Lost with Jace

"Excuse me, Miss." I groaned, dragging my sleepy eyes open. The sunlight burned through my eyelids, making me squint as I lifted an arm over my face to block it out. "Miss." The voice cut back in, assaulting my ears as I tried to shove myself upright. "Yeah, yeah, give me a second," I muttered, squeezing my eyes shut before prying them open and squinting into the glare. It took me about two seconds to realise I wasn't in the villa, and I definitely wasn't indoors. The breeze and the rock-hard bench explained that much. I glanced around and nothing looked familiar, not even the policeman looming over me. Brilliant. "Um, hi," I said, trying to get to my feet and instantly feeling the world tilt. Bile climbed my throat, ready to come up with last night's dinner. Throwing up on a policeman's shoes would really top off whatever mess I was already in. Thinking about topping and cake was not helping when I already felt nauseous. "Miss, will you wake your partner, please? We need to talk." Unsurprisingly, he sounded very Italian, and I had to work to untangle the English through his accent. "Okay." I hadn't a clue who he meant by partner until I looked down and saw Jace stretched out on the bench behind where I'd been sitting. Or lying. Except he was shirtless, scruffy-looking, and sporting a huge bruise beneath one eye. When I lowered my gaze, I figured out where his shirt had gone. I could only hope we hadn't done anything the night before that landed us in trouble for indecent exposure or whatever the charge would be. At least Jace's shirt was covering my top half, so only my legs were on show. I did what the policeman asked, only nowhere near as gently as he probably would have. I smacked Jace across the bare chest and his eyes flew open straight away.