Lindsey Kelk - I Heart Vegas

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

A Paperback Original 2011

I HEART VEGAS. Copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Lindsey Kelk asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007345625

EBook Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007383450

Version: 2017-08-10

Faster, faster on your feet …

For Ryan

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Hands on hips, I stood in the middle of the…

Chapter Two

Jenny Lopez was, as far as I was concerned, the…

Chapter Three

‘Basically, there’s just no reason to give you a visa.’

Chapter Four

‘Are you shitting me?’

Chapter Five

‘And then Jenny had to fire me but it was…

Chapter Six

When Monday rolled around, I was all business. Being the…

Chapter Seven

Bright and early on Thursday morning, I kissed Alex goodbye…

Chapter Eight

And then things went from bad to worse.

Chapter Nine

‘Oh, honey, what are you wearing?’

Chapter Ten

The next morning I woke up bright and early at…

Chapter Eleven

‘It’s my own fault,’ I slurred into my cocktail. ‘I…

Chapter Twelve

Without a working phone, I hadn’t heard from Alex, but…

Chapter Thirteen

The ride back to the hotel was frustratingly short, but…

Chapter Fourteen

Jenny let me use her phone to call Alex on…

Chapter Fifteen

Everything that happened after leaving the Venetian was a blur.

Chapter Sixteen

Shoeless, bagless, cashless and Alexless. I slouched over to the…

Chapter Seventeen

The first thought that ran through my head was how…

Chapter Eighteen

The huge free-standing mirror was angled right at me when…

Chapter Nineteen

I didn’t tell Jenny about the win until we were…

Chapter Twenty

‘And then what did he say?’

Angela’s Guide to Vegas

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Other Books by Lindsey Kelk

About the Publisher

Hands on hips, I stood in the middle of the living room and surveyed my work. Excellent. The Christmas tree was up, champagne was chilling in the ice bucket and the apartment was, hmm, passable. As long as no one turned the big lights on. Alex would be impressed. Almost as impressed as the random man on Kent Avenue staring up into our window, surveying my pants. Shit. If I was going to insist on walking around the house in my knickers, we were going to have to get curtains. I staggered backwards, trying not to trip over in my borrowed high heels and hit the light switch. Another bright idea, Angela, I mentally slapped myself as I stumbled straight into the kitchen counter, banging my knee hard as I went. Because nothing went as well with black lace lingerie as a purple throbbing bruise, did it? Surely most twenty-eight-year-olds had grown out of being such an incredibly clumsy cow. Surely most twenty-eight-year-olds didn’t wander around in the pitch black wearing four-inch heels. Surely most twenty-eight-year-olds weren’t like me.

There was a reason for my playing peep show. Alex, my lovely boyfriend and quintessential rock god, had been away touring the Far East for exactly forty-three days, and he was due home any minute. Having had far too long to think about how I would welcome him back, I’d let Jenny, my best friend and quintessential sex kitten, talk me into a sultry seduction scenario over one too many afternoon cocktails. Although now I was here, trussed up like a chicken, I couldn’t help but feel he’d have been as happy with beer and a pizza. Served me right for meeting her at the bar at Hotel Delmano on a Wednesday afternoon. I was so weak in the face of peer pressure. And Pinot grigio.

‘Alex gets back tonight, right?’ she had asked.

‘Yep,’ I had replied.

‘Big plans?’

‘Beer. Pizza. Lovely sit down. He’ll have been on a plane for a billion hours.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ Pause. ‘Why?’

‘Dude, if my guy had kept his pants on for an entire month while he was on tour in Japan, where all the groupies live, well, I kinda think he’d be expecting a more exciting welcome home.’

At which point she removed her spike-heeled, black patent leather Louboutins, forced them onto my feet and a plan was born.

‘Too late now, Clark,’ I whispered to myself, rubbing my knee and hobbling over to the sofa to arrange myself in what I hoped would be a sultry fashion. Sexpot was not my natural setting. Not that I wasn’t excited to see him. My ‘ladyboner’, as Jenny would call it, was at Thumper levels. I was twitterpated out of season. Seriously, I was just about ready to knock Alex right off his feet the second he walked through the door, but I still wasn’t convinced spending twenty minutes trying to fasten a pair of suspenders onto seamed stockings (after spending twenty minutes trying to get the seams straight in the first place) was a good use of my time. Not least of all because for most of that twenty minutes, I looked less like Dita Von Teese and more like a very slutty dog chasing its own tail. Why were these things so hard to put on? How was putting your neck out fastening the bastards supposed to put you in the mood? There was also the fact that there were a lot of other things I probably should have been doing with my time. Like Christmas shopping. Like looking for work. Like cleaning the bathroom for the first time in three weeks instead of going in, pulling a face and shutting the door. Lots of things, really.

But now wasn’t the time to worry about that, I told myself as I lowered my arse onto the couch, trying to fan my dark blonde hair out around my head and position myself so as to avoid any and all exposure of cellulite. Which was basically impossible. The clock on the DVD player flashed nine p.m. Alex’s flight was due into JFK at seven-twenty. He would be walking through the door any second. I yawned and tried not to fall off the sofa. It had been a long hard day of procrastination. Any second now he’d be home. Any second …

‘Dude, hit lights?’

Keys jangled in the door. I rubbed my eyes, leaving big black smudges on my fists. Keys? Burglars? Burglars with keys? I noticed the champagne bobbing around in a bucket full of water. What time was it? And why was I semi-naked?

‘Where do you want this?’ The voice again, this time definitely inside the front door. With very little time to make a decision, I decided to stay on the couch and hide. I really wasn’t dressed for vigilantism. Batman hardly ever wore heels, after all.