Adele Parks has brought her #1
Sunday Times sensation, JUST MY LUCK to the US!
Be careful what you wish for...
After spending happy hours, parenting classes and barbeques together for the last 15 years, Lexi and Jake Greenwood have celebrated and shared almost everything with the Pearsons and the Heathcotes, including their lottery numbers. Then one night, the unthinkable happens. Someone has been telling lies – lies dark enough to burn bridges and tear the tight group of friends apart. When the Greenwoods win a stunning $23 million in the lottery with their group’s numbers shortly after their dramatic falling out, the Heathcotes and Pearsons believe they’re entitled to part of the prize... and the three couples will do anything to claim what is theirs.
Reader beware: the last chapter will change everything.
A compulsively readable
portrait of the fragility of friendship, the corrosiveness of sudden wealth,
and the dark side of good luck, Adele Parks’ latest domestic thriller will make
you think twice about trying your hand at the lottery.
Buy Links
Harlequin | Barnes & Noble | Amazon
Chapter 1
Saturday,
April 20
I
can’t face going straight home to Jake. I’m not ready to deal with this. I need
to try to process it first. But how? Where do I start? I have no idea. The
blankness in my mind terrifies me.
I
always know what to do. I always have a solution, a way of tackling something,
giving it a happy spin. I’m Lexi Greenwood, the woman everyone knows of as the
fixer, the smiler—some might even slightly snidely call me a do-gooder. Lexi
Greenwood, wife, mother, friend.
You
think you know someone. But you don’t know anyone, not really. You never can.
I
need a drink. I drive to our local. Sod it, I’ll leave the car at the
pub and walk home, pick it up in the morning. I order a glass of red wine, a
large one, and then I look for a seat tucked away in the corner where I can
down my drink alone. It’s Easter weekend, and a rare hot one. The place is
packed. As I thread my way through the
heaving bar, a number of neighbors raise a glass, gesturing to me to join them;
they ask after the kids and Jake. Everyone else in the pub seems celebratory,
buoyant. I feel detached. Lost. That’s the thing about living in a small
village—you recognize everyone. Sometimes that reassures me, sometimes it’s
inconvenient. I politely and apologetically deflect their friendly overtures
and continue in my search for a solitary spot. Saturday vibes are all around
me, but I feel nothing other than stunned, stressed, isolated.
You
think you know someone.
What
does this mean for our group? Our family. Friends that are like family. What a
joke. Blatantly, we’re not friends anymore. I’ve been trying to hide from the
facts for some time, hoping there was a misunderstanding, an explanation;
nothing can explain away this.
I
told Jake I’d only be a short while, and I should text him to say I’ll be
longer. I reach for my phone and realize in my haste to leave the house I
haven’t brought it with me. Jake will be wondering where I am. I don’t care. I
down my wine. The acidity hits my throat, a shock and a relief at once. Then I
go to the bar to order a second.
The
local pub is only a ten-minute walk away from our home, but by the time I
attempt the walk back, the red wine has taken effect. Unfortunately, I am
feeling the sort of drunk that nurtures paranoia and fury rather than a light
head or heart. What can I do to right this wrong? I have to do something. I
can’t carry on as normal, pretending I know nothing of it. Can I?
As
I approach home, I see Jake at the window, peering out. I barely recognize him.
He looks taut, tense. On spotting me, he runs to fling open the front door.
“Lexi,
Lexi, quickly come in here,” he hiss-whispers, clearly agitated. “Where have
you been? Why didn’t you take your phone? I’ve been calling you. I needed to
get hold of you.”
What
now? My first thoughts turn to our son. “Is it Logan? Has he hurt
himself?” I ask anxiously. As I’m already teetering on the edge, my head
quickly goes to a dark place. Split skulls, broken bones. A dash to the
hospital isn’t unheard-of. Thirteen-year-old Logan has daredevil tendencies and
the sort of mentality that thinks shimmying down a drainpipe is a reasonable
way to exit his bedroom in order to go outside and kick a football about. My
fifteen-year-old daughter, Emily, rarely causes me a moment’s concern.
“No,
no, he’s fine. Both the kids are in their rooms. It’s… Look, come inside, I
can’t tell you out here.” Jake is practically bouncing up and down on the balls
of his feet. I can’t read him. My head is too fuzzy with wine and full of rage
and disgust. I resent Jake for causing more drama, although he has no idea what
shit I’m dealing with. I’ve never seen him quite this way before. If I touched
him, I might get an electric shock; he oozes a dangerous energy. I follow my
husband into the house. He is hurrying, urging me to speed up. I slow down,
deliberately obtuse. In the hallway he turns to me, takes a deep breath, runs
his hands through his hair but won’t—can’t—meet my eyes. For a crazy moment I
think he is about to confess to having an affair. “Okay, just tell me, did you
buy a lottery ticket this week?” he asks.
“Yes.”
I have bought a lottery ticket every week for the last fifteen years. Despite
all the bother last week, I have stuck to my habit.
Jake
takes in another deep breath, sucking all the oxygen from the hallway. “Okay,
and did you—” He breaks off, finally drags his eyes to meet mine. I’m not sure
what I see in his gaze, an almost painful longing, fear and panic. Yet at the
same time there is hope there, too. “Did you pick the usual numbers?”
“Yes.”
His
jaw is still set tight. “You have the ticket?”
“Yes.”
“You’re
sure?”
“Yes,
it’s pinned on the noticeboard in the kitchen. Why? What’s going on?”
“Fuck.”
Jake lets out a breath that has the power of a storm. He falls back against the
hall wall for a second, and then he rallies, grabs my hand and pulls me into
the room that was designed to be a dining room but has ended up being a sort
of study slash dumping ground. A place where the children sometimes do their
homework, where I tackle paying the household bills, and where towering piles
of ironing, punctured footballs and old trainers hide out. Jake sits down in
front of the computer and starts to quickly open various tabs.
“I
wasn’t sure that we even had a ticket, but when you were late back and the film
I was watching had finished, I couldn’t resist checking. I don’t know why.
Habit, I suppose. And look.”
“What?”
I can’t quite work out what he’s on about. It might be the wine, or it might be
because my head is still full of betrayal and deceit, but I can’t seem to
climb into his moment. I turn to the screen. The lottery website. Brash and
loud. A clash of bright colors and fonts.
The
numbers glare at me from the computer—1, 8, 20, 29, 49, 58. Numbers I am so
familiar with, yet they seem peculiar and unbelievable.
“I
don’t understand. Is this a joke?”
“No,
Lexi. No! It’s for real. We’ve only gone and won the bloody lottery!”
Excerpted from Just My Luck by Adele Parks, Copyright © 2021 by Adele Parks. Published by MIRA Books
Adele
Parks is the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of twenty novels,
including Lies Lies Lies and Just My Luck, as well
as I Invited Her In. Just My Luck is currently in
development to be made into a movie. Her novels have sold 4 million copies in
the UK alone, and her work has also been translated into thirty-one languages.
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