Seven Nights of Sin - Lacey Alexander [107]
Brenna just blinked. “What?”
“Let’s go to Vegas. Just for the weekend. I’ll drive, and I’ll even spring for the room.”
“Vegas? You want me to go to Vegas? After what just happened to me there? Are you crazy?”
“That’s the hair of the dog part, dummy. You need to go back to Vegas, have a good time, and quit associating it with him. Otherwise, the place will be ruined for you forever, and Vegas is far too fun and far too nearby to mark off your list of weekend getaway destinations.”
Brenna shook her head. “No.”
“I insist.”
“The last time you insisted upon something, I ended up with a tattered heart.”
Kelly rolled her eyes. “I told you to fuck him, not fall for him. Big difference, girlfriend.” She opened her sandwich box and popped the top on the soda can she’d tucked inside with the food. “Now I’m not taking no for an answer. We’re going to Vegas for a girls’ weekend. I’m picking you up at five thirty on Friday.”
Two
“How’s the office?” Brenna asked Kelly as they drove across the Mojave Desert.
Kelly let out a slightly hysterical laugh. “In shambles. Trust me, this getaway wasn’t just for you. I need it, too—bad.”
They discussed the various disasters occurring at Blue Night for a while longer, but both concluded it was a downer, so decided to turn on the radio. From which blared Malcolm Barstow’s latest hit, which made them both grimace, so Brenna turned it back off. And peered out over the flat brown landscape. “Did I tell you Damon and I fucked in the desert?”
Kelly looked over at her with a sly smile. “No, you didn’t. And honey, I have to tell you, that man was so good for you. Even if you only had him a week.”
Brenna cast a wry grin. “Why—because I can say ‘fuck’ now without flinching?”
Kelly wore a satisfied expression as she looked back out the windshield. “Well, that, too—but mainly…you’re just a more confident person now. You’re more outgoing, you don’t let people push you around, and you don’t dress like a schoolmarm.”
Brenna hadn’t really thought about it—she’d hardly had time, given everything else being juggled in her brain—but maybe Kelly was right. “I guess maybe I…feel better. I definitely feel like my divorce is long behind me now—like it happened in another lifetime. And…I was brave enough to quit that so-called dream job, wasn’t I?”
“I think he just…showed you parts of yourself you’d never seen before.”
“You can say that again,” she replied, clearly thinking of sex, and they both laughed.
She still thought this girls’ weekend in Vegas was a generally bad idea, but for Kelly’s sake, she decided to try and have fun, or at least to pretend she was.
Kelly tended to drive like a maniac on the open road, so they turned onto the Las Vegas Strip just after ten o’clock, which flooded Brenna with recent memories. Her heart beat harder just seeing the hotels she and Damon had toured together, the streets they’d walked—and the Eiffel Tower, of course.
But she nearly passed out when Kelly veered onto the drive leading to the Venetian.
“What are we doing here?” she asked.
“Um, sleeping. Maybe some eating. And possibly partying, as I hear they have some great clubs here.”
Brenna passed her friend a dubious look. “This is where Damon and I stayed.”
Kelly blinked. “Oh. I guess you mentioned that at some point—I must have forgotten. But hey”—she shrugged, smiled softly—“hair of the dog, remember? And it’s a gorgeous hotel. And I got a great deal on the room, so we’re not going anywhere else.”
Brenna didn’t like it, but she supposed it wouldn’t kill her to be here. Even if everywhere she glanced she found another memory. Yet she tried to push that aside as they checked in and headed up a familiar elevator where Damon had once rubbed his hard cock against her ass. She tried to push it aside as they rolled their suitcases into a room very much like the one Brenna had stayed in—even if she’d ended up not spending a great deal of time in it.
“So,” Kelly said, “ready to hit the town?”
Brenna simply blinked. “It’s late.