Chapter 3 #2
I’d offered to find her an entry-level position in the investment division, but she had turned me down.
Since then, she had only appeared at Blackguard for mandatory board meetings and spent the rest of her time gracing the gossip columns, touring the world’s most expensive beaches, or messing around with the West Coast music scene.
“My darling!” Violeta shoved her way to Dad’s bedside, forcing Ronan to vacate the chair so she could play the worried wife. “Oh, my baby. What happened? How could I have missed it?”
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 trouble again.
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.
The nurse seemed to recognize it too because she shrank into her seat.
“My name is Brendan Black. I’m the COO of Blackguard Holding and the eldest son of one of your patients, Niall Black. Know who that is?”
The nurse nodded, looking almost afraid. Of course she did. Everyone in Boston knew who Dad was.
“Good. Then you’ll know I mean it when I say that I will write you a check for a million dollars right the fuck now if you can tell me about the candy striper who was in my father’s room when I arrived and where she went.”
The nurse’s mouth fell open. So did her coworker’s mouth when he joined us.
“I-I—” The first nurse sounded like a skipping record.
“He’s talking about Simone,” said the second out of the corner of his mouth.
“That’s right,” I said, swallowing back my relief. That was one mystery solved: I wasn’t actually crazy. “But you don’t get a million dollars just for a name. I already knew that. Price just went down, but I’ll be generous. What else can you tell me?”
The nurses traded shocked glances when I removed three hundred-dollar bills from my wallet and set them on the counter.
“She’s cute,” the second one offered as he reached over and pocketed the cash. “Kind of frigid, if you want to know the truth.”
“Cameron, you’re just saying that because she’s turned you down like ten times for a date.” The first nurse looked like she wanted to clock him in the face for snaking the cash.
Cameron, otherwise known as the nurse whose teeth I suddenly wanted to knock out, just shrugged. “I’m just telling the truth. She’s hot and all, but Icy Bambi.” He shook his head. “I can’t stop trying, though. Apparently, hot Mother Teresa with nice legs and a tight ass is my kryptonite.”
It took everything I had not to rearrange this asshole’s face.
Instead, I pushed another hundred across the counter. “Your million-dollar payday just disappeared. But you both get another one of these for every detail, and you can keep your job if you tell me where I can find her.”
The details came quickly after that as both nurses vied for the rest of the cash in my wallet.
Her full name was Simone Bishop. She was twenty-eight.
She lived in the shitty part of Jamaica Plain but was originally from Vermont.
She worked full time slinging drinks at a bar in Back Bay and volunteered another three days per week at the hospital, offering support to lonely patients like my father.
“We don’t know much about her other than that,” Cameron finished, glancing at the first nurse for confirmation. “But if you want, I can call CARE and find out—”
“Don’t bother.” I pushed off the desk. “It’s nothing. She was nothing.”
It was the biggest lie I ever told.
“Are you sure?” asked the other, in a tone that said she would definitely still like a shot at that million dollars. She’d managed to pocket two hundred-dollar bills by knowing Simone was from Vermont and that she loved Joni Mitchell. All other details were courtesy of the asshole.
Everyone was the same. Give them a whiff of money, and they were sharks in a feeding frenzy.
But before I could answer, Liam popped out of Dad’s room. “Brendan. The doctor’s here.”
I turned and straightened my tie. “It’s about fuckin’ time.”