Love's Gamble. Theodora Taylor

the simple white crochet dress she’d been planning to wear for their farce of a wedding.

      Fifteen minutes later, she stared at herself in the mirror, completely aghast. Apparently, Max liked vintage, too. In fact, he had sent over one of the Benton Revue’s original showgirl costumes, a scoop-neck top and bottom, covered in silver trim, all held together by a netted stocking.

      It came with a huge white feather headdress and matching white bustle, which thankfully fanned over and completely covered her backside. And the rhinestones and silver trimming shone so bright, the costume might well have been mistaken for white. But other than that, it looked nothing remotely like a wedding dress.

      After a full moment of staring at her image in horror, she decided to just throw a long cardigan over the ostentatious number and leave before she could think too hard about what she was doing. She comforted herself with the fact that the old-timey costumes didn’t expose nearly as much skin as the current crop of Benton Revue getups.

      She and Sunny had never been among the girls who danced topless, but their barely there bikinis, dripping with fake jewels, hadn’t been designed to leave much to the tourists’ imaginations.

      Still, there was a difference between dancing in a revue with two dozen other girls and walking across the lobby of the Benton in an old showgirl costume beside Tomas. The driver’s large body blocked out a lot of the stares, but not nearly all of them, and Pru’s cheeks burned as they made their way through the Benton.

      She was a little surprised when Tomas passed by the bank of elevators in the main lobby. Since Benton Girls got a steep discount, she’d been to quite a few ceremonies at the Benton and knew that most of their wedding salons were upstairs.

      But Tomas kept on going, past more staring tourists and hotel employees. So she guessed that meant they would be getting married in the Benton ballroom, which she supposed wasn’t that big of a surprise since that was where Sunny and Cole had gotten married. Still, the thought of getting married in the same place as her best friend felt a bit like sacrilege. Sunny and Cole had married for love, whereas she and Max were doing this for much, much different reasons. She whispered a silent apology to her best friend, hoping Sunny wouldn’t hold this against her after it was all said and done.

      But when Tomas finally stopped walking, it was in front of the towering double doors to the Benton’s main nightclub. This particular nightclub was known as one of Vegas’s premiere hotspots. It was the place to go Thursday through Saturday night if you wanted to play a game of Spot the Celebrity. And like many clubs in Vegas, it had a one-word title. In this case, one meant to convey a sense of decadent luxury and wicked-good times.

      MAX was written in huge red letters across the top of the doors.

      Pru’s heart sank. She used to come here all the time before her parents died, but not once after she’d taken over as Jakey’s guardian. She remembered now the other showgirls talking about how the club had been closed for a much-needed update and then reopened under a brand-new name.

      Apparently, that brand-new name had been Max. Pru let go an irritated sigh. Of course this was where Max had decided to hold their wedding ceremony.

      “Son of a...” Pru said, covering her heavily made-up eyes with one hand.

      When she uncovered them, she found Tomas looking down at her sympathetically. “You sure you’re ready for this?” he asked her.

      No, she wasn’t. She definitely, definitely wasn’t ready for any of this.

      But she took off her cardigan and handed it to Tomas anyway.

      * * *

      The next morning Pru woke inside a cloud of white. Everything was white and soft, and for a moment she thought she might have gone to heaven.

      But then she lifted her head and realized that though nearly everything in the room was white, this was not heaven. No, definitely not heaven, she thought squinting against the too-bright sun streaming through two wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows. After her eyes adjusted, she realized she was in a hotel room, one she vaguely recognized from pictures she’d seen in brochures as one of the Benton’s panoramic corner suites.

      Her head was throbbing, her mouth dry to the bone from lack of hydration. And, she noticed the bed wasn’t all white. There was brown and black makeup all over her pillow. She’d slept in her makeup? That was so bad for your skin. Like most showgirls, she never did that. She sat up in bed, wondering what the heck had happened to her last night only to realize that she wasn’t wearing anything.

      That’s when memories from the previous night came bursting back through all the cotton wool inside her head.

      Her entering the nightclub to the loud, raucous cheers of what had to be at least a thousand of Max’s “closest friends.”

      The flash of paparazzi taking pictures as she made her way over to Max, who was standing on top of the stage normally reserved for DJs and wearing a skinny white tuxedo. Him pulling her up to join him with a devilish grin.

      Max handing her a shot glass with some kind of blue liquid inside as he whispered in her ear, “This is how Max Benton would get married, so play along, Prudence.”

      Her taking the shot, actually grateful for it, because she knew she would need to be severely altered to go through with this.

      The images flashed by quicker after that. Her and Max signing the official prenup in front of the cheering crowd. Her and Max taking a shot for every vow exchanged.

      There had been dancing after that. A lot of it, with Max in the middle of the throbbing throng. She remembered laughing with him, and feeling free. Freer than she had in a very long time.

      But what had happened after that? She sat up and frantically looked around, trying to figure out how she’d gone from dancing with Max Benton to waking up in one of the bridal suites.

      “I see you’re finally awake.”

      She turned to see Max walking into the room, looking fresh as a daisy, his freshly washed black hair in a stubby knot on top of his head. Wearing nothing but a towel...and a titanium wedding ring on his left hand.

      Despite the circumstances, Pru couldn’t help but stare. Max Benton, as it turned out, didn’t spend all his time in the club. He must have also been clocking some serious hours at the gym, too, because he was cut from head to toe with lean muscles. The sight of his nearly naked body was so impressive that Pru couldn’t take her eyes off it for a long entranced second before it occurred to her why he was staring back with an equally impressed look on his face.

      Then she remembered she was sitting there still naked as the day she’d been born.

      With a gasp, she grabbed the white duvet, bringing it up to cover her chest before demanding, “What happened last night? Tell me. Now.”