Burn: A Novel by Linda Howard

waiting area. One was reading a magazine, but the other two watched her. What were they waiting for? God, was she supposed to sign in and wait her turn? This was nerve-racking enough, without having to wait.
    An older woman pasted on a good imitation of a sincere smile when Jenner reached the counter. Swallowing hard, Jenner reached into her bag and took out the winning ticket, as well as her pay stub and driver’s license, and placed them all on the counter.
    “I won,” she half-whispered, trying to keep everyone else in the room from hearing.
    The woman picked up the items, looked at the ticket, and a wide grin split her face. “Yes, you certainly did.” She nodded to the people in the waiting area behind Jenner, and they all got up from their chairs. Jenner turned, and a flash went off in her face, momentarily blinding her. The woman and two men fired questions at her, talking on top of each other; she couldn’t pick out a singlequestion that made sense, everything was jumbled so. She backed up and found herself pinned against the counter, unable to go either left or right.
    One of them stepped on her left foot, and abruptly she’d had enough. “Hey!” she said loudly, almost shouting. “Back it up, okay? One of you almost took my toe off.” The three reporters momentarily paused, and Jenner took advantage of the brief silence to announce, “My name is Jenner Redwine.”

Chapter Four
    Y OU CAN’T UNRING A BELL
.
    Jenner stared down at the legal-size sheets of paper in her hand, trying to make sense of what she was reading. She’d just gotten out of the Goose, in the employee parking lot at Harvest Meat Packing, when a nondescript man had approached.
    “Jenner Redwine?”
    You’d think she’d have learned by now, because the past two weeks, since she’d gone public with the winning ticket, had been filled with people who wanted her to invest in a surefire business proposition, or give to charity, or give to them, or any number of variations on the theme of Give Me the Money. She should have run as fast as she could. Instead, startled, she’d turned and said, “Yeah?”
    The man extended a thick envelope to her, and automatically she took it. “You’ve been served,” he said, then the asshole winked at her before turning and hurrying away.
    Served?
    “I don’t have a red cent yet!” she yelled furiously at his back.
    “Not my problem,” he called as he jumped in a white Nissan and drove away.
    Jenner tore open the envelope and unfolded the stapled-together sheets of legal-size paper, quickly scanning them. Sheer rage engulfed her, making her literally see red. In that moment, if she’d been able to get her hands on Dylan, she’d have strangled him.
    “Trouble?” A coworker sneered at her as he passed. “Who knew being rich would be such a bitch?” He laughed at his own joke as he entered the plant, and everyone in the vicinity laughed, too.
    If she’d only known, if she’d had any idea, she’d have set up a blind trust and never gone public. She wouldn’t even have told Michelle, not until she actually had the money. Not that Michelle hadn’t been great, but these past two weeks had been hell—and now this. Now Dylan was suing her for half the winnings, claiming … whatever it was he was claiming, that they’d lived together and shared expenses and went in on the winning ticket together, along with a bunch of other bullshit.
    Hounded to death was
a reasonable description of what Jenner’s life had been like for the past two weeks. Practically from the minute her name had been released as the jackpot winner, her phone had rung. And rung. And rung. All hours of the day and night, the phone rang, until she had finally unplugged it, more or less permanently. Charities, long-lost relatives—usually so long-lost she hadn’t even known she had them—people offering her the opportunity of a lifetime to get in on the ground floor of a great business opportunity, friends who wondered if