I Heart Vegas. Lindsey Kelk

      

      Lindsey Kelk

      I Heart Vegas

      Copyright

      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

      Dedication

      Faster, faster on your feet …

      For Ryan

      Contents

      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

      CHAPTER ONE

      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