“You know what? Why don’t I go downstairs and get us some coffee? You can get dressed in peace and maybe the caffeine will clear our minds a little,” I say.
“That would be great,” she says.
I pick up my t-shirt from the bed behind me and pull it on. I get up and head for the door. “Oh and Sierra? I think we’re way past formalities. Just call me Chance.”
I’ve been telling her that since pretty much the moment she joined the company, but she’s always insisted it’s not professional to call her boss by his first name. Surely, now she’ll start though. I mean who calls their husband by his full title? I pause and wonder why I just thought this in such a casual way. Her husband?
I head downstairs to the bar. It’s only when I get there I realize I have no idea how Sierra takes her coffee. I’ve worked with her for two years and I don’t even know whether she takes milk and sugar in her coffee. That’s pretty bad.
I order a latte for me and an Americano for Sierra. I grab a couple of packs of sugar and a couple of little milk cartons. There. She can make it how she likes it. I head back up to my room.
As I walk along the corridor, a thought occurs to me. If neither of us really knows what happened last night, how do we even know we’re married? No I tell myself, we have to be. It’s way too much of a coincidence for both of us to have gone out, gotten drunk and then married total strangers. Not that Sierra isn’t a total stranger to me even though technically, I know her. I make a note to myself to take an interest in getting to know my employees more. I mean look at Sebastian. His assistant knows more about him than anyone, and he knows as much about her. I bet he knows how she takes her coffee.
It has to be Sierra that I got married to. I mean how else would we have ended up in bed together? I wonder fleetingly again what we did in bed, if we consummated the marriage, but that’s hardly what I should be focusing on right now.
I get back to my room and I reach out to let myself in, but then I let my hand fall away. What if Sierra is naked in there? Suddenly awkward, I knock on the door. I hear a gasp come from inside and I smile to myself. Sierra doesn’t know it’s me. She’s probably trying to work out how she would explain herself being in there in a state of undress if it’s one of my brothers at the door.
“It’s me,” I call.
She whips the door open.
I step inside.
She’s back in her dress from last night and she looks a bit more composed. Certainly more composed than I feel.
“I didn’t know how you take it,” I say as I hand her the coffee, the milks and sugar.
“Black with two sugars,” she smiles as she tears open a sugar packet. “I hate to break it to you, but what you drink isn’t coffee. It’s warm milk with a bit of flavoring.”
I smile at her and shake my head. “And what you drink is just sweet water,” I grin.
She finishes putting the sugar in her coffee and then she sits down on the edge of the bed. She takes a sip and winces when it burns her lip, but the heat doesn’t stop her going back for another sip. “That’s better.” She smiles. “I don’t understand these people that can face the day without coffee.”
“Me neither.” I sit down beside her on the bed and start working on my own coffee. It numbs the dull ache in my head a little. “So do you remember anything from last night?” I ask. “Tell me everything you remember, no matter how trivial it seems. We might be able to trigger each other’s memories a bit.”
“I remember checking in,” she says. “And you giving me the night off. I came up to my room, unpacked and got changed. I decided to go down the strip and visit one of the casinos.” She pauses and then she gasps. “Wait! I remember something. I was just about to leave. I picked my bag up. And then there was a knock on my room door. It was you. You said I should join you all, because being in Vegas alone was no fun.”
Her words spark a memory in me and I find myself nodding along. “Yes. That’s right. Rick, the guy who was hitting on you at check in? He told the others that I gave you the night off, and Matt said I should have invited you out with us. The others joined in, so I started to feel bad. I said I’d come up and see if you wanted to come for a few drinks. Sebastian told me to tell you not to tell Bernie, because she’d be mad if she found out you’d come along when he’d told her it was guys only.”
She laughs softly. “Well, you can tell him his secrets are safe with me. I can’t tell Bernie something I don’t remember. Even if I wanted to.”
I don’t know if it’s talking about the bits we remember of the night, or whether the coffee is finally having an effect on me, but my mind is starting to clear a little bit and I’m remembering more. “Wait, we had dinner. All of us. We went to a high end restaurant and you said it was a rip off and we should have just gone to McDonalds. I told you the food was better quality and you laughed and said it’s Vegas – it’s all crap aimed at tourists, and we did it, didn’t we? We all went to McDonalds.”
“Yes!” Sierra exclaims. “We got cheeseburgers and milkshakes. We
