Luck Be a Lady by Cathie Linz

The provided text is an extended excerpt from a novel, likely a romance, titled Luck Be a Lady by Cathie Linz, detailing the complex and eventful relationship between the protagonist, Megan West, a librarian, and Logan Doyle, a Chicago police detective. The narrative begins at Megan's cousin Faith's wedding in Las Vegas, where Megan and Logan first meet after Logan's grandfather, Buddy, is a last-minute replacement in the wedding party, and it soon shifts focus to Megan's frantic search for her mother, Astrid, whom her father had lied about being dead for over two decades. Their quest takes them to a brothel/butterfly ranch in Nevada and a small, quirky town called Last Resort, where they are temporarily stranded and threatened with a shotgun wedding by the eccentric locals.