Free Strip for Me by Amarinda Jones Page A

her sister began chanting her faults. “Yep, you’re the saint in the family and I’m the sinner.” Sally made being anal an art form. “I’ll see you when I get home.” Rett snapped her cell phone shut. “Fucking hell, she’s a head case. Ever since she married that twerp she’s lost the plot.”
    You’re a gypsy, Loretta. You’re always off on one wild adventure after another, expecting people to bail you out when you’re in trouble. You have to stay in one place and learn to be normal. You can’t act reckless all your life.
    “What the hell is normal?” Living under the dictatorship of Sally’s husband Lionel? “If that’s normal, then count me out.”
    Lionel completes me.
    Rett snorted as she remembered her sister’s words. “I hope someone smacks me in the back of the head if I ever utter those words about a man.” Once again, Loretta wondered how she was related to her sister Sally. She used to beg her mother to confirm that her blonde haired, goody two shoes sister was adopted.
    Hell, mum. Or tell me I’m adopted. I can take it. It’s only logical I am as I’m the only one with black hair. It makes sense.
    But her mother had sworn blind she wasn’t. Apparently, Rett took after her dark-haired father. Whoever the hell he was. Her mother, like Rett, had enjoyed the pleasures of a few men in her time.
    But then that’s what sex was for, to enjoy. In that, she most definitely took after her mother.
    Rett opened her purse once more, hoping that somehow a wad of cash magically found its way into it. But other than a crumpled plane ticket back home to Australia, one mismatched earring, some Aussie coins, a—what was that? A hairy breath mint — and about fifty US dollars Rett was broke.
    “I probably shouldn’t have gone to Vegas.” It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Rett was supposed to be in the US on behalf of her boss Gloria’s company, Second Comings, an erotic toy manufacture. They were trying to crack into the international market.
    A manufacturer in Miami invited Gloria over to discuss business, but she had been unable to attend. Gloria was sixty-five and had a bad back. She could only sit for so long. Gloria sent Rett instead. Rett, ever eager for adventure, had jumped at the chance.
    How Rett got to Las Vegas was only a vague recollection in her mind. She recalled drinking several–okay maybe a lot of—
    strawberry daiquiris at the party the company invited her to and then wandering back to her hotel where she came across some other Aussies in a van who were driving to Las Vegas. When they invited her along, it seemed like a good idea. Once company business had been attended to, Gloria had given Rett two weeks off to see what she could of the US.
    Although hungover, once in Las Vegas, Rett went wild on the slot machines and black jack. She drank and ate too much as she partied with her fellow countrymen. In the end, she was left with only enough money for a bus fare to take her to Resort City. It was several hundred miles from Miami where she was to make her flight connection home. The money she spent in Las Vegas was supposed to last her for the entire time she was in the US.
    “Yep, I’m a screw up.” Sally was right, but then, Sally always was and she constantly enjoyed telling people so.
    Rett dropped her bag to the ground. She was at the Resort City bus depot. Rett had considered phoning her mother and then her boss for the money home. However, her mother, like Rett, had a habit of spending money and worrying about consequences later, and Gloria had medical problems and didn’t need the worry of her errant employee.
    “I can look after myself.” Rett surveyed the streets of the town. She had never heard of Resort City before the clerk at the bus depot in Las Vegas pointed to it on a map and told her that was how far she could get on the money she had. From the brochure Rett had read on the bus, Resort City was supposed to be the new Miami.
    “Huh, really?”