I guess one more Scotch won’t hurt. It might even help me sleep.
Jesus fucking Christ. My pounding head drives me from sleep, and my aching eyeballs throb their protest at the sunlight streaming through the open blinds.
A sleepy moan echoes in my ears, and I close my eyes again. Someone is lying beside me. Instinct, or maybe it’s simply the fact that I know my wife’s body and scent so well, tells me it isn’t Mel. Bile burns the back of my throat. I throw back the covers and jump out of bed, but the sudden movement only makes it worse, and I spew my guts out onto the thick gray carpet.
“Are you okay?” a woman asks.
I tune her out, hoping she’s a figment of my imagination, and sink back onto the bed. My stomach rolls and my chest heaves, but I swallow down the urge to vomit a second time and swipe the back of my hand over my sweaty forehead.
“Can I get you a drink of water?” the voice asks.
I turn around. She’s sitting up and the sheets have fallen from her body, exposing her breasts. I’m naked too. Motherfucking fuck. What the fuck is the bartender from last night doing in my bed?
“What the hell are you doing here?” I bark.
She pulls the covers over her chest, and her lower lip quivers like she’s about to cry. “What? We … well.”
I jump up and pull on my boxers, which were hastily discarded on my side of the bed. My stomach rolls again. Please tell me we didn’t … “What happened? Did we—” I scan the sheets and floor for used condoms and don’t see any, but I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
“We fooled around. You were too drunk to do anything else.” With a huff, she climbs out of bed and gathers her clothes.
I close my eyes and try to piece together what happened last night. This is not who I am. I wouldn’t cheat on my wife, not even if I didn’t have the kind of feelings for her that I do. I’m not a fucking cheat.
Except a naked woman just got out of my bed, so what exactly does that make me? I bury my face in my hands and focus. I remember her pouring me a couple glasses of Scotch and telling me about her parents’ ranch in Montana. I have a vague memory of laughing over a shared hatred for country music, but that’s it. I have no fucking idea how we went from that to being naked in my bed together. No fucking clue at all.
“I don’t remember anything,” I groan.
“Really? Nothing? I mean, I know you were pretty wasted, but …”
Sitting up, I scrub a hand through my hair and fight the constant urge to vomit while trying to engage the logical part of my brain to come up with a reasonable explanation that doesn’t involve me cheating on my wife. She’s fully dressed now, so I give her my full attention. “I told you I was married, right?”
She shrugs. “Married guys come through here all the time. Means nothing.”
Rage simmers beneath my skin. I stand and take a step toward her. “It means something to me.”
She fixes me with a glare. “It didn’t seem to mean much last night, asshole.” She snatches her shoes from the floor and, without bothering to put them on, storms out of the hotel room, leaving me standing here naked, about to pass out. My knees buckle, and I collapse onto the mattress.
I cheated on my wife. My sweet, caring Mel, who was waiting at home for me while I fucked around with some random bartender. What the fuck have I done?
I look around until I find my phone on the nightstand, and my heart sinks through my chest when I see her goodnight text. How the fuck do I tell her what I did? Despite how we started out, I know this will break her heart. It’s damn sure breaking mine.
I suck in a deep, calming breath. I can fix this. I can explain that I got so drunk that I … that I what? I don’t even know what the fuck I did with that woman. How far did fooling around go? Did I kiss her? What parts of her body did I put my mouth on? I lurch for the bathroom and barely make it to the toilet before I heave up the remaining contents of my stomach. When there’s nothing left to throw up, I sink to my knees, press my damp forehead to the cool plastic seat, and pray to every entity I’ve ever heard of that I can find a way to make Mel forgive me.
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
NATHAN
Elijah shakes his head, his brow furrowed as he tries to process the shitstorm I’ve just dropped in his lap. After canceling my meeting, I immediately left the hotel and asked the pilot to haul ass home. Within minutes of touching down in New York, I was on my way to my older brother’s office. I needed to talk this through with someone before I faced Mel. And despite our differences, Elijah is the man whose opinion I trust more than anyone else’s.
“So you got so drunk you blacked out?” he asks, his frown deepening.
“Yeah. At least I think I did.” I pinch the bridge of my nose and try to recall more than the few little snapshots that came back to me when I was on the plane. Stumbling out of the bar. Me leaning against the wall in the elevator. Fumbling for my room key.
Nothing new appears. I still don’t remember kissing her or touching her. I don’t remember taking her clothes off, or my own.
Elijah shakes his head. “No.”
I blink at him. I need his rational brain right now, not his denial. The time for unwavering brotherly support will come, but now’s not it. “What do you mean, no?”
“Nathan, I’ve seen you drunk off your ass more times than I can remember, but you have never once blacked out. Last summer I watched you down a whole bottle of Johnny Walker Black in a matter of hours, and you still beat my ass at poker. You seriously think you blacked out after a couple of shots?”
My head is pounding too hard for me to make sense of what he’s trying to say. “And? What the fuck does that mean?”
He sighs heavily, then picks up the phone on his desk and asks his secretary to bring him one of the drug tests they use to randomly test their staff.
“What the fuck. You think I was drugged?”
He hangs up the phone and narrows his eyes. “Seems more plausible than you losing your memory after a few glasses of Scotch, don’t you think?”
I rub my temples, trying to alleviate the rhythmic drumming in my head, but it doesn’t help. “But why the fuck would she drug me?”
He leans forward. “Did you check your wallet? Was anything missing?”
“I checked before I got on the plane. Everything was there.”
