Read After the Last Dance for Free Online

street.
    It was cold now because Vegas was a beautiful illusion: a glittering town hidden in the middle of the desert. The bitter, brutal heat of the day had given way to the callous chill of night. Jane crouched down and opened her suitcase to gently unwrap a Chanel jacket nestled between several layers of tissue paper.
    â€˜Married in black, you’ll wish you were back,’ Leo said as she slipped it on.
    She grinned. ‘Bit too soon for the regret to kick in, darling.’ She straightened up on her perilously high spindly shoes. ‘I think it’s only fitting that we toast our union with a glass of champagne, don’t you?’
    â€˜I do, but I spent all my money on cocktails and cabs and our marriage licence.’ Leo didn’t want to be that guy but he didn’t know how to be anything else. ‘Unless you…’
    â€˜Not a bean. I was meant to be getting married today; I didn’t really think I’d need much cash and I don’t believe in credit cards.’
    â€˜You don’t believe in them?’
    She shook her head. ‘Cash or charge every time.’
    All sorts of bells and whistles were going off in his head. He should have listened harder when she was talking about her ex. About the millions in seed capital. What else had she said? He couldn’t remember; he’d been too busy staring at her, but trying hard not to look as if he was staring. But now he remembered what she hadn’t said; she hadn’t talked about love or a broken heart, which you’d expect from someone who’d been jilted minutes before her wedding, but Leo couldn’t find it in himself to care that much when Jane was suddenly beaming at him. ‘Paying for my own drinks sets a dangerous precedent, but I desperately need a glass of champagne so we’re going to find someone who’ll buy me one. In fact, let’s make it a bottle.’
    The wedding chapel was on the main strip and she was already heading for a shimmering beacon of glass and neon in the near distance at a speed Leo wouldn’t have thought possible. He had custody of her vintage Louis Vuitton suitcase and quickly caught up with her. Oh, this one was trouble. Caps-lock trouble. The tech-genius fiancé and the venture capitalists and the guff about patent applications could all be bullshit and he might well wake up hours from now in a bathtub packed with ice and minus his kidneys. All he really knew about her was that she was going to be twenty-seven in less than two hours, unless that was a line too. She smelt sharp but sweet like blackcurrants and he really wished he could afford to get her a bottle of vintage champagne.
    â€˜Darling, please don’t look like you’re having buyer’s remorse.’ Jane managed to look reproachful even as she strode with a wobbling gait. ‘I’m going to be an exemplary wife.’
    Even if she did end up taking his kidneys, she was beautiful and funny and had what his great-aunt would call
gumption
. ‘Are you going to make me breakfast every morning and iron my shirts and talk me up at the annual Rotary Club dinner dance?’
    She shook her head. ‘I think we can do a little better than the local Rotary Club… Why is it that building doesn’t seem to get any closer, no matter how long we keep walking?’
    â€˜It’s perspective,’ Leo said and he told her about the effects of the reflection of the neighbouring buildings on the glass tiles and Jane listened, kept him talking, until they reached the monolithic temple of steel and mirrors. It was a casino with its own ecosystem: hotel, several fine-dining restaurants, two of them Michelin-starred, high-end boutiques and row upon row of slot machines flashing and whirring as people sat glassy-eyed in front of them, feeding handfuls of coins into their gaping maws from huge plastic cups.
    Jane did a slow circle, eyes narrowed. Then her nose twitched like she could