“In a minute. I have something to show you. Can you come with me?” He pulled back the duvet, then extended a hand.
“The last man who asked me that wanted me to rob a grave,” I half-groused just for the effect.
“Hard to compete with that.” He pulled me to my feet once I’d gotten my legs over the side. “Come.” He kept hold of my hand, leading me to the front door where he stopped. “I have not given you your birthday present.”
“I wasn’t expecting one. You gave me my life.” Overstating and sappy, I know, but I was feeling emotional—the last bit of life had been one heck of a ride.
He opened the door.
Nestled next to the curb was a car, and not just any car. “A 1953 356 American Roadster.” I almost couldn’t breathe. “That’s like the rarest Porsche ever built.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the car.
“For the rarest woman I’ve ever met.” He tossed that line off with ease and got a kiss for it. “I am sorry it is late. They are hard to find, then I had to get it here. She is a beauty, no?”
Silver with a beige top and darker brown interior, if the street light wasn’t playing tricks. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Where did you get her?”
“Paris.”
“Of course, she would be French.”
I rewarded him with another kiss and lost myself.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Thank you for coming along on Lucky’s wild ride through Vegas. If you enjoyed the book please consider leaving a review here, it would make Lucky’s day!
NOVELS IN
THE LUCKY O’TOOLE SERIES
Wanna Get Lucky?
A woman falls from a tour helicopter to the horror of the 8:30 Pirate show crowd.
Was it suicide? An Accident? Could she have been pushed?
Lucky’s day began with the invasion of the Adult Video Awards and Trade show convention.
It got more hectic when the spouse-swapping annual event checked in.
And if adding a body to the mix wasn’t enough, Lucky’s got a new suitor. Her best friend, Teddie, a female impersonator who is pressing to take their relationship to the next level.
Can she really date a man who looks better in a dress?
What happened to the woman over the pirate show?
Will her sleuthing skills catch the killer and save her job?
DOWNLOAD WANNA GET LUCKY? FOR FREE
Lucky Stiff
Someone fed Numbers Neidermeyer to the tiger shark in the tank at Mandalay Bay resort .
Lucky’s friend, the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock, is suspect Numero Uno.
Miss P, Jeremy’s squeeze and Lucky’s right-hand man, is in a tailspin.
A tractor-trailer full of honeybees jackknifes on the Strip in front of the Babylon, spilling its load.
The district attorney—apparently the odd man out in a threesome—is hiding in the buff in a laundry room.
And Lucky’s mother decides to auction a young woman’s virginity.
Can Lucky get Jeremy out of the hot seat, handle the new hot French chef and her mother… restore order in her life?
So Damn Lucky
Renowned magician, Dimitri Fortunoff apparently dies while trying to pull a Houdini.
Then his body actually disappears.
Lucky is less than amused. She has enough problems already.
Paxton Dane, a handsome Texan long on charisma, short on history, is pressing for an opening.
And the new French chef is equal parts charm and venom, seasoned with a dash of irresistible.
But Lucky can’t shake the question: did Fortunoff really die or is this some elaborate hoax.
With his connections to the UFO convention in town, outlandish theories abound.
Love, laughter, and a few evil spirits from the Great Beyond or the Great Void—
Lucky Bastard
Tonight, someone turned a young woman, a Jimmy Choo embedded in her carotid, into a hood ornament for the latest Ferrari in the Babylon’s dealership.
And one of the big-name players in a huge poker tournament ends up dead.
Are the two deaths related?
Lucky starts making connection putting her in the crosshairs of a killer.
Her former lover, Teddie, comes back from his rock tour to deliver a bombshell.
Then life deals another major complication to her personal life… and it’s not going to be pretty.
Can Lucky handle the fallout and catch a killer?
Lucky Catch
For Lucky O’Toole, she finds killers.
As the Chief Problem Solver for the Babylon, Las Vegas’s most over-the-top destination, murder is a bit outside of her normal.
But, armed with a wicked wit and an even more wicked right-cross, Lucky takes it all in stride.
But tonight taxes even Lucky’s formidable skills.
Lucky’s former lover, Teddie, shows up, hat in hand.
A gaggle of egomaniacal chefs appear for a televised cook-off.
And Lucky’s current lover, Jean-Charles stops answering his phone.
Since trouble comes in threes, Lucky is sure this is the extent of tonight’s trouble.
As usual, she’s a tad optimistic.
A prized Alba truffle disappears from Jean-Charles’s restaurant.
A young chef is murdered in Jean-Charles’s food truck.
Jean-Charles still isn’t answering his phone.
And when Lucky’s path crosses the killer’s will her goose be cooked?
You want to know…I know you do.
Lucky Break
For Lucky O’Toole it’s a break from murder.
As the Chief Problem Solver for the Bablyon, Las Vegas’s most over-the-top destination, Lucky is used to cracking heads and cracking jokes.
Besides, it’s Christmas.
But even Santa can’t give Lucky what she wishes for.
Holt Box, a beloved country singer on the comeback trail is killed in Lucky’s lover, Jean-Charles’s, kitchen.
Mr. Box dies in Lucky’s father’s arms.
Her former lover, Teddie, is accused of the murder.
A heavy-hitter in the Macanese underworld is working over Lucky’s father
An old nemesis salivating for revenge gets out of jail on a technicality.
Lucky’s mother is ramping up an ill-advised political campaign,
And the holidays racing to a crescendo.
And then things get really messy…
Lucky the Hard Way
For Lucky O’Toole, living with murder is, well…murder.
As the Chief Problem Solver for the Babylon, Las Vegas’s most over-the-top destination, mischief is in her job description, but murder? Not so much… until recently….
Facing a murder indictment, Lucky’s first love, Teddie, has flown to Macau on the heels of the real killer.
A powerful figure in the Macanse underworld has Lucky’s father and his empire over a barrel.
Lucky’s own hotel is days away from opening.
And her engagement is very new.
So, there’s only one thing for Lucky to do…
Take a trip.
Macau.
Five days to catch a killer, save Teddie, and rescue her empire from financial ruin.
Piece of cake for someone with Lucky’s superpowers…
Right?
Lucky Ride
Who would want to kill a clown?
Lucky O’Toole, chief problem solver for the Babylon Hotel, the primo property on the Las Vegas Strip, isn’t in any mood to find out.
For one, it’s New Year’s Day and Lucky’s birthday.
And she hasn’t caught her breath after a chase to the death in Hong Kong and Macau.
Her French chef is pushing to set the wedding date.
Her former lover, wounded in the China chase, needs TLC.
A young woman, in town with the rodeo, shows up at her office with a secret that could blow the lid off Lucky’s life as she knows it.
Could it?
What if everything Lucky thought she knew about her family was built on a lie?
And why would someone kill a clown?
LUCKY O’TOOLE NOVELLAS
Lucky in Love
Lucky O’Toole, the vice president of Customer Relations for the Babylon, one of Las Vegas’s most over-the-top strip properties, is seriously regretting booking a reality television show, The Forever Game, in the hotel’s small theater.
Lucky Bang
Missing dynamite, an old grudge, and whispers from the past, force Lucky to delve into dark secrets best left alone. And when her father disappears, things become personal.
Lucky Now and Then (Parts 1 and 2)
Las Vegas, the City of Reinvention.
No one knows this better than Lucky O’Toole, V.P of Customer Relations at the Babylon, Vegas’s newest, most over-the-top Strip property. As the daughter of one of the men responsible for shaping Vegas from its ignominious Mob beginnings to its full current glory, Lucky has witnessed the constant rebirth. So, when the time comes to implode her father’s first hotel, The Lucky Aces, she feels the angst, but moves on.
Until skeletal remains are found in the foundation and her father is implicated in a murder.
Then it is a race to uncover the long-buried past. A past no one wants revealed, least of all the killer, who has tried to kill Lucky once before. Lucky must unravel the twisted knot of lies, Mob hits, Vegas power plays, passions, and corruption.
Her father’s life hangs in the balance.
Lucky Flash
Lucky O’Toole, Vice President of Customer Relations at the Babylon Resort, one of the premier properties on the Vegas Strip, is back. This time she wises-up and sends her down-and-dirty best friend, investigative report “Flash” Gordon on the trail of Johnny Pismo. Pismo, a washed-up-never-been singer shows up at the Babylon singing a song about a ring of thieves stealing Vegas’ music memorabilia. They replace each piece of Vegas’s music history with a fake, selling the originals on the black market. Pismo even claims to have the prize piece in Lucky’s father’s collection—a large diamond ring given to the Big Boss by Liberace himself.
Lucky is shocked to learn he’s telling the truth.
Teddie, Lucky’s former lover, offers a few choice pieces of his memorabilia collection as bait. Of course, Lucky must join the chase to protect Teddie’s treasures.
But can she protect her heart from him in the process?
OTHER BOOKS BY
DEBORAH COONTS
After Me
Kate Sawyer, a former NYPD undercover cop, injured badly in a takedown gone terribly wrong, is living in Portland, Oregon safe in the Witness Protection Program, while she undergoes experimental stem-cell treatment for a genetic case of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Everyone thinks Kate can provide vital evidence that will lead to the recovery of twenty million dollars of diamonds that disappeared during the takedown.
If she could only remember.
One night, Kate returns to her condo to find a dead man in her bathtub with a note stuck in his pocket.
I know what you’ve done.
Her cover blown, Kate runs, knowing the clock is ticking. Chased by shadowy figures she can’t remember, Kate must solve the mystery before it’s too late. People close to her are being killed. Shadowy memories tease her. Some she recognizes as her own. Others don’t seem familiar at all.
Running from people she can’t remember, dogged by a past lost in the haze, Kate discovers no one is who they appear to be, perhaps not even herself.
MORE ABOUT AFTER ME. . .
Deep Water
Oil—the currency of global economic power. Alter the supply a country controls; alter the power they wield.
Patrick Donovan, Texas wildcatter, sitting on a deep-water well, has tapped into a reservoir so vast it could totally alter the balance of economic power.
A software scatter-bomb planted in the trading software at the New York Mercantile Exchange. A software security engineer is killed.
And the price of oil is dropping like a stone.
Donovan goes missing, and an influential senior Senator from Texas is presumed dead.
Sam Donovan, Patrick’s daughter, finds herself in the bullseye of a world scramble to gain control of her father’s well. A helicopter pilot operating between the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, Sam knows how the game is played.
But this time, the stakes are life and death.
As a hurricane bears down on the Gulf of Mexico, a man with everything to lose sets in motion sets in motion a disaster that will bring down the global oil market.
The price of oil will skyrocket.
Sam, with help from Commander Kellen Wilder of the U.S. Coast Guard, must avert disaster before global economic stability is forever altered.
MORE ABOUT DEEP WATER. . .
Crushed
In Napa Valley, he who has the best grapes wins.
And in the pursuit of perfection, dreams and hearts can be crushed.
Sophia Stone is a widow on the brink of an empty nest, stuck in an unsatisfying job managing the vineyard for a mediocre Napa vintner. Faced with an uncertain future she wonders how do you choose between making a living and making a life? Between protecting your heart and sharing it? Five years ago, after her husband was killed in an accident, Sophia put her heart and dreams on ice to care for those around her. Now her home, her dreams, and her family’s legacy grapes are threatened by the greed of the new money moving into the Valley. Sophia has a choice—give up and let them take what is hers, or risk everything fighting a battle everyone says she can’t win.
Nico Treviani has one goal in life: make brilliant wine. A woman would be an unwanted distraction. So, while recognized as one of Napa’s premier vintners, Nico finds himself alone… until his brother’s death drops not one, but two women into his life—his thirteen-year-old twin nieces. In an instant, Nico gains a family and loses his best friend and partner in the winemaking business. Struggling to care for his nieces, Nico accepts a job as head winemaker for Avery Specter, one of the new-money crowd. And he learns the hard way that new money doesn’t stick to the old rules.
When Sophia Stone gets caught in the middle of Nico’s struggle to remain true to himself or sacrifice his convictions to make stellar wine, both Sophia and Nico are faced with a choice they never imagined. A choice that might extinguish the hope of a future neither expected.
MORE ABOUT CRUSHED. . .
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deborah Coonts swears she was switched at birth. Coming from a family of homebodies, Deborah is the odd women-out, happiest with a passport, a high-limit credit card, her computer, and changing scenery outside her window. Goaded by an insatiable curiosity, she flies airplanes, rides motorcycles, travels the world, and pretends to be more of a badass than she probably is. Deborah is the author of the Lucky O’Toole Vegas Adventure series, a romantic mystery romp through Sin City. Wanna Get Lucky?, the first in the series, was a New York Times Notable Crime Novel and a double RITA ™ Award Finalist. Her contemporary romance inclinations found wing in The Heart of Napa series, set amid the bucolic vineyards of Napa. For thrills and dark mystery, she penned, After Me an iBooks Best Of and a Nook First choice. And to further flex her writing abilities, Deborah penned the Sam Donovan series, a romance suspense series highlighting her love of flight. Right now, Deborah calls San Francisco home, but, since it’s her we’re talking about, this too can change. But, for sure you can find Deborah at www.deborahcoonts.com.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2017 Deborah Coonts
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance of fictional characters to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author and publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
ISBN: 978-1944831-74-5
V062817AMZ
Digital formatting by Austin Brown (cheapebookformatting.com)
Lucky Ride (The Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series Book 8) Page 33
