Her chuckle was as quiet as her words, and I thanked God and all the saints that she hadn’t broken out with a ringing laugh that would have blasted my skull open from the inside.
She slid off the bed, barely jiggling the mattress that dipped toward her.
My stomach tried to follow.
I watched her pad—all—the—way—around—the—bedon bare feet,staring, even though my eyeballs were dried-out husks, and squinted as she passed through a laser glare of sunlight from the wide window.
Her tee shirt and cotton shorts fluttered around her hourglass figure and shapely legs.
Despite an icepick hangover migraine and my mouth tasting like I’d been gargling paint stripper, my body responded, every ounce of flesh below my neck reacting to her fresh skin and the jiggle of her breasts and thighs under flimsy summer pajamas.
My cranium couldn’t keep up.
The nightstand on my side held a silver ice bucket with an opened champagne bottle sticking out.
The girl plunged her hand down into the ice bucket, clinking metal and glass and ice, and retrieved a can of ginger ale from under the surface.
A piece of paper that looked like ivory card stock lay on the nightstand on the other side of the champagne bucket.
The watery ice sluicing from the can and her arm back into the ice bucket roared like a waterfall. “I thought you might needsome of this in the morning, although I figured you wouldn’t regain consciousness until at least noon.”
She stood in a nimbus of desert sunlight from the window.
“You’re an angel,” I whispered.
“Nope, not at all. Come on, Nico. Sit up and drink some ginger ale. I made you chug some water before you went to sleep last night, but I’ll bet you’ve still got one heckers of a hangover.”
I nodded, the stubble on my cheek and chin scraping over the pillowcase like screeching tires in my ear. “This headache can’t be from just one bottle of champagne.”
Her sympathetic smile was more than I deserved. “Oh, we barely touched the complimentary champagne. I wasn’t there for your pre-gaming, but you said something about vodka.”
Vodka? I never drank vodka.
The Russians?—
Volkov, his henchmen, and my uncle stomped into my mind. “Oh, God.”
The ginger ale can cracked and hissed as she opened it. “Yeah, I think I’ll save my questions for later. Your explanations last night didn’t make much sense.”
I shoved the bed away, pushing with all my might to raise myself off the sheets. My feet found the floor, but I was hunched over in pain and humiliation.
The woman wrapped my fingers around the freezing-cold can of ginger ale and guided the straw she’d stuck in it to my lips.
The first sip absorbed into my desiccated tongue and gums, leaving me nothing to swallow.
I looked up at the woman, her pretty face angelic in the austere desert light. “I don’t usually get drunk like this.”
“I’m glad to hear that, my dude. If you did, I would suggest maybe you need a meeting.”
Fluttering sparks of recognition trickled through my brain, but I couldn’t quite grasp the memories to examine them.
A few sweet sips of ginger ale finally made it all the way down my parched throat, and I moved the can away from my mouth. “I deeply apologize for getting blotto last night.”
“You were already pretty blotto when I met you. And here’s a couple of aspirin. You look like you’re going to need it.”
I swallowed the tablets with more ginger ale despite them clinging to my sticky beef jerky tongue. “Then I thank you for taking me on and not dumping my murdered corpse in an alley.”
Again, her soft chuckle was sweet and did not hurt. “Don’t mention it. Howareyou feeling?”
