Married by Christmas by Scarlett Bailey Read Free Book Online Page A

were heading to Vegas, so I thought, well, I thought, why not? Vegas, prime Hunter S. Thompson territory, it’s a town made for me. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Las Vegas, but it is the world’s single most odd place. There’s a soundtrack playing all the time, wherever you go, music blasting out from everywhere, free drinks available in the casinos twenty-four hours a day, and if you can afford it anything, and I mean
anything
, you can think of that you might want is there for you to buy.’
    ‘So you bought a wife?’ Anna spoke for the first time, her voice sounding tight and strained, feeling very much like she was caught in some surreal delusion.
    ‘No, no.’ Tom shook his head firmly. ‘No, I did get a job though, as a barman in a cabaret bar, off the main strip. I’d never been anywhere like Vegas before in my life, it was like … Charlie wandering into the Chocolate Factory. Like you know, all you’ve ever had is Mars bars and then suddenly there’s this world of exotic tastes, and you want to try them all.’
    ‘Are you calling me a Mars bar?’ Martha asked, amused, earning herself a steely warning stare from Liv, who seemed keen to hit someone and wasn’t all that fussy who. That seemed to put Martha in her place for the time being at least.
    ‘So you worked in a strip club?’ Anna asked him, wrinkling up her nose in distaste. The very idea that women were willing to take their clothes off for men they didn’t know to ogle at horrified her, and the idea that Tom liked that kind of thing was even worse. Not her Tom. Not her wholesome boy-next-door Tom, who wore jogging bottoms to bed and hadn’t even tried to look at her naked in weeks, Anna thought, her mind reeling, thoughts pinging crazily round her head like the bells on a slot machine. No wonder Tom didn’t want to marry her. Whenever they made love, even at the beginning, the lights were always out.
    ‘No, it wasn’t a strip club,’ Tom reassured her. ‘It was a cabaret bar. Where the tourists with slightly less money would come for dinner and a show. There were regular artists, singers, magicians and a troupe of dancers, male and female. Dancers not strippers.’
    ‘Dancers that kept their clothes on?’ Anna asked him, insistently.
    Tom sighed, heavily. ‘Topless showgirls in Vegas are as common as … a roulette wheel. After a while you stop even noticing they’ve got their … breasts on show.’
    Anna’s eyes filled with silent tears, and she discovered she couldn’t look at Tom any more. It wasn’t the fact that he’d ever looked at other women, or even been to bed with them, that hurt. She’d known when she’d met Tom that there was no way she could be the first woman in his life. It was just discovering where she was on the scale of glamour and excitement that Tom had been used to. Between scantily clad dancers and Martha in her fur coat and quite possibly no knickers, Anna was fairly certain she came far down on the list in terms of allure and excitement. Anna had many virtues – lovely skin, great hair, what she had been reliably informed by impartial sources was an impressive body, and her personal hygiene standards were exceptional. But even so, she wasn’t the kind of girl who set pulses racing, she didn’t have …
sex appeal
.
    ‘So this … dancer, this woman that you … married. It was just a drunken one-night stand then? A stupid bender that ended in “I do”?’ Anna asked him, uncertain of which answer would be worse.
    ‘No,’ Tom said heavily. ‘It wasn’t a one-night stand, she was my girlfriend. I thought I loved her.’ He paused, reaching across the table to touch Anna, who in turn backed further into her chair, withdrawing both her hands and folding them in her lap. ‘Like Martha said, her name was Charisma, Charisma Jones. But the Real McCoy was her nickname because she didn’t need implants … Anyway, she was a solo dancer in the troupe, and you’ve got to understand, even if