Ingrid Weaver - Winning Amelia

Can fate really be this cruel?

Amelia Goodfellow can’t escape her bad luck. After her ex-husband’s embezzlement conviction cost her everything, winning the lottery seemed like fate’s way of paying her back. But to then lose the painting she hid the winning ticket in? Amelia is done with luck. She’s going to get that painting and her life back. Even if it means hiring her old flame, private investigator Hank Jones.

Trust isn’t easy for Amelia, so keeping Hank in the dark about the ticket just makes sense. Tracking the yard-sale purchaser of the painting should be simple, but then an auction of stolen art complicates the search, and Amelia suddenly has more to lose than money. A second chance with Hank might be priceless.

“My fee isn’t the issue.”

“Then what is?”

“I asked for the real reason you want that painting.”

Amelia’s chin trembled. She tightened her lips.

“You can’t honestly expect me to believe you would be willing to throw away the money you do have on a piece of worthless, not very good art that doesn’t even belong to you. What are you holding back, Amelia?”

She remained silent.

Hank used to have more patience than she had. It was a good bet he still did. He waited her out.

It took less than a minute. When she finally did speak, her voice shook. “During the past year and a half, I’ve lost my business, my reputation, my husband....” She cleared her throat. “You name it, I lost it. I lost so much, it got to the point that I stopped believing I could win.” I want to start living again. I want the right to be happy again.”

“And you believe that finding this painting will do all that?”

She surged to her feet. “Yes!”

Dear Reader,

I’m not much of a gambler, unless you count organic gardening, which between the weather and the bugs is pretty chancy. I suppose you could count computer card games as a form of gambling, too, since they’re definitely risky with respect to how much of my time they end up consuming. Come to think of it, strolling down the cookie aisle in the grocery store is a huge and rather dangerous gamble, depending on how hungry I happen to be. So I can relate to my heroine’s decision to buy a lottery ticket, in spite of the astronomical odds against winning.

Every aspect of writing Winning Amelia was a pleasure for me. For one thing, it’s set in the picturesque small town of Port Hope, which lies halfway between our farm and Toronto and thus is my favorite spot to meet my city friends for lunch. Though there isn’t actually a Mae B’s, the restaurant where my heroine worked was inspired by some of the places I’ve visited. The house where she lived was based on the one where I grew up—the simple, story-and-a-half design was used in Port Hope as well as in neighborhoods throughout southern Ontario. As for the oddball characters that crop up in the book, let’s just say the countryside provides plenty of fodder for a writer’s imagination.

Above all, I enjoyed creating a story for the Heartwarming program, because it’s one that can be read by anyone. It celebrates not just romance but real, lasting love. That’s the kind of love that survives the big, dramatic issues like kids and finances as well as the everyday stuff of an ordinary life. And love like that is well worth any gamble!

Warm wishes, and happy reading!

Ingrid

Winning Amelia

USA TODAY Bestselling Author

Ingrid Weaver

www.millsandboon.co.uk

INGRID WEAVER

began her writing career by propping an old manual typewriter on her children’s play table. Twenty years later she is a USA TODAY bestselling author of thirty books and the recipient of a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award. She currently resides on a farm near Frankford, Ontario, with her family and a varying collection of critters.

This book is dedicated to everyone in my family whose birthdays wound up on Amelia’s lottery ticket. Those are truly lucky numbers.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

BY THEMSELVES, NUMBERS were meaningless squiggles. It was what they represented that mattered. This particular string of six—1, 3, 4, 17, 23, 29—happened to represent the birthdays of Amelia Goodfellow’s family: her own, plus those of her brother, her sister-in-law and all three nephews.

The sequence also appeared to be the winning numbers in yesterday’s Lotto 6/49 draw.

Crockery rattled against crockery. The chinka-chink sounded oddly like...the clink of coins. Amelia set the dishes back on the table and reached for the newspaper. The previous customer had left no tip, only a discarded Toronto Star, so maybe Amelia was too annoyed to be seeing straight. The sun was glaring off the moisture remaining from where she’d wiped the table, so it could have been a trick of the light. Or fatigue. Or simply a bad case of wishful thinking. Sure. No reason for her hands to be shaking like this because she’d probably made a mistake, right?

She squinted at the paper.

The lottery results were in bold print in a box on the lower right-hand corner of the front page, along with the weather forecast and the horoscope for anyone whose birthday was today. There had been only one winning ticket. 1, 3, 4, 17, 23, 29. Her lips moved silently as she read the numbers again. No matter how many times she repeated them, they remained the same.

The jackpot had been over fifty-two million, not a record but close to it. To be exact, it had been fifty-two million, four hundred and eighty-five thousand, seven hundred and twenty. More numbers. They were too mind-boggling to grasp, even for someone who had once made her living by dealing with figures.

“Excuse me, miss?”

Yet these were more than simply figures on a page. This was a new house for Will and Jenny. It was redemption for Spencer’s crimes. It was the ability to think of tomorrow without feeling her stomach curl into a knot. It was the future. A brand-new, shiny, fire-engine-red, fresh-off-the-showroom-floor life in which she could stop apologizing and start living again.

“We’d like to order, please.”

Bubbles worked their way into her throat, stealing her breath and making speech impossible. The sensation was so unfamiliar, and it had been so long since she’d experienced it, Amelia didn’t recognize the joy immediately. Yet that’s what it was. Pure joy.

“Hello?”

She looked at the paper again, just to be sure. There they were, in all their multmillion-dollar splendor: 1, 3, 4, 17, 23, 29, the numbers she always played, the numbers she could never forget. She pumped her fist in the air and whirled.

A pair of women was seated at the booth across from her. The older one raised a penciled eyebrow. “Well, it’s nice to see someone so happy. Did you read good news?”

Amelia wouldn’t have thought she could smile any wider but she did. Her cheeks ached from it. Those crazy joy bubbles were swirling through her blood now. Her knees shook as badly as her fingers. She stumbled backward and came up hard against one of the boxes that held fake philodendrons. Plastic greenery crackled against her palm as she steadied herself with one hand. In the other she still clutched the paper. “Good?” Her voice rasped. She had trouble getting the word past her lips because every facial muscle was locked into her grin. “Uh-huh. Oh, yeah.”