Excerpt from Book 3 in the “New America” series.

Bolton. Friday, 4th July 2025

Dorothy McGinn held a secret that she wasn’t about to spread. She’d never bought a lottery ticket. That revelation, in itself, wasn’t headline news, but last year’s win of three million pounds was all the stranger for the fact.

The prize call arrived out of the blue. At first, she’d believed it to be a prank. The work of her crazy mate, Rosemary, again. Going along with it for fun, she’d then been stunned when the money appeared in her online banking app.

During a quick visit to a local branch, a rimless-spectacle-wearing bank manager confirmed to her that the money was real. Dot was rich.

By the time the lottery company’s security team arrived for her protection, it was way too late to acknowledge the error.

So, here she was, one year on, in her six-bedroom house. Having resigned her minimum wage job at the petrol station, she lay in a bubble bath to prepare for another day doing whatever the hell she fancied.

Perhaps the time had arrived to find a new boyfriend. She chuckled. Tommy, the loser of a guy she’d dated for three years, dumped her the night before she’d won the cash. Well, he’d just stopped calling her, anyway. That was Tommy, though.

The loser had no bottle. Dot had to do the asking out in the first place.

While stacking sandwiches on the cool shelf, she’d been checking him out. Moving fast would be critical. Two other girls had eyes on Tommy.

The shop staff’s consensus leaned toward his lack of communication, likely indicating that he was the strong, silent type. A deep thinker. A man of passion.

After only a week of dating, a disappointed Dot discovered Tommy to be as shallow as a puddle. He uttered little because he had little worthy of addition to life’s melee.

Why did she stick about for three years? She had no clue. It was doubtful if a hundred words passed between them the whole time. From him to her, anyway. Dot could talk for England.

The further she pondered how the relationship ended, the stranger the circumstances seemed. Dot was used to being dumped, but Tommy never returned to work either. Maybe he’d been in an accident? Even if that were the case, it was way past time she could do anything about it.

She swivelled as the sound of her opening front door reached her. Water splashed against the tiled wall and then lapped over the tub’s edge, pooling on the floor. Someone was coming up the stairs. She wasn’t too worried; it would be Dmitri, the security guard the lottery people sent.

With turmoil brewing before the election, Dot took comfort from Dmitri and the guys being around. However, the burly Eastern European had never entered the house uninvited before, and as far as she recalled, he’d not ventured up here.

She reached for the bath towel, about to cover her modesty, when a better idea hatched. The tall, broad, guard was a bit of alright. It wouldn’t be her fault if he walked in and found her naked, now, would it?

Reclining once more, Dot swept away some of the soap suds, permitting a better view of her assets.

“Oh, my god,” she whispered as the bathroom door handle was pressed, and the door swung open. “This is really going to happen.” She faced away from the interloper, prepared to appear surprised at his entrance.

“He’s going to kiss me,” she thought as he pressed the odd-smelling rag over her nose and mouth.

“Mmmm, very nice,” he said, standing behind her. Even in the hot water, Dot gave an involuntary shiver.

He ran his strong fingers over her shoulder and under her neck. Slipping a finger beneath her chin, he tilted her head to face him.

…..Lucan, Ireland

Ed sat on a rickety chair outside the bar and watched the taxi stop in front of his hotel. A voice inside warned that the vehicle’s arrival would hasten Dana’s departure. Things were just too good to last.

“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone,” he sang into his pint of Guinness in a murmur. But there was no doubt what he had. He had, or most likely had had, if that was a thing, the most intoxicating creature in his life.

Now the big yellow taxi had arrived to rip that all away.

Okay, it was a grey Prius, but let’s not be pedantic, he thought.

Five minutes ago, he’d squared his gay circle with the realisation that Dana spanned the gender boundaries. Not in the new, woke-speak way. Dana wasn’t some homogeneous dream for men and women alike to hold. Dana was just Dana. The beautiful Irish girl was a gender of one, a law unto herself…

 Only, that wasn’t true, was it? For, were it correct, he wouldn’t be sitting here now, watching her walk away.

Unfortunately, the subset of women that inveigled their way into his otherwise man-centric attraction held two in number.

“And there’s the rub,” he said.

“Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane, fucking Jane.” The chant ceased with another mouthful of stout. After swallowing, his shoulders sank, and he sucked in a lungful of the warm Dublin air.

He couldn’t hate Jane. If he could, it was likely all his problems would evaporate.

He loved Jane. Maybe even more so than Dana. Yet for some bloody, crazy, messed-up reason, he wasn’t attracted to her in the way he was to the alluring woman crossing the pavement and getting into the car.

Dana, about to duck into the back seat, looked up, and their eyes met. The world stopped. Without sound, the stream still flowed. The traffic lights changed from green to red and back to green, but nothing moved. Patrons of the bar took an oath of silence. The pensive world only awaited her voicing his name. Please just cry out, Dana. I’ll come running. But she didn’t. She said nothing. Dana just shook her head, broke his gaze, got into the car, and broke his heart.

The above novel will be released in paperback, Kindle and Audible versions soon