Chance of Loving You

by Terri Blackstock

  Blake joined her. “The same way I interpreted it when Paul gave it to me.” He picked up a sticky, unwrapped cough drop and cringed. “Don’t you ever clean this purse out?”

  “I’ve been busy!” she snapped.

  He unwrapped some folded papers and shook them out. “When Paul gave the ticket to me, I saw it as a gesture of goodwill. He was doing the best he could at the time. I almost left you the whole thing! I didn’t have anything else.”

  Julie glanced up at him, reluctant to admit he could be telling the truth. But it hadn’t been his failure to leave a tip that had hurt, she thought. It had been the rejection, the indifferent way he’d shrugged her off and walked out.

  “You ought to be thanking me instead of making me feel like pond scum. I had enough of that last night.” He opened the last receipt, found nothing, and threw it down. “It’s not here, Julie. Where is it?”

  She panned the room again. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  Blake got up and scanned the small house. Her designs were draped over the sofa and hanging from hooks on the wall. Bolts of expensive, elegant material lay on a table with the sewing machine, and notions and accessories were scattered in various stacks without order. “I don’t know how you find anything in this place. It looks like a rummage sale.” He went to the couch and snatched up one dress after another to look under them. “What is all this junk, anyway?”

  Julie’s cheeks stung as she rushed forward to rescue the dresses from his rough handling. Draping them over her arm, she caressed them as if they were small children who had been abused. “This junk,” she said through clenched teeth, “is why I’m working as a waitress. They’re my designs. I’ve been working on them for months, and they’re good.”

  “Right now they’re in the way,” he said. He tossed the cushions off the couch and ran his hands along the edges.

  “They belong here. You don’t! Now get your hands off my furniture!”

  He reeled around to face her. “Your car! Maybe you left it in your car!”

  Julie clutched the dresses to her chest and backed away. His eyes were getting too wild, and she didn’t trust him. “I don’t have a car. I had to sell it.”

  Blake’s jaw dropped. “What kind of person lives in Detroit without a car?” he asked in a cracked, high-pitched voice.

  “The kind who has to spend her money on more important things!” she shouted with indignation. “I’m not above riding the bus!” She started back down the hall to hang up her designs, but he was behind her in an instant.

  “Julie, don’t you understand? If you find that ticket, you can buy the bus! Please! Help me look for it!”

  “I was helping, until you started mauling my dresses,” she said. “I don’t like people insulting my work!”

  “We’re talking about twenty million dollars!” he shouted. “Who cares about your work!”

  “I care!” she yelled back.

  “Okay, I’m sorry!” he said as if to appease her. “I didn’t mean to insult your work. I’m just anxious to find—”

  “You called it junk!” she reminded him. “If you had any taste in clothes, you’d know that these are masterpieces. They’ll give women options! They can look elegant without looking trashy. Beautiful, without exposing themselves. They’re going to be worth a lot of money!”

  Blake folded his hands in a dramatic praying gesture and moaned. “Julie, you’ll have a lot of money if you’ll just find that ticket. Please! Where do you keep your garbage?”

  She crossed her arms militantly. “Where do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Judging by the rest of this place, it could be anywhere!”

  Julie marched toward the kitchen and found the garbage can tucked in a corner. “I’ll go through it myself! I don’t need any glassy-eyed man rifling through my trash!”

  “I’m not glassy-eyed,” he said as he watched her dump the garbage on her counter.

  She pulled out a wet paper towel, a soup can, a potato chip bag. “You could be a murderer for all I know,” she muttered as she continued sorting through the trash. “How do I know there is a winning number? How do I even know the sweepstakes entry is authentic? You could have made this whole thing up.”

  He caught his breath, incredulous. “For what reason? To get close to you? You’re beneath me, remember? At least that was your enlightened impression!”

  Her hands began working faster, in jerkier motions, as she realized she wasn’t going to find what she was looking for. “Last night my enlightened impression was that you were a nice man who needed a friend. I liked you. But you know what they say. You never know a person until you’ve shared a sweepstakes ticket with him.”

  His mouth fell open. “Who says that? I’ve never heard anyone say that.”

  “I just said it,” she snapped.

  He snatched the garbage can from her hand and violently shoved the trash back in. “Last night you seemed like a nice woman I might like to know better. I never would have guessed that under all that beauty and compassion was someone who valued an unhemmed dress more than a twenty-million-dollar sweepstakes ticket. Priorities a little mixed up? I think so!”

  “I’ll be just as well off if I don’t find that ticket as I will if I do, because that unhemmed dress is worth a mint if I sell it. I can live without ten million dollars if I have to. Can you?”

  “No!” he shouted. “Especially if I lost it all because of you! What kind of airhead loses a twenty-million-dollar ticket?”

  “What kind of airhead gives one away in the first place?” she bellowed.

  “Then we’re both airheads!” he admitted. “We’d make a great pair. We probably deserve each other.”

  “We probably do!” she volleyed.

  He pivoted toward her and brought his angry face intimidatingly close to hers. “Close your eyes!” he said.

  “Why?”

  “So you can concentrate!”

  She closed her eyes reluctantly, furiously.

  “Where did you leave the ticket?” he asked.

  Her eyes snapped open. “Oh, this is great. Yelling at me is really going to help me concentrate.”

  “I don’t know how else to get through to you!”

  “And I don’t know how to get through to you! What do you want? Blood?”

  “The ticket!” he shouted. “I just want the other half of my ticket!”

  “Your ticket?” she asked.

  “Our ticket. The ticket.”

  “If I find that stupid ticket,” she muttered through her teeth, “it isn’t going to be our ticket. It’s going to be your ticket. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t want it, and I sure don’t have to subject myself to this kind of abuse for it!”

  “Just find it,” he ordered, “and we’ll talk about what to do with it then.”

  Julie squeezed her eyes shut and tried to concentrate.

  “Think,” he said, lowering his voice. “What was the first thing you did when you got home last night?”

  “I took off my shoes,” she said. “You see, I’d been running myself ragged waiting on one customer who kept ordering—”

  “Then what did you do?” he cut in, more calmly now.

  “I turned on the stereo. Then I came in here and got something to drink.”

  “Did you have the ticket then?”

  Her eyes opened, and she focused on the wall, seeing the blurry events unfold. “I think so. I remember looking at it and thinking you were just like all the rest.”

  A slight grin softened his features, but his voice remained sharp. “Then what did you do?”

  “I went to—” She stopped suddenly and snapped her fingers in the air. “My sewing basket! I put it in my sewing basket when I got out what I needed!”

  Blake threw his hands together and glanced at the ceiling. “Thank you, Lord,” he mumbled aloud, “for giving her a temporary lapse in her insanity.”

  Julie caught the barb and jutted her chin. Stalking to the sewing basket, she reach
ed into her tray and grabbed the ticket half. She threw it at him. “It’s all yours.”

  Blake caught it and matched it to his half of the ticket. Relief swept visibly over him, and he collapsed onto the couch. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “You found it. We’re rich.”

  “Not we,” she said, planting her fists on her hips. “You. I don’t want anything to do with your money or your insults or your wild greed. Just get out before you start hyperventilating, and take the ticket with you.”

  “Julie, it’s yours, too.”

  “Go ahead. I won’t take it. I may not have money, and I may not have a car, and I may not even have a glamorous think-tank job, but I do have pride. I don’t want to have anything to do with a man who calls me an insane airhead. Not even for ten million dollars.”

  Blake threw back his head and gave a genuine laugh—a laugh that was pulled from deep inside, where tense fear had just been harbored. “That’s good. You’re almost convincing. But nobody in her right mind would pass up ten million dollars.”

  “Well, according to you, I’m not in my right mind, am I?”

  Blake stood and faced her, undaunted. “Julie, come on. This is no time for making some noble statement.”

  “I’m not trying to make a statement,” she said. “I don’t need your ten million dollars, and I don’t want it.”

  “Everybody needs it,” he said. “Everybody wants it.”

  “Not me.”

  His smile faded as he realized just how stubborn this lady was. “Julie, we were under a lot of pressure. Both of us. I don’t do well under pressure.”

  “I won’t take the ticket,” she said again.

  “And I won’t leave until you do,” he told her with an equally obstinate shrug. “The winner has to report to the nearest ABC affiliate by midnight. It’s nine thirty right now. I’m not going alone.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Then you’ll miss it and lose your fortune.”

  “Fine,” he returned. “So will you.”

  They stood staring at each other for what seemed an eternity, each certain the other would back down. Finally Blake pulled out his cell phone.

  “Calling ABC?” Julie asked.

  “Nope,” he said. “I’m ordering a pizza. It looks like we’re going to be here for a while.”

  THE CLOCK SAID 11:18. Julie and Blake sat staring at each other across the single remaining slice of cold pizza, as if it represented the torn sweepstakes ticket that neither would touch. She sat with her lips pursed, trying to ignore the two ticket halves lying on the coffee table like a future fading in and out of grasp. Blake had to admit he admired her. How many women could actually carry a bluff so far?

  Anyone else would have taken the money and run. But it was the principle of the thing that motivated him. Besides, he liked her little game. He had always found that the most difficult things in life were the most rewarding.

  “So . . . how about those Lions?” he asked to break the silence tingling between them.

  “I don’t have much time for sports,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t know.” She unfolded her legs, dusted crumbs off her jeans, and started to stretch.

  “What do you have time for?” he asked. He gave a sweeping glance around the cluttered room. “I mean, besides housework.”

  Julie shot him an insulted look. “I clean my house,” she returned. “Things are just . . . a little out of place right now.”

  He rubbed his hand over his stubbly jaw and laughed again. “You didn’t answer my question, Julie. What does a woman like you do in her spare time?”

  “A woman like me doesn’t have spare time,” she said. “I work too hard.”

  “If you had money, you could have all the time you wanted.”

  “Money can’t buy time.” She stood. “Speaking of time, I don’t have any to waste. I hope you don’t mind my working while you waste yours.” She picked up a container of tiny beads.

  Blake gave a soft chuckle and stretched out his arms dramatically before clasping them behind his head. “You know us millionaires. We love wasting time.” Offering a lazy yawn, he propped his feet on the coffee table. “You know, if you had money, you could buy a dress like that. You wouldn’t have to make it yourself.”

  Her eyes flashed at him. “I am a fashion designer,” she bit out. “This is an original—my original. Why would I want to buy one?”

  “Well, it’s just so much work. If you had money, you could hire someone to sew those little thingamajiggies on.”

  “If I sell this dress, I will have money, and I’ll be able to hire help.”

  “But you still won’t have time.”

  “I’ll have self-respect and a sense of accomplishment,” she said. “And you can get your big feet off my table.”

  He grinned wider, but he didn’t budge. “I’ll buy you a new table.”

  “If you don’t go claim your money, you won’t be able to.”

  “And you’ll be responsible for my poverty for the rest of my life,” he returned.

  Julie grabbed the needle out of the sofa arm and took aim at him. “If you don’t get your feet off my table, I’ll be responsible for something much worse than poverty.”

  Blake dropped his feet and gazed up at her. “You’re dangerous,” he said, a mischievous lilt to his voice.

  Julie gave him a victorious smile and plopped back down in her chair, making a grand ceremony of propping her own feet on the table.

  Blake stroked his index finger over his lips and tried to suppress his laughter. This one was a rascal. She’d probably wait until the clock said it was ten minutes to twelve to give in . . . and that was only thirty minutes away. Well, he thought, it only made things more exciting.

  He could almost believe she meant to give up the money. But he knew better. Any minute now she’d start to sweat and fidget. . . .

  Any minute now, Julie thought with an inner chuckle. Any minute now he’d start to look at his watch and pounce on that ticket. And he would expect her to pounce on it, too. Apparently he wasn’t used to women who had the strength of their convictions. She’d show him how stubborn she could be.

  “So what are you going to do with your half?” he asked with his disarming grin.

  She glanced up from her work. “Flushing it down the toilet comes to mind,” she said. “That is, if you don’t intend to take it.”

  His deep, tumbling laughter made her smile. “I’d dare you,” he said, “but I won’t.”

  “You’re catching on,” she returned with a wink.

  He dropped his elbows to his knees and leaned forward. “You know, this may be hard for you to admit, but we’re a lot alike.”

  “Us?” she asked with a laugh. “How?”

  “We’re both cool,” he observed. “We just won ten million dollars each, and we’re both pretending we couldn’t care less.”

  “You’re pretending,” she said.

  “And we’re both pretty confident. You think I’m going to give in, and I know you are.”

  “Then one of us must be wrong,” she pointed out.

  “And we’re both stubborn.”

  “One out of three isn’t bad,” she said.

  He looked at his watch, compared it to the clock ticking away on her wall. She glanced at the clock. “What’s the matter, Blake?” she asked. “Getting a little nervous?”

  “Nope,” he said calmly. “We still have twenty-eight minutes. And I’m not going without you.”

  Julie threw down her dress and raked her hand through her hair. She couldn’t concentrate on her work when there was a man staring at her, waiting for her to crack, and when time flew by as though disaster were on its heel. “What difference does it make to you? It was your ticket to start with. Why can’t you just take it back?”

  “Because I gave it to you. I wanted you to have it. You were nice to me.”

  “Well, I don’t charge for being nice to people. I didn’t expect to be paid for it.”

  “You expected a tip.”r />
  “For doing my job, not for being nice to you,” she said.

  “Well, whatever we expected or got out of it, the fact remains that we both won, and we’ll both claim our money. Otherwise—” he rubbed his hands over his face and arched his brows firmly—“we both go on as we have been. Struggling, dreaming, failing, reaching . . .”

  Her eyes met his, and for a moment she wondered if he knew more about her than he was telling.

  “It would be fun,” he said. “I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather become a millionaire with.”

  Julie stood and began to pace slowly. “Let’s face it, Blake. You aren’t going to believe me until it’s too late. And I’m not going to believe you, either. You need that money, and I know you’re not going to pass it up.”

  “You need it too. If you had it, you wouldn’t have to keep working as a waitress.”

  That was true, she thought. But it was his money. His. And he had said such vicious things to her when he thought she’d lost her half of the ticket. She sat back down and pulled her feet onto the chair with her, dropped her head onto her bent knees, and tried to think clearly. He was bluffing, she thought. He’d run out in the next five minutes with both halves of the ticket. He wouldn’t really risk losing it all just because she refused to take half.

  His patient bullheadedness intrigued her. How many men would care whether or not she wanted it? How many men would have waited the space of a heartbeat once she’d given the ticket back?

  She shook her head and looked up at him as he waited for her to change her mind. Despite the things he’d said to her, she couldn’t help seeing the gentle vulnerability peeking through his expression at odd times, as if some sense of honor lurked behind his mask of indifference. Last night she had really liked him, but would she have ever seen him again if God hadn’t drawn them back together with a torn sweepstakes ticket?

  Had God really been behind this? she wondered. Was this how he planned to answer her prayers after she’d cried out in her loneliness? Was he giving her a miracle now, after she’d suffered through heartbreak and injustice? Jack—the man she had been in love with, the fashion designer she had worked for—had put his ego above their relationship. He had fired her when he realized that the customers placed higher value on her designs than on his, even though the designs bore his name, not hers. Crushed but not defeated, she had tried to start over alone. But just as her designs began to get attention, he claimed she had stolen them from him.