Chapter One

If you could sing, you wouldn’t be out in this heat, trying to entice someone to drive off in that convertible, Bailey mused as she stared at a man outside her hotel window. He was standing in a small parking lot, next to a bright red car that had a RENT ME sign posted over its windshield, and he was wearing a white jumpsuit. And from what Bailey could see, he was cute, handsome even, down to every last black hair on his head. But Elvis wasn’t a car rental agent. He was a singer, and a god among men.

One down. Forty-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety- nine to go.

She continued to watch the activity on Las Vegas Boulevard, where tourists moved in a steady stream down the sweltering sidewalk, many of whom, no doubt, had dreams of becoming the next big winner. Herself included. But it wasn’t money she was after. It was a man. And not just any man.

Bailey Ventura was an Elvisaholic. She knew it. Her friends knew it. Her entire hometown of Coupeville, Washington, knew it. And, she wasn’t interested in joining some twelve-step program that would help her snap out of it.

By the time she was three, Bailey couldn’t count to ten, but she knew all the words to “Rock A Hula Baby”— convinced it was really “Rock A Hula Bailey”—and could give an impressive performance, complete with hip shimmies, to a captive audience of teachers and preschoolers in her class.

By the age of ten, Bailey had seen every Elvis movie a dozen times and had decided that he was the only man she would ever love.

At twenty-five, Bailey still knew all the words to “Rock A Hula Baby,” plus a hundred others, and she’d spent enough time listening to the King of Rock and Roll croon mournfully about doing things his way and lost love that she was convinced she was born to be his bride.

Unfortunately, the odds of that happening were worse than winning the megabucks lotto, because fate had dealt both her and the King a low blow: he was already serenading fair maidens in the biggest coliseum of all, beyond the pearly gates.

Not that a little detail like that was going to stop her. She had other options, which, admittedly, weren’t as perfect as the real deal, but they were her only choices, and there were plenty of them. They were called Elvis tribute artists. Bailey had recently read that approximately fifty thousand lip-sneering, hip-swiveling, dark-haired impersonators walked this earth, and she was pretty sure at least one of them was meant to be hers . . . if only she could find him.

And if she couldn’t find him in Las Vegas, Nevada, where the Elvis Impersonator World Championship Competition was being held, the right man for her just didn’t exist.

Bailey sighed. Fate couldn’t be that cruel, could it? It just wouldn’t be fair.

The only woman who might love Elvis more than Bailey was her mother. She’d offered to come along as a chaperone. Bailey hadn’t bothered telling her that, in her opinion, too much chaperoning was probably the cause of Elvis’s failed marriage to Priscilla. It wouldn’t have mattered. And anyway, Bailey suspected her mother’s real motive in wanting to accompany her to Sin City was the chance that a miracle might happen and she’d catch a glimpse of the real deal, the man himself.

Olivia Ventura was one of the remaining two million— give or take a million—women who continued to believe Elvis Presley was still walking this earth and that he’d set up house somewhere in Kalamazoo, Michigan. “How else do you explain all those Elvis sightings?” Olivia would say. “That many people can’t be crazy, or wrong.”

Bailey’s mom was sure that Elvis took pleasure in knowing others emulated him, and that he regularly attended events such as the one coming up day after tomorrow. According to Olivia, if there was anywhere one could go to get a glimpse of the King, it was Las Vegas.

God bless her. Probably they both needed a little therapy.

Bailey hated disappointing her mother, but she was on a mission, and besides, she’d already told her best friend, Liza, that she’d take her. For a couple of reasons: she had more sense than Bailey and would keep her out of trouble, and she didn’t need any therapy.

“Do you really think you’ll find a genuine guy among all those pretenders?” Liza had asked when Bailey picked up an Elvis Tribute Artist Guide from the check-in counter.

“A girl can dream,” Bailey had answered with a wistful sigh.

But dreaming was all she ever did and it was time to either make those dreams come true, or settle for what she already had, which was basically a boy she’d known through high school—Mark Jefferson—who only wanted to be with her because she reminded him of Kate Beckinsale. Oh, she loved him—like a really, really good friend. The end.

“What are you going to do if you find this Elvis person?” Liza said from the bathroom doorway. She had a toothbrush in her hand and her hair was fluffed about her face. Her teeth were so white that when she smiled you half expected to see them sparkle like in one of those toothpaste ads. No doubt about it, Liza was beautiful, standing there all blond and covered in pink from head to toe, but Elvis wouldn’t have liked her. He liked dark hair. Like Bailey’s.

“Bring him home, of course,” Bailey answered.

“And then what?”

“And then he and I will buy a bigger house, somewhere other than Coupeville. We’ll have children and live happily ever after. . . .”

Liza went back into the bathroom and dropped off her toothbrush. “I guess that’s plausible . . . in a fantasy world. Your fantasy world.”

“It’s not such a fantasy. I’m not a bad catch.”

“No.” Liza shook her head. “In Coupeville, you’re a goddess.” She removed her clothes from her suitcase and placed them into small tidy stacks in the top dresser drawer. She also took two silk blouses and one dress over to the closet.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bailey asked.

“Sweetie, do you think you’re really going to get some man who’s used to living around thousands of half- naked women to go home with you, where the typical attire is Birkenstocks and prairie skirts?”

“I don’t wear prairie skirts.” Bailey dug around in her bag and pulled out a light blue skirt that could hardly be worn on a prairie. “See?” she said, holding it up.

“Right,” Liza said, touching a finger to her lips. “We’ll see. How about you shimmy into that skirt and we go down to play some slots?”

Slots. Bailey shook her head. They were nothing more than the evil twin of cash machines. Money goes in; nothing ever comes out. She’d learned the hard way that she could actually save money if, instead, she went to a show or did some shopping.

Liza, on the other hand, didn’t give up so easily. It was the only thing she wasn’t sensible about. She’d lose a bundle and two months later, she’d be lamenting how she couldn’t wait to go back and get her fingers on the cold, hard buttons of her favorite machines. “Even a blind hog finds an acorn sometime,” she always said. Bailey figured if Liza ever tried pawning her clothes, she’d have to intervene, maybe even threaten her with gambler’s rehab.

“Those machines aren’t going anywhere.” Bailey plopped herself down on one of the queen-sized beds and started flipping through the Tribute Artist guide. It contained photos and mini-bios of each competitor, and by the time Bailey got to the fifth page, she was dizzy. She put a hand to her forehead. Being so close to realizing her dream was making her blood pump through her veins double time. She had to pause, take a few deep breaths.

Johnny Thompson, Quent Flagg, Steve Sogura, Irv Cass, and so many others . . . How would she ever choose? Picking one over the other by looking at their pictures was like picking one M&M over another simply because she liked the color. No, she had to see them in person. Evaluate which of them could really walk the walk and talk the talk, not to mention do that funny little grin thing. But most of all, she had to find out who among them had truly captured Elvis’s essence, and which of them, if any, could really sing the King’s songs as though every word that passed over their lips came straight from their hearts.

Bailey tossed aside the guide with a sigh. Finding the total package in just one man would be like, well, winning a jackpot, and no picture or bio could answer those questions. Her heart skipped with reserved anticipation at the thought of having them all stand before her like some delectable smorgasbord.