Teresa Hill - Runaway Vegas Bride / Vegas Two-Step - Runaway Vegas Bride / Vegas Two-Step

TERESA HILL

AND

LIZ TALLEY

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RUNAWAY VEGAS BRIDE

TERESA HILL

Dear Reader,

Writers will tell you story ideas are all around us, and they truly are.

This idea came from a newspaper story about two elderly residents of a retirement home falling in love, much to the outrage of their respective families. Love in the eighties took on a whole new twist.

I took that idea and played with it, twisted it this way and that, turned it just so. It’s what writers do to make a story our own.

Who were these people who fell in love? What were they like? What reasons would their respective families have to be upset about that? How complicated could I make this? How much fun could we all have along the way?

The result is the kind of life in our eighties and even nineties that I hope all of us have: busy, fun, active, surrounded by friends and lots of love, along with glorious adventures. (And maybe a little scheming and meddling in our loved ones’ lives.)

Happy reading,

Teresa Hill

TERESA HILLlives within sight of the mountains in upstate South Carolina with one husband, very understanding and supportive; one daughter, who’s taken up drumming (earplugs really don’t work that well. Neither do sound-muffling drum pads. Don’t believe anyone who says they do.); and one son, who’s studying the completely incomprehensible subject of chemical engineering (Flow rates, Mom. It’s all about flow rates.)

In search of company while she writes away her days in her office, she has so far accumulated two beautiful, spoiled dogs and three cats (a black panther/champion hunter, a giant powder puff and a tiny tiger-stripe), all of whom take turns being stretched out, belly up on the floor beside her, begging for attention as she sits at her computer.

To my son, John, on the occasion of his 21st birthday

and first trip to Vegas.

May your math skills and all those poker probabilities

you memorized serve you well.

And please stay far, far away from the

Love Me Tender Wedding Chapel.

“Darling, I’m in love!”

Jane Carlton choked on her hot tea, then covered the phone with her hand and mouthed to her assistant, “Did you say this is my grandmother?”

Lainie nodded, looking concerned. “What is it? She sounded okay. Is she okay?”

Jane threw up her hands as if to say she had no idea, then tucked the phone into her shoulder once again and said, “Gram?”

“Yes, dear. Did you hear me?”

“I…maybe,” Jane admitted. “Say it again?”

“I’m in love!”

The words came out sounding like lyrics in a musical—theatrical, whimsical, larger-than-life.

There was just one problem.

The women in Jane’s family didn’t do love. They didn’t do forevers.

Oh, they had men in their lives. But they made no mistakes about it involving anything as substantial and long-lasting as love.

Jane had learned that the hard way.

“Gram, I thought—”

“I know. I know! That’s why it’s so amazing! Me, in love, finally, at seventy-six! Who’d have believed it?”

“Wait,” Jane said, shaking her head. “Gram, you’re eighty-one—”

“He moved into one of the cottages a week ago! The most amazing man I’ve ever met in my life, Jane, and…Oh, here he comes! Leo! Over here! Over here!”

Jane’s grandma sounded like a teenager.

This was so bizarre.

Was it some kind of sudden-onset dementia that had her believing she was only seventy-six? Worst yet, could that have taken her back in her own mind to her teenage years in the four days since Jane’s last visit?

Because that’s what she sounded like, a ridiculous kid in love.

“Say you’ll come and have dinner with us so you can meet him,” Gram said. “Tonight? All right? It’s lasagna night. Goodbye, my darling girl.”

Thursdays.

Lasagna night.

One of Jane’s big dates of the week.

Thursdays was lasagna with Gram, her great-aunt Gladdy and a few of their friends from their active retirement village—they stressed the word active in all things—called Remington Park. Sunday afternoons were spent taking Gram and Gladdy shopping, maybe to a movie or brunch.

There it was, the sad truth about Jane’s big dates.

Oh, she could have found a man to go out with. Men were everywhere. But a man she truly wanted to spend time with? A man who could be depended on to show her a good time that topped a hot bath, a glass of wine and a good book?

There certainly weren’t a lot of those around, Jane had found in her twenty-eight years.

She put down the phone—forgotten by Gram, who’d gone in search of Leo, the supposed love of her life—and sighed, trying not to think Gram had more of a social life than she did.

“Is she all right?” Lainie asked, hovering as she tended to do.

“Well, she’s either forgotten her own age or she’s pretending to be five years younger to impress a man. Please tell me we won’t give a flip about impressing a man when we’re eighty-one. I mean, at that age, who really wants one? They’re bound to be more trouble than they’re worth in their eighties. I mean, I think men in their thirties are more trouble than they’re worth.”

Lainie frowned. “Jane, you think all men are more trouble than they’re worth.”

Jane considered, decided she couldn’t argue that point. “And?”

Lainie looked sad, as if she might just feel a bit sorry for Jane. “I’m just saying…Don’t you ever get lonely?”

Absently drumming the keys on the powered-off calculator on her desk, Jane considered. “Not really. I have my work, my family. I guess I’m a little lonely now that Bella’s gone—”

“Bella was a dog, Jane.”

“I know. I’ve never met a man who was nicer to me than my dog was.”

Then there was no even trying to hide it. Lainie definitely felt sorry for her, which made Jane wonder if it was really that sad, to have a beloved and recently deceased dog who was nicer to her than any man she’d ever met. But really, Jane felt lucky to have no illusions. To be honest with herself and in the way she’d put together a life of her choosing. And it was a good life. A good, satisfying life most of the time.

Sure, every now and then she got lonely, but didn’t everyone?

“Men are so unpredictable,” she complained.

“Life is unpredictable,” Lainie insisted.

“No, life with men is unpredictable.” Jane smiled, quite satisfied with that catchphrase.

She quickly scribbled it down on a list she kept handy for just these occasions. She’d come up with another great catchphrase for her work with the poor, unhappy women who hadn’t yet come to the wisdom she had, wisdom she happily shared with others in her Fabulous Female Financial Boot Camp seminars. Where she preached financial independence with the same fervor of a good old-fashioned preacher trying to save lost souls. The women in her seminars were lost, too, in a wilderness of financial ignorance, irresponsibility and the completely mistaken idea that they were helpless to assist themselves, to take control of their own financial destiny.

Men were what messed up everything.

Most women would be so much better off without them.

Jane didn’t come right out and say that, exactly, to the poor, lost female souls who came to her. She didn’t want to freak them out too badly right away, and Jane knew she could really freak people out if she wasn’t careful, being so passionate and insistent in getting her ideals across. She just told women that unless and until they were in charge of their own lives, they would never have any true independence or stability, and that who, if anyone, should be in charge of their lives except themselves?