Page 6 of Morally Black Betrothal

I took a deep breath. Of course she wouldn’t understand. If there wasn’t anything in it for her, there was no reason to stay.

She’d never even gone with me to lay flowers at Mom’s grave.

“I’ll meet you,” I said. “But not until I’m done with work here, okay? It’s not an emergency, is it?”

“Not exactly, but?—”

“Good. Because after I’m done at the hospital, I have a shift at the bar.” I picked at an invisible bit of lint on my scrubs. “I’m glad you’re in town. We really need to talk about Dad, and?—”

“Fine, sure, whatever. I’ll see you at the bar after your shift. We’ll wait for you outside.”

We. Of course, Kylie was with her. So, not only was Selena racing into town like she was in the Indy 500, but she also didn’t have a place to stay now that she was here, despite having a four-year-old whose sleep needs wouldn’t be served by waiting for her auntie to finish work at two or three in the morning.

I should have known.

Do not let her into your apartment. You know what’s going to happen. She’s going to take it over, run up your utility bills, ruin the one sanctuary you have…

“Come ten minutes before instead,” I said with a sigh. “I start at six. I’ll give you the keys to my place, and then I’ll see you at home.”

“Awesome, see you then.”

The call ended as abruptly as it had started. I found myself staring at my phone, as if she might be bothered to ring back and end the call the way sisters should.

“You’re welcome. Love you too. Can’t wait to see you.” There was only alittlebitterness in my voice as I slid my phone back in my pocket.

I returned to Mr. Black’s room and went back to my solitaire game with a little more intensity than was necessary.

“Maybe you should be grateful you don’t have any family here today, Niall,” I told him as I slapped cards on the tray. “If they’re anything like my sister, you’re better off with me. Now, would you like me to tell you how to maintain a starter? It’s really easy. They are surprisingly hard to kill. Kind of like you.”

“What the fuck?”

A deep voice boomed through the little hospital room, drowning out the monitors. A man strode into the room, his eyes frantic and wild as they landed on my patient with the fear I’d witnessed all too many times.

“Jesus. Dad.”

Something about hearing that deep voice turn to a croak turned my heart inside out.

Family, then. Possibly one of the four children.

Though this man was very,verygrown.

He was also the most beautiful person I had ever seen.

Not in a classical way, per se. His appeal reminded more of some of the older buildings in Boston, like the nineteenth-century townhouses that lined the Common and the streets of Cambridge. The ones that were gorgeous in their restoration, butstill bore marks from the past that could never be completely erased—and were better for it.

He dripped money, but seemed slightly wild just the same. His tailored suit couldn’t quite mask the tense stance of a fighter, and his angular face, carved with high cheekbones, was marred with a scar just over his right brow and a nose that had to have been broken at least once in his life. A shock of untamable dark reddish-brown hair brushed his ears, and a stubble shadowed his jaw despite the fact that it wasn’t even close to five o’clock. The custom clothes, the diamond-encrusted cufflinks, the mirror-polished shoes were all very nice, but they couldn’t quite mask the sense that there were very sharp claws beneath the layers of refinement, ready to unsheathe at the slightest provocation.

He blinked, and his eyes, so green they were almost black, immediately became the most remarkable thing about him. They darted over his father’s state with quick intelligence and a well of emotion flashing in their depths.

Then they turned on me.

“Who the fuck are you?”

His cold words were laced with fury and a thick Boston accent that felt so at odds with the suit and tie. If I hadn’t been frozen in place, I would have hidden behind Mr. Black’s slumbering form. Instead, I jumped, sending playing cards into the air like confetti.

I swallowed hard as I gathered them back together under his steely gaze. In my experience, there was only one response for a grieving family member. It happened to be the same one I used to calm my sister when she threw tantrums or to ease my father back from the brink of his own misery.

I set the cards on the tray, then held up my palms and flashed the gentle smile I’d honed so carefully in my twenty-eight years. “Hello. I’m Simone Bishop. And I’m here to help.”