Heartbreaker Breaks (A Bittersweet Lottery Love Story) (Tangled Hearts & Broken Vows: Tales of Infidelity Book 1) Read online

  New From Paloma Meir

  A Girl's Story

  Overdone (The Loss of Reason)

  Book Three

  Trashed

  Vee & Addie (A Short Story)

  Heartbreaker Breaks

  Copyright © 2015 by Paloma Meir

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the author

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Edition, 2015

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  You can’t give your heart to a wild thing.

  -Truman Capote

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bonus Story: Vee & Addie

  Heartbreaker Breaks

  (A Bittersweet Lottery Love Story)

  by

  Paloma Meir

  Chapter One

  It was Faye’s birthday. She was feeling generous. She liked to feed the traveling youth that gathered in front of the convenience store not far from home by the beach in Venice. She would pass out sandwiches and orange juice to the malnourished drifters. Left to their own they would choose to survive on a diet of chips and sports drinks. It didn’t seem healthy to her.

  The gathering of kids shouted out their hellos. They morphed into new groupings over time but there was always a straggler who recognized her and would alert the others to Faye being a soft touch. She didn’t mind. They were her daily good deed. Maybe it was selfish. She would go to the store to buy cigarettes. Part of her felt that this act of charity inoculated her from the dangers of the secret habit. The secret habit that was ending that day.

  “Hey Faye,” A dread locked boy with a guitar in hand sang out to her. She didn’t know his name. She tried not to get too attached. The travelers aimlessly roamed around the country and she would sometimes hear of their sad fates. “Roast beef would be good today.” He smiled brightly to her and she couldn’t help but return the expression.

  “Vegetables would be better…” She counted up the kids as she entered the store, five boys and one girl. There were never many girls, and she did worry about their safety, but she admired their spirit all the same.

  She opened the refrigerated compartment and randomly grabbed five sandwiches, making a small effort to find one made with roast beef. Hands full, she dropped them off at the counter and returned to get the kids a selection of fruits and juice. Back at the checkout to pay, she spied a shelf of donuts and chips.

  She rolled her eyes to herself and took the bags and packages off the shelf and placed them on the piled up counter. She knew they would eat the junk food first and spoil their appetites for the healthier food. But it was her birthday, and she was in a generous mood.

  “Cigarettes?” The counterman shyly asked. He had been working in the shop for the previous ten years and saw Faye daily but still couldn’t make eye contact with the comely, friendly woman.

  “Yes,” She tilted her head down and looked up, forcing him to catch her eye. He turned bright red and covered his mouth with his hand, reminding Faye of her daughters when they were small children, “Six lottery tickets too.” She thought the kids outside might like that.

  The man standing behind her in line let out a heavy sigh at the amount of time her transaction was taking. She turned to him, a smile plastered on her face and apologized. She wasn’t really sorry, but she liked to see the embarrassed reaction impatient people expressed when caught in their moment of rudeness.

  He opened his eyes wide in something close to terror as she laughed to console him. It was the little things in life that made it fun for her.

  “64.80,” The counterman said.

  “I meant the scratch tickets.” She said as she fished the credit card from her handbag and saw he was handing her quick pick number slips. She knew the kids would lose the quick pick tickets before the drawing.

  “Okay, let me get the manager to void these ones.”

  “Oh, that’s okay I’ll keep those… but six scratch tickets please.” She didn’t want to hold up the impatient man behind her any further.

  “Thank you… Bye.” She said with a friendly wave of her hand as she exited the store.

  She passed out the food and lottery tickets to the kids and continued on her way home to the sound of a jaunty improvised song of gratitude from them. It was very sweet, and she thought for a moment of going back and telling them that it was her birthday. She wanted to hear them sing the birthday song in their folksy way. She didn’t turn around because turning forty-five wasn’t something she particularly wanted to celebrate.

  She glanced down at the tickets held firmly in her hand as she opened the door to her house and noticed her birth month and day on one of them. That’s fun, she thought to herself as she dropped the tickets on the computer desk in the family room before heading outside to her secret smoking area beneath the Magnolia tree in her backyard.

  The scent of the tree’s blossoms reminded Faye of her daughters who were away at school. They had loved the tree when they were little, playing in it all day long, coming back into the house covered in the sweet odor. She responded to their birthday greeting texts as she inhaled deeply on her cigarette and put the lottery tickets out of my mind.

  Chapter Two

  Faye's husband, Adam, came into the family room, lounged into their overstuffed sofa and turned on the television. She withheld her inner protest at the interruption and concentrated on the computer screen in front of her. The accounting software she had opened baffled her and required full concentration. Adam was aware of this.

  “Could you be a dear and–"

  “Car chase… in a minute.” Adam’s voice held a trace of his boyhood Croatian accent. The melodic tone never failed to make Faye’s heart flutter.

  “Okay…” She never understood why their whole city shut down to view the chases that always ended in the same way. “That’s Los Angeles for you,” she muttered to herself. She stared at the numbers on the screen willing away the sound of raised voices over the whirling helicopters that blared from the television. She was successful.

  Their finances came from Adams’ job. He was a liquor distributor, promoting the newest brands to trendy hotels and restaurants. He traveled a lot for work. She would miss him but made good use of her time while he was away.

  Faye had a small company, producing hand tooled black leather handbags. Their day-to-day finances were taken care of by Adam’s salary. Her business was for their future, not that Adam was aware of her intentions.

  He wasn’t what one would call good with money. She would never have said that she wa
s either, but it didn’t take a genius to see that a total lack of savings at their age was reckless. She had managed to save in a hidden bank account a little over 100,000 dollars in the previous five years. She mentally patted herself on the back, returned to the numbers and looked for ways to cut the operational costs of her company without sacrificing the quality of the handbags.

  “And the numbers tonight…” The television screeched after a relative period of quiet following the arrest of the scofflaws.

  “Adam…” She swiveled her chair around, the sweetest smile on her face, to ask him to turn the volume down. He was asleep on the sofa. She grunted and returned to her work. She knew her concentration would be lost for good if she got up to turn it off.

  “11… 16…” She heard her birth month and day called from the television and swiveled her chair around.

  “36, 12, 7 and the powerball number is 1...”

  She felt a shiver of excitement. She had never played the lottery before and didn’t know the rules but she had heard that getting three or four of the numbers paid out a few hundred dollars, or maybe you needed to get the powerball number correct too. She wasn’t sure, but it seemed worth checking. Her eldest daughter, Anja, had been hinting about a pair of boots outside of their family budget for her upcoming birthday. She would be able to get them for her.

  She rifled through her drawer looking for the pile of tickets she had put away earlier as Adam snored away on the sofa. She was tempted to pour the carafe of water over his head, but she didn’t. She was nice that way.

  She leaned back in her chair, tickets in hand and looked up to see the news program had moved on to the sports segment. Enough was enough. She tiptoed across the room and turned it off. She didn’t want to wake Adam up. She did not want him to wrestle away control of the few hundred dollars that was hers with a suggestion of a weekend away or an overpriced dinner. It was always so hard for her to say no to him.

  She closed the accounting file and opened the lottery website page. A wave of nausea passed over her as she read the numbers, her heartbeat coming to a full stop before the powerball number. She had won.

  She closed her eyes as the room spun around her and held back the bile in her throat. No, no, no were the only thoughts in her head. She knew with certainty that the money would destroy their lives. She saw the four of them, five years in the future living in a single room occupancy apartment in Downtown L.A. Skid Row would be their home. The traveler kids she offered food to would be giving her scraps from their leftovers.

  She forced her eyes open and stared down at the ticket. She would rip it up and put this unfortunate incident behind them forever. The tearing sound at the corner of the pale yellow slip of paper brought reality back to her with a sickening speed of force. Her stomach was not handling the situation well at all.

  She didn’t know how much money she had won. Perhaps it was only a million. That would be a lot of money in one lump sum. She wasn’t a jaded person. But it seemed manageable. She could see Adam plowing through in under a year but perhaps she could skim a little off the top, save some for their children, hide it in her business’s secret savings account.

  She turned back to the computer. Her hands trembled and her eyes strained to focus on the jackpot amount, thirty-eight million dollars. She ran from the room, on tiptoe of course, to the bathroom and threw up.

  Chapter Three

  Faye hadn’t woken Adam up the night before to move him into their room. The bed was hers. She stretched out, relishing the extra space and her well-rested mind from having slept the night far away from his snoring. Her peace was interrupted by the memory of the lottery ticket.

  She slunk under the covers and wished the ticket away. The amount was too large and Adam’s dreams too big. The money would be invested into schemes that would never come to fruition. He would spend it lavishly, assuring her that it was just for this one time. Just one trip, just one this, just one that, just one orange grove in the Sudan for all she knew.

  “My back… Why didn’t you wake me up?” Adam asked as he loudly thrashed through their room.

  “I’m sorry,” She popped up from under the covers and said through her first false smile of the day, “My stomach was upset... I laid down for a moment and fell asleep.”

  “Are you feeling better? Can I get you something?” He sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed her foot through the thick duvet.

  “I’m fine…” She looked away from him, “I had the strangest dream… I won the lottery… Isn’t that funny?”

  “If you say so.” He smiled.

  She was not the only one in their home who had perfected the art of the false façade. “What would you do if we won?” She looked straight into his eyes. He held her gaze for a moment and looked away.

  “You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

  “This has nothing to do with that.” It really didn’t, she was willing to give him another chance, even though all the windfalls they had experienced in their lives had blown through his hands. The last and the largest had been a few years before when her parents had passed on. “Really what would you do?”

  “I don’t know…” He dropped her foot and stared ahead, “Buy a house, maybe in Laguna… renting this house for the past fifteen years has been downbeat… Invest the rest of it.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “Yeah… I learned my lesson and I’m sorry it came at the expense of you and the girls.” He turned to her and the morning light illuminated his full and dark Slavic features and a trace of lipstick in a color she never wore on his neck.

  She had let go of her disappointment in his financial responsibility. But his extramarital relationships? No. She had not grown used to it and she did not forgive him.

  “It was just a dream.” She sat up in the bed and gently flicked his chin before getting up and going into the shower.

  Chapter Four

  Three days later Faye sat in the spacious waiting room of Serge Richmond. She had met the lawyer a few years before at a party for her oldest and best friend, Cassandra, who had been dating him. They had long since broken up and in the intervening years Serge had changed his specialty from Corporate Law to Personal Injury. She knew her immediate needs would have been better served from a lawyer who specialized in corporations but she trusted him and he did have the previous experience.

  “Ms. Petrov,” He opened the door to the waiting room and held out his hand, “It’s been a long time. Come this way.”

  The rumbling in her stomach that had been constant since winning the lottery subsided for a moment and her heart skipped a beat as she felt her face flush, “Please call me Faye.” She held back a giggle and followed him down the hallway.

  “So… You’re looking for a lottery attorney? You spoke so quickly in your voicemail,” He ran his fingers through his inky black hair as he sat down in the chair behind his desk. Faye swooned, and the giggle escaped her lips.

  “I do not specialize in “lottery law” and if anyone approaches you suggesting that is what they do… I suggest you run very far away.” An amused expression passed over his face as he saw her laughing in the chair across the table from him.

  “I’m sorry… I’m laughing because… Never mind. My emotions are so extreme these past few days, with the lottery and I just quit smoking… My husband snores and I want to slap him, he says good morning and it’s as if we’ve just met for the first time and we’re in love all over again.” She sensed she was babbling and took a deep breath and stared out the floor to ceiling windows onto cityscape of downtown Los Angeles to regain her equilibrium.

  “Well… Don’t slap him. I’m not a criminal defense attorney either.”

  She turned back to him and saw he was just a very handsome man who she planned to hire for legal help and felt much better. A crush would only confuse her newfound life change. She did not want that kind of nuisance in her life.

  “I would never do that,” She smiled, sighed lightly and dug
through her oversized handbag to retrieve a pad of paper, “I’ve won the lottery. I need help with… hiding… no, not hiding, withholding that information.”

  “You’re leaving your husband? You won’t be able to hide it. Best to split it, go on your merry way. These things can get ugly.”

  “No, no, no… I would never do that. I just need time to organize it. My husband is… not good with money. I don’t want this to destroy our lives. I’ve read so many stories… Hookers, guns, drugs… I don’t want our lives to end that way.”

  “No I don’t suppose anyone would want to go down in a blaze of gunfire,” He laughed and the swooning feeling returned for a moment, “You know it doesn’t have to be that way? The media only reports on the sensational stories. Many people do fine with their winnings.”

  “We will be fine with it but I need a year of privacy to arrange that.”

  “That makes sense but have you considered how your husband will feel about this deception at the end of the year?”

  “Truthfully? No. But I have time to figure it out.”

  He stared at her, all humor gone from his face. Faye felt as if he were staring into her soul. She looked down at the hastily written figures on her pad of paper.

  “How about six weeks to figure it out? I did some research last night, and that’s how long it takes to process your claim before the money is given to you. You said you want to take the lump sum?”

  “Yes I do. I don’t need this problem popping up annually.”

  “Problem?” Amusement filled his eyes again, “I suppose it’s good that you’re taking this seriously. Okay…Thirty-eight million? After taxes and you’ll be very happy to know that those are taken out immediately, you’ll have 18,920,000 millions dollars.”

  “Oh good, I worried it was more.” She held up her pad of paper, “I lost track of all the numbers.”