Slash and Burn by Valerie Bronwen

Author:Valerie Bronwen [Bronwen, Valerie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781626390232
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2014-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

I woke up Saturday morning with a slight headache and a severe case of cottonmouth, but that wasn’t the worst part.

That would be the fact that I wasn’t alone in my bed.

It might have been ten years, but I’d recognize those distinctive snores anywhere.

Dani.

I had a vague memory of staggering back to the hotel with her. I moaned to myself. Great, this is just exactly what you need. You finally come to terms with everything that happened in the past, and now this? This is a complication you do not need, Tracy. How could you have been so stupid?

Prosecco, that’s how.

This is a prime example of why I don’t get drunk at parties anymore.

Carefully, I pushed the covers back and slipped out of the bed without waking her. She’d always slept like the dead—I used to tease her that she could sleep through a nuclear holocaust, and that had obviously not changed. I had a vague memory that she’d been too drunk to drive when we’d finally decided to call it a night, and the prosecco had loosened me up enough to invite her to spend the night rather than telling her to call a goddamned cab and pick up her car in the morning.

I shut the bathroom door behind me carefully, so it didn’t make any noise, and got a cup of coffee started in the Keurig. It brewed while I brushed my teeth and washed my face. I rinsed my mouth out a few times, then brushed again. It felt like my teeth and tongue had grown fur during the night, and my sinuses were achy despite the arctic temperature in the hotel. I took my vitamins and a Claritin and washed my face yet again as the cobwebs started clearing out of my idiot head.

Stupid, stupid, stupid—you’re way too old to be acting like a teenager in heat, I chided my reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t pretty. My hair looked like a rat’s nest, and my eyes were so red and puffy I could probably frighten small children. They also ached a bit, and I gulped down some aspirin to try to make everything stop hurting.

As I stared at my scary reflection, more vague memories from last night flashed through my mind like a montage from some bad romantic comedy—all that was missing was a sappy power ballad from a once-popular hard rock band. I remembered kissing her in the elevator and pushing her up against the wall, my leg going in between hers while I stroked her breasts. She hadn’t resisted. In fact, I could feel her heat on my leg as her arms went around to pull me closer into her, her hands cupping my butt and pulling me tighter against her. Then the elevator stopped at my floor and we’d separated, smiling at each other. I remembered being so turned on the hall seemed endless, like we would never get to my room, and then I’d had to fumble through my shoulder bag to find my key card.

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