Chapter 12
TWELVE
PIPER
A scream escaped my lips before I could stop myself. The numbers on the ticket I held with trembling hands began to swim. My eyes weren’t working right. But they were, because that was my number the emcee had just called out!
Heart hammering, I stared at the big projector screen and squinted until I could double-check.
The numbers matched. The numbers matched. We’d won!
I screamed again, brandishing the ticket as my boys began to yell with me. I put my hands on Nate’s cheeks and smacked a big kiss on his forehead, then did the same to Alec.
“Mom, is that our number?” Alec asked.
“Yes!” I screeched. “Yes!”
And then the emcee said, “…with the ticket belonging to none other than Mr. Rhett Baldwin!”
The words came at me as if I were underwater. I frowned at the man onstage, watching the way his lips moved under his big white mustache, not understanding.
People around me had already turned to stare, and the surprise on their faces turned to confusion. Murmurs began to swell, and it was the coffee shop all over again. I was the outcast, the pariah, making a scene.
“Rhett, come on up here and claim your prize!”
Across the room, I saw Rhett smile, his good-guy mask solidly in place. He grinned a little wider, lifting an arm to wave at his adoring fans—uh, fellow townspeople—like he was a visiting rockstar.
And it was too much. He’d bullied me from the moment I started working for him, but I wouldn’t let him bully me out of this.
This changed everything. This gave me stability and control and a tiny bit of power over my own life.
If I had a house, I could stay here. I could find some remote work, maybe, or a job that didn’t pay much, because my housing costs would be nil.
Rhett Baldwin would not take this away from me.
“No!” I screamed, lifting my arm. “It’s mine!”
Mila darted around a portly man and his wife and came to a stop in front of me. “Are you okay?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“Look at my ticket, Mila,” I demanded. “Those numbers match. Don’t they? Am I blind?” Anger and righteous fury turned to doubt. My hands were still shaking.
“Mom?” Nate asked. “Did we win?”
“Hang on, baby,” I said, and bent my head over the ticket beside Mila.
“Fourteen, two, double-oh, six—” She frowned, then started over to double-check.
Then she straightened. “That’s your ticket number,” she announced, and another ripple went through the crowd.
I could almost see the news moving through the assembled townspeople, and I saw the moment the words crashed into Rhett.
He was at the base of the stairs leading up to the stage, one hand on the railing, and he paused with a foot on the bottom stair.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder, said something, and pointed in my direction.
The back of his T-shirt had the word “VOLUNTEER” emblazoned across his shoulder blades, the writing shifting out of sight as Rhett turned.
Our gazes collided. I bared my teeth. Rhett narrowed his eyes. The crowd parted between us, leaving a narrow aisle of electrified space connecting us.
Mila handed me my ticket again, and I clutched it in one hand before taking Alec’s hand with the other. Nate grabbed onto my belt loop, and the three of us marched toward the stage.
Rhett painted an open, baffled expression on his face, and I knew it was a lie.
I could see the fire streaking through his eyes, the anger simmering just below the surface.
I’d dared to challenge him again—this time in front of everyone he tried so hard to fool with his benefactor routine.
I wanted to rip that T-shirt off him, and not because of the chest beneath it, but because it made him look like he belonged here, like he was such a good guy volunteering for the community.
He belonged, and I was just a dirty interloper.
But he was a bully and an ass. He didn’t even care about injured cats! All he cared about was making money and protecting his precious reputation.
Yeah, I knew his type. I’d been married to a man just like him.
And I was done living a small life. Deep pockets or no, this man would not run me out of town. I’d just won a freaking house. I’d won a home. I’d won stability for myself and my boys, and I wasn’t going to give it up.
The mustachioed emcee moved to the top of the short stairway and frowned at me. “Ma’am? What’s the problem?”
“The problem is you called my number with his name,” I said, jabbing my ticket at Rhett’s broad chest.
The emcee’s mustache trembled. “Well, now, let’s figure this out. Rhett, son, come on up here and let’s check the records here—”
“Just look at this ticket,” I said, thrusting it at the man. “It’s got my information on it, and the number matches the number on the screen.” I pointed at the big projector screen for emphasis.
“Be that as it may,” the man said, “the ticket stub we’ve got has Rhett’s name on it.”
“Well, your ticket stub is wrong,” I insisted.
“Darling,” Rhett drawled, “let’s calm down a bit here—”
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down,” I snapped.
I was making a scene. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me like a thousand pinpricks poking into my spine and the back of my neck. I hated it. I hated the fact that once again, I looked like the crazy, unreasonable, hysterical woman.
The urge to crumple in on myself was almost unbearable.
I’d spent the past decade and longer making myself smaller to fit into my ex-husband’s life.
I’d given up my career and my ambitions.
I’d put my body on the line with two hard pregnancies.
I’d stripped away everything that made me me in order to build a family and a life.
Fat load of good that did me in the end.
I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
My independence and my freedom were everything to me. I couldn’t give them up just because of a bit of peer pressure. Let every single person in this town think I was a lunatic. Let them judge me. Let them compare me to King Rhett and shake their heads with a tsk.
I wasn’t giving anything up for a man. Never again. Never. Ever. Again.
Besides, Mila had confirmed it. That was my number! That was my house!
Rhett Baldwin owned half this town, just like the Wilsons had owned half of Clare. He didn’t need another house. And what kind of man would insist on taking a free house when there was a single mom with two kids who needed it more? A single mom and two kids who happened to have the winning ticket!
I stomped up the rattling stage steps and followed the emcee to his podium, my boys trailing behind me. Rhett took up the rear, brow knitted in a sort of harmless concern. The liar. Every time our eyes met, his blazed with annoyance bordering on fury. He hated being called out.
Was this some sort of scheme? Did he count on no one in this town wanting to go up against him? Was this how he made his money?
What had really happened with the designers I’d replaced? I didn’t know this man at all, and it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that he was as crooked as a boxer’s broken nose.
“Now, let’s all take a deep breath and get this sorted out,” the emcee said.
He walked over to the table at the back of the stage, where a teenager sat behind a computer.
The two of them studied the screen, then the ticket, then the screen again.
The emcee looked at me from under bushy white brows, then turned back to the computer.
Then he looked at the ticket stub they’d pulled out of the comically huge fishbowl and pursed his lips.
“What game are you playing, Darling?” Rhett asked quietly, that same fake expression on his face.
Rage ignited inside me, and I whirled on him. “What game am I playing? What game are you playing?”
“They pulled my ticket out of the barrel,” he said, shrugging.
“Show me your ticket, then,” I demanded. “Show me the numbers matching.” I pointed to the display.
Rhett’s eyes narrowed slightly, and that false concern melted away. “I don’t have the tickets. They use the stubs with our information on them to do the draw.”
“The fine print on the back of the ticket says you need to show your ticket to claim your prize, then do a skill-testing question.”
Rhett said nothing. I doubted he’d ever taken the time to look at the fine print. This was probably some scam, and he was so sure of winning that any fine print would be moot.
Well. It wasn’t moot for me.
We faced off. I hated for my boys to see me in this kind of mood, but they needed to know that their mother wasn’t going to be pushed around.
Alec had twisted his fist into my shirt, and now he clung to me like a terrified puppy.
Nate was frowning at Rhett and intermittently glancing at the emcee and the computer.
And the gathered crowd was murmuring, the swell of their conversation, curiosity, and judgment pressing against me like a concrete wall.
I wanted to explode. I wanted Rhett Baldwin to slink away and know that I’d called him on his shit.
A throat cleared, and we both whirled around to see the emcee standing there. He lifted his palms as if to settle us, my ticket clutched in one hand, the winning stub in the other.
“All right, you two, we’ve got a bit of an issue here,” he said. “Let’s take this to the office and get it sorted out.” He gestured to the stairs, and when I’d turned toward him, I heard him say to Rhett, “Sorry about this.”
Rhett replied something conciliatory, but my anger blocked it out. The emcee hadn’t apologized to me, had he? Only to the emperor of the town, the man who was in charge, the arrogant jerk who wasn’t used to being challenged.
Well. They were both about to find out that I might not have money or much of a reputation, but I wasn’t going to back down.
Not for Rhett. Not for the sake of my tattered status in this town. And definitely not when my children’s stability was on the line.