Page 13 of Zero Pucks

The man across from me at his desk sighed. “It’s complicated.”

I wasn’t a violent person by nature. Even pushed to my limits, I was more inclined to dig a hole and shove my head into it until the chaos passed. But I kind of wanted to smack this jackass. He was one of those people who bought a three-piece suit only to wear the slacks and button-up part and chronically forgot how to keep his shirt closed above his nipples.

He looked like a TV gigolo. And his name was Jacques—pronounced the French way, even though there wasn’t a drop of French blood in his veins.

My gaze dropped to the small stack of papers sitting on his desk. The stack of papers I’d found lying in a pile beside two prosthetic legs that had been left in the lobby with my room number attached. I’d been called down to the desk, the ringing phone dragging me from the best sleep I’d ever had.

Which, it turned out, was because I was curled up in the arms of a man I was pretty sure I’d never met before. He was soft and warm and absolutely,annoyinglygorgeous. The only weird thing about him was that he slept with one eye open, but he didn’t flinch, even when I waved my hand in his face.

I also didn’t notice he was missing both his legs until I got tangled up in the sheets trying to get out of the bed and landed where knees should have been.Huh. That was something I probably should have remembered from the night before.

Then again, coming back to my hotel room and getting mostly naked with a stranger was also something I should have remembered too. Had we slept together? I shoved my hand down the front of my boxers and felt my dick for evidence as I stumbled toward the room phone.

The guy didn’t even budge from the noise, and my dick was dry and not sticky. So…no. Probably.

“Um? Yes?” I whispered into the receiver.

“Hello, is this Mr. de Luca?”

Was it…right. Yes. That was, in fact, my last name. I was Amedeo de Luca—a tired IT nerd working for an accounting firm in Vegas on a work trip. Which was also a trip to get away from…

Right. Shit. My fiancé. I’d needed space from my asshole fiancé.

This counted as cheating, right? Because I wastechnicallyengaged. We’d been together for years, me settling for less than I deserved, him stringing me along and refusing to set a date because he knew he could get away with it.

But Bryce had been a real monster lately, and while I’d put up with a lot of his crap over the years, getting away from him for a week just went to show me that I was at my breaking point. Hours before whatever had happened, I’d been crying on the phone to my sister about how I couldn’t take it anymore. That I was done.

It was time to leave him for good.

Alessia wholeheartedly agreed with me, and that was the plan. But it wasn’t supposed to go like that. I wasn’t supposed to find some rando in Vegas and take him to my room and…do whatever it was we did.

Oh God, was I the monster now?

“Sorry, yes. Speaking,” I’d said once I pulled myself together and remembered I was in my room, with a sleeping stranger, on the phone with the hotel front desk.

“Your car is here, sir, and I also had some items turned into the lost and found desk for you last night.”

I’d frowned and glanced around. My wallet was on the table, along with my keys. My suitcase had already been left downstairs for checkout, but my phone was…ah. In the middle of the floor. Strange, but at least it was there. The rest of the items beside the bed—a jacket, a T-shirt, and…boxers? Those had to be the sleeping man’s.

“I’m sure I have everything,” I’d told her. “Whatever it is, it’s not mine.”

“Sir, these seem…sensitive in nature. It might be a good idea for you to come and take a look.”

Glancing at the stranger in the bed, I hadn’t wanted to wake him. I wanted to take a moment to process whatever the fuck happened, have my little freak-out far, far away from this stranger, and then figure out what I was going to do with my life.

I didn’t need him waking up and asking me questions—or worse, expecting me to know what went on after that first chocolate cake shot I’d ordered at the bar.

I hung up, gathered my things, and found out that the front desk was holding two prosthetic legs and a folder full of papers that I was too cross-eyed to make heads or tails of. “I don’t know what to do with these,” I told the woman at the desk. “I think they belong to—ah. My friend. But I can’t remember where he’s staying.”

I didn’t know his name. Wonderful.

She flipped open the manilla folder she’d said was mine, typed something into her computer, then said, “Looks like he is a guest here at our hotel, but I’m afraid I can’t give you his private information.”

That was fine with me. The less I knew, the better. I reached past her—rude, I knew—and grabbed one of the Post-its on her desk and then held my hand out for a pen. Yes, I was kind of a dick. But I was hungover and holding back a barely contained panic attack, so social propriety was the first thing to go.

“Can you please have someone leave these at that door? Also, can you extend my checkout for another couple of hours? I don’t mind paying the fee. Just charge the card on file.” I had no idea when he was going to wake up, but I didn’t want to be charged some fee for traumatizing some poor housekeeper either.

“No problem. Here are your papers, and I hope you have a wonderful day.”

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