Lotto Changed My Life
*Author's Note: This is loosely based on a fantasy of mine and a fetish I've had for many years. Maybe the personal aspect made this one so much fun for me. I hope it will be for you, too.
*****
"Mom! Hey. What's going on?" her 19-year old daughter asked.
"Jenny! Hi. Guess what?"
Before her daughter could answer she blurted out, "I have a new job!"
"Mom, that's great!"
"You know the guy that won the lottery a few months back? The Mega Jackpot thingy?"
Her daughter made an 'mmm' noise then said, "Wait. The hot guy with the amazing hair? Who's like filthy rich?"
Her mom laughed then said, "Yes. Him. Jared Porter."
"Wait. You're working for him?" a now-perplexed daughter asked.
"I am."
"Doing...what?"
"Cooking. And taking care of the dishes. And I'm also doing all of the food shopping."
Jenny Thomas knew her mother's first love was cooking. She'd been a chef for many years and before her husband passed away unexpectedly, she'd been an executive chef at an upscale restaurant in their hometown of Casper, Wyoming. It wasn't exactly London or Paris, but she'd been well paid and a couple of culinary magazines had done features on her.
When Jenny's dad had a heart attack just days after her 17th birthday, she and her mom's world stopped. The two women began relying on one another for emotional support, but even so, her mom was unable to continue working. Jenny managed to graduate from high school, and thanks to the 3.97 GPA and having been on two varsity sports teams, she'd earned a full scholarship to the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
Kim Thomas, and her late husband, Evan, had managed to built up a modest nest egg which had given Kim the cushion she needed to take some time off to grieve and to find a way to go on. Evan had been the love of her life, and even after more than two decades together they still held hands, left one another little notes, and had an intimate life most newly married couples could only envy.
Then suddenly, without warning, he was gone. He had something called a 'left ventricular free-wall rupture' as a consequence of a mild myocardial infarction or heart attack.
He'd been in bed with COVID-19, something he'd dodged since the pandemic began. The doctor who explained what happened to him to Kim told her that his immune system had been weakened, so that when the heart attack came--an attack that shouldn't have done much damage--a part of the wall of his left ventricle ruptured. By the time EMTs got him to the hospital, he was gone.
So getting this job was a godsend on at least two fronts that Jenny could come up with off the top of her head. The first was that her mom was at the point again where she wanted to stay busy, and the best thing to fill her time was doing what she loved the most. Secondly, she'd made a huge dent in the money she and her father had saved, and she was very much in need of a job that provided income.
There was a 'Part Deaux' to the reason Jenny was glad her mom was working again, but she wasn't about to ruin her day by telling her. The truth was that she'd met someone, and this new 'someone' had been so charming and so distracting that Jenny had missed a lot of school, and unless she could turn things around on a dime, her scholarship was in grave danger.
"What's the catch?" she asked her mom, trying not to let her skepticism show through--a trait she got from her late father.
"No. There's no catch, honey. It's real. And it pays very well."
"It better!" her only child replied. "The guy won what? Like...$300 million dollars or something?"
It was actually $323 million and change, and Jared Porter had elected to take a lump sum. After paying a hefty 35% in taxes (Wyoming has no state income tax) he was left will a measly $204 million. He'd spent a little under four million on a gorgeous home he called a mini-mansion and another half million on three of the best cars money could buy. Well, perhaps the fastest cars if not the best with 'best' being in the eye of the...buyer. He'd also helped out his parents, his sister, and an old friend who'd had a rough time of it the last few years.
With the interest he was accumulating on his investments, he still had roughly the same amount of money he'd had before going on his initial buying spree.
At 28 Jared was a very wealthy man. However, once the thrill of buying all of the high-end toys wore off he was still just as alone as he was before the fateful day he'd played the lottery on a whim. He used his birthday numbers, 11-23-19-95 and 28, his current age, as the bonus number. He 'wired them' meaning he played every possible variation of their order with the birthday money he'd been given.
He was beyond stunned when three days later he checked the lottery website online and saw the winning numbers. He sat there in shock for several minutes before pulling out the tickets and culling through them. He held up the winning ticket then reread the winning numbers slowly, one by one, being sure to carefully check each one on the ticket. All five matched. Then he did it again and then a third time
"Holy shit," he remembered mumbling as he broke out in a cold sweat.
The other thing he remembered was the way his hands started shaking. He had so much adrenaline pumping through his body his hands were trembling uncontrollably. His next thought was along the lines of 'so what do I do now' before wondering who he should tell first. And just as importantly, who he shouldn't tell. He also recalled laughing when he wondered if it was maybe 'whom' rather than 'who.'
He'd moved back to his home town of Evansville which was just south of Casper after leaving the Air Force. With a population of 2,749, Evansville was a small town where most folks knew one another. To the residents of Evansville, Casper, with a population of around 57,000, was considered 'the big city'.
Jared moved back to Evansville several years ago. Not because he was lazy but because he was broken. At 22 he married the love of his life, a girl named Shari Conroy he'd met while at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
He was an aerospace engineering major who couldn't help but notice the only woman in his differential equations class his sophomore year. She was every bit as smart as he was, and she was so hot it made his head hurt. Mainly his 'little head' which swelled with joy each time he saw her.
He'd seen her before but never really noticed her. During the summer following their plebe year she and Jared were doing different things as part of their four-year program. She'd somehow blossomed from the last time he'd seen her until then, and the difference was astounding.
He asked her out that same day, but she pretended to be uninterested even though she'd noticed him from their first week in Colorado Springs as the Upperclassmen ran them ragged. She knew he was way out of her league, but that never stopped her from dreaming that one day he'd notice her. During the two weeks she'd been allowed to take leave the next summer, her older sister, who'd been working in a beauty salon, took her on as a kind of personal project. Between a very cute haircut, some really high quality makeup, something she'd never worn much of be it cheap or expensive, and a few new clothes, she'd gone from plain and dowdy to cute and sexy. Okay, she'd ditched the glasses she'd worn since she was four years old for a pair of contact lenses, which, just by themselves, would have made a significant difference.
Shari had always been a bookworm and never really cared about the kinds of things most girls were into. She preferred building and flying a remote controlled jet to lipstick and crop tops. She was aware of boys, but her only interest in them was having them help her with some new project. Somehow she'd graduated from high school without ever having so much as kissed a boy and didn't care.
That changed when she got to the Academy. At first, the dizzying pace of plebe summer made it impossible to think about anything but surviving. But once she got accustomed to the pace, she began noticing guys for the first time in her life. Cute boys--or men by virtue of being at least 18--were everywhere!
She'd found the time to have that first kiss and several other 'firsts', to boot. In so doing, what she'd come to realize was that as an average-looking girl, the best she was going to do was date average looking guys. Until the makeover when even the hot guys began looking. None of them did more than nibble, but the change was most welcome.
That changed the day she saw him looking at her in their math class and briefly smiled at him. Just as she'd dreamed, he asked her out. Just as she'd planned, she began rattling off reasons why she couldn't like her incredible workload plus intramural sports, blah, blah, blah. He reminded her that everyone in the engineering department at the Academy had the same requirements, but she only replied with a quiet little 'oh' before walking away, a small smile on her face that Jared couldn't see.
Undeterred, he asked her out again the next day. And the next. And every day thereafter until she said 'yes'. When she finally did he asked her why she waited so long.
"Because I do my homework," she told him with a devious smile on face.
Shari handed him a folder, and before he looked inside, he asked her, "Did you hire a private investigator?"
"No. I just told you I do my homework."
She snatched the folder back before he could see there was nothing in it, smiled at him, then said, "You checked out."
"Really," he replied as she began walking away which caused him to catch up and walk beside her.
"Yes. Really," she told him before taking his hand in hers and smiling at him in a way that caused quite a stir.
They became inseparable from that day on, and the day after graduation they were married in the Air Force chapel, one of many cadet-turned second lieutenant couples who were doing the same thing. There were several other active duty types getting hitched, as well, one of them a brigadier general with gray sidewalls and a very young, very pretty major.
At the time Jared thought it was disgusting and told himself, albeit very quietly, that he'd never do anything like that. But why would he when he had the perfect girl his age saying "I do" and promising to love him until death do us part?
How could he have known that just four and a half years later they would part due to her death during a training mission in which her F-22's engine flamed out during a low level air-to-air exercise.
