Brenna arrived in Las Vegas with a new wardrobe, a new hair color, and a new attitude. Not about sex with Damon Andros, but about the job. She’d talked herself into believing Kelly was right—that this was just the way business was done in the entertainment industry. It wasn’t an ethics issue—it was simply how the game was played. Damon Andros would surely view it that way if the situation were reversed.

Damon had flown from Los Angeles to Vegas on the same day that Brenna made the five-hour drive across the Mojave Desert. Good old Jenkins—happy to make her lie, and just as happy not to offer her a plane ticket, explaining that they were still an indie label, after all, and money didn’t grow on trees. “Once you’re in the A&R seat, though,” he’d promised her, “the red carpet will be rolled out for you.”

God knew this wasn’t where she expected to find herself at the age of thirty—starting a whole new career, and crossing a desert to do it. But maybe a big, new, high-profile job would somehow give her back the sense of security her divorce had stolen.

She’d tried to concentrate on that as she’d prayed her car wouldn’t overheat in the hot May temperatures, and as she’d driven, she’d actually spotted more than one mirage—tricks played by the sun, convincing her she saw a large, smooth body of water, only to discover as she grew nearer that it was simply more flat, brown land.

So it was a relief, even if a bit overwhelming, to finally hit the Vegas Strip. She’d never been to Sin City before, but a drive up the ten-lane street revealed it to be all she had imagined. Even during the daytime hours, millions of lights flickered and danced to either side of the famous boulevard. She passed enormous fountains, roller coasters that sped by high above her car, and even whole buildings that changed colors at will. She spied the Brooklyn Bridge, an Egyptian pyramid, the Eiffel Tower, the Roman Coliseum, and an erupting volcano—and thought it was as if the whole world had collided here, reshaping itself into pure spectacle.

Pulling in at the Venetian, where side-by-side rooms had been reserved for her and Damon, she followed a winding lane to the front doors. She was astounded by the scope of the place even before driving up under the awning that covered at least a dozen lanes of one-way traffic: a busy but efficient menagerie of cars and luggage carts and suitcases manned by guys dressed in the stripes and neck sashes of Italian gondoliers.

One of them rushed to open her car door. “Welcome to the Venetian. Checking in?”

“Yes.”

She was checking in to the Venetian. And checking in to Las Vegas—the place where people came to sin.

And already, as she strolled through the doors into the ornately huge lobby complete with frescoes on the arched ceiling high above, a change somehow began to come over her. It started slowly, yet it was easy to recognize, and…shockingly easy to embrace.

It wasn’t about the new clothes. Or the new hair. And she wasn’t even certain it was about the job she’d come here to steal.

Because it seemed to grow from within her, echoing outward from her very core.

She could scarcely explain it to herself, but…she simply felt different here.

Filled with a strange, new energy. Ready to make changes in her life.

Maybe it was about the new clothes and hair, for all she knew. Maybe it was about the job. The truth was, she’d told herself that this had to happen, that she had to become the sort of person who could play this game. Yet something about the very aura of this place was—that quickly—helping the process along, making it suddenly feel smooth as silk, and at the same time exciting as…sin.

As she stepped up to the lavish registration desk and gave her name to the clerk, a heady sense of freedom coursed through her veins. A sense of newness. And if ever there had been a time in her life when it would be beneficial to be someone new, it was now.

Because this was Vegas, baby. Enormous, overwhelming, a stunningly bright oasis built in the desert purely for the pursuit of pleasure—and like it or not, she was about to immerse herself in it.