It had been the perfect start to the weekend: To be twenty-one and in the exclusive part of the casino, surrounded by men in expensive suits, was everything that she and her friends had hoped for, and after three or four hours, they’d gone up to the suite Mark owned. Not the brightest move, maybe, but there had been four girls and three men, and after they’d all spent time together on a collective winning streak, the illusion of friendship and trust had been created.

But nothing bad had happened. Just more drinks and chatter and flirtation. And Sarah ending up in a bedroom alone with the taller of the two “associates.”

At the end of the night, Marie-Terese had gone out onto the balcony with Mark.

She could still remember the feel of the dry, hot air blowing over the sparkling view of the Las Vegas strip.

It had been ten years ago, but that night was still as clear to her as the moment it had become memory: the two of them out on that terrace, high above the man-made city, standing side by side. She had been looking at the view. He had been staring at her.

Mark had swept her hair aside and kissed her on the nape of her neck…and in that soft contact given her the best sexual experience of her life.

That was as far as it went.

The next evening had been much of the same, except Mark had taken them all to see a Celine Dion concert and then they had gone back to the tables. Glittering. Fancy. Exciting. Marie-Terese had soared on the heated gusts of promise and romance and fairy tale, and at the end of the second night, she had gone back to that suite and kissed Mark on that terrace again.

And that was it.

She’d been disappointed he hadn’t wanted more, although she wouldn’t have been able to sleep with him. She wasn’t hard-wired like Sarah, capable of meeting a man and going to bed with him hours later.

How ironic she’d ended up where she had.

The next morning, they’d had to leave and Mark had had his limo take them all to the airport. She’d been crushed, assuming that was the end of it: a fun forty-eight hours—just what the travel agent had promised and exactly what they had paid for.

As she and her friends had been driven away from the hotel, she’d hoped Mark would come running out and wave them to a stop, but he didn’t, and she’d guessed that the last she’d ever see of him was him kissing her hand at the hotel room she and her friends had all stayed in together.