Just My Luck by Adele Parks (best romance books of all time txt) 📗

her. There was a lot of money at play. A lot. Nothing was clear-cut. And although it should have been a straightforward case of four voices against two, the two had stolen the march and so she had decided to make a two-way bet, cover off all bases. She had put on quite the performance today for those lawyers, but she wasn’t sure the people at the lottery were convinced by the claim she and Fred and the Pearsons were making. She had to use all her intelligence and charms to ensure everything turned out as she hoped. By saying she was in the loo, she was sending a message to Jake. When she received his text, she knew he’d got it. Loud and clear. She had never considered leaving her husband for Jake. When her husband discovered their affair and screamed at her to “just fucking leave, get out of my sight. Go to him,” she’d had no intention of doing so. She’d planned to stick around, see if things calmed down. She wasn’t the sort of woman who could live with a poor man. And Jake had, up until very recently, been a poor man. She could play with a poor man nicely enough, but she needed to be married to a man who was comfortably off. She liked living in Great Chester and could never have managed in Little Chester the way Lexi did. She didn’t want to have to work and chip in on covering the bills. She enjoyed having manicures, pedicures, blow-dries.

Of course, Jake was now a very wealthy man. Obscenely rich, in fact. She had a lot to play for.

Last week, when he hadn’t turned up to their usual rendezvous—when there was no call, no message, nothing—she had sat in the hotel bedroom and worried about him. The thought made her rage now. She’d seriously considered that he had been in a car accident, imagined him unconscious, his face bleeding and smashed against his steering wheel. She’d wondered about calling hospitals.

But then Ridley and Megan came home from school and told their parents about the lottery win.

She’d still waited for him to call or message. Still believed he would. Each time the tiny icon to say a message had arrived flashed on her phone or laptop, her heart leaped. But the messages were never from him. The silence stretched and physically tormented her as though she was being pulled apart on a medieval rack. She needed to speak to him more than ever. It was clear that he was trying to hide the win from them all. Even her. He had said he loved her. But people say all sorts of things.

The betrayal burned.

It frightened her to think that he didn’t need her now. A man as rich as he was would have his pick of lovers because there was always someone willing to buy and sell. Many someones. That was the problem with being a mistress—it was a transient role. Everyone knew that. The wife had some power, was propped up by children, society, shared history. Even if a mistress ever became a wife, she knew she had just opened up a vacancy. A more devastating thought was that he wouldn’t want a lover at all now. With this newfound wealth, maybe he’d settle for his wife again. Maybe he’d find he could buy up enough excitement and pleasure without having to have illicit sex on Tuesday afternoons. Perhaps all she’d ever been was the equivalent of an exhilarating thrill ride at an amusement park. He could certainly buy bigger thrills than that now. He’d driven his Ferrari right past her house, for God’s sake.

Despite promising herself that she’d be charming, she found the moment he pushed open the hotel bedroom door and she set eyes on him—in his new expensive-looking clothes, with his new smug-looking expression—that her anger surged. Impulsively, she reached for something to throw at him. The first thing that came to hand was a hardback book about mindfulness. She flung it at him; the irony wasn’t lost on her. He ducked and the book sailed above his head, hitting the door behind him. He looked amused.

She let loose a cry of frustration and humiliation. He moved swiftly across the room toward where she was sitting on the end of the bed. She was not lying on it or in it, as usual, but she had not sat on the desk chair, either. He would know that by sitting on the bed she was showing that she was still open to negotiations. He knelt on the floor in front of her. Leaned toward her so that their lips were just a fraction away from touching. She lurched forward and bit him. “Fuck, that hurt, you bitch,” he yelled, standing up and swiftly moving away from her.

“It was supposed to, you bastard.”

Jake looked at his mistress: exciting, expensive, explosive. Secretly, he liked a show of passion. It turned him on when she was uncooperative, difficult. He had fully expected her fury. He hadn’t treated her well since the win, but they were not nice to each other. That had never been part of the deal. Not what they wanted from one another at all. They were always saying so. Even when he’d told her he loved her, he’d almost resented her for it—for making him weak and needy.

“You fucking bastard. Where were you last week?”

He admired her for starting with that question, the least expected. The most personal. He had failed to show up for their rendezvous and she was upset. Or at least paying him the compliment of pretending to be so. What a joke, considering everything else that was going down. He loved it that she was ignoring the question of the lottery when really it had to be all she was thinking about. She was such a game player. So exciting! “Buying a Ferrari.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’d rather fuck you,” he said, and smiled. She glowered.

He shrugged. She wasn’t ready