Sharon Swan - Four-Karat Fiancee

“Look, Ms. Prim, as I’ve explained to you Lord knows how many times, I run a—”

Just then a shout rang out, halting him in midsentence. “We won! Dev, we won!”

He whipped around and saw Dean Kenning hopping up and down on the street outside his barbershop less than a block away, as though the snow-covered asphalt had turned to hot bricks. Beside him, two of Dean’s longtime cronies, bundled against the cold, watched with stunned expressions as their friend did a jig worthy of a man far younger than the barber’s sixty-plus years.

“What in the world—” Dev started to say. Then he remembered it was Tuesday, the day the Big Draw Lottery numbers were announced on Channel 4 right after the evening news. Fifteen states participated, including Montana, and he was one of a dozen hopefuls who contributed a weekly dollar to Jester’s private lottery pool—money the other players forked over to the jovial, ruddy-faced barber so he could purchase tickets for their group at the nearby town of Pine Run. They’d won enough in the past few years to celebrate in a small way, but Dean had never done a jig before. Had they finally lucked out?

Dev took off at a fast clip, vaguely aware of Amanda’s footsteps hurrying along behind him. A second-story window over one of the stores lining the street flew open. “Land sakes, what’s all the commotion about?” a woman asked in a near squeal.

Ignoring that question, the barber kept right on shouting. “We won!”

“What do you mean we won?” Dev shouted back as he skidded to a halt in front of the barbershop.

At last Dean stopped jumping around and held up a small piece of paper. “These are the jackpot numbers I just wrote down. And one of tickets I bought for us matches all of them.”

Dev swallowed, hard. “Are you sure?”

“I’ll read them to you,” Dean told him, his voice beginning to shake as he handed over the ticket.

In the dim light of an old turn-of-the-century streetlamp, Dev checked the printed computer numbers against those the barber quickly read off. And they matched, every…single…one.

“We did win,” Dev said in a rough whisper, feeling as though the bottom had dropped right out of his stomach. Looking up, he saw that a small crowd had gathered, and it wasn’t long before a woman wedged her way through.

“Let me see that,” Shelly Dupree said.

Dev gave the ticket to Shelly, who was another regular in the lottery pool. Over the past few years, the Main Street coffee-shop owner with a ready smile for her customers had become a friend of his. Shelly was also a close friend to Amanda Bradley, he knew, but he’d never held that against her.

“Read them again, Dean,” Shelly told the barber. “Slowly.”

Dean followed instructions, and moments later Shelly lifted her gaze. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

“How much did you win?” someone in the crowd asked.

The barber raised his hands to the dark sky above him, as if he were trying to touch heaven, and looking as though he had. “Forty! Million! Dollars!”

Forty million, was all Dev could think. “That’s…” Using a knack for math that had served him well in business, he divided the winning amount twelve ways and soon came up with a figure. “Three million, three hundred and thirty-three thousand, three hundred and…well, you know. One of those numbers with threes that go on forever.”

Someone else brought up the fact that taxes would have to be paid, but Dev was hardly going to carp about that at this point. “We’ll still be millionaires!” he declared with a wide grin. A millionaire…a millionaire. The words echoed in his mind.

Years ago, when he was growing up in Jester, more than a few folks had never expected him to amount to much, not coming from the no-account family he undeniably had. Once, defiant of their judgment, he’d played the bad boy to the hilt, until he’d turned thirty and decided it was time to try to make something of himself—something Jester’s citizens could respect. So he’d left behind the days after high school when he couldn’t wait for his shift to end at his first real job at the slaughterhouse in Pine Run, followed by the years when he’d amused himself in the role of wise-guy bartender at the Heartbreaker Saloon. Instead, he’d scraped up enough cash to buy his uncle’s run-down bar and through sheer hard work had made it a consistently profitable operation.

And now he wasn’t only a successful businessman. He was a millionaire.

Elated, Dev turned to the woman standing beside him and lifted her right off the ground. With a secure grip on a slender waist, he waltzed her around in a wide circle as thick, white flakes rained down on them, holding her close and feeling the length of her petite body snug against his.

And then he realized who that petite body belonged to and set her down in a hurry.

Amanda Bradley stared up at him, eyes wide. She didn’t look anywhere near as jubilant as he felt, Dev noted as he took a swift step back. Then again, she’d never contributed to the weekly pool and wasn’t one of the big winners. Not like he was.

Dev’s own gaze narrowed in speculation at the thought that maybe he had enough money at last to buy her part of the building they shared. Maybe he’d no longer have to rue the day his uncle had sold that piece of property to her parents long ago. Maybe, just maybe, he could make her an offer she couldn’t refuse and finally get some peace.

But all at once her gaze narrowed, too, as though she’d read his mind. He was sure of it when she issued soft words for his ears alone that nonetheless rang with conviction.

“Never in a million years,” Amanda told him, looking him straight in the eye.

And Dev knew that, despite his unbelievably good fortune, he still had his work cut out for him.

Never in a million years, she’d told him. Amanda recalled that ringing statement on a cloudy April afternoon, thinking that she had been as good as her word.

Dev Devlin might now be a wealthy man, especially in comparison to most of Jester’s far-from-affluent residents, but she hadn’t given in to him one inch. Winter had bowed to spring and her quiet bookstore still shared a building with his busy bar—something that continued to rub both parties the wrong way, even though Main Street hadn’t seen a real confrontation between them since the town sheriff had actually stepped in to break up the last one several weeks earlier. Although neither had declared an end to hostilities, the two of them seemed to have struck up a wary truce. Which was just as well, Amanda told herself, because at the moment she had something more important than her problems with the Heartbreak Saloon’s owner to consider.

She had the fate of four children to think about and worry over. Four young kids who had lost their father and mother.

Four orphans she’d only recently discovered existed.

But she couldn’t think about them now. At the moment she had to keep her mind on business, Amanda knew, because today problems had also cropped up at the Ex-Libris, her bookstore.

“What do you plan to do with all this new stock?” Irene Caldwell asked. A widow in her early sixties, Irene was a big reader and faithful Ex-Libris customer who also took on the role of occasional, and very able, helper at the bookstore whenever the need arose.

Amanda braced her elbows on the store’s dark mahogany front counter and studied a copy of Midnight Passions, one of many filling several cartons stacked on the dove gray carpet that stretched the length of the high-ceilinged room. The hardcover novel featured a dusky rose cover slashed with bold ebony letters that left little doubt as to its sexy subject matter.

“Most of the books will be shipped back to the distributor’s warehouse, since I made it plain enough to them over the phone that I didn’t order a hundred copies.” Amanda blew out a breath. “The manager I talked to wasn’t overjoyed at the news, but I told him he was getting them back, regardless.”