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She frowned slightly. “Your heart’s still jumping around.” How long had that been going on? she wondered.
The exam was thorough but swift. Milos had even bought his own personal EKG machine so that he didn’t have to go into her office to have his heart monitored. And during the exam, Kady asked a few pertinent questions in between dodging blatant invitations they both knew he would never act on and neither would she. Her questions encompassed his lifestyle, what he’d been eating lately, what he’d been doing. His diet remained relatively unchanged. His activity, however, had heightened.
She listened and watched his face as Milos told her about the other company, Skourous Shipping, the one that was breathing down his neck and had been for quite some time now. Alexander Skourous and his grandson, Nicholas, were trying to steal his customers any way they could, he told her, the veins in his neck thickening as he spoke.
The rivalry between Milos Plageanos and Alexander Skourous, whose families had both originated from the same small fishing village in the south of Greece, had been steadily heating up over the past twenty-five years. In the last five, it had gotten especially ugly. Matters were not helped by the fact that Milos’s second wife had eloped with him a week before she was set to marry Alexander.
“This is not over the woman,” Milos assured her. “For that, Alexander should have sent me a thank-you note because I saved him from a terrible shrew. But he is trying to steal my oldest customer from me. My very first one,” he emphasized. “Theo is gone now, but his grandson…”
He waved his hand, unable to finish his sentence because the words he wanted to use to describe what he thought of his old friend’s grandson weren’t fit for her ears. In some ways, Milos was very much a courtly gentleman and she appreciated it.
Milos sat up, buttoning his pajama top as she put her stethoscope away. “I am a sentimental man—”
“Not to mention a superstitious one,” Kady pointed out, pausing to write something down on her prescription pad.
“Superstition is healthy.” Leaning back against his pillows again, he eyed the pad suspiciously. “It tells us where our place is.”
“I want you to stop thinking about the business so much and start thinking about you.”
“I am the business and the business is me,” he said with finality, then he nodded toward the pad. “What is that you are writing?”
“A prescription.” She tore off the top page and held it out to him.
He made no effort to take it from her. “I have no time to go to the hospital.”
“Good.” Opening his hand, she placed the paper in it, then pushed his fingers closed again. “Because you’re not going.”
The pain had been real. And frightening. It was clear he didn’t believe himself out of the woods yet. “I’m dying?”
She laughed warmly, placing her hand on top of his and patting it reassuringly. “You’ll outlive me, Mr. Plageanos.”
He frowned, shaking his head. “I have no wish to live in a world without beauty.”
The man would be a player on his deathbed, she thought. Kady rolled her eyes. “I have to be getting back.” She nodded at the paper in his hand. “Have one of your people fill that.”
He looked at it, but without his glasses all he saw were wavy lines on a page. “What is this?”
She told him the name of the medication, then explained. “It’s for your anxiety attack—the next time you have one.”
An indignant expression came over his face. “I was not attacked by anxiety.” Making a fist, he brought it in contact with his chest. “My heart attacked me.”
She knew what the problem was. Men like Milos associated anxiety with weakness. They didn’t understand that at times, the mind and body had wills of their own that had nothing to do with what a person might want or expect.
“Not this time. What you had was an anxiety attack—with a touch of heartburn.” Lowering her voice, she leaned over his bed. “Stop eating all these rich Greek dishes, Mr. Plageanos. And cut down on the pastries.” She indicated the plate of half-finished confection that was on his other nightstand.
“Stop eating baklava?” The instruction brought a look of mock distress to his face. “But eating baklava is like going to heaven.”
“You’ll be booking passage to there permanently if you’re not careful.” Closing her medical bag, she picked it up. “You have the constitution of a man half your age, but you have to take care of yourself—otherwise all this—” she waved around the huge room “—gets wasted.”
He looked at the paper in his hand, his expression dubious. “Anxiety?”
“Anxiety,” she affirmed.
Folding the paper again, he drew in his breath, resigned. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“No,” she agreed, not knowing if he was ordering her or requesting it of her. In any event, she had her ethics. “I can’t. I’m your doctor. This is just between you and me, remember? Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to wash up before I leave.” She glanced over her shoulder at the door. With Byron gone, she had no way of knowing which way to turn. “Where can I—?”
“No need to go anywhere, use mine.” He gestured toward the sumptuous bathroom at the far end of the room. The door stood open, and from where she stood, Kady could just about make out the black onyx tiles. The man certainly did like black, she mused.
Nodding, she started across the room.
Chapter 2
The master bathroom was larger than her bedroom back at the apartment. As a matter of fact, Kady thought, taking a long look around, this bathroom looked larger than her living room. Not to mention that the gold sink and tub fixtures probably cost more than a year’s rent.
She shook her head as she turned the handles and proceeded to wash her hands. What did a man need with a gold swan spouting out an arc of water into a black onyx tub? She dried her hands on towels that felt softer than whipped cream.
Moving over to the tub, Kady paused to look at it more closely. A huge stained-glass window directly behind it cast beams of blue and gold into the room. The tub itself was round and roomy enough for three wide-hipped people to sit comfortably without touching.
Opulence run amok, she couldn’t help thinking.
It seemed like such a waste. The money that all this had cost would have been put to better use funding another clinic or helping to get people off the streets and on their feet again.
Kady straightened the towel she’d used and backed away. It was Milos’s money, she told herself, and she had no right to impose her own set of values on him. The man should be free to enjoy it. Heaven knew he seemed to enjoy very little these days, focusing exclusively on his company and obsessing about it the way he did. It wasn’t healthy. At his age, a man as well off as Milos should have no reason to stress himself out to the point of having an anxiety attack. He should be into the coasting part of his life.
And then she smiled. She sincerely doubted if she’d be willing to just coast at seventy. She’d still want to work, still want to make a difference. She supposed that was what kept the man going, a sense of purpose. Work, if you didn’t hate it, was what kept you young. And Milos just told her that he considered the business his life and—
About to go back into the bedroom, her hand on the doorknob, Kady paused, cocking her head. Trying to make out a sound. She could have sworn she heard a series of popping noises coming from somewhere within the bedroom. If she didn’t know better, she would have said they sounded like firecrackers.
Kady frowned slightly. All right, what was Milos trying to pull now? She knew he thought himself invincible, but she wanted him to spend the rest of the day in bed. Anxiety attacks were not heart attacks, but they could certainly feel that way to the body, and after that kind of an ordeal, Milos’s body deserved to rest.
Now that she’d told Milos that the situation wasn’t actually dangerous, he was probably champing at the bit to get back into the game of besting Skourous and his company, making sure the other man had no opportunity to get the better of him.
She sighed, shaking her head.
With a reprimand on her tongue, all set for release, Kady opened the bathroom door.
And stopped dead.
There was someone else in the room. Someone dressed all in black, right down to the gloves on his hands and the shoes on his feet.
The collar of the turtleneck pullover was raised up high, covering his mouth and his nose. Even his eyes seemed to be coal black. The only thing of vague color was the gun in his hand. Gray. The gun’s barrel appeared strangely disproportioned.
And then she recognized it for what it was. A silencer. The intruder had a silencer at the end of the gun barrel.
He’d come to kill someone.
He had killed someone, she realized in the next moment. That was what the noise had been. Bullets fired through a silencer.
Milos was lying in bed the way she’d left him, except that now there was a pool of blood on his wide chest. The sight of another figure, crumpled on the floor, registered less than a beat later.
Byron?
No, whoever it was was built smaller than the man who had accompanied her to the penthouse.
And then her heart felt as if it was constricting into a hot ball within her chest.
Ari.
Ari was lying there at the foot of Milos’s bed. The other bodyguard must have rushed in when he heard the “pop” and had died trying to protect Milos.
Where was Byron? Was he lying somewhere, hurt? Dying? Dead? Kady felt her throat tightening more and more.
All these thoughts flew through her brain a beat before she pulled back into the bathroom, afraid that the killer would see her, too.
Her heart racing, Kady resisted the temptation to close the door again. Any unnecessary movement or sound might catch the killer’s attention, make him come closer to investigate.
But she couldn’t just stand here, frozen. Not knowing. What if he came after her?
With her heart racing faster than she thought humanly possible, Kady angled one of the three adjacent medicine cabinet mirrors to see what the killer was doing. To her surprise, he unscrewed the silencer from the gun barrel, tucking the former into his pocket and the latter into the back of the waistband of his slacks and then smoothed down his collar. As if appearance counted.
When he turned toward the door, she caught a clear glimpse of him, his image reversed in the mirror. Tall, his slight build appearing thinner because of the black clothing he wore, the killer looked young. Maybe twenty-eight, maybe less. He had a mop of curly black hair that looked as if a comb could get lost there.
She had no idea who he was. And then she saw his eyes. They weren’t looking at her, but even at this distance, she’d never seen eyes so dead before.
She had to struggle to keep from shivering, from making a sound.
The killer paused at the door, listening. Kady held her breath. Had he heard her? She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t tell. Very carefully, she shrank back in the bathroom, making sure that her image wasn’t thrown back at him in the mirrors.
In the recesses of the bathroom, she could no longer see what was happening. Her insides felt like jelly. She counted off seconds in her head, waiting. Mentally reciting a fragment of a prayer the sisters at St. Catherine’s had taught her.
Finally the door opened and then closed again. As she eased back into range in the bathroom, her eyes were glued to the mirror. The outer door remained closed. It looked as if the shooter was gone.
Only then did she let out the breath she’d been holding. The next moment Kady shot out of the bathroom and rushed first to check the man on the floor. One look told her that Ari had been shot where he stood. She would have expected him to be disposed of the moment he’d entered the room. What was he doing clear across here, on the other side of Milos’s bed?
Probably following the killer’s orders, hoping to stay alive, she thought. Just like her.
Ari was dead. Had probably been dead even before he’d hit the floor. There was a single bullet hole in the center of his forehead.
She didn’t remember crossing to the bed. The next thing she knew she was bending over Milos, searching for a pulse. Willing him to live. At first she couldn’t find any evidence of a pulse, but then, squeezing her fingers hard over the man’s thick wrist, she thought she detected the faintest hint of erratic rhythm.
He was alive.
She needed to keep him that way.
Her bag was still in the bathroom where she’d taken it, but she didn’t want to leave Milos’s side.
Her heart froze in midbeat as she saw his electric-blue eyes flutter open. Milos’s lips moved, but she couldn’t hear anything. Leaning in closer, she felt the faint brush of his breath against her cheek and thought she heard him say, “Skourous,” but she couldn’t have sworn to it.
“Don’t talk,” she ordered. “We’ll get you to the hospital. You’re going to be all right, Milos,” she promised hoarsely. “You’re going to be all right.”
Kady wasn’t even aware that she was crying, or that her tears were falling on the old man’s face. She saw his lips move again, forming one word. “Liar.”
And then his eyes fluttered shut.
Horror filled her. The next moment she’d gone on autopilot. She began applying CPR in a last-ditch effort to get Milos’s heart beating again, however faintly. She wasn’t about to let him die right in front of her.
Coming back from downstairs, Byron didn’t think anything of it when he didn’t see Ari standing guard outside Milos’s bedroom. He’d just assumed that the examination was over and the man he shared bodyguard duties with had gone back into the room.
But when he knocked and heard Kady scream for him, his entire body immediately became alert. Throwing the doors open, he pulled out the weapon he wore holstered beneath his jacket.
A swift visual sweep of the room told him that there was no one else there. Only Ari on the floor, dead from the looks of it, and his employer in the bed, with the doctor frantically working over him.
Frantically trying to tug Milos away from the jaws of death.
“What the hell happened?” he demanded, crossing to her.
Her hair was falling into her face. Kady shook her head, trying to get it out of her eyes. She didn’t look in his direction as the sound of his voice registered. She just kept going. Fighting.
“I don’t know. Someone got in here. When I opened the bathroom door, he’d already shot both of them.”
With amazing speed, Byron checked all the corners, making sure that there was no one else hiding in the recesses. He went back to her.
“Who?” he demanded.
“I don’t know.” Her voice cracked as she kept on pushing at the chest that made no movement on its own, kept blowing into a mouth that was already beginning to feel cool beneath hers.
Distancing himself, Byron processed the scene. Her efforts were futile. There was too much blood. The bullet had been straight to Milos’ chest. Straight to his heart, he guessed. The old man never stood a chance.
He cursed silently that he hadn’t been here. That he’d been downstairs, talking to the mechanic Milos kept on the payroll to care for his twelve automobiles, instead of guarding Milos.
“He’s dead, Doctor.”
The low, calm voice seemed to rumble at her from some faraway place. She shook her head adamantly, never looking up, never stopping.
“No. No, he’s not.” She’d found a pulse. He’d tried to speak. She couldn’t just let Milos slip away.
And then she felt strong, firm hands on either side of her shoulders, lifting her up, drawing her away from the bed. From the man she couldn’t save.
Kady wanted to push the bodyguard away, wanted to go back and fight a fight she knew in her heart she’d already lost. But Byron was too strong for her. His grip was gentle but firm, holding her in place.
Suddenly, as if all the air had gone out of her, Kady felt weak, dizzy. The room began to spin. For a second it threatened to pull itself into darkness, leaving her on the outside to fend for herself. It was through sheer grit that she fought her way back from the blurred boundaries, fought back the nausea.
Trying to get a grip, Kady drew a deep breath into her lungs before she looked up at the man holding her. She saw concern in his eyes. Or maybe she just imagined it.
Either way, she felt like an idiot. She was made of sterner stuff than this. “Sorry. I don’t usually fall apart like this.”
“I don’t see any pieces,” he replied crisply. She felt fragile, like the scent of cherry blossoms. He hesitated backing off. “If I let you go, do you think you can stand?”
