Every woman has a secret. The question is: How far will she go to make sure it stays secret? Abbey Walsh never wanted anyone to find out about her shady past. After all, she’s the wife of a minister now, living an exemplary life. That is, until someone shows up from her past with blackmail in mind . . . Tiffany Vanderslice Dreyer never dreamed that she’d find herself up to her new designer sunglasses in credit card debt from one mad moment of a shopping spree. She’s an upstanding wife and mother with the perfect marriage . . . right? Loreen Murphy hadn’t meant to hire a male prostitute in Las Vegas. It was all just a big, stupid, and expensive misunderstanding. . . . Abbey, Tiffany, and Loreen are each in need of thousands of dollars and fast . Tiffany’s sister, Sandra, has the perfect idea. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s legal, and it’s the secret that kept her shoe addiction alive. It’s the perfect plan. . . . In this deliciously sassy novel, three very different women bond when they find themselves in more than one kind of trouble. It’s the story of how sometimes you have a secret that can get you in---and out---of dire straits. It’s about romance, friendship, kids, revenge, affairs, and, most of all, a love of the well-heeled things in life. "Harbison's witty, fast-paced follow-up to last year's Shoe Addicts Anonymous ... Harbison's writing is zingy and funny."-- Publishers Weekly  "Secrets of a Shoe Addict has it all - friendship, romance, affairs, revenge - and as you read you will be cheering these women on."-- BookLoons Beth Harbison is the bestselling author of Shoe Addicts Anonymous. She lives with her husband and two children near Washington, D.C., where she enjoys a large collection of impractical shoes and purses, and a small group of friends who are always there to help save her from the occasional Really Bad Decision. SECRETS OF A SHOE ADDICT (Chapter-1) Loreen Murphy hadn't meant to hire a male prostitute in Las Vegas. It was all just a big, stupid, expensive misunderstanding. The night had started out pretty normal. There was no visibly strange alignment of stars, no static electricity in the air, nothing to warn anyone that things were about to turn so weird. She, along with other parents--mostly mothers--of the Tuckerman Elementary School band members from Travilah, Maryland, was in Las Vegas, where the kids were competing in a National Battle of the School Bands. Loreen, as the PTA treasurer, had been instrumental in working out a deal with the airline and several Las Vegas hotels so that parents and siblings could attend the contest. And everything had gone fine, right up until they tucked in the little third place-winning musicians and handed their trust over to a hotel babysitter who looked a little like Joan Crawford but was able to produce identification to prove she was employed by the hotel. So, confident that their kids would be fine, Loreen and her fellow PTA officers--Abbey Walsh (vice president of the PTA and wife of the local Methodist minister) and Tiffany Dreyer (president of the PTA)--went down to the casino and spent a little time playing the nickel slots and sipping free margaritas from the hotel bar. For Loreen, life began to veer off course with the idea of taking a break after an hour of slot machines and free drinks to get up and move around so she didn't get slot machine elbow or whatever you'd call a repetitive-motion injury from playing the one-armed bandit for too long. Besides, she'd allocated twenty-five dollars to gambling, and according to the slip the high-tech machine had just spit out at her, she had only ten dollars left. When that money was gone, she'd decided, the evening was over for her. "Are you sure you don't want to come look around with me?" she asked Tiffany, Loreen's friend since both their kids had eaten a container of paste in Mrs. Kelpy's first-grade classroom and thrown it up in the cafeteria line half an hour later. "No way." Tiffany kept her baby blues fastened on the machine in front of her. "I've invested almost two hours in this machine. It's going to hit the jackpot. I can just feel it." "This is how gambling addiction starts, you know." Tiffany nodded and lifted her drink to the one Loreen was taking with her to the bar. "I think alcoholism starts this way, too." "Touché." Loreen made her way through the crowd--hundreds of people she'd never know. The feeling of freedom was exhilarating. Jacob was safely with the sitter upstairs, and Loreen, who was a month away from her final divorce decree, was a "bachelorette on the loose" for the first time in eleven years. Robert, her soon-to-be ex, thought she was a control freak who focused too much on her child and not enough on her life. Well, she was going to change that tonight. The lobby of the Gilded Palace was crowded with people, marble columns, and large potted palm trees. There was Muzak playing through some distant speakers, adding just enough vague ambience to make it fe