tonight, she thought dismally. It would help her forget the fluttering feeling she’d had when she thought she had finally met someone she might like to spend some time with. Not like the others who came into the restaurant late at night.

  “Oh, well,” she said, trying to find the bright side. Maybe he’d at least left her a good tip. Heaven knew, she needed every penny she could scrape together these days. Juggling two jobs—or one job and one difficult dream—wasn’t easy, and a good tip could pay for the pearl buttons she needed for her latest creation. She looked down at the cluttered table and shifted the plates, looking for the money usually tucked under a saucer or a glass when a customer left. When she saw the IOU propped against a glass, her stomach plummeted.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she mumbled. She picked up the ripped half of the sweepstakes ticket. The note on the ticket sent her blood pressure up. An IOU for a tip? An IOU? And the note about New York was like a punch line in a predictable joke. She glanced around her, humiliated for having spent so much time on a man who probably wouldn’t give her another thought. New York, indeed. She hated herself for liking him.

  But he wasn’t just like all the rest, was he? He had seemed like a genuinely nice guy. Knew the Bible and everything. He seemed to be a real Christian, and that had moved her to tears. She had prayed so many times that God would send her one of his own, someone who shared her beliefs and her values. For a while tonight, she had believed God was answering that prayer. Was her judgment so warped that she hadn’t seen Blake for what he really was? He’d paid over a hundred dollars for food he hadn’t even touched, and he didn’t even bother to leave her a ten percent tip! Ten percent? Five percent would have been better than nothing.

  She looked down at the ticket again, and a ribbon of shame curled through her. What was the matter with her? The guy probably didn’t have anything else. Hadn’t he confided in her about his misfortune? And he had mentioned that all he’d been paid for his work was a hundred dollars and a sweepstakes ticket. Maybe he figured that box of candy was her tip. Maybe he’d given her all he had.

  Except his time. He hadn’t been willing to give her that, when she’d had to psych herself up to ask if he’d like to go somewhere. She grabbed her purse from behind the counter, her mind weighed down with regrets. I should leave the candy, she told herself. Yet she tucked the box under her arm all the same.

  As she stood in the rain beneath the dim streetlight waiting for her bus, she looked back down at the ticket. Did the IOU mean she’d see him again?

  She honestly didn’t know whether to hope for that or not.

  Julie had overcome her disappointment by the following night and decided that God had intervened to protect her from someone who wasn’t what he seemed. She told herself that she hardly remembered the dark-haired Blake Adcock or the blue eyes that had drawn her in from the moment she’d taken his order.

  There were more important things preying on her mind. She sat sprawled on her living room floor with an elegant gown draped over her lap as she did the delicate beadwork on it. She had her first show to think of—the show that she had been working on for more than a year. It would be her debut as a solo fashion designer, even if it was in the city’s smallest mall with amateur models and was taking every last penny she’d saved.

  No, she had hardly thought of him at all, she told herself with congratulations. So what if they’d shared a moment of communion, a moment of reaching out and understanding? So what if he’d given her a box of candy, which she’d tossed into a drawer when she got home? So what if she’d believed his line about enjoying her company? So what if she’d known he was attracted to her, just as she was to him? So what if he’d seemed like a direct answer to prayer?

  Maybe the emotion stirring in her because of another lonely Valentine’s Day had caused her to imagine things that weren’t real. Or maybe they were real, but he had some rule against going out with waitresses or blondes or Christians. Or maybe she had been too assertive. How was he to know that it had taken every ounce of courage within her to invite him out?

  The doorbell rang. Placing her needle between her lips, she stood and laid the gown carefully over her sofa, next to some of her other designs that were almost ready. “Coming!” she mumbled around the needle. Jerking it out of her mouth and jabbing it in the arm of the sofa, she fluffed her shoulder-length hair and brushed back her bangs. It was probably one of the waitresses who’d agreed to model her clothes in the show coming for a fitting, she thought as she rushed to the door. She swung the door open.

  “So we meet again,” Blake Adcock said in a lazy drawl that belied the dancing delight in his eyes. He thrust a handful of fake poinsettias at her, and she wondered if he’d just plucked them from her next-door neighbor’s pots. Despite the cool grin on his face and the suave way his shoulder leaned against the jamb, there was a definite glaze to the same blue eyes her heart had stumbled over the previous night. His breathing was heavy as if he’d run six miles to her door, and one side of his shirttail hung out of his jeans as though he hadn’t taken the time to tuck it in completely.

  “Well, well,” she said, unable to suppress her smile. She cocked her head and crossed her arms as she surveyed the man who had kept her from sleeping last night. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”

  “It took some doing,” he admitted. She hadn’t noticed the dimples in his cheeks the night before, but the sly smile tugging at his lips enhanced them now. “You would choose tonight to take off work. And your boss acted like your address was a matter of national security. I had to bribe the red-haired waitress.”

  “Bribe her? What did you have to bribe her with, Blake?”

  “I’m real good with IOUs,” he admitted.

  “So I noticed. Did you promise her New York, too?”

  Blake laughed and threw a delighted glance toward the eaves over her door. “Oh, boy, are you going to be surprised when I tell you why I’m here.”

  “I doubt that,” Julie said. Somehow the laughter in his eyes was contagious, and she couldn’t help matching it. “You’re here to give me these stolen flowers and pay off your IOU, right?”

  “Wrong,” he said, laughter rippling in his voice. “I came because of that half sweepstakes ticket I left you. You know—the one that probably ticked you off because you thought it was worthless?”

  Julie narrowed her eyes and bit her lip, trying to hold back her grin. She had to admit he was cute when he was mysterious. “I vaguely remember something like that,” she said.

  Blake took a deep breath and pulled his half out of his pocket. In a voice vibrating with controlled excitement, he said, “Well, Julie, you might want to go get it. I was just watching Wheel of Fortune, and they drew the winning number. If my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me, we’re about to be rich.”

  Julie sucked in a breath. “The winning number? How much?”

  Blake’s grin trembled. “Twenty million dollars,” he whispered. “Ten for me and ten for you.”

  “TEN MILLION DOLLARS?” Julie threw a hand over her heart and stumbled back from the door. “Ten million dollars?”

  “You got it,” he said with a shaky note of euphoria. He took her hand and started to dance. “We’re rich. Millionaires!”

  Julie pulled away. “Wait. This can’t be. You can’t become a millionaire with a little piece of paper.”

  “I’ll prove it to you,” he said. “Go get your half. They said we have to head to our nearest ABC affiliate by midnight to claim our money.”

  Julie’s face went slack as she racked her brain. Where had she put the ticket? Her hands fell helplessly to her sides as her eyes darted from place to place around the room.

  “Julie, the ticket,” he pressed.

  She nodded quickly, holding up a hand to quiet him as she tried to think. “Just give me a second,” she said. “I need a minute.”

  Alarm narrowed his eyes. “A minute for what?” h
e asked slowly.

  “To think about . . . where I put the ticket. I don’t think I threw it away.”

  Blake gasped. “You don’t think . . .” Carefully, he stepped inside the door. “Are you telling me that you lost a ticket worth twenty million dollars?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I didn’t lose it. I just can’t remember what I did with it.”

  “Well, think!” he blurted. The cords in his neck began to swell. “Think!”

  “I’m trying to!” she shouted back. “But you’re making me nervous!”

  “I’m making you nervous?” He closed the door—too hard. “Julie, if you don’t come up with your half, my half isn’t worth a nickel.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” She darted down the hallway into her bedroom, not caring that Blake was on her heels and that he’d see the cluttered state of her house. “I didn’t know it was worth anything! Neither did you. If you had, you wouldn’t have left it!” She dug through her dirty clothes hamper for the jeans she’d worn the night before.

  “Hey, I left that ticket out of the goodness of my heart.”

  She found the jeans and yanked them out, then dug into the pockets, which were distressingly empty. “The goodness of your heart?” she scoffed. “You left that ticket to insult me.” She threw down the jeans and dug out her sweater. “To put me in my place.”

  “What place?” Blake asked as his eyes followed her every movement.

  “My place as just another waitress. Because you think I’m beneath you.”

  Blake snatched the sweater from her hands and frisked the pockets. “Beneath me? You think I’d spend three hours flirting with someone if I thought she was beneath me?”

  “Depends on how bad the weather is!” she threw back. She knocked over the clothes hamper and scanned the inside in case the ticket had fallen out of a pocket.

  “You thought I sat there because of the rain? Did you really interpret my note and that ticket to mean I was too good for you?”

  Julie marched out of her room and grabbed her purse off the couch. “How did you want me to interpret it?” She dumped the contents of the purse onto the coffee table and began sorting through the folded receipts, empty gum wrappers, and loose change with trembling fingers.