Page 6 of The Cowboy's Redemption
*
Dana
She was sickin the night.
Someone held her hair while she threw up in a small bathroom with a low toilet, and water-stained tile on the floor. Then they helped her to bed.
When she finally awoke, she had no idea where she was or how she’d gotten here, only that the bed was lumpy and sagged on one side, and the room was dim. A crack of exterior lighting glared through the gap between the drawn drapes. She’d been in enough motel rooms, however, to recognize one when she saw it.
She bolted upright, fear clawing her throat raw, and almost passed out from the fingers of pain digging into her skull. The pain faded and the dizziness passed, enough so that she could take stock.
She had her clothes on. Including her panties and bra. Thank God for that. She was alone in the double bed. Another small blessing. A shadowy shape slouched in a stuffed chair between the window and door. A man. Her pounding heart ramped up its pace. That last one could pose a problem. What, exactly, had happened last night? Her headache forced her to abandon any attempts to recall.
She’d worry about it later. Her immediate problem was to get out of here without waking whoever slept in that chair. The digital clock next to the bed proclaimed it not quite 5:30 a.m. Carefully, slowly, she drew back the blankets and swung her bare feet to the floor. She didn’t know where her boots were, and she didn’t care. They were a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.
She tiptoed across a thin carpet that felt none too clean under the balls of her feet. She didn’t think she’d taken her purse with her when she’d left her camper to go to the dance.
The dance.She couldn’t imagine what had possessed her. Had loneliness and a fizzling career reduced her tothis? To drinking too much, then heading to a motel with a stranger?
She reached for the doorknob. The stranger stirred in the chair and her hand froze to the cool steel. Fear choked the breath from her lungs. She dared to dart a glance at him. Pale gold leaked between the curtains and limned the lines of his face.
Her fear morphed to confusion.Levi.She would never have believed him capable of taking advantage of any woman, sober or drunk. The fact she had her clothes on swore that he hadn’t, but the fact she’d spent the night in a motel room with him was also going to take some explaining. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d badly misjudged a man.
Her headache. Her raw throat and aching stomach. All forgotten. She stalked to his chair and kicked his shin with her bare foot. Not hard. Just hard enough to get his attention.
He awoke with limbs flailing, tried to rise, and caught one sock-clad toe on a leg of the chair. He grabbed the chair’s padded arm to steady himself, but his weight knocked it over. The chair crashed to the floor, its wooden legs rocking back and forth. Someone in the next room banged on the thin wall.
Dana fumbled for the switch next to the door. Light filled the room. Tousled blond hair stuck out in several directions. Red shadowed his cheeks, chin, and jaw. Sleepy blue eyes blinked at her.
He’d held her hair while she’d been sick. The foggy memory dredged up a sense of helplessness and violation that further enraged her. “What happened last night?” she demanded.
“Not what you seem to think.” The sleepiness cleared from his eyes. His gaze narrowed and sharpened. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
Nothing.
She pressed fingertips to her eye sockets and said the first thing that popped into her head. “You.”
“Me?” He sounded surprised.
She’d gone looking for him. She’d been rude to him earlier and planned to apologize. Things got a bit patchy after that. She remembered him appearing out of nowhere and how happy she’d been to see him. How relieved. “Dana, do you know this guy?”
Her leg muscles rebelled. She crumpled onto the edge of the droopy bed, dropped her throbbing head in her hands, and gathered her skittish thoughts. She hated feeling afraid. It made her angry—with herself and the world. Levi had been Tanner’s best friend. He’d never been anything but polite and respectful to her. A complete gentleman. He was hardly the type of man to take advantage of a woman when she was drunk.
Now would be a good time to offer up that apology she owed him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had more to drink than I thought. Last night is a blur.” She tried to smile but embarrassment held her lips captive. How many people had seen her make a drunken spectacle of herself?
He waved the apology aside. He didn’t smile it off though, and his dark expression seemed so out of place. He righted the chair and parked it in front of her. When he sat, their knees almost touched. He dipped his head and studied her face. “Walk me through it. How much did you have to drink?”
“Two glasses of wine.”
“How much wine?”
“Maybe half the bottle? No more than that.” Maybe a teensy bit more. Maybe two thirds of the bottle.
He kept barking questions at her. “Who gave you the wine? Where were you when you drank it?”
“In my camper. No one gave it to me.” She preferred to drink alone. So what? There was no crime in that. She wasn’t on trial. And yet, she began to feel judged.
He frowned. “That’s it? That’s all you drank?”
