TAKE A CHANCE (Chance Colorado Series) Read Free Page A

rest of the town to wake up and do something.”
    “And now it’s your special mission, is it?” Harley grinned and turned away, stopping to set his empty cup on the end of the counter. “Well, more power to you, woman. If you and Dot can’t revive Chance, then it’s a task beyond anyone’s doing. As for me, I’m headed into town. You need me to bring you anything?”
    “No, thanks,” she answered absently, her mind already brooding over the problem at hand.
    Unless someone did something—and soon—Chance was in danger of becoming one of those pitiful ghost towns that were no more than a footnote in some dusty old book. Though many of the old mining towns in the Colorado mountains struggled to stay alive as time passed, the real culprit in Chance’s demise could be pinpointed to a single year and a single man. It was the year that Daniel Reilly had used his millions to make sure the big highway detoured around Chance to cross through his family’s property, all but dumping tourists in the lap of their ski resort.
    Probably the only halfway smart business decision that useless wastrel had ever made, other than choosing Helen Maxwell as his bride. And even then, he’d only done it out of spite and revenge, not because he was smart enough to see the monetary advantage to the Last Chance Ski Resort.
    “Lazy son of a bitch,” Odetta muttered. “May he rest in peace.”
    She and her best friend, Dorothy O’Connor, had wrestled with the problem of what to do about their dying town for over a year now. Dot, to her credit, had seen some success in keeping her family in Chance. But after a generation-long exodus of their young people, simply keeping family here wasn’t enough. They needed to find a way to make Chance more attractive to outsiders.
    As much as she hated to acknowledge what she needed to do, Odetta accepted that the time had come for more drastic action. She had no choice left but to take off the kid gloves and call in some long overdue favors.
    She set down her cup and reached for the telephone, quickly punching in the numbers she hadn’t forgotten, not even after all these years.
    “Helen Reilly,” she said into the receiver. “Just tell her it’s Odetta Flynn. She’ll take the call.”
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    Allie had never asked to be one of those superwomen who had it all. Deep down she suspected those women were a myth anyway, living only in the pages of the books she loved so much. She’d never asked for the perfect job, the perfect man, the perfect two-point-five children and the perfectly clean little house surrounded by a white picket fence. She was practical enough to accept that such a bounty of perfection was way beyond her reach.
    But, honestly… shouldn’t a girl have the right to expect to end up with at least one out of four?
    “Apparently not,” she muttered under her breath. “Not this girl, anyway.”
    “Oh, this is primo.” Matt Flynn kept his eyes closed as he spoke, his head resting against the passenger-side window. “First I have to listen to that crazy cat of yours howling nonstop across three states and now you’re talking to yourself. Out loud. I suppose next you’ll be answering yourself. This road trip with you is just getting better and better by the mile.”
    “Chester isn’t howling.” Allie spared a quick look over her shoulder toward the puffed-up ball of fur her brother had disparaged before fixing her gaze back on the winding road ahead. “He’s only trying to communicate with us.”
    To be fair, the cat had been communicating since they’d pulled away from Allie’s empty apartment yesterday before sunrise. She should have tried harder to find someone in Waco to adopt him, but Chester wasn’t the type of cat people warmed to easily. He came equipped with sharp claws and a seriously bad attitude. Most of the time, she wasn’t sure that she even liked him.
    Not that liking him was necessary. She’d found him a year