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Chapter One
Agatha
Bright. Too bright. So bright, even with my lids still closed, the obnoxious light beams were making my head throb worse.
Oh my God, my head.
This had to be the literal worst part of excessive drinking. The morning after was brutal, and this one was no different from the times I’d done this to myself before.
Cautiously, I patted the mattress beside me.
Shit.
There was definitely another person in bed with me. Luckily, when I listened a bit longer, whoever it was continued sleeping. The soft sounds of air moving in and out through parted lips made panic rise. Was that a chick?
Not again.
I had no idea what that was about lately, but on more than one occasion, I’d taken a woman home with me. It had never been my thing before, but to be honest, I’d been pretty fed up with the male population.
We couldn’t all be as lucky as my oldest sister, Hannah. The incredibly fine specimen she had sunk her teeth into could right the wrongs for so many douchebags before him. If I could just sit and stare at that guy, it would be suitable penance for all of mankind.
Infinitesimally, I turned my head, not wanting to wake my bedmate and deal with the awkward morning-after conversation. At the same time, curiosity killed this cat every single time. I needed to know who I so carelessly shared my body with the night before.
Although…after a quick assessment of things beneath the blankets, I was fully clothed. And ewww, I needed a shower in the worst way. There was my out—I just had to be stealthy when exiting the bed.
But first, I had to figure out where the hell I was.
Parts of the room seemed familiar, or at least what I could see from my current vantage point. I slid my hand across the mattress to estimate how close I was to the edge. If I could slither off the bed without creating much motion, I could get to the shower to freshen up. Nothing worse than having the morning-after conversation with a stranger when your mouth tasted like you might have barfed a time or two.
So, fine, this was not my proudest moment. And also fine, this kind of bullshit was happening a little too often lately. I needed to stage an intervention with myself and stop this shit before I did something really stupid.
I made it to the bathroom without waking my party pal. At least there was some relief when I saw it was a guy and he was someone I knew. Probably explained why my clothes were still on. Carmen Sandoval was a straitlaced mama’s boy who would never take advantage of a drunk woman.
Even if she were?—
Wait. What the fuck am I wearing?
My stomach roiled as I gaped at my reflection. Whether the letters were backward or not, even an idiot could read what my T-shirt said.
BRIDE
No. Please no.
I instantly dropped my eyes to the cheap green jelly band on my left finger. Well, at least drunk me got the color right. Green was my favorite…
I was desperate to find bright spots in what was looking like a monumental disaster. Trying to calm down, I stripped off the offensive shirt and angrily threw it into the neighboring sink. It had to be a joke.
This is a joke, right?
I tugged off my leggings and left them in a heap on the floor. The massive showers in these villas were glorious, and this one was calling to me like a siren.
Under the spray, I tried in vain to recall the events of the night before. My sister and one of her bosses, Rio Gibson, married the men of their dreams, shotgun style, at a cheesy little chapel on the strip. Afterward, we had a fantastic meal in one of our hotel’s restaurants and played many hands of poker until everyone was shitfaced or exhausted.
Guess which one I was?
I remembered doing a lot of shots in that card room, and things went really fuzzy from that point of the night onward. I leaned my head back farther to rinse the suds from my long hair and racked my brain a bit more.
Did I leave the property? I must have at some point, because this chichi hotel didn’t sell tacky souvenirs like the one I woke up wearing. Maybe it was Hannah’s and I borrowed it after a spill or vomit episode. That sounded pretty reasonable, so I held on to the concept with all the functioning parts of my brain and stepped out of the marble enclosure to dry off.
