Chance bit back a smile. The worst-kept secret at Endicott High School was Max’s unrequited love for Marcy, whose family was so rich and so much higher on the social ladder than practically anyone in Indiana he might as well have been pining for a Greek goddess. Good luck filling that wish, Bob.

“I wished for a million dollars,” Chance offered readily. He didn’t care if anyone knew what he wished for. It was a legit request.

Felix added, “And I wished that, just once, something interesting would happen in this town.”

Oh, sure. That was even less likely to happen than Marcy Hanlon seeing Max as something other than the lawn boy. Comet festivals aside, nothing interesting ever happened in Endicott.

Chance was about to say something else, but a blonde lady at the next table suddenly turned around and smiled at them. “Be careful what you wish for, boys,” she said. She took the hand of the dark-haired man sitting beside her. “Because you know...you might just get it.”

They both smiled as they stood up and walked toward the ballroom exit. For some reason, as he watched them go, Chance couldn’t quite shake the idea that whoever the lady was, she was a comet kid, too, and Bob had done right by her this year and granted her wish.

It was a good sign. Maybe in fifteen years he really would have a million bucks dropped into his lap. Maybe, somehow, the next time Bob came around, he really would make Chance’s wish come true.

CHAPTER ONE

Fifteen years later

Chance Foley concentrated hard on unclenching his fists, breathing slowly and reminding himself again that 10:00 a.m. was too early in the day to start drinking. September was turning out to be one hell of a month, and it was barely half over.

It had started on day one, when his beloved vintage Jeep Cherokee rolled into the Ohio River while he and his friend Max were trying to secure his other friend Felix’s boat onto its trailer. But the news he’d received three days ago had topped even that. He’d learned that his brother, Logan, whom he hadn’t seen or heard from for more than a decade, had died—along with a wife Chance never knew he had—in a freak avalanche while snowboarding in Austria.