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Authors: Cat Johnson
NEW ORLEANS
Cat Johnson
When
I agreed to be my best friend’s maid of honor, I thought it
would be fun. Maybe I’d even meet a nice, single guy at the
reception. But now the bride is missing, I have the hang over from
hell and it seems I may have accidentally had sex with the groom last
night while pretending to be a stripper to spy on him at his bachelor
party… Or maybe I didn’t.
It’s
hard to tell since I can’t remember much past drinking that
last Hurricane on Bourbon Street. There’s also this matter of
the groom’s identical twin brother and the fact they have a
habit of switching places.
I
do know one thing, nothing is what it seems in New Orleans. Anything
can happen…and it usually does.
New Orleans
Cat Johnson
Copyright 2012 by CAT JOHNSON
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: The Morning After
It happened in stages. First came
just a tiny glimmer of consciousness. That’s when I realized I
was awake, but not much else. I knew this was the good part, because
things would only go downhill from here.
I, Rose Thayer, was good and hung
over. Perhaps I was still drunk. Who could tell for sure? Certainly
not me in my state. The problem was, I didn’t remember drinking
enough to make me feel like this. Come to think of it, I couldn’t
remember much of anything at all.
Either way, things weren’t
good. That realization hit when I started to feel things. My mouth
and throat seemed as dry as a bag of cotton balls. Unfortunately,
since I’d graduated from college only a couple of years ago,
this sensation wasn’t at all new to me. I’d suffered
through
the morning
after
in the past.
Yes, I’d been down this
road before. I knew that should I attempt to move to get and then
drink the water I craved, I’d be sorry because next would come
the headache. Pain equivalent to having a screwdriver stabbed into my
brain. The headache from hell would sometimes be accompanied by
dizziness, which was always joined by nausea—reason number two
I wasn’t about to risk drinking anything.
So instead I stayed right where I
was, not quite playing dead but sure doing a good imitation. I
breathed nice and slow, shallow so I wouldn’t jar anything or
anger the hangover gods. Maybe I’d fall back to sleep. That
would be good. Riding out the rest of this hangover in an unconscious
state seemed like a pretty damned good idea to me right now.
But as always happens, I started
to think.
What had I done last night? It
must have been a pretty kick ass time that landed me in this
predicament this morning. Another thought tickled my
consciousness—where was I, how had I gotten here and who else
was here with me? Okay, perhaps those should have been my first
thoughts, but I was running a bit slow in the brain department so I
decided to give myself a pass.
I steeled my nerves for both the
pain and the possible shock and cracked one eyelid partially open. A
smoke detector blinked merrily next to a sprinkler head on the
ceiling above me. Okay, good sign. It seemed as if I’d actually
made it back to the hotel. I wiggled a fingertip and felt the
telltale scratch of a polyester bedspread beneath my nail. Definitely
hotel grade bedding.
I began to piece together the
shattered remnants of my memory. I was in New Orleans. I’d
flown in yesterday for my best friend from college’s wedding
this weekend. Last night had been her bachelorette party—which
explained a lot of my condition now.
I managed to lift my head enough
to glance down at my bottom half and not vomit. One look at the jeans
and heels I still wore indicated I’d passed out in my clothes
on top of the covers. Fine with me. I was happy to be here at all.
Though did my purse and wallet arrive with me or would I be calling
to cancel my credit card when I could finally get vertical?
As the acid backed up my throat
and added to the already foul taste in my mouth, I realized right now
I couldn’t care less if my credit card were winging its way
around the globe on the Queen Mary II with an identity thief
pretending to be me.
I flung one forearm over my eyes
and groaned.
Never again. Never, never, never
ever. From now on diet soda only. Or perhaps, maybe a light beer. But
no more Hurricanes on Bourbon Street. Ever.
This was Marci’s fault.
She’d ordered the first round. I would have been okay with just
a beer—
Crap! Marci, Jen and Beth had
been with me last night.
Unlike my possibly missing ID and
credit card, I probably should worry whether my friends had made it
back with me. Actually, Marci and Jen could be on their own, but if
I’d lost Beth during the bachelorette party I’d planned
for her, her husband-to-be would probably kill me. He was from the
deep south and in the Marines so he could do it too.
He probably wouldn’t even
need a knife or anything. Nope, he could kill me with his bare hands
and get his friends to help him dump my body in the bayou for the
gators to dispose of. No one would be the wiser.
Apparently hangovers made me
extra morbid. Or maybe it was New Orleans. There could be voodoo in
the air. How would I know? I’d never been here before. After
this weekend, I might never come here again.
I made the supreme sacrifice and
lifted my head to try and see the rest of the room. After all, I was
the maid of honor. I suppose checking to see if I’d lost the
bride was the least I could do.
There was a lump under the covers
in the other bed. Unless I’d picked up a stranger and brought
him or her home, at least one member of our party was accounted for.
“
Beth?” Wishful
thinking on my part, but I croaked the possibly missing bride’s
name as loudly as my pounding head and scratchy throat would allow,
hoping the lump would respond.
“
Ugh. Holy hell, I feel
like crap. Did I get run over by a truck last night?” Marci’s
muffled voice preceded the arm that snaked its way out from beneath
the covers.
“
I have no idea. Where are
Jen and Beth?” I braced myself on one elbow and tried not to
sway since the room seemed to be doing enough moving on its own.
“
I don’t know.”
Marci lifted the covers and peered under them. “Christ, my feet
are sore.”
Come to think of it, I was pretty
achy too, but it wasn’t my feet that were sore. It was a much
more intimate area—one that hadn’t been used in quite a
while. Not since I’d had my last steady boyfriend. Uh, oh.
“
You guys okay?”
I heard the disembodied voice
come from the vicinity of the bathroom. “Jen?”
“
Yeah. I seem to have slept
on the bathroom floor. But judging by what’s in the toilet,
that was a good thing.” There was the sound of a flush, and
then Jen stumbled out of the bathroom, holding on to the wall.
“Hurricanes don’t look as good in the toilet the morning
after.”
Phew, another one accounted for.
Now all I needed was to hear Beth’s voice and I’d be the
happiest hung over girl in the world. “Beth didn’t happen
to be in the bathroom with you, did she?”
Jen frowned. “No. She’s
not out here with you guys?”
Marci leaned over the edge of her
bed and checked the floor. “Nope. Ugh, that was a bad move.”
She pressed her hand to her head.
“
I think we lost her.”
I looked from Marci to Jen, starting to really panic now. “What
do we do?”
“
Call her family?”
Jen suggested.
I let out a snort. “And
tell them what? I got drunk and misplaced their daughter? That I
possibly left her somewhere to get killed or kidnapped?”
“
Jen or I could call. We
just have to be a little sneaky about it.” Marci glanced from
me to Jen. “One of us can call their house and pretend we’re
not with the others and ask if Beth’s there. I mean she grew up
in New Orleans. That’s why we all had to fly our asses here
from all over the country for the wedding. Maybe she went home to her
family’s house last night after we passed out.”
“
Let’s try calling
her cell phone first.” I didn’t think any one of us
currently had the capacity to lie to Beth’s parents, forget
about her Marine Corps fiancé.
“
Good idea.” Jen, who
was already standing, stumbled from the wall to the dresser where a
purse sat next to the lamp. I recognized that purse. It was mine.
That was good. One more piece of the puzzle found. When Jen pulled my
phone out of it, my hopes rose a bit higher. She squinted at the
readout, then hit a few buttons.
A vibrating in my pocket had me
jumping. I may have been moving a little slowly but a feeling of
dread descended upon me the moment Jen’s call to Beth’s
phone made my ass vibrate.
“
Crap.” I reached
beneath me and pulled out a cell phone. “Why do I have Beth’s
phone?”
“
Wait, I remember that.”
Marci held up a hand.
“
Me too!” Jen nodded,
then pressed her hand to her head and groaned.
Thank God. At least they could
remember something. “What do you remember?”
“
Beth was drunk and pissed
at John for lying about having a stripper at his bachelor party. So
you took Beth’s phone so she wouldn’t call her
ex-boyfriend in retaliation.” Marci’s words started
slowly but sped as the pieces started to fall into place.
I nodded. That did sound like
something I would do. “Okay. That makes sense.”
“
Wait. I remember more.”
Jen squinted, as if it would wring the memories out of her alcohol
soaked brain. Her gaze swung to me.
“
So do I.” Marci
stared at me now too.
I started to get a little
worried. “What?”
“
You don’t remember?”
Marci asked.
“
No.”
Crap.
I looked at Marci. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
Jen answered for them both.
“Since you’re the only one John has never met, we sent
you into his bachelor party as a spy dressed as a stripper.”
Uh, oh. This was starting to
sound familiar to me, but in a detached kind of way. Kind of like it
was the plot of a movie I’d watched only I couldn’t
remember the ending. I glanced up and found them both watching me,
wide-eyed. I glanced down at myself and noticed for the first time
that though I was in my own pants, there was a corset making my boobs
look two cup sizes larger. It was definitely stripper-worthy.
I noticed an uncomfortable
presence between my ass cheeks and wiggled a bit. Reaching down I
confirmed my suspicions. I was wearing a thong. I didn’t own a
thong. And definitely not a red lace thong that matched the corset,
which was the discovery I made when I peeked down the front of my
jeans.
“
Rose, what happened at the
bachelor party?” Jen asked.
Memories swirled like a
kaleidoscope. Music. A party. A man’s hands on my body. I
didn’t have a chance to piece it all together before a knock on
the door broke my concentration.
“
Maybe it’s Beth.”
I glanced at Jen and Marci.
Jen moved to open the door. When
she backed into the room, a man I was pretty sure I knew though I
couldn’t be sure followed her inside.