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not to like?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Evie managed to say, her body blissfully relaxed, bubbles bursting in her throat, her brain dancing with laughter. ‘Nothing not to like.’

 
    Please read on for a sneak peek of
    Rebecca Chance’s sizzling new novel,
    Killer Heels ,
    featuring hot men, hotter sex, skyscraper
    stilettos and oodles of scandal . . .
    out in paperback this summer . . .

 

Prologue Manhattan: Now

 
Coco
    Coco Raeburn stared down at the display on her bathroom scales, excitement rising in her as she scanned the figures on the screen. Actually, the chrome and glass device on
which she was standing was much more than a set of scales; it was a body composition analyser, informing her not only of her weight but also her body fat percentage, her total water content, and
her BMI. By now, Coco was so used to seeing her fat percentage displayed that she didn’t bat an eyelid at the brutal truth; and today it was a mere 8 per cent. Under 10 per cent body fat!
That was wonderful enough in itself, but the real prize was the main display, the large figures in the centre of the screen.
    There were only two of them. Two figures. She had done it; she’d reached her goal, cracked the hundred.
    Ninety-eight pounds. She could hardly believe it. In fact, she stepped off the scales, let the screen clear, and then tapped the base of the scales to restart them. Cautiously, almost
tentatively, she set one bare foot, then the other, on the rubber indents, watching, breath held in anticipation, as the monitor scanned her once more and then spat out the figures that by now
– as far as she was concerned – defined Coco more completely than anything else.
    Ninety-eight pounds, again. Not only had she cracked the hundred, but she had an extra pound to spare in case of any slipbacks.
    Well, there won’t be any of those, she told herself, determined. I’m staying at ninety-eight if it kills me.
    Coco shivered in the air-conditioned bathroom; the trouble with only having 8 per cent body fat was that you felt the cold much more acutely. But she didn’t go into the hallway to adjust
the temperature on the built-in thermostat: she couldn’t drag herself away from the sight of her thin, thin body in the full-length mirror set into the wall. With approval, she noted how much
bone and muscle she could see. Her tummy had sunk in below her ribcage, a tight concave band of muscle, firm from all her Pilates classes and training sessions with Brad. She pummelled it lightly
with her fists: hard as a rock. She could count every one of her ribs, the top ones slatted like a set of Venetian blinds. People commented on those, and the protruding collarbones. I need
high-cut necklines to cover them , she thought. Diane von Furstenberg’s doing some great blouses for spring/summer. I’ll get someone to call them in.
    Blouses with high necklines and long sleeves: those would be ideal. Coco was dressing very differently than when she’d been what she now considered huge – an English size
12–14. Gigantic! She shuddered at the thought of how fat she’d been. Then, she’d shown off her rounded shoulders, the boobs that she’d now completely lost. Now, folds of
fabric hung on her skinny frame as if from a hanger, concealing not only the too-visible bones, but the bruises and chafe-marks that patterned her pale skin.
    At each hip, perfectly parallel, were five livid purple imprints where a man’s hands had dug into her, held her down. Big hands, which spanned half her body with ease, now that she was so
thin; the bruises were so clear that a police pathologist could almost have taken fingerprints from them. On her stomach, a pattern of small red smudges bore witness to hot wax that had been
dripped on her, her abdomen so hollow now it was like a shallow bowl he had taken pleasure in filling. As for her wrists and ankles . . . well, Coco took it for granted these days that she needed
to cover them whenever she was out in public. She