A shrill ring jolted me upright with a half-scream caught in my throat.
Where was I? Why did I smell smoke?
I swung my legs over the edge of an unfamiliar bed, wrapped the blanket around me, and stumbled from the room.
My mouth tasted like I’d eaten roadkill. I grimaced and filled a glass with water from the tap, downing it while smacking my ringing phone on the counter. “Hello?”
Damn. I should have checked the number. I squinted at the screen, but the numbers blurred together.
“Bree? It’s Declan.”
“Who?” Reality smacked me in the head, along with a royal hangover that included nausea and a throbbing headache. “Sorry, Declan. What’s going on?”
I bent over the counter, pressing my cheek to the cold surface.
“Well.” Declan’s voice rumbled. He cleared his throat. “The contractor has arrived. I thought it best not to barge in on you again, so I found your number in Maeve’s book. Did you forget you were supposed to meet with him?”
The reality I’d been trying to avoid punched through my chest. Nana’s death. The pub. My inheritance.
Finn.
My brain screeched to a halt. Where was Finn? I scanned the apartment. No Finn.
A look down proved I was still wearing my dress from yesterday. The woozy feeling returned, and I covered my eyes with both hands. “Right. Contractor. Sorry, I overslept. Tell him I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“Need something for that hangover?” Why did his voice sound like sex? And why did my entire body respond to it like I hadn’t been with Finn last night?
Because I hadn’t been with Finn. I forced my body upright and crossed to the door. Locked.
Right. I’d gotten drunk. Finn had walked me to the door.
I must have made up the rest, because there was no sign of him anywhere and I had all my clothes on.
That was some hallucination.
“Bree?”
“Sorry. Sorry.” I moved as fast as I dared to the counter. “Hangover remedy. Yes, please. Be down soon.”
I ended the call before he could hear me puke and made my way gingerly to the bathroom.
One look in the mirror ruined any thought of making a good impression.
My hair deserved its own zipcode with all the tangles and snarls sticking up all over the place.
My dress was a mess, and my makeup looked like I’d gone a round or two with a drunk clown drawing on my face.
Fuck it.
I yanked the dress over my head and threw it into the corner of the bathroom, then paraded to the bedroom in nothing but my underwear.
Finn would never be interested in me like that. No wonder I’d made up the whole sex thing, though.
The man was hot enough to fuel any woman’s sex dreams.
Everything in my suitcase was wrinkled, but hopefully that wouldn’t matter to a man Nana had already hired. My clothing choices didn’t interfere with his payment.
I pulled on a pair of worn jeans–my favorite pair–and a soft sweater that fell mid thigh and didn’t make me look like an overinflated blimp.
