Page 12 of Morally Black Betrothal

I had to roll my eyes. Violeta was almost never present unless cameras were around to capture it. That had been the case since Dad finally put a ring on it. I had a feeling he preferred it that way.

“I’m guessing they don’t allow cell phones at the spa?” Liam muttered.

“Botox,” Ronan corrected him. “Her forehead hasn’t moved in fifteen years.”

“There was a show in the tents.” Violeta batted a hand toward them. “I had no service.”

“Ah, fashion week,” Ronan said. “How could we forget?”

“They take our cell phones. I didn’t know until it was over.”

“And you?” I turned to Shea, who was avoiding everyone else’s curious gazes. “Were you with her?”

Shea shook her head, though she flicked a glance toward Mac. “I was…with someone else. We just got back from St. Tropez.”

Ah. Different yacht, then. Probably not ours. And Mac, no doubt, had been forced to rescue her from some kind of troubleagain.

Eventually I was going to have to have a talk with Shea about growing the fuck up.

“Have you established a rate yet?” Ronan asked her. “I hope for your sake, or maybe his, he put a rubber on it.”

Outside the door, Mac jerked.

Shea’s cheeks turned a bright shade of red. “Shut up,Ronan. How was your last trip to Vegas? Did you come down with gonorrhea this time or chlamydia?”

“My trip was fan-fucking-tastic, Shea-by baby. Got my dick sucked and everything, and I’m proudly clap-free.”

While the two of them continued to bicker over who, exactly, was the most debauched Black sibling, I slipped toward the exit.

“I’m going to check on the doctor,” I lied to Owen.

His dark eyes narrowed. “You know, you’re not the Boy Scout everyone thinks you are,” he called after me.

I ignored him. Just like I always did.

I darted out to the nurse’s station, looking for any sign of the phantom girl. Once again, I felt like an addict.

I had my vices, of course. A weekly pour on a Saturday night. A little black book full of dependable numbers I could call when I was in need of a short, safe distraction.

But this was more than casual sex or twenty-year-old Scotch.

In just a few minutes, this stranger had made me feel…different. I needed to know why.

“I’m looking for someone,” I said to one of the nurses behind the circle-shaped desk in the center of the ICU. “A girl. She said she was a hospital volunteer.”

The nurse in front of a computer held her finger up while she listened to the phone held to her ear.

I frowned and turned to the other nurse next to her. “Excuse me, I?—”

“I’m sorry, I have to see a patient,” he cut me off, then slipped away and down the hall.

“I’m telling you,” said the one still on the phone. “It was orange, girl, not red.”

I glared, then reached a hand over the barrier and pressed the button on the handset that would end the call.

The nurse jerked and stared up at me. “What the—sir, you can’t just?—”

“Let me make some things clear,” I cut her off in the tone my staff would recognize as what they heard just before the shit hit the fan.