Fortune's Twins

Gwen was afraid Sylvia was right. Wyla did tend to feel sorry for herself a lot, though her last divorce had netted her a very profitable pig farm. She was about the only person in town who really didn’t need the lottery proceeds.

“C’mon,” Sylvia said, dragging Gwen by the arm. “We’re gonna celebrate. It’s not every day we become millionaires.”

“Celebrate?” The idea was a bit foreign to Gwen. “How?”

“The Wild Mustang has Wet T-Shirt Night on Tuesdays.”

“Oh, right.” Gwen decided Sylvia’s good fortune had caused a few screws to come loose in her head.

“I’m not suggesting we participate,” Sylvia said. “But the place will be full of cowboys. And you know how I like cowboys.”

Boy, did she. Sylvia was probably the most stylish person in Jester. She owned The Crowning Glory Hair Salon, and she was always attending hairstyling conventions in exotic places like Denver and Seattle, returning with the latest cuts—and the latest story of her exploits with the opposite sex. If she could hook up with a cowboy, that much better.

“Oh, come on,” Sylvia urged. “I’ll drive.”

“It’s forty miles to Roan.” Roan, North Dakota, was where The Wild Mustang was located.

“Exactly. If we go wild and make fools of ourselves, no one in Jester will ever hear about it.”

Gwen was ashamed to admit she was tempted. She felt wild, free, actually light-headed from the shock of her sudden good fortune.

“You should go!” Stella urged her. “I’ll make sure Oggie and Irene get fed. Honey, you hardly ever leave that house except to go to The Mercantile and the Stop ’n Shop. Once in a while, you’re entitled to kick up your heels and have some fun!”

“You know, Stella, you’re right.”

Sylvia clapped her hands in childlike excitement. “Go put on your sexiest clothes and tease up your hair. We’re going dancing!”

Dancing! Gwen thought as she threw on a pair of tight jeans and a red blouse with a ruffly, low-cut neckline. She was a millionaire, and tonight she was going to party, party, party.

Damn the consequences!

Chapter One

Consequences.

Seven months after her lottery win, Gwen was certainly awash in the consequences of her wild night on the town. Her obstetrician had just given her the startling news. She wasn’t just pregnant, she was carrying twins.

Dr. Sanders, an older, white-haired obstetrician who practiced in Pine Run, a larger town a few miles southwest of Jester, grinned broadly.

“Is something funny?” Gwen snapped. She wasn’t normally a moody person, but her hormones were running amok these days.

“I’m sorry, Gwendolyn,” he said. “It’s just that, when you get caught, you really get caught.”

Wasn’t that the truth. She’d spent her life living by her grandmother’s rules. Always sit up straight, eat your vegetables, wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident and never follow a man to his hotel room.

One little indiscretion—one!—and she was about to be a single mother with twins.

“I wouldn’t smile at your expense,” Dr. Sanders said, “except I know you’re secretly delighted.”

“In shock, more like it. I guess I should have known there was more than one baby in there.” She patted her stomach, which was so swollen it made her look like she was near term, though she had two months of her pregnancy to go. Then she found her own smile. “But you’re right. I was raised an only child, and I always wanted a brother or sister. My children will have each other.” She paused. “But couldn’t you have figured this out a couple of months ago when I bought all the stuff for the nursery?”

Dr. Sanders shrugged. “You wouldn’t come in for a sonogram.”

Again, he was right. She’d been trying to hide her unplanned pregnancy from her friends and neighbors for as long as possible—and that meant she couldn’t make too many unexplained trips to Pine Run. But as she’d grown bigger and bigger, she’d realized she was being foolish. It wasn’t as if she could hide the pregnancy forever. A couple of months ago, when she’d been delivering some baked goods to the Ex-Libris bookstore owned by her friend Amanda Bradley Devlin, Wyla Thorne had made some nasty comment about Gwen’s weight, and Gwen had spilled the news.

The whole town had been shocked. She’d always been the good girl, the shy one, who followed the rules and never made waves. To suddenly become a single mother was like a tsunami.

As she drove back to Jester in her ice-blue Mercedes—one of her many indulgences since she’d received her lottery winnings—the news finally sank in.

Twins. Two children. What fun. But also, what a challenge for a single mother. Not for the first time, she wished she had a husband with whom to share the joys and fears of parenthood. But she could not find Garrett, the sexy hunk she’d met at The Wild Mustang that cold January night. She’d left him her phone number, but he hadn’t called. And she didn’t know his last name or where he lived.

As she drove the familiar Route 2 toward Jester, she couldn’t stop her thoughts from migrating back to that wonderful, magical night when she and the other Main Street Millionaires—that was what the press had dubbed them—had won the lottery. She’d been riding high, floating in a surreal cloud of joy and optimism. She and Sylvia mentally spent their winnings a hundred times over on that snowy drive to Roan, North Dakota, though Gwen had put most of her money in blue-chip stocks and bonds for the future.

When they’d arrived at The Mustang, the place was rocking. As Sylvia had predicted, drunk cowboys were in abundance, and the moment they walked through the door, they had more drink offers and dance invitations than they could handle.

Gwen wasn’t that big on cowboys, drunk or otherwise. Her father, whom she’d never met, had tricked her mother into marriage by pretending to be a prosperous Montana rancher. Her mother didn’t find out the truth until too late. Willie Tanner was a con man and worse, and his “ranch” was a broken-down pig farm, heavily in debt. After eloping with Gwen’s mother, who’d been a minor heiress from Billings, he’d wasted no time cleaning out her bank accounts to pay off some rather nasty creditors—the kind who favored cement overcoats—then disappeared, leaving Gwen’s mother destitute, stranded, estranged from her family, and pregnant. She’d died shortly after Gwen’s birth.

Gwen’s paternal grandmother, Abigail Tanner, had taken in Gwen as an infant. Though she’d long ago turned her back on her no-account son, she’d willingly, lovingly, raised his daughter. One thing Grandmother had drilled into Gwen’s head was not to let any smooth-talking men talk her out of her better judgment—or her bloomers.

“What did I tell you?” Sylvia asked as she sat down to sip her beer, taking a break from the dance floor. “Wall-to-wall cowboys. Are you having fun?”

“Yeah, actually, I am.” She’d received more attention from men that night than she had in her whole life. It might have been the sexy clothes or the dark red lipstick. Or it might have been her attitude. For once in her life she felt strong, confident, powerful. She could do anything!

“You haven’t been dancing,” Sylvia pointed out.

“Dancing’s not really my thing. But I love watching. And I’ve got enough free booze to last a month.” Several eager bucks had sent drinks to Gwen’s table, but she was still nursing the same Shirley Temple she’d started with. She’d volunteered to be the evening’s designated driver.

Sylvia sighed. “What am I going to do with you? Listen, I’ve found a live one, and we want to get out of here. I’ll give you my keys, and you can drive my car home. I’ll get a room at the hotel later and find my way home in the morning.”

Gwen gasped. “You’re leaving with a complete stranger?”

“We aren’t strangers anymore.” Sylvia winked.

Far be it from Gwen to rain on Sylvia’s parade. “All right. But please, be careful.”

“I will. And you—try not being so careful for a change, huh? If you can’t find a guy in this smorgasbord, you’re doomed to a life of spinsterhood.”

That word echoed in Gwen’s mind for a long time. She wasn’t a spinster. That was a stupid word, anyway. She chose to be single.

Didn’t she?

Just then, she spotted a very good-looking man a few tables away. He wasn’t a cowboy, either. In fact, he might as well have been wearing a sign that said, “city boy.” His black hair was short, expertly cut. In his khaki slacks and tailored shirt, he looked more like a businessman of some sort. And, like her, he was on the sidelines, watching the action rather than participating. He appeared to be alone, too.

“Spinster,” Gwen muttered. “I’ll show her spinster.” With a determined toss of her head, she stood, picked up the watery Shirley Temple, and strode to his table.

He glanced over at her as she approached, and she could see that his eyes were blue, a deep, intense hue that seemed to see straight to her core. Her heart jumped unexpectedly.

No turning back now. “Hello. Mind if I sit here?” Her voice sounded like it could have been someone else’s. Where had that B-movie dialogue come from?