Josie Day Is Coming Home

by Lisa Plumley

  JOSIE DAY IS COMING HOME

  by

  Lisa Plumley

  *

  previously published by Kensington Publishing

  Her name was Josie, she was a showgirl…

  …until the night she Heimliched a martini olive out of fabulously wealthy and eccentric casino owner Tallulah Carlyle. Now Josie Day—proud new owner of one of Tallulah’s spare estates—is leaving Vegas behind for…Donovan’s Corner, Arizona? Ironically, her “reward” has brought her right back to the dusty hometown she thought she’d left behind forever. Still, Josie’s ready to prove there’s more to her than feathers and a wicked rumba. She plans to sell the old mansion and use the profits to open a dance school. But first, she’ll have to figure out some fancy footwork to avoid knocking heads—and other things—with caretaker and local bad boy Luke Donovan…

  It isn’t every day a woman like Josie comes strutting into town—which is fortunate, since her presence on the estate has Luke hotter and more bothered than he’s been since, well, ever. He’s a little annoyed with his Aunt Tallulah, though. This was supposed to be his property to renovate and sell—an opportunity to make good after being cut off from the family fortune. But Josie doesn’t have to know that…at least not until Luke figures out a way to make both their dreams come true—and prove that Vegas isn’t the only place where taking a chance can change everything…

  *

  Copyright © 2012 by Lisa Plumley

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, then please respect the hard work of this author by purchasing your own copy. Thank you!

  *

  USA TODAY best-selling author Lisa Plumley has delighted readers worldwide with more than three dozen popular novels. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and editions, and includes contemporary romances, western historical romances, paranormal romances, and a variety of stories in romance anthologies. Her fresh, funny style has been likened to such reader favorites as Rachel Gibson, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, LaVyrle Spencer, and Jennifer Crusie, but her unique characterization is all her own.

  Lisa lives in sunny Arizona with her husband and two children. In her free time she reads romances and research books by the dozen, practices yoga, and spends time with her family—hiking in the mountains and deserts of Arizona, visiting ghost towns and historical sites, traveling, reading, and watching classic movies.

  Visit with Lisa at her website, www.lisaplumley.com, follow her on Twitter @LisaPlumley, connect with her official Facebook page at www.facebook.com/lisaplumleybooks, or circle her on Google+ at www.google.com/+Lisaplumley today!

  Lisa also writes cozy mysteries as Colette London. Her Chocolate Whisperer mystery series featuring globe-trotting chocolatier (and amateur sleuth!) Hayden Mundy Moore begins with Criminal Confections and continues with Dangerously Dark, both from Kensingon Books. Visit www.colettelondon.com today to sign up for updates on Colette’s books, catch all the news on Facebook, follow Colette on Twitter or circle Colette on Google+ .

  JOSIE DAY IS COMING HOME

  by

  Lisa Plumley

  Some days, a girl just didn’t feel like shimmying into her rhinestones, feathers, and spandex, and going to work. For Josie Day, the first Friday in April was one of those days.

  Maybe it was because it was April Fool’s Day. On a day like that, living in Sin City—aka, Las Vegas—felt like one big “gotcha!” Maybe it was because, as a showgirl at Enchanté, she was required to hand out comped tickets on the casino floor an hour before each show—decked out in a full headdress, false eyelashes, and the rest of her regalia. Appearing offstage in costume was not her favorite thing. It only attracted trouble—not to mention stares, whispers, and drunken, pinching bozos who found her butt a prime target.

  Sure. Those were likely reasons for the weird feeling of discontent she’d been experiencing all day. So were raving PMS and the high-heel blister on her big toe. But it was more than that, Josie thought as she gazed wistfully across Enchanté‘s glittering, flashing, noisemaking gaming floor. For months now, she’d been battling a niggling sensation of…restlessness. Of uneasiness. Even, at times, of loneliness.

  Which was ridiculous. She was surrounded by people all day and all night. At the moment there were approximately one thousand gamblers, gawkers, and wide-eyed tourists all around her. She couldn’t possibly be lonely. Especially in the midst of the glamorous life—so purposefully removed from her old life—she’d always craved and had finally made for herself.

  But there it was. Undeniable. Inexplicable. And only partly drowned out by the clatter of slot machines shooting quarters into their payout trays nearby. No matter how hard Josie tried to ignore this edgy feeling, it always came back.

  Lately it grew in ferocity each time it returned. Sort of like the Snickers cravings she tried to quash with fat-free Chocolate Fantasy frozen yogurt (the fantasy being that it actually tasted like chocolate) in order to meet her show-mandated, contractually binding weight range.

  Was it unhappiness?

  Nah. Instantly, Josie shot down the thought. She couldn’t possibly be unhappy here in the glitzy Las Vegas life she’d worked so hard for. It had to be something else. Something like…a constant G-string wedgie. She’d had one for the past six years, ever since she’d made the cut to join the cast of the Glamorous Nights Revue. That would’ve gotten on anybody’s nerves. Right?

  Right. So Josie put her worries out of her mind. She handed out her last pair of show tickets to two fanny pack-wearing tourists, then headed backstage to the showgirls’ communal dressing room.

  As usual, everyone was getting ready for the seven o’clock show—the first of two back-to-back performances for the night. Some dancers stood nearby talking. Others limbered up, wearing track pants and zip-up hoodies over their costumes. The rest lingered in front of their assigned “stations”—lighted makeup mirrors and chairs arranged along a shared Formica vanity. They’d all been lucky enough not to have been assigned rope-in-the-tourists duty in the casino today.

  Josie’s spot was a small one, wedged beside a rack of shimmery beaded costumes. She squeezed onto the chair in front of her Hollywood-style makeup mirror, glad to have “pinch duty” over with. Once men entered a dark casino and knocked back a few cocktails, they all felt entitled to grope a showgirl.

  Sure, it was all in keeping with Vegas’s new tourism slogan: “What Happens Here, Stays Here.” But it was galling, all the same. She was a regular person. A normal person. A person who recycled, who wore sunscreen, who treated people with respect and occasionally told knock-knock jokes. When she was grocery shopping off The Strip, men didn’t feel compelled to reach in her cart and squeeze her melons. But at work…. At work it was a different story.

  Sighing, Josie elbowed aside a jumble of eye shadows, hairpins, and roll-on body adhesive used to secure costumes. The smells of hair spray and false eyelash glue hung sharp in the air. She inhaled deeply, trying to bolster her spirits. Those unique fragrances—along with the bustle backstage—reminded her she’d really done it. She’d made it. She’d escaped Donovan’s Corner and become a professional dancer. Just as she’d always dreamed.

  Beside Josie, Parker Yates plopped breathlessly onto the nearest vanity chair. Late, as usual. She grabbed her waist-length ponytail fall.

  “What did I miss?” she asked as she pinned on the fake platinum hair—a near perfect match for her own—then wound it in a topknot. “Give me the whole scoop.”

  “Okay. But first…knock, k
nock.”

  Parker rolled her eyes. “You and your jokes. Okay. I might die of gossip deprivation in the meantime, but…. Who’s there?”

  Josie loved this routine. After the day she’d had, she needed it. With relish, she said, “Dwayne.”

  “Dwayne who?”

  “Dwayne the tub. I’m dwowning! Ha!”

  They both giggled. Josie was a sucker for a cheesy knock-knock joke, and Parker…. Parker was her most frequent audience.

  “Better than the last one you came up with,” she said, nodding. “Okay. On with the dirt-dishing. Is Jacqueline on the warpath? Did Ashley make her weigh-in? Are Marco and Ty still fighting? Tell me everything.”

  “In the ten minutes between now and show time?”

  Parker rolled her eyes impatiently. “I had time for that joke, you have time to fill me in. Hit the highlights. I feel as if I’ve been lost in the wilderness for a month.”

  “You were only gone for a week.”

  “Tell that to my ass. I think it’s gone numb. Turns out, Thad suckered me into a fishing trip in disguise. I still smell like trout.”

  Parker and her boyfriend Thad, another Enchanté dancer, had been vacationing on a rented houseboat at Lake Mead. Josie couldn’t quite picture her elegant blond friend “roughing it.” But apparently when it came to true love, all bets were off.

  Josie made a sympathetic face. “A little tomato juice in your next bath and that smell will come right out.”

  Parker looked at her oddly. “Should I add a celery stick and a hit of Worcestershire, too? I’m not a Bloody Mary.”

  Whoops. Sometimes Josie forgot to keep up with her new life. Showgirls in Las Vegas were glamorous. They didn’t bathe in tomato juice, like her childhood mutt, Squeegie, had when he’d bumped into a backyard skunk. Literally.

  “I’ll just pop into the spa later,” Parker continued, fiddling with her fishnet stockings. “A nice aromatherapy scrub will fix me right up.” She grabbed her costume’s headpiece and a mouthful of hairpins, then set to work anchoring the red feathered contraption to her head. “So, what’s the dirt?”

  “Okay.” Settling in for a good dish session, Josie ticked off the answers to Parker’s questions. “Yes, that new choreography has everybody tied in knots. Jacqueline isn’t happy. Yes, Ashley made it with two pounds to spare. And yes. The latest drama happened yesterday. Marco completely freaked out when Ty cut off the fringe on his chaps. You know, the faux leather ones for the ‘Way Out West’ number?”

  Parker’s guileless blue eyes widened. She was, Josie noticed for the zillionth time, effortlessly beautiful in a way Josie could never hope to be. Not with her rambunctious red hair, affection for enchiladas, and big feet. But hey—all those things made her who she was. She wasn’t complaining.

  “No!” Parker said. “All the fringe? Marco must have been crazed!”

  “He was. But he retaliated by putting superglue on Ty’s prop cowboy hat. Since then, nothing.” She shrugged. “I guess they feel as though they’re even.”

  “Superglue? That explains Ty’s new buzz cut.”

  Josie nodded. “Mmm-hmm.” Thanks to the mishmash of showgirl and showboy personalities, things were never dull behind the scenes.

  “Ah. It’s so nice to be back in the bosom of our own little dysfunctional family.” Looking satisfied, Parker squinted in the mirror. She applied more lipstick. “It’s sweet, really. Back home I never—”

  “Five minutes, everybody!” the show’s producer yelled.

  “Yikes. I’ve got to change.” Parker scrambled for her costume—all three feathers, four triangles of fabric, and six gazillion rhinestones of it. Matter-of-factly, she got herself outfitted. There was no point in modesty backstage. “Toss me my shoes, will you?”

  Josie handed over the gold high-heeled Mary Janes all the girls wore in the first number—a Busby Berkeley-style routine with singing, dancing, and lots of feathered fan waving. She wished Parker had finished whatever she’d been about to say.

  Back home I never….

  Never what? Although they were friends, Parker never confided much about her past. She changed the subject whenever Josie asked. In fact, when it came to talking about herself, Parker was nearly as closemouthed as Josie was.

  Oh, well. If there was one thing Josie understood, it was not wanting to revisit the past. She’d left hers behind her. That was exactly where she intended to keep it.

  The moment the music started, Josie’s spirits lifted. By the time she heard her cue and stepped onstage beneath the brilliant lights, her earlier troubles were forgotten. She didn’t know what had been wrong with her. She loved this life. The dancing, the singing, the patented sideways showgirl walk with arms extended to show off her sequin-spangled costume. She couldn’t get enough of any of it.

  Getting here hadn’t been easy. It had taken her grueling months of practice—on top of years of dance instruction—plus nearly a dozen auditions before she’d landed her first chorus position. Now, at Enchanté, she’d worked her way up to second-lead dancer. She had better costumes, more singing parts, and a prime piece of spotlit real estate at the edge of the stage. It didn’t get much better than this.

  High-kicking through the first number, Josie scanned the audience. Their smiling faces bolstered her; their energy pushed her to kick even higher. She adored performing. There was nothing else like it. On stage, nothing else mattered except the next step, the next turn, the next burst of applause. Nothing else really existed except this moment. Right now.

  And some sort of commotion in the front row.

  Shimmying sideways, twirling in time with a jazzy Gershwin tune, Josie looked curiously toward the premium seats. There, a half dozen audience members were on their feet. They clustered around the velvet-upholstered banquette that stood third from the left. Some pointed. Others looked around as though for help. A low murmur rose from the spot.

  Josie’s heart rate kicked up. None of the other dancers seemed to notice the hubbub. For most of them, the audience was a blur…a sea of faces. She was the unusual one. She liked to connect with the people watching the show. But tonight something was clearly wrong.

  Probably it was a just a passed-out gambler, she told herself as she swished her enormous feathered fan. She issued her trademark showgirl smile. Chuck and Enrique, the security team, would take care of the problem.

  Except they didn’t seem to have noticed it yet. As Josie executed a perfect step-ball-change, she glanced back to the banquette again. The clump of onlookers parted. Just for an instant, Josie glimpsed an elderly woman at the center of all the attention. A woman with her eyes wide and her bejeweled hand at her throat.

  Josie knew what that meant. A hand at the throat was the universal choking signal.

  Quickly, she estimated the distance between the stage and the floor. Too far. If she leaped offstage in these shoes, she’d break an ankle for sure. Heart pounding, Josie broke rank with her fellow dancers instead and headed for the stage-left stairs. She moved in double-time with the music, smiling widely…and doing her high-stepping showgirl walk the whole way.

  Hey, old habits died hard. The choreographer, Jacqueline, had threatened to cut any dancer who dared to walk normally while onstage. Doing a showgirl walk was second nature to everyone. Josie figured she probably lapsed into it in the supermarket without realizing it—while selecting a can of peas or carrying ramen noodle packages to her cart.

  She reached the floor and scrambled to the banquette, feathered headdress streaming behind her. Shocked faces turned toward her. Josie only had eyes for the white-haired woman.

  “Are you choking?” she asked.

  By now, the woman was on her feet. Gesturing toward her martini glass on the table in front of her, she nodded. Her eyes widened with alarm.

  “Let me help you.”

  Decisively, Josie maneuvered her way behind the woman. She apologized hastily as she whacked a few onlookers with her costume’s booty frill. Music clamored all around. Show li
ghts flashed. She wrapped her arms around the woman and caught a whiff of expensive perfume. Dimly, she realized the show was still going on above them in all its glitzy glory. Then there was no time to notice anything else. She concentrated on performing the Heimlich Maneuver.

  The last time she’d practiced it, she’d been working on a plastic dummy in first aid class. Squeezing a real live woman was a lot different. With frantic intensity, she kept at it.

  Two-handed fist, below the rib cage, quick upward thrust. Again and again. She had to keep going. This woman was somebody’s grandmother, somebody’s sweet elderly wife, somebody’s sister. Feeling panicky, Josie thrust upward again.

  “That’s enough!” the woman barked. “One more thrust and I’ll cough up my spleen along with that damned martini olive.”

  Roughly, she twisted away from Josie’s arms. In shock, Josie watched as the woman rounded on the onlookers.

  “And you! Standing there like a bunch of idiots while an old woman chokes to death. Shame on you!” Even in competition with the music of the Glamorous Nights Revue, her husky voice carried. “I got up to Heimlich myself on the table edge, but this nincompoop”—she gestured to a gawking businessman—“wouldn’t get his lard ass out of the way.”

  Red-faced with fury, she snatched her cocktail. Drained the whole thing. Winced. She banged her empty martini glass on the table, then swiveled her luxuriously clad, barrel-shaped body in a hasty arc. Looking for a fresh target.

  Never one to cower in the face of a challenge, Josie lifted her chin. “You should sit down.”

  Calmly, she reached for the old woman’s arm to help her.

  “Mind your own business, Red!” the woman snapped. “I’m not decrepit.”

  But she wobbled slightly as she leaned in the banquette. Her wrinkled hand trembled as she retrieved her envelope-shaped silk purse from the velvet cushion. Clearly the martini olive incident had affected her more than she wanted to admit.

  All around them audience members murmured, getting resettled at their own tables. The show lights flashed. The music from the opening number reached its crescendo.