Chapter 10 Piper #2
“What’ll it be, boys?” a deep voice asked, and my head snapped forward again.
We’d reached the front of the line, and behind a plastic folding table bearing big rolls of tickets and a cashbox, I found my boss staring at the three of us with that familiar I’m-such-a-good-guy-aren’t-I smile of his.
He wore a navy T-shirt with the Lovers Peak Charity Home Raffle logo on the breast, a white outline of the mountain behind the simple frame of a house.
The T-shirt fit him like a glove, stretching over his broad chest and falling to his slim hips, which he’d bracketed with his hands as he stared at us.
My gaze shifted from the logo to Rhett’s face. He arched a brow, eyes glittering, and familiar annoyance started to simmer in the pit of my stomach.
I didn’t like Rhett Baldwin, and I despised how much influence he had in this town.
It reminded me of Clare, where the Wilson family owned most of the businesses in town.
My ex-husband had started working for them and ingratiating himself with them, and by the time we divorced, he had all the power while I had none.
But I wouldn’t fold. I wouldn’t back down. I was done making myself smaller.
“Rhett,” I said, nodding. “We’ll have ten tickets, please.”
“Only ten?” Nate asked, his eyes wide and pleading. “The candy jar guess costs a ticket, and the basketball hoop costs two. If we both do it”—he counted on his fingers—“we only have four tickets left!”
Tickets were a dollar each. I could afford to get more, but I’d planned on buying some food tonight too, and I wasn’t getting paid for another two weeks.
I wasn’t broke broke, but I had to watch my finances.
The move, shipping all our belongings, damage deposits, school fees, insurance—everything had added up, and my savings were depleted.
Feeling his gaze like an itch across my collarbones, I glanced up to see my boss studying me. His face was impassive, as it often was, but I could still tell he was judging me.
I resented it—resented him. Who was he to judge my parenting?
“Okay. Ten tickets each,” I said, “but that’s it, so you have to make them last all evening.”
That would be easy for Alec, I knew, because he hoarded his allowance and any money he got for holidays or birthdays, only spending it when he was very sure that he couldn’t live without whatever toy or activity he’d chosen.
Nate would probably blow through his ten tickets within as many minutes, then barter with Alec to buy half of his.
The boys beamed at me as I pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it over to Rhett. Our fingertips brushed as he took the money, and another electric shock skittered up my arm. I pulled my hand away like I’d been burned.
Rhett’s eyes narrowed, and then he shifted his gaze to my boys. “You two boys behaving tonight?”
“Yes,” they answered in unison, looking up at him with big eyes.
“You think your mama’s gonna win the house?”
“YES!” they shouted.
I bristled. All my careful words from earlier to prepare them for an eventual loss went out the window.
Of course, Rhett Baldwin wouldn’t bother himself with any of that.
He wouldn’t think about two little boys and how disappointed they’d be when we didn’t win.
He was just here to stoke them to a blaze of excitement so he could seem like the fun, generous benefactor that he’d convinced everyone he was.
I’d have to pick up the pieces, just like I always did. I’d have to take the boys home and comfort them when someone else won, and explain the way of the world. I’d be the one in their bedroom, stroking their heads, reminding them we had each other and life was good.
But for now, Nate and Alec bounced up and down and pointed at the huge banner on the opposite wall showing the house that we weren’t going to win.
“We’ll get our own bedrooms!” Nate exclaimed.
“Really?” Alec asked, whipping his head over to me. “My own bedroom, like back home?”
A dagger in the chest would have hurt less.
We rented a two-bed townhouse near the center of town, the boys sharing bunk beds.
It was a far cry from the sprawling Texas estate that Jacob had insisted we buy—and that we’d had to sell off in the divorce.
Most of my proceeds had been eaten up by lawyers’ fees during our long custody battle, but Jacob had still managed to secure a house big enough for the boys while I struggled.
And Alec had called it “back home,” which told me just how much he thought of the move. Maybe the boys weren’t adjusting as well as I thought.
I was clinging to my freedom, my life, with the very tips of my fingernails, my feet dangling into an abyss below. Alec’s words threatened to make me slip and fall.
I snatched the twenty blue tickets from his hands and scowled at him.
“Thanks for that,” I said, and I could tell he knew I wasn’t talking about the scraps of paper that I divided between the boys.
With one last withering glare over my shoulder, I guided the boys away from the ticket booth and toward the carnival games—and I resisted the silly, nonsensical urge to reach into my bag and touch the cursed raffle ticket.