“I’d be glad too. The current dating pool makes amoebae look sexy. Anyway, I’m visiting someone.”
“It’s not exactly visiting hours, Kitty.”
“I work here!”
With a tut, she shoved a visitor’s pass at me. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Stay the boss-ass bitch you are, Shaz.”
Hearing her chuckle as I wandered toward the bank of elevators, I hit the floor for the sharks—the people who paid millions to treat this like a hotel/hospital.
I’d only visited this area by chance a couple years ago, when a VIP in the ER had been transferred to this section and had left her delicious Birkin bag by accident in my department.
That was how you knew you were rich—you could lose a Birkin bag and not care about its location.
Attempted suicide be damned, I’d give a fuck where my $100k ostrich Birkin was. Hell, I’d want to be buried with the SOB.
I watched the monitor as the elevator drifted toward the high-rollers’ section and mumbled, “Have to pry that bastard out of my cold, dead hands.”
That earned me a perplexed look from some stranger I shared the elevator with, but I stared straight through them.
Ever since the Birkin incident, I’d visited this floor a few times a week and it was why I’d noticed Custanzu Valentini in one of the private rooms.
When I arrived, I flashed the pass at the nurses’ station and earned myself a wolf whistle from one of the girls on duty.
“Are you overdressed, or are we underdressed, Kitty?”
I winked. “You could never be underdressed, Nina.”
Heading to the swankiest of swank suites with a wave, I knocked on the door and pushed inward.
When Currau Valentini’s head rocked on his pillow away from what had to be a gripping rerun ofCSI: New York, his eyes widened.
I swiped a hand over my silhouette—the skintight, ankle-length, racer-neck dress that split at the back, tumbled curls, strawberry makeup, and hooker heels. “Yes, Currau, I wasted this on one of your gender.”
His nose wrinkled at the bridge when I slapped my purse at his bedside. “Wasted?”
His voice always sounded like he had a pound of sawdust down his larynx—croaky as fuck. I had it on good authority that he spoke to nobody, his family included, and I’d only managed to get him to talk when he’d asked me to shut up one day.
‘Now I know you can speak,’ I’d told him that fateful evening when I’d delivered the Birkin to the nurse’s station and had slid into this room to avoid Douchebag David’s eight hands. ‘Don’t think you can get me to leave by being silent.’
And a friendship had been struck.
“Gah, that idiot totally wanted a placeholder.”
The old man’s brow furrowed. “Like at a table?”
“Yes, Currau.” I clicked my fingers at him. “I’m upgrading this from a date-three question to a date-one Q&A. Men are such schmucks. You have this one chick who’s your dream girl, but she won’t have you or she’s taken, so you’ll fuck around until she’s available.” I motioned at my dress. “Do I look like the type of woman you can do that to?”
“Porca troia.He actually admitted that he was waiting for someone?”
“Well, I could tell.” I stuck two fingers in front of my eyes. “You guys can lie but never here.”
Thin fingers plucked at his blankets. “How many times? Date a Sicilian. They’ll tell you these things to your face.”
“It’s not like I can narrow that down on my dating apps, Currau. ‘MUST. BE. SICILIAN.’ Do you know how small a demographic that is anyway? What can I do? Haunt Little Italy?” Plunking my ass on the side of his bed, I held out a hand, and he passed me the chocolate pudding cup he’d saved for me. “Still can’t believe what your niece is paying for this suite and they give you this crap to end your meal. I’m pretty sure you can buy them at Costco.”
“It’s not a hotel. At least it’s silverware and not a plastic spoon.”
