This week, the RT Booklovers Convention 2016 will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, a city closely associated with escapism, glamour, and sex. In honor of the occasion, RT has released a list of some recommended romances set in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, here at Romance Wanderlust, we have three examples of the most romantic, swankiest places to stay that Las Vegas has to offer, fit for any romance novel scenario.
Romance Wanderlust is the product of daydreaming while Googling – I have not stayed in any of these places, and this is not a recommendation, an endorsement, or a review. If we have any readers who have dropped over $5,000 per night for a swanky hotel room in Vegas, for goodness sake, tell us all about it!
Scenario: You are a chiseled billionaire’s mousy secretary. For various reasons, you must pretend to be his wife for one weekend in Vegas. The billionaire is reclusive, so he takes you to a private villa. You work out in the gym, have a massage and get your hair done; all without leaving the villa, because of course it has its own gym, spa, and salon.
The hotel’s beauty experts give you a full makeover in the villa’s hairdressing room, and the billionaire is astonished when he sees you. Your mousy brown hair has been transformed into chestnut waves, your thick glasses replaced by the miracle that is Lasik eye surgery (no, I don’t think that comes with the room), and your shapely form is no longer concealed by baggy tweeds but instead is revealed by the designer swimsuit you wear at the villa’s private pool. As the weekend goes on, the two of you get a little tipsy at the villa’s fully stocked bar, and nine months later you give birth to a beautiful Secret Baby. You long to tell the billionaire about his Secret Baby, but he does he love the Real You, or only the Vegas Version?
Where to Stay: Bellagio Villas
With a starting price of over $6000 per night, these villas offer over 6000 feet of floor space. They are pet friendly if you are willing to fork out some extra money, and let’s face it, no one is going to start counting their pennies after the $6000 per night thing. There’s a private dining room and a kitchen, and the hotel chef will come to the kitchen and cook for you. There are giant bathrooms and a view of the fountains. Basically, it’s set up so that you have total privacy, with the exception of the villa’s wifi and eleven telephones.
Scenario: You are a movie star. Your life is perfect until you discover a secret spy ring operating out of the set of your latest movie. You must team up with Brett, a rugged, stubbly, ex-Navy SEAL with a dark past and an aversion to shirts, to expose the spy ring. You find yourself strangely drawn to this man, almost feral in his ferocity, a far cry from the polished stars you’ve been with in the past – but can you really trust him?
Midway through the mission the two of you take refuge in a palace of ultimate luxury, where you both surrender to your deepest longings and make passionate love for several days in a row until you both regain your resolve to deliver the microfilm to the President despite the peril that awaits you at every turn. Little do you know that the greatest peril is to your hearts!
Where to Stay: Palms Two-Story Sky Villa
This place includes massage and fitness rooms, a sauna, a butler (no word on what happens if you call him ‘Jeeves’), lots of bathrooms, a media room, and a glass elevator. (And of course, the elevator is described on the amenities page thus: Rise to any occasion in the villa’s private glass elevator. Ahem.)
The real excitement though is the cantilevered pool. It’s a pool that is enclosed by glass and that sticks out of the side of the building, like a balcony, but it goes out farther. The pool can be lit up to be different colors and it hangs out over The Strip. There’s a giant circle shaped tub and a circle-shaped rotating bed, in case you want to have sex while rotating.
The cost for the two-story villa, the one with the elevator, is about $50,000 per night. If you’re willing to forgo the elevator, it’s only $30,000 per night. Everyone start looking for couch cushion change! One, two, three, go!
Scenario: You are the CEO of a massive corporation but you are tired of being in charge all the time. You meet a mysterious man who has a strange power over you – one look into his eyes and you feel yourself surrendering to his every whim. During a business conference in Vegas, he persuades you to break away from your conference, lose your formal suit and heels, toss your cell phone into the pool (if you can get to it through a throng of scantily clad revelers) and learn the joys of BDSM.
Where to Stay: Hard Rock Hotel, The Provocateur Suite
Describes as a blend between “Eyes Wide Shut and Moulin Rogue,” this room is designed for sexy times in red and black colors. There’s a mirrored ceiling and an in-room bar and a private small pool. The shower/tub is extra large. The décor includes BDSM props including a usable cage.
The pride of the room is the projector units, which display silhouettes of naked women on the shower walls and on the bed. What I’m saying here is that this is not a subtle room, and neither is the price ($3,500 – $7000).
We’ll probably visit Vegas again in this column for more suggestions on where to stay with your favorite billionaire. In the meantime, we’ll be content to be staying at Rio All-Suite Hotel for RT. I’m kinda pining for a butler, though!
If you want to retrace my trip through Google, here’s the links:
“The Most Expensive Hotel Suites in the World” by Lisa Dingman for The Richest
“Fantasy Suites at the Palms” for Best of Vegas
“Take a Look at Nine of Vegas’ Most Expensive Suites” by Kristen Desilva for Review Journal
Ok, but where can I read the book that fleshes *cough cough* out Scenario 1?
Also, I want a Lauren Dane “Goddess with a Blade” guide to Vegas.
Due to some room issues and the fact that mr.mir and I looked pitiful and like we wouldn’t trash the place, Paris put us up in a high-roller suite for a whole week.
It. Was. AWESOME. There was a miscommunication with my destiny at birth because I was totally meant to be rich. 1100 square feet, separate bedroom, two marble-floored bathrooms, huge marble dining table. The maid left chocolates on our pillows.
This has spoiled me for all other hotel rooms, but the regular rooms at Aria are pretty nice too. 🙂
BTW, the desired clientele for Paris seems to be ‘drunk 20 somethings who want to party in the hallways at 2:00 a.m.’ If anyone wants to write a romance about that, especially one that includes an assassin who deals with the hall-partiers, let me know, and I’ll buy multiple copies.
I love these. I’m glad I’m not the only one who spins out stories for all occasions.
I’m so fascinated by the cantilevered pool. I doubt I’d be brave enough to swim out over the city but it sounds so, so cool.
On a side note, my parents recently went to Vegas to see a rugby tournament and go birdwatching (yes, my parents are awesome) – so this is a nice counter balance to my mom’s excited stories of the desert bloom and seeing the migrating watsis.
Forgot to add my contribution to the RT list of romances set in Vegas.
Tall Tales and Wedding Veils by Jane Graves is my favorite version of the “went to Vegas for a bachelorette party, came home married” trope. The set up requires a suspension of disbelief but the rest of it is a sweet contemporary version of a marriage of convenience.
This was so much fun, thank you. I loved your stories and, yay, she’s a CEO or movie star and paying her own way. Rock that.
I was JUST in Vegas for a little getaway, and I was really jonesin’ for a super hot Vegas-set romance to burn through during the (long!) flight there. Funny I’m not the only one who was making up plot lines as I walked through the super plush casinos. If anyone has any suggestions for a contemporary Vegas-set romance with some fun Ocean’s 11/George Clooney/high roller stuff going on, do share!
Conference organizers often get free fancy rooms as a bonus for selling tons of regular too nights to their attendees. (This is why conferences always want you to stay in their “official hotel” and use a discount code like their name when you register so you can be counted).
Often the conferences give these fancy rooms to their keynote speakers as a gift. I was one such speaker two careers ago, and found myself in the Presidential Suite at I think the Bellagio. Which is how I found myself sitting on the marble edge of possibly the biggest tub in history, with room for a dozen, in my old flannel PJs, dangling my feet in hot water so I could hopefully fall asleep alone in the gargantuan bed. And something made me look up…and I saw myself, in those ratty old PJs, in the vast ceiling mirror.
And I thought, wow. This is meant for a hedonistic party they make movies about. Or, maybe centerfolds. Not a middle aged woman from New England who is just trying to get through the night far from home.
This… THIS is why romance novels should be illustrated!!
…just of the hotel rooms, of course.
I swear, I’m such a cheapskate, I can’t even imagine this scenario.
I’d have a “squeeze pennies until the scream” heroine who makes the Billionaire Hero stay at the Motel 6. “If you spend all your money on fancy hotel rooms, Mr. Billionaire, you’re going to run out of money eventually. It’s best to be frugal,” she huffed, ignoring his glower from across the polished chrome and glass office.
And since Billionaire Hero is incapable of making his own hotel reservations due to a broken arm, he’d have to go and stay in the hotel with economy furniture, poor lighting, and a clean but slightly frayed carpet.
@I Am Kate I love your scenario – maybe after Mr. Billionaire finds he is being prosecuted by the tax department for illegally funneling his money to an offshore company to evade taxes (the broken arm came when he resisted arrest and was locked up for one night before someone posted bail).
@Lynnd Perfect!!! I’m a tax accountant and that is totally my thing. As for the broken arm–maybe he was doing something reckless (and expensive, of course) and broke it? So she’s trying to protect him from himself.
And she dresses in her grandmother’s vintage muumuus which are two sizes too small for her. I’m starting to think I should pitch this at RT this week. 😉 Or maybe I’m just slappy from having to get all my clients’ taxes done early so I could go to RT this week.
I think those stories should be turned into SBTB serials. hee hee
@I am Kate I think he broke his arm falling down the stairs carrying the banker’s boxes with the records of his ill-gotten gains :). The heroine is the nurse who comes in to set it for the arrogant b**tard – maybe no muumuus for her (although there should be muumuus somewhere….)
Have fun at RT
I’m starting to think that I should write a novel/novella by committee, because your ideas are much more exciting than mine are. 😉
Although I did ask Sarah to review a dragon time travel suspense novel today and she seemed disappointed to find that I haven’t written it yet.
I was legit disappointed. I’m not going to lie. 🙂 (It was lovely meeting you!)
@k_hack, I think I recognized some of the venues in Goddess with a Blade. Sadly, the vampire rock opera “Bite” closed a couple years ago, after a decade-long run at The Stratosphere. The vampire-owned Strip casino with a German name was probably based on The Cosmopolitan, which used to be owned by Deutschebank. Vampire ownership would certainly explain why they lure sexy young things to their restaurants and nightclubs without caring much about luring gamblers into their casino.