Cursing myself for my stupidity in leaving the door cracked, I peeled off the towel and dug through my heap to find my man panties. But I hated showering with a door closed; it just felt so humidly, smotheringly cloistering to me. Still...
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I muttered, jerking on my foam chest and then the rest of my clothes.
My hair was dripping wet and I didn’t have anything to comb it with, so I used the towel to squeegee as much moisture as possible from it. Then I ran my fingers a couple times through the damp locks before winding them into a bun and tugging on my mask. I checked out the mirror for glitches and straightened my left ear when I saw it was wonky. Then I blew out a breath and turned to leave the bathroom. That’s when I realized I was barefoot.
I couldn’t return to the room barefoot; Asher would wonder why I didn’t have any shoes, and I was sure he was going to bombard me with enough questions I needed to come up with some answers for.
So, while I scampered barefoot around the hotel, searching for something that might pass as shoes, I tried to come up with a plausible story.
But really...why would I have let a girl into our room and then left her there alone to shower? Maybe I thought she needed some privacy. But then, he’d want to know who she was. Just some random girl who’d knocked on our door, begging for the use of our bathroom? Meh, I couldn’t see him buying that story. If I’d trusted her alone in our room, then I’d have to know her, and if I knew her, I’d have to come up with a name for her, possibly a life story if he got really curious.
I was already lying to him enough with the whole I’m-a-dude trickery, I didn’t want to lie any more than I had to. So I decided to go with the clueless route. Yeah, that sounded good. After miraculously spotting a pair of Chicago Bears flip-flops with one strap broken sitting on the closed lid of the dumpsters outside, I trudged back to the hotel, holding my breath as I let myself into our room.
Asher pounced immediately. I barely opened the door before he was in my face, demanding, “Where the hell have you been?”
I lurched a step back, a bit concerned by the anger flashing in his eyes. “I...I was looking for you. I thought you said you were going to eat breakfast at Denny’s across the street, and when I couldn’t go back to sleep, I hauled my butt over there, but you were gone.”
“Because I forgot my wallet in the room and came back to get it. Who was the girl?”
I swear, I deserved an Academy Award for the way I furrowed my eyebrows, squinted at him and asked, “What girl?”
“The...the...” He sputtered a second longer, motioning wildly toward the bathroom. Finally, he was able to blurt, “The fucking chick in our shower!”
Mouth gaping, I glanced toward the opened door of the bathroom and then back to him, sending him a look that told him I thought he was straight-up tripping.
“There’s a chick in our shower?”
“Yes!” he boomed, then swatted a hand toward me. “Well, not now. But there was when I came in.”
“No way.” Letting him know I totally didn’t believe him, I strode toward the bathroom and peered inside to see that the shower stall was still wet. I swerved back around. “Who the hell was she? How’d she get in here?”
“That’s what I’m trying to ask you, asshole. She said she knew you.”
“She did?” I scratched at my head, perfecting the confusion bit.
Poor Asher, he was really baffled by all this. “Well...damn it,” he muttered, running his hands through his hair. “I think she did. She only spoke Spanish.”
I lifted my eyebrows in offence. “Oh, so all us Spanish-speaking people must know each other?”
“No...I didn’t mean it like that.” He scowled at me for even assuming as much. Then he blew out a breath. Once he was calmer, he explained, “I said your name and her face lit up with recognition. Then she rattled off...something that had the word amigo in it, which means friend, right? She had to have been one of your friends.”
Damn, he seemed really bothered by all this. I was tempted to break down and tell him everything, but then the fear of how he’d react scared me back into silence. “Well...” I frowned, hating this game more with each second. “What’d she look like?”
“Fucking gorgeous,” he said immediately, making my heart rate jack faster. “Long, straight black hair with these stray purple streaks in it. Eyes the same color as yours, but like fuller. Thick, dark eyelashes that seemed to go on forever. Heart-shaped face, flawless features. Perfect tits and legs, and...” He drew in a deep breath before adding, “A banging body. I shit you not; she was...beautiful.”
I blushed and was tempted to thank him. Hell, I was tempted to push him down onto his bed and crawl on top of him so he could appreciate everything he’d complimented up close and personal.
Instead, I shook my head and murmured, “Weird.”
He nodded. “So, you really have no idea who she was, or how she got in here?”