so maybe heading to Las Vegas – the setting for his new movie – wasn’t the ideal place for him to be going. But, then again, it was also the place he needed to be. He was looking forward to it. For a number of reasons. Who wouldn’t say no to a couple of months in Vegas? Especially when you were going to be working alongside the one actress he’d waited years to make a movie with. The one actress he’d always wanted to meet but, so far, had never managed to get anywhere near. Now, however, he had a reason for wanting to get close to her.
Dominic smiled at his reflection, running his fingers over his rough chin. Yeah, he was looking forward to Vegas. He had no idea what was going to happen once he got there, he hadn’t planned that far ahead yet, but one thing he knew for sure was that he was going to enjoy it. He was going to enjoy every single second.
CHAPTER 4
Kenny Ross wasn’t really in the mood for a party but he needed something to take his mind off the impending breakdown of his latest relationship.
He’d been with Casey – an ex-Las Vegas showgirl, now working for Vince and Charley Maine as their Hotel Entertainments Manager – for over a year now but, due to his inability to move forward and take the relationship to the next level, she’d grown tired and, after a particularly draining argument last night, it now looked as though he was about to say goodbye to somebody that could quite possibly have been “the one”. Or maybe not, because Kenny doubted he’d ever find “the one”.
Kenny was about to turn forty-six and he was getting quite used to the idea of spending the rest of his life a very wealthy but ultimately lonely bachelor. That was the way his dice had rolled and he’d live with it, because only one thing could change the way his life would eventually pan out, and he’d thrown that chance away a long time ago.
He was happy, he couldn’t deny that. In every other aspect of his life he was happy. For over twenty-five years he’d been a hugely successful and talented actor with an amazing career behind him, and even now, about to hit the wrong side of his mid-forties, he was still an incredibly handsome man, still wearing that rock-star look that he’d made his own with his long black hair and scruffy beard and the unkempt clothes that never veered far from old jeans and biker boots. He’d always had the reputation of being a free spirit, and he’d found that hard to shake.
Settling down had never really been high on Kenny’s agenda, not since he’d lost the only woman he’d ever really been in love with. His best friend. A woman who’d been in his life for almost twenty years. A woman he’d once been married to and then lost in a stupid second of misguided, drunken lust. One kiss – that’s all it had been. One kiss, and he’d lost her. India Walsh.
They’d been friends from the second she’d walked into his life, back in the winter of 1991, when Reece Brogan had brought her over from Britain to screen test for the leading role in a Michael Walsh-directed movie that both himself and Reece were starring in.
She’d got the part, and Kenny’s life had never been the same again. They’d struck up a bond that nobody had managed to break in almost twenty years, and many people had tried. One person in particular had taken it too far. Michael Walsh had caused untold damage with his actions, but they were very much in the past now and had ultimately only caused real damage to his own relationship with India, because she’d never once shut Kenny out of her life. And he loved her so much. In so many different ways.
They’d married when she’d been only twenty-three and him twenty-seven in a spur-of-the-moment $50 dollar Las Vegas wedding that had stunned everyone back then. But he hadn’t been able to get his head around having someone else to think about and, ultimately, it hadn’t worked out. She’d caught him with Charley, a stupid moment of madness that, looking back, had been so trivial, so pointless, but – for whatever reason – it had hurt India so much at the time. And he’d always regret what had happened because that was the only chance he’d ever