Page 53 of A Prince of Smoke and Mirrors

The low tone of her question suggested that she understood vast extent of my hangover, rather than merely being standard American conversation. “I’ve been worse.”

“Worse than this? I’m surprised you aren’t dead.”

“Boarding school toughens your liver. I should be embarrassed to be assassinated by mere alcohol.”

“Are you still a little drunk?”

Assessing the spin of the room and condition of my muddled thoughts suggested I had not metabolized all the alcohol in my system. “While I am a bit worse the wear, I am not currently leathered.”

She blinked twice. “So, a little?”

“I’ll be all right in a few hours.”

A furtive peek under the covers assured me that I appeared to still be mostly dressed, decently clad in my suit pants and dress shirt, although my suit jacket, shoes, and socks seemed to have wandered off somewhere.

Odd.

In college when I’d achieved blackout drunk and woken up with a woman I didn’t remember, I was always stripped naked and so was she, and I was just praying there was a used condom in the room somewhere.

Waking upfully clothedwith a woman in the bed after a bender was—yeah—odd.

I wasn’t even thirty, for God’s sake.

I set the ginger ale on the nightstand and experimented with the stability of my legs, feeling phantom shockwaves roll from my ankles to my hips. “I’ll be right back.”

After I used the very small hotel bathroom, truly a shockingly small closet of a room with a mixing bowl-sized tub and a brittle plastic shower curtain, I twisted the water faucets to start the shower running and then stared at my haggard reflection in the mirror.

Dark bruises stained the skin under my eyes.

I peeled off yesterday’s clothes, inspecting myself for clues about the night before.

A few light bruises on my left-side ribs under my swirled black tattoo ink suggested a bit of a brawl, probably nothing I was going to be sued over. Americans and their lawsuits after proper pub brawls were annoying.

I rolled my shoulders, feeling for strain. Yes, my whole left side was a little battered, from the whorls of black ink cresting over my shoulder and draining down my torso to the full sleeve that nearly reached my wrist.

The stench fuming from my pores did indeed suggest vodka, wine, and probably something more.

Damn, why had I been drinking like I was fifteen?

The Russians, Volkov, his unimaginable offer?—

I dragged my left hand through my hair.

In the mirror, metallic gold glinted on my ring finger between my dark curls.

The fuck?

I yanked my hand out of my hair, pulling out a few strands that had caught in the plain gold band encircling my finger.

The finger that one wears a wedding ring on.

No, no,no.What had I done?

There was no robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door, so I tucked a scratchy towel around my hips and yanked the door open.“What the hell happened last night?”

The woman peeked out from under the sheets where she had crawled back into the bed. Her eyes ran down and up my abused, mostly naked body like she’d never seen it before. “We’ll discuss it after you shower.”

I splayed my left hand and pointed to my own damned finger. “Is this a wedding ring?”