SECRETS OF A SHOE ADDICT (Chapter-1)Loreen Murphy hadn't meant to hire a male prostitute in Las Vegas. It was all just a big, stupid, expensive misunderstanding.
The night had started out pretty normal. There was no visibly strange alignment of stars, no static electricity in the air, nothing to warn anyone that things were about to turn so weird.
She, along with other parents--mostly mothers--of the Tuckerman Elementary School band members from Travilah, Maryland, was in Las Vegas, where the kids were competing in a National Battle of the School Bands. Loreen, as the PTA treasurer, had been instrumental in working out a deal with the airline and several Las Vegas hotels so that parents and siblings could attend the contest.
And everything had gone fine, right up until they tucked in the little third place-winning musicians and handed their trust over to a hotel babysitter who looked a little like Joan Crawford but was able to produce identification to prove she was employed by the hotel.
So, confident that their kids would be fine, Loreen and her fellow PTA officers--Abbey Walsh (vice president of the PTA and wife of the local Methodist minister) and Tiffany Dreyer (president of the PTA)--went down to the casino and spent a little time playing the nickel slots and sipping free margaritas from the hotel bar.
For Loreen, life began to veer off course with the idea of taking a break after an hour of slot machines and free drinks to get up and move around so she didn't get slot machine elbow or whatever you'd call a repetitive-motion injury from playing the one-armed bandit for too long.
Besides, she'd allocated twenty-five dollars to gambling, and according to the slip the high-tech machine had just spit out at her, she had only ten dollars left. When that money was gone, she'd decided, the evening was over for her.
"Are you sure you don't want to come look around with me?" she asked Tiffany, Loreen's friend since both their kids had eaten a container of paste in Mrs. Kelpy's first-grade classroom and thrown it up in the cafeteria line half an hour later.
"No way." Tiffany kept her baby blues fastened on the machine in front of her. "I've invested almost two hours in this machine. It's going to hit the jackpot. I can just feel it."
"This is how gambling addiction starts, you know."
Tiffany nodded and lifted her drink to the one Loreen was taking with her to the bar. "I think alcoholism starts this way, too."
"Touché."
Loreen made her way through the crowd--hundreds of people she'd never know. The feeling of freedom was exhilarating. Jacob was safely with the sitter upstairs, and Loreen, who was a month away from her final divorce decree, was a "bachelorette on the loose" for the first time in eleven years.
Robert, her soon-to-be ex, thought she was a control freak who focused too much on her child and not enough on her life. Well, she was going to change that tonight.
The lobby of the Gilded Palace was crowded with people, marble columns, and large potted palm trees. There was Muzak playing through some distant speakers, adding just enough vague ambience to make it feel like this was someone else's life and she was free to do whatever she pleased with it.
That's when the trouble started.
When Rod--that turned out to be his name, or at least the name he gave--first sat down and started talking to her, her first thought was that it must be on a dare from one of his drunk friends, who were undoubtedly hiding behind one of the gold Corinthian columns or enormous potted palms somewhere.
But if he had drunk friends with him, they were hiding for a really long time. And besides, Loreen wasn't unattractive enough to make a dare like that funny to a bunch of assholes. She was just . . . she looked like a mom.
Not a MILF, just a mom.
Her dark hair had lost some of the luster of youth and was cut in a sort of hopelessly plain brown variation of Prince Valiant. No matter where she went to get it styled, and no matter what pictures she took with her, she always seemed to leave with the same schlumpy mom look.
And the stylists' advice that "You have a different face. I can't make you look like TV actress X, movie star Y, fill-in-the-blank, but this is the same basic haircut. . . ."
In other words, You're never gonna be that hot, honey. Give it up.
It was true, too. Loreen was also suffering a little from post-childbirth spread. Nine years post-childbirth. Her butt was considerably wider than it had been the last time she'd been single. Her high-waisted jeans kept everything sucked in pretty well--someone trying to identify her across the room wouldn't call her "that fat woman over there"--but she wasn't exactly what you'd call buff either. And there was a telltale balloon of flesh below the waistband that she just couldn't seem to get rid of. At least not without a steady diet of carrots, celery, and Pilates.
But Rod looked at her as if she had just stepped off the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.
Upon reflection, that in itself probably should have made her more suspicious.
"Margarita, huh?" He nodded at her glass and smiled. The way his mouth curved, showing white-white teeth, made him look like a real-life movie star. "Pretty lady like you deserves something more special than that."
It was such a lame line and she knew it, but she got a kick out of it anyway. "Well--" She swallowed a burp and hoped he didn't notice. "--they put a Grand Marnier floater on top."
"Ah. So it's got a touch of class, like you." He smiled again. "I'm Rod, by the way."
"Loreen Murphy." Not only was it nuts to give her last name to a total stranger, but she held out her hand like a total dork. "Nice to meet you."
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it, keeping eye contact all along, just like Leonardo DiCaprio did with Kate Winslet in Titanic. "Where are you from, Loreen?"
"Is it that obvious I'm not from here?"
He laughed. "You look way too happy to be from here."
"I'm from Maryland."
"And what do you do in Maryland?"
"I'm a Realtor." And a PTA treasurer, and a mom, and a soon-to-be ex-wife, and a whole lot of other easy-to-pigeonhole labels.
He looked impressed. "Keep your own hours and cream the top off every deal made. Good gig."
She shrugged. "It's feast or famine."
"What about tonight? Is it feast or famine tonight?"
"Feast." She smiled. It really was. This letting-go stuff was pretty good. Maybe Robert had been right. A little bit, anyway. "Tonight, it's all feast."
Rod chuckled charmingly and gave an approving nod. "Are you looking for company tonight, Loreen?"
For a crazy moment she was ten years younger, one impending divorce lighter, and free to be a flirt. It felt awesome. She took another sip of her drink. "Well, I don't know. Are you offering?"
"As a matter of fact, Loreen, yes. I am."
She could not believe this gorgeous hunk of man was coming on to her! This never happened at home!
Take that, Robert.
Just last week Jacob had told Loreen that Robert had a girlfriend who came over for dinner.
So, with that little piece of icky news in mind, what the hell? Rod was a gift from God as far as she was concerned. As for why he would be interested in her--well, why not? No, she wasn't a supermodel, but she wasn't a dog either. In her day, plenty of guys had come on to her. It hadn't happened for a while now, but maybe this was the first time she'd been relaxed enough--and anonymous enough--to put out an available vibe.
"Sounds good to me," she said with a laugh. Females all around them were looking on with clear envy, and Loreen liked it. "So you can tell all these other women you are taken."
A nod. "Consider it done."
She'd worried he wouldn't get the joke and would think she was seriously jealous already, so she was glad for his response. "Well, I'm honored."
Robert had moved on. So would she.
Even if it was for only a few minutes.
"The honor is mine." Rod lifted a perfect brow over one pale blue eye. Actually, his brows were so perfect that she concluded he had to wax them, which was a little troubling. But then again, one look at his whip of a smile and it didn't matter anymore. "Do you like champagne, Loreen?"
"Depends what you mean by champagne. I've never had the good stuff." It was true. Her experience was limited to the sort that tasted like melted Popsicles and could be used to sweeten coffee. But tonight she'd had enough tequila to lubricate her confidence and fuel her awkward flirting. "Does it come with the deal, Mr. Rod?"
"Of course, if you like. The menu is always à la carte." He signaled the bartender with one breezy motion and said to him, "Piper." Then he turned back to Loreen. "So you're a fine champagne virgin. And I get to break you in."
She smiled. In fact, she damn near trilled. "Be gentle with me."
"Whatever you like." He smiled, and the bartender set two tall phallic flutes on the bar and poured bubbling gold liquid in.
"Thank you, Piper," Loreen said to him.
Rod chuckled again. "You"--he clinked his glass to hers--"are adorable."
"So are you!" she gushed, a little too enthusiastically. Then, in a misplaced effort to regain the cool dignity she was going for, she said, "For someone so young, I mean." Oh, that was dumb. Really clumsy. And it didn't seem like she was going to be able to stop herself anytime soon. "How old are you anyway?"
He looked at her very seriously. "About the same age as you, I'd guess. I'm twenty-four."
"Smooth, Rod. That was really smooth."
He looked at her guilelessly. "What do you mean?"
"I'm not twenty-four," she said, downing the rest of her champagne. "And you know it."
"Twenty-three?" he guessed, then furrowed his brow in mock consternation. "Younger? Tell me I ...
