Ticket To Love. Jen Safrey

said. Then she blurted, “Oh, I forgot my purse,” and she trotted back to the kitchen. When she returned, she looked at him a bit differently, with her head cocked just slightly to one side.

      Harry narrowed his eyes with curiosity.

      Acey picked up her grocery bags, stepped outside and said over her shoulder, “See ya around, cowboy.” Then she clattered down the stairs.

      Harry grinned. Everything that woman did was noisy.

      “I wasn’t stalking him,” Acey called, squeezing water out of her hair and into the kitchen sink. A second quick downpour had caught her two blocks from home, drenching her. She wrapped a towel around her head and entered the living room where Steph was sitting, her eyebrows raised in amused fashion.

      “I wasn’t stalking,” Acey repeated.

      “Uh-huh,” Steph said, leaning back on the sofa and lacing her fingers behind her head.

      “I wasn’t.” Acey tucked the towel behind each ear to hear better. “The supermarket run happened to take me past his building. And then my bag sort of ripped open, maybe because I sort of absentmindedly picked a hole in the bottom of it with my nail.”

      “Suddenly this all becomes more believable.”

      “Listen, I had to meet him again. So my bag breaks, and he comes running like…like…”

      “Like what?”

      “Like the hero. Every time I see him, he’s saving the day. In the store, he was all sweet to Rosalia, and he said the nicest thing to Cassandra I ever heard, did I tell you?”

      “About twenty-three times.”

      “He helps kids, and elderly people, and me.”

      “So, is his place papered with hundred-dollar bills?”

      “No, it’s…totally nothing. It was like, white walls and brown chairs and that’s it.”

      “Doesn’t sound very megamillionaire-ish.”

      “No, I thought the same thing. I talked to him and I felt…” Acey stopped. She’d felt, and that was amazing in itself. She’d wrapped up and protected her heart since her bad breakup last year, and she hadn’t really enjoyed a conversation with a man in so long.

      “Felt what?”

      Acey shook her head. “I just figured, it’s not him. I mean, he’s in this little apartment, doing this freelance grant-writing work for nonprofits that can’t be paying him a whole lot, and if he did win, he’d probably be making some serious changes. But…” Acey paused for drama.

      Steph, who knew her sister’s games, waited ten seconds before demanding, “But what?”

      “But before I left, I was in his kitchen, and I saw a lottery ticket on the fridge. The date was May twenty-fourth.”

      Steph jumped a tiny bit. “Did you ask him about it?”

      “Yeah, but I tried to be cool.”

      “Ha!”

      “Shut up. I tried to start a conversation about it, but he reacted so strangely. He just about said that winning all that money would cause problems, not solve them. He sounded annoyed.”

      “Did you recognize the numbers? They’ve been showing them so often on TV…”

      “That was another thing. The numbers were folded under. I could read the date but not the numbers.”

      “Maybe he’d folded it in his pocket when he bought it and stuck it up there like that?”

      “Yeah, well, here’s the kicker. I forgot my purse, and when I went back to the kitchen to get it, it was gone.”

      “Your purse was gone?”

      “No. The ticket. Gone. Disappeared off the refrigerator. So I peeked in the garbage can. The can was empty, not even a trash bag in there. He’d followed me out of the room the first time, so…”

      Steph was nodding, her mystery-writing, clue-analyzing mind jumping ahead. “So you think he swiped it out of your sight? Hid it in a safe place?”

      “Exactly. Which got me to thinking on my walk home.”

      “As well it should.”

      “I thought, for someone so convinced that money causes problems, he still bought a ticket. If he’s so antimoney, why did he pay a buck to play?”

      “Good question.”

      “Isn’t it.” Acey plopped herself down on the floor and put her fuzzy-slippered feet on top of her sister’s bare ones. “The thing is, he’s so…” Her voice trailed off.

      “Amazing? Sexy? Wonderful? Gorgeous?”

      Acey looked into Steph’s face.

      “It’s okay, hon,” Steph said. “I knew you had a thing for him the first time you saw him. You’ve been going on and on about him even before today’s little encounter. Maybe you can ask him out?”

      “No. Absolutely not.” Acey jerked her head from side to side, and her towel turban collapsed. She threw it to the ground. “What if it turns out he’s the one? That he won all that money? And I think that’s the case.”

      “That would be great, right? You wanted it to be a nice person who won. From your description, he’s the nicest man who ever walked the streets of New York.”

      “It would be terrific for him, but I couldn’t go out with him. I couldn’t have a relationship with him.”

      “Why not?”

      Acey was quiet for a minute. “You know why not. I hate talking about it. Even after all this time, I still hate thinking about Charlie and what he—” She cut herself off before beginning again. “I’m never dating a wealthy man again. I will never again be accused of being a gold digger.”

      “Listen, Charlie’s parents had their heads up their behinds when they said that.”

      “Charlie didn’t exactly rush to my defense.”

      “I think that was less a consequence of his being rich and more a consequence of his being an utter bastard.”

      “I’m not taking any chances. No rich guys.” Acey lay down on the floor. “I liked Harry. Dammit.”

      “Should we hope he didn’t win? That doesn’t seem right.”

      “No.”

      “Besides,” Steph said, “if everything you said is true—that funny business with the ticket, and the weird stuff he said—he does sound like the secret winner.”

      “I know.” Acey lay quiet for a moment. “Remember the other night? When we were wondering about why the winner wouldn’t come forward and then we thought he might just be scared?”

      “Yeah?”

      “That could be it. Harry could be scared to have all that money. Scared it will corrupt him somehow. Cause problems, he said.”

      “Sounds possible.” Steph glanced at her watch. “Time for the news.” She hit the power button on the remote and grabbed her notebook. Acey sat watching with her sister through stories on accidents and homicides and world tensions before the lottery took precedence once again.

      “Still no word on the winner of the thirty-five-million-dollar lottery jackpot, who bought the lucky ticket at a Valley Stream convenience store,” the TV said.

      Steph looked at Acey, who took the remote from her and muted the set.

      “I can’t pursue Harry. I liked him,” Acey repeated. “And I’m pretty sure he liked me, at least as a friend. So I can be his friend, and—”

      “And what?”