No Attachments - By Tiffany King Page 0,9

the counter and take her right there in front of everyone.

I reached over for my cellphone to check the time and was shocked when I realized I had been lying there, thinking about her for the last hour. I reached over and flipped the light switch, plunging the room into darkness. As I contemplated my next move, the sane part of me knew I should call my client first thing in the morning and hand over Ashton's location, but the slightly insane side considered the possibility of waiting a few days to see if I could flush out why she had run away. The irrationality of this thought wasn't lost on me. It shouldn't matter why she'd run off. I was paid to locate her, plain and simple. It wasn't my business to ask questions. The fact that I had the sudden urge to hunt down my client instead, and bury my fist in his face for ever hurting her, shook me to the core. It had been years since a woman had this effect on me.

Insanity. That's all it was. I would turn her in tomorrow. It was the only way to get my mind back on track. I had no problems keeping the women I dated at arm's length for the last six years. I wasn't about to screw that up over some girl I'd been tracking for the last three weeks.

Chapter 3: What happened last night?

Ashton

My head felt like I was in hell with a herd of elephants in tap shoes. Dragging the pillow off my head, I looked around to find my room empty, but someone was insistently pounding on the front door.

"Oh, mother of all things holy, shut up, and stop the goddamn pounding," I squawked out as I attempted to sit up. The sound of my own voice made me cringe and want to curl up into a ball as needles of pain shot through my head. Stumbling to my feet, I grabbed the pair of yoga pants and t-shirt I'd left draped over the foot of my bed the previous day. I nearly fell over trying to pull them on before I shuffled my way to the front door of my rental cottage. I threw open the door, ready to poke the eyes out of the offending knockers.

"Took you long enough. You were supposed to text us, you bitch. We were worried sick," Tressa yelled, making me cover my ears with agony as my eyes watered in pain. My stomach flipped, making its own displeasure glaringly obvious. Lurching past my two astonished friends, I stumbled to the bushes that bordered the front of my cottage and expelled all the liquor I'd consumed the previous evening. My stomach muscles clenched as I continued to heave even after there was nothing left to come out. Ironically, the last time this happened, I swore I'd never puke again. The waves of nausea were not foreign to me. I had spent more time kneeling before a toilet puking than I liked to think about. Of course, those circumstances were different, and the poisons in my blood stream at that time were worlds apart. If this is what resulted from a night of drinking, I was out.

"Holy shit, that's a lot of puke," Tressa said behind me as Brittni handed me a cold rag to mop up my face. "I think you might have drunk a little too much," she said.

"Oh, you think, ole wise one?" I sniped. "Can we use our indoor voices?" I asked, holding a finger in front of my lips for emphasis.

"You have a headache?" Tressa asked, snickering behind me as I stumbled back into my cottage and sank down on the couch.

"A headache I could handle. This is a freaking jackhammer," I mumbled, letting my head fall back against the cushions of the couch. "Please tell me why I drank so many shots?" I moaned.

"More importantly, how was the sex?" Tressa interrupted impatiently.

My eyes flew open at her words. Stumbling to my feet, I hurled my way across the living room to my bedroom. I swept my eyes around the room, checking to see if I'd missed his presence in my mad bolt out of the room earlier.

"Are you expecting him to crawl out from under the bed, or maybe jump out of your wardrobe?" Brittni asked dryly, peering over my shoulder at the large wardrobe that served as the only closet in the whole cottage. I had cringed at first when I