Shirley Valentine Goes to Vegas
Shirley Valentine meets Sons of Anarchy in this raunchy, red-hot read!Lana Saunders is on a mission find the ‘new Lana’, the real Lana. After twenty years spent as a prim and proper businessman’s wife, she’s finally swapped beige cotton for black leather, and cardigans for tattoo sleeves! With the ink only just dry on her divorce papers, she’s ready to live it up in Vegas.What she doesn’t expect is to meet wickedly sexy biker, Eddie and is shocked when he asks her out. Not only does he send her sex-starved libido into overdrive, but the connection between them is unlike anything she’s ever experienced. So when Eddies asks her to stay with him in Vegas, the desire to fall into this gorgeous man’s bed and stay there forever is too tempting to ignore!Living with Eddie in Las Vegas is the most fun Lana’s had in years—especially when he shows her that there’s more than one way to ride on a Harley!—but soon she realises she can’t ignore her old life forever, particularly when her ex, Adam shows up determined to win her back!Author Michelle Betham gives Jackie Collins a run for her money in SHIRLEY VALENTINE GOES TO VEGAS, a story about what happens when you realise that life isn’t what you thought it would be…
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Shirley Valentine Goes to Vegas
MICHELLE BETHAM
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
HarperImpulse an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2015
Copyright © Michelle Betham 2015
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Michelle Betham 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
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.
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and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
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Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 9780008119430
Version 2015-08-24
For everyone who believes in a little bit of fate…
And to Helen at Indigo Rose, thank you, for giving me the tattoo of my dreams.
Contents
Dragging the suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe I threw it onto the bed, standing back as it hit the mattress with a resounding thud. For a couple of seconds I just looked at it as if, all of a sudden, I’d temporarily forgotten just what the hell it was I was doing. Was that deliberate? Was that actually my own subconscious giving me a little bit more time to think about everything? To make sure this really was the right thing to do?
Leaning back against the wall, I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply. My heart was still beatingfast, pounding away inside my chest as I tried to shut out the noise drifting up from the party going on downstairs: a party I should be getting back to. But I couldn’t. Not now.
‘… this is just something she needs to get out of her system…’
His words were playing over and over in my head like some never-ending record I couldn’t switch off.
‘She loves me, and she knows I need her to do certain things if this is going to work a second time…’
Yeah. I loved him. But did I love him enough? Enough to strip myself of everything I’d fought so hard to become?
I slowly opened my eyes, taking another deep breath, my gaze falling back on the empty suitcase.
‘Lana?’
I swung around so quickly I almost lost my balance, my breath catching in my throat as I saw him standing there.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m leaving, Adam.’ I’d thought my resolve would weaken the second I saw him, but I was obviously stronger than I thought I was. ‘And this time, I’m not coming back.’
My brother, Finn, slid something a rather startling shade of orange towards me.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, eyeing the drink warily.
‘A cocktail.’
I threw him a withering look. ‘Yeah. I can see that. It’s what’s in it that’s bothering me. What is in it?’
He shrugged. ‘No idea. Just thought you might like one, you know, you being a woman and all that.’
My withering look turned into a wide-eyed stare. ‘Seriously?’
He shrugged, a look of mock innocence on his face.
‘When have you ever known me to drink cocktails, Finn? When?’
‘Just get it down you. Might help you loosen up a bit.’
I loved Finn. I loved him a lot, despite his knack of being able to wind me up at a moment’s notice. But he’d always been able to do that, right from when we’d been kids and he’d realised how easily I could be sucked in.
At thirty-five years old Finn was four years younger than me. And with his short, dark, messed-up hair, a multitude of tattoos that adorned his entire body, and a black and red Ducati Multistrada that I was extremely jealous of, he was handsome in that rough, edgy, rock-star kind of way – a bit of a cross between a younger version of Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and The Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl – which meant he was never short of female attention. And the fact he was also one of the most reputable tattoo artists in the north-east of England didn’t do him any harm, either. His studio – Black Ink – sawpeople travel to Newcastle-upon-Tyne from as far afield as Cumbria, north Yorkshire, and even Scotland,to be ‘inked’ by my brother. I was incredibly proud of him. Even more so after everything he’d done for me over the past twelve months. He’d been my rock. The best friend I could have asked for. Because the past twelve months had seen my life change in a way I could never have anticipated. A year ago I’d walked out on my husband, and left behind the only life I’d known for almost two decades; a decision that hadn’t been an easy one to make, because Adam was a good man. We’d been together almost twenty years, and been married for eighteen of those. I’d thought I’d found my soul mate. But sometimes, even when – or should that be
