Shelly's Second Chance (The Wish Granters, Book One) (4 page)

 Shelly sighed, tried to pull
her thoughts back to the present. Marcus always said fantasizing was dangerous,
as dangerous as hanging around race tracks and casinos. Besides, she was almost
to the end of her struggle years anyway, wasn’t she? It was really just a matter
of holding on for a few more months. Once she and Ben
were married, she’d be totally solvent and
she wouldn’t have to worry about money anymore. It was just this single girl
life that had gotten out of control. No matter how much she had, she was like a
gerbil in a wheel spinning around and around. Pay one bill and put three others
aside for later.

Shelly reached into her purse
and laid out the spreadsheet she’d created in front of her on the marble bar. She
took a deep breath and said, “Please, God, make me a winner this time,” then
traced down the sheet with her finger, carefully comparing the Lotto numbers on
the newspaper page next to the numbers on her spreadsheet.

 From the other end of the
bar, Alanna and Joe watched her, fascinated.

“What’s she doing?” Alanna
asked.

“Attempting to beat the
system.” It was Morgan. Now that they’d spotted him, the voice really gave him
away. “She puts all her Lotto numbers from different games into a spread sheet
and runs them through a probability software she wrote for herself.” He wiped
some melted ice drops off the counter with a bar cloth.

“Wow,” Joe looked over at
Shelly with new respect. “That’s impressive.”

“Yes. She has talents, but
she also called in sick to work today so she could go all over town buying Lotto
tickets and soon she’s going to find out . . .”

“Wait a second,” Joe
interrupted. “If she runs out of money that’ll stop her in her tracks.”

“Ahhh, Joe, this is not
someone who operates in reality. You see, Shelly’s one of those people who want
to believe there’s an easy street waiting around the corner and if they can
just find that corner, all their troubles will be over. Just look at her.”

Alanna and Joe turned toward
Shelly at the end of the bar, her head still down, still running her finger
down columns on the spreadsheet.

“Is that the wish we grant
her? Directions to
easy
street?” Alanna asked as she turned back to Morgan.

But Morgan was gone. Alanna
and Joe looked at each other. Then down the bar to where two bartenders were
laughing while one placed drinks on a tray for a waiter. Neither of the
bartenders looked anything like Morgan.

“What the hell?” Joe
muttered. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know but one thing
is sure. He’s dumped a woman on us who’s so self-involved all she can think
about is
winning a
lottery. You’d think he’d have chosen someone more deserving.”

“There must be more to her
than that. No person is just one thing. Maybe there’s something behind her need
to win. For all we know, she’s desperate.”

Alanna shrugged. Maybe, she
thought but she wasn’t convinced.

“Besides,” Joe added.
“Money’s not the worst thing you could wish for.”

“It’s so paltry,” Alanna said.
“So meaningless.”

Joe leaned back and stared at
her. “I cannot believe you just said that. Money solves a whole boatload of
problems.”

“It doesn’t seem like enough.
It seems like the kind of thing you’d say you wanted and then you’d realize
later it wasn’t the right thing, that you should have wished for . . .”

“Not our problem,” Joe
reminded her. “Not our call. Our job is to grant their wishes, not tell them
they should have wished for something else. And, for the record, I think most
people would wish for more money given the chance. So you must have been some
kind of rich girl back in Delray Beach.”

“You don’t know anything
about me,” Alanna turned to him indignantly, her hair swaying.

“You don’t know all that much
about yourself, do you? Why is this pissing you off so much?”

 “It’s just that everyone
assumes that rich people have no problems. It’s not true, you know.”

“I’m sure it’s not. Poor rich
people. Let’s all have a moment of silence on their behalf. Anyway, what makes
you an authority on rich people and their problems?”

Alanna shook her head.
“You’re right. I don’t know you and I don’t even know myself and neither one of
us has any idea why we’re here.” She gazed down the bar at Shelly, busy with
her spreadsheet. Maybe she really was being too hard on the girl.

“Oh God,” she said, her eyes
growing misty as another thought suddenly settled in her mind, obviously
something else from the file. “We’re both here for the same reason. That’s why
we were partnered. Because our lives ran out before they were destined to end.
And that’s why we’ve been given these tasks because we have the chance to earn
our way back . . .”

“Back to what?” Joe asked.
“Back to life? I think I must have loved life. But so far this is pretty good,
too.” He watched her tip her glass again and thought that she was really a
woman who could hold her not-drink.

“I think we’re going to follow
Shelly now,” he said.

“How do you know that? Was it
in the file?”

“Nope. I know it because
she’s leaving. Come on.” Alanna glanced down the bar in time to see Shelly
crumple the newspaper page she’d been looking at and throw it on the floor
under the bar. She reached down for her purse and slid off the stool. Alanna
saw a look of desperation on her face.

 “But maybe we should go over
to her, tell her, explain that . . .”

“No time to talk,” Joe said abruptly. Shelly was heading for
the door fast and he barely had time to slam down the final not-drink and reach
for Alanna’s hand.

“Let the games begin.”

Chapter Seven

“So . . . come here often?”

It was a lame line and they
both knew it. Shelly looked up from her phone and gave Joe a bored glance. Like
Alanna, she was an attractive woman. And like Alanna, the kick of having random
guys hit on her had worn off a long time ago.

“So,” he persisted, as the
line edged a little closer to the cashier. “What are you here for? Motor oil?
Slurpees? Beef jerky?” He paused. “Maybe lottery tickets?”

Now her head jerked up. “What
if I am? It’s not a crime.”

He raised his hands. “Hey,
you’ll get no argument from me. I used to be a gambler myself.”

 Shelly looked at him out of
the corner of her eye. “Used to be? What happened? You’re not some sort of GA
spy, are you?”

 GA. Had that been in the
file? Joe’s mind raced through possibilities.

“Hey, I’m on your side,” he
said, with what he hoped was a convincing smile. “Name’s Joe, by the way.”

She shrugged. “Shelly. Well,
really Michelle, but no one calls me that.”

Joe nodded. He knew all about
names. He’d been born Aloysius Joseph Taft and had never forgiven his mother
for sticking him with that.

“Well,
Shelly-but-really-Michelle, I’ve gotta tell you. I have a really good feeling
about those Vegas Chance tickets. I think you need to buy one.”

She turned back to her phone,
already bored with the conversation. “If you have such a good feeling about it,
why don’t you buy one for
yourself? Don’t like to win?”

 For starters, I don’t have
any money, Joe thought. And for another thing, I’m flying utterly blind here.
Why had he told her to get a Vegas Chance? With twenty-five hundred Lotto
tickets, her chances were surely better there. Hell, he’d never even heard of a
Vegas Chance. The words had simply flown out of his mouth. It must have been
something from the file. Shelly had already turned her back to him again, sure
he was nothing more than some loser trying to pick her up in a convenience
store. Joe glanced around for Alanna, sure she’d have better ways to approach
the situation. After all, women trusted other women, didn’t they? But Alanna
didn’t seem to have manifested with him. He was not only flying blind, he was
flying solo.

 “Yeah, Vegas Chance,” he
said again, rocking back on the heels of his feet. If she was a true gambler
she wouldn’t be able to resist taking the bait no matter how strangely he
acted. “Instant Winner. That’s the ticket.”

 She shrugged, snapped her
phone shut. “I only play Lotto. Or Super Lotto. The pots are worth it. I just
wish I could win really big once in my life.”

There it is, Joe thought. The
wish. Just as easy as that.

“I know,” he started to say,
catching himself just in time. At least she was talking to him again but there
were only two more customers between them and the cashier so he had to act
fast.

“Shelly, I’ll tell you what,
I
have this really
strong feeling that there’s a winning ticket in there for you,” Joe told her
and then added. “But only for you. It wouldn’t do me any good at all to buy
one. It’s just not my day.”

Shelly looked at Joe, then at
her watch. She understood all about these mystical impulses drawing you to one
gas station or another convenience store, telling you that you were going to
win, that it was finally your moment. “You have a feeling.” She wagged her head
from side to side, considering what he’d said.

“Not just a feeling,” he
promised. “
The
feeling.”

“Okay. But just one ticket,”
she said and then added. “I must be crazy.”

Shelley told the cashier she
wanted four hundred ninety nine Lotto tickets and one Vegas Chance. The request
seemed to set the man back on his heels a little bit, and he was further
flummoxed when Shelly withdrew a battered envelope from her purse and fanned
five hundred dollar bills across the counter, then crumpled the empty envelope
and tossed it toward the trash can. She missed the can and Joe winced.
Apparently, just as Morgan had predicted, Shelly had bought tickets all over
town and was down to the last five hundred dollars of the engagement weekend
money. Gamblers had their strange rituals—another thing he wasn’t quite sure
how he knew—and Shelly must be one of those who favored certain gas stations.

The cashier pushed a stack of
paper tickets toward Shelly and she scooped them up and headed for the door.
Joe followed, hoping she didn’t ask him why he’d stood in such a long line and
left without buying anything.

“The Vegas Chance is an
instant win,” he reminded her, once they were out on the sidewalk.

“I know, I know,” she said.
“God, you really do have a feeling, don’t you?” She zipped the Lotto tickets in
her purse and put the Vegas Chance ticket on the top of a metal stand selling
copies of
USA Today
.

 “Scratch it off,” Joe said.
His own heart was pounding. “Go ahead.” Even though he was pretty sure this was
a winning ticket, Joe felt the rush of the gambler. And besides, how did he
know he could trust Morgan? Still, he’d been a guy who never dodged an
opportunity.

Shelly rubbed with the tip of
one broken fingernail. She’d blown her manicure money on tickets two weeks ago.
The silver coating started crumbling away in tiny pieces. She rubbed and rubbed
and when she saw a capital V and then an E and then a G, she rubbed faster and
harder. She started jumping up and down in little hops and the more she rubbed
the more the letters looked as if they were spelling out the words she needed
to win and finally there it was in front of her.
VEGAS CHANCE WINNER
.
Shelly clamped her fingers around Joe’s wrist.

“You were right. I won. I
really won.” She was grinning like a hyena and still had her hand clamped on
Joe’s wrist so tight it felt like he’d just been handcuffed.

“I told you.”

“How did you know? It’s
amazing. But what’s the payout?” She released his wrist so she could hold the
ticket in both her hands to study it closely. She turned it over and squinted
at the small print on the back.

“What does it say?” She
handed it to Joe. “I can’t read it. It’s too small.”

Joe knew without reading but
pretended to scan the back of the ticket, hoping he was squinting at the small
print in a convincing fashion. “It says you’ve won an all expenses paid four
days in Las Vegas. It includes airfare—first class—and you’ll be a VIP guest.
And
,
holy crap. It says when you get there, you’ll get three thousand dollars in
chips to have fun gambling. Holy crap,” he repeated.

“This can’t be happening.”
Shelly shook her head, as Joe gave her back the ticket. “It just can’t. People
like me don’t win glamour stuff. It must be some mistake.”

“Trust me, it’s no mistake.”

“Well it’s fantastic, that’s
what. Fantasmatastic. I can’t wait to tell my fiancé. I’m on my way to the
airport to pick him up now and he’s just going to be . . . he’s going to be
thrilled.” She grinned at Joe. “Come on, you need to let me do something for
you. It’s almost noon. Would you like lunch?”

Joe wasn’t sure he could even
eat. The Manifest had come complete with what seemed to be a normal human
body—his body, as a matter of fact—and
no one, including Shelly, seemed to have
noticed anything odd about him. But he wasn’t sure how this body worked—if it
ate, slept, or performed any of the other vital functions he remembered from his
life back on earth. Although a bit ragged around the edges, Shelly was a
good-looking girl. He’d recognized it at once and yet he wasn’t responding to
her in the same way he’d once responded to a pretty woman. It was a disturbing
thought.