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Chapter1
HARPER
Today was the day Harper Presley had to turn her disaster of a life around or she’d lose everything.
Failure wasn’t not an option.
And the best part, which might sound more like the worst part…
She had to do it in a cocoa-colored tutu while wearing a brown feathery mask.
If this wasn’t hitting rock-bottom, she didn’t know what was.
But first, she had to livestream an online music lesson.
From inside her car.
That didn’t have working air-conditioning.
In the sweltering heat.
Yep, this had to be the rockiest of rock-bottoms. But if things went her way, in a few hours, she’d be living it up and walking on sunshine.
She balanced her laptop on her rusted Volvo’s nicked dashboard and gazed into the camera. “Do re mi, sing along with Bonbon Barbie,” she crooned, but before she could utter another word, some asshat pounded on the passenger side window.
Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk!
She paused the livestream and released a frustrated growl. Shifting in her seat, she leaned over and rolled down her car’s smudged window. The old gears whined a high-pitched squeal as the glass begrudgingly disappeared into the door, and a rush of hot desert air entered the vehicle.
“I’m working here,” she quipped, sizing up a burly older gentleman clad in an ornate bellhop uniform. The ridiculous coat was adorned with sequins around the collar andLuxe Grandiose Hotel Las Vegasstitched across the front. He slipped a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, then shoved them back inside the glittery coat.
“Lady, you can’t sit here in your car,” he barked in a thick New York accent. “This is the entrance to Las Vegas’s Luxe Grandiose Hotel, not a parking lot.”
Um…yeah. She knew exactly where she was. Did he think she was an idiot?
She scowled at the man, giving the shimmery dude a dose of thego-screw-yourselfexpression she’d been perfecting since kindergarten. This expression had served her well…until now.
Unfortunately, her attire seemed to tamp down the intended effect of telling the bellhop to take a long walk off a short pier. He fiddled with the pack of smokes again. He appeared to be jonesing for a nicotine hit, but his jittery movements ceased when he got a good look at her.
The man took a step back and cocked his head to the side. “What are you supposed to be? A half-naked piece of crap? This is Vegas. There are some outrageous shows here, but I’ve never seen anybody dressed like a piece of crap. And what’s with the brown feathery mask? Are you the potty patrol princess headed for the toilet ball or would that be the toiletbowl?” he mused with a snort.
What a comedian.
She checked her outfit. As much as she wanted to tell the snickering bellhop to go to hell, she couldn’t deny that her appearance was, for lack of a better term, absolutely batshit crazy.
Still, the unique ensemble was why she’d made the twelve-hour trek from Denver to Sin City.
She lifted her chin and gestured to the designs on her chest. “These are chocolate bonbons—the delicious candy. They aren’t poop.”
Point of clarification.
Poop emojis had been printed on the shirt, but she sure as hell wasn’t about to admit that. She’d doctored the image to make the comical bowel movement into bonbons—the chocolate domes of perfection she adored. She usually wore a denim jacket over the brown top that skimmed her midsection, but it was too hot to wear a coat in the sweltering desert heat.
Of course, she realized how odd she looked, but there was a reason—a very good reason—she was dressed like a cocoa dessert.
Under the music teacher alias Bonbon Barbie, she was about to go bonbon big-time and become the internet’s place to go for neurodivergent thinkers to learn how to read and write music.
At least, that’s what she’d hoped would happen.
