The Lottery Winners_A Free Introduction Read online

  Daisy felt the same. “I’m sick of traveling,” she announced. Ivy and Marilee both nodded in agreement.

  Tony was at the bar and, of course, several women surrounded him. They all looked lovely and eager to please him.

  “I’m worried about Tony,” Ivy murmured. “I think he’s been with a different woman every night we’ve been here.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Daisy added. “Do you think we should give him The Talk?”

  All three women laughed and Tony looked over. Marilee lifted her hand, fluttering her fingers in his direction.

  “You can just feel his eyes narrowing on us, can’t you?” Ivy said, laughing, thinking it was hilarious.

  He strolled over, unaware and unconcerned with the disappointed beauties he was leaving behind. “What’s so funny?” he asked, waving away the waiter that stepped up, ready to take his drink order.

  “We were laughing at how you’re enjoying the ladies. And giving us The Look.”

  “I don’t have a look,” he argued.

  They all laughed again, Marilee patting his shoulder. “Oh honey. You’re rolling your eyes behind your sunglasses, aren’t you?”

  Instead of answering, he changed the subject. “I called Jason last night.”

  “Why?”

  Tony stared off at the ocean for a moment. “Because I’ve been getting a bad feeling. I asked him to check on the diner and make sure everyone was still okay. Initially, he said that everything was working fine. He even checked in with the inspectors who said everything had been brought up to code and all fines had been paid.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  Again, another tense silence and the ladies sat up, looking at him more carefully. “Tony,” Ivy prompted with a lower voice, “what’s wrong?”

  “Janice is out of jail. She’s only out on bail right now. All the fines were paid and the pack pay doled out, so her assets were unfrozen.”

  “That’s not good,” Marilee said.

  Tony shook his head. “No. She fired more than half the staff.”

  They all sighed, silently trying to come up with some way to help

  “I’m going back,” he announced.

  Daisy, Ivy and Marilee nodded. “We were just saying how we missed home and were ready to go back.”

  He looked at them carefully. “I’m going to build a new diner, right across the street from Janice’s place, just like we talked about. I’m going to put her out of business!”

  They had varying degrees of surprise, but one by one, they smiled, agreeing that it was a good plan. “And serve better food, right?”

  His smile was almost predatory. “Yes. And I’ll poach anyone at a higher salary that she tries to bring into her diner.” There was a grim pause and he shook his head. “I’m not letting her abuse those people any longer,” he snapped. “I have the resources now to ensure that she will be stopped.”

  Marilee shifted. “Tony, you can’t stop all the bad people in the world.”

  He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I know. But I can stop this one.”

  “He’s right,” Daisy said what they were all thinking. “We have plenty of money now. We can do anything we want.”

  Ivy’s mouth twisted. “I was kind of becoming bored with not doing anything productive,” she said.

  “Me too.” They all paused with their silent thoughts for a moment. “So…we’re heading home? We’re going to do something good?”

  As they nodded, the tension slowly easing from their shoulders. “Yes,” they all agreed, nodding to confirm.

  Two days later, they stepped off of the plane at the Louisville International Airport. For a long moment, they watched as a porter loaded their bags onto a trolley, each of them thinking of ways they could use their money to make the world a better place.

  “We’re going to need different clothes,” Ivy pointed out, thinking about the designer togs they’d all purchased over the past month.

  “And we definitely can’t arrive in LowPoint driven by a limousine,” Daisy added.

  “This is going to be both fun and difficult,” Marilee commented, tilting her head slightly. “I hate to say it, but I’m sort of looking forward to putting my old jeans back on. They were a whole lotta comfort!”

  They laughed. “And you look great in them, honey,” Tony said, kissing the top of her head. “I’m moving to Louisville, ladies. I want to go to school, get a business degree, but I’ll still get that new diner built.”

  They knew that he wanted to go to school, they were just surprised that he was doing it first. He’d said exactly that when they’d been dreaming about what they would do on his birthday night. “It seems like another life, doesn’t it?” Ivy said.

  “Yeah,” Marilee agreed. “But our new one is going to be amazing,” she smiled up at the tepid sunshine.

  “Really amazing,” Daisy agreed.

  Excerpt from “Tempted” – Coming April 20, 2018

  Daisy’s story in The Lottery Winners Series

  To Order this story, click HERE

  (As usual, there’s a bit of build up to this scene – but this one sets the tone for the entire story so I thought it was perfect to give you a sense of what is to come. Enjoy!)

  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 jeans 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 c
ould 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 an
other 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.”

  There was a long silence as he continued to look down at her. It took all of her self-discipline to not squirm or fidget with those intense, blue eyes looking down at her like that. “Two hundred houses, each looking different?”

  “Yep,” she confirmed, smiling again at his astounded expression. “You’d be in charge. You’d have a budget and could hire as many workers as you need. We have an accountant who helps with the budgeting. There’s an admin assistant who orders supplies for you and ensures that the orders arrive on time. Once we have more houses ready for sale, we’ll hire a realtor or a sales team. I don’t know the exact plans for that area, but they will be in charge of finding buyers for the houses, once they are complete.” She paused, wondering what else she could say to convince him to take the job. “One of the downsides to this project is that we need to get several houses, maybe all the houses on a block or a street, fixed up before potential buyers would feel safe enough to consider moving to LowPoint. So it’s a pretty big job.” Daisy recognized the wary look he gave her. “The foundation is well funded. There is funding aplenty, so you don’t need to worry about taking on the project and then having it fold up in just a few months.”

  Rocco rubbed the scruff on his jaw, thinking he should have shaved this morning. But he hadn’t really thought that Daisy-Barbie was for real. So he’d fully expected to show up this morning and have a chuckle, then head back to Louisville to search for a job.

  But this…looking around at the house that was pretty much in shambles, he started to think through the process. If this was for real, he would really enjoy renovating something like this. It was one thing to build an office building. There were challenges and obstacles that made the work interesting. But the job he’d lost yesterday had been a square building, ten stories high. It would be pretty much the same kind of work he’d been doing on for the past several years. It was a job, paid the bills, but it hadn’t really excited him.