“I can’t. Not only have I’ve nowhere to go—as you must know, it’s too dark to take a donkey back down the mountain.”
“No, I don’t know. I’m blind. I’ve no idea what time of day it is.”
Heat surged to her cheeks. Heat and shame and disgust. Not for her, but him. If he expected her to feel sorry for him, he had another thing coming, and if he hoped to intimidate her, he was wrong again. He could shout and break things, but she wasn’t about to cower like a frightened puppy dog. Just because he was a famous Greek with a billion-dollar company didn’t mean he deserved her respect. Respect was earned, not automatically given.
“It’s almost four o’clock, Mr. Koumantaros. Half of the mountain is already steeped in shadows. I couldn’t go home tonight even if I wanted to. Your doctors have authorized me to stay, so I must. It’s either that or you go to a rehab facility in Athens. Your choice.”
“Not much of a choice.”
“No, it’s not.” Elizabeth picked up one of the prescription bottles and popped off the plastic cap to see the number of tablets inside. Three remained from a count of thirty. The prescription had only been refilled a week ago. “Still not sleeping, Mr. Koumantaros?”
“I can’t.”
“Still in a lot of pain, then?” She pressed the notebook to her chest, stared at him over the portfolio’s edge. Probably addicted to his painkillers now. Happened more often than not. One more battle ahead.
Kristian Koumantaros shifted in his wheelchair. The bandages that hid his eyes revealed the sharp twist of his lips. “As if you care.”
She didn’t even blink. His self-pity didn’t trigger sympathy. Self-pity was a typical stage in the healing process—an early stage, one of the first. And the fact that Kristian Koumantaros hadn’t moved beyond it meant he had a long, long way to go.
“I do care,” she answered flatly. Elizabeth didn’t bother to add that she also cared about the future of her company, First Class Rehab, and that providing for Kristian Koumantaros’s medical needs had nearly ruined her four-year-old company. “I do care, but I won’t be like the others—going soft on you, accepting your excuses, allowing you to get away with murder.”
“And what do you know of murder, Miss Holier-Than-Thou?” He wrenched his wheelchair forward, the hard rubber tires crunching glass shards.
“Careful, Mr. Koumantaros! You’ll pop a tire.”
“Good. Pop the goddamn tires. I hate this chair. I hate not seeing. I despise living like this.” He swore violently, but at least he’d stopped rolling forward and was sitting still while the butler hurriedly finished sweeping up the glass with a small broom and dustpan.
As Kristian sat, his enormous shoulders turned inward, his dark head hung low.
Despair.
The word whispered to her, summing up what she saw, what she felt. His black mood wasn’t merely anger. It was bigger than that, darker than that. His black mood was fed by despair.
He was, she thought, feeling the smallest prick of sympathy, a ruin of a great man.
As swiftly as the sympathy came, she pushed it aside, replacing tenderness with resolve. He’d get well. There was no reason he couldn’t.
Elizabeth signaled to Pano that she wanted a word alone with his employer and, nodding, he left them, exiting the library with his dustpan of broken glass.
“Now, then, Mr. Koumantaros,” she said as the library doors closed, “we need to get you back on your rehab program. But we can’t do that if you insist on intimidating your nurses.”
“They were all completely useless, incompetent—”
“All six?” she interrupted, taking a seat on the nearest armchair arm.
He’d gone through the roster of home healthcare specialists in record fashion. In fact, they’d run out of possible candidates. There was no one else to send. And yet Mr. Koumantaros couldn’t be left alone. He required more than a butler. He still needed around-the-clock medical care.
“One nurse wasn’t so bad. Well, in some ways,” he said grudgingly, tapping the metal rim of his wheelchair with his finger tips. “The young one. Calista. And believe me, if she was the best it should show you how bad the others were. But that’s another story—”
“Miss Aravantinos isn’t coming back.” Elizabeth felt her temper rise. Of course he’d request the one nurse he’d broken into bits. The poor girl, barely out of nursing school, had been putty in Kristian Koumantaros’s hands. Literally. For a man with life-threatening injuries he’d been incredibly adept at seduction.
His dark head tipped sideways. “Was that her last name?”
“You behaved in a most unscrupulous manner. You’re thirty—what?” She quickly flipped through his chart, found his age. “Nearly thirty-six. And she was barely twenty-three. She quit, you know. Left our Athens office. She felt terribly demoralized.”
“I never asked Calista to fall in love with me.”
“Love?” she choked. “Love didn’t have anything to do with it. You seduced her. Out of boredom. And spite.”
“You’ve got me all wrong, Nurse Cratchett—” He paused, a corner of his mouth smirking. “You are English, are you not?”
“I speak English, yes,” she answered curtly.
“Well, Cratchett, you have me wrong. You see, I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
Blood surged to Elizabeth’s cheeks. “That’s quite enough.”
“I’ve never forced myself on a woman.” His voice dropped, the pitch growing deeper, rougher. “If anything, our dear delightful Calista forced herself on me.”
“Mr. Koumantaros.” Acutely uncomfortable, she gripped her pen tightly, growing warm, warmer. She hated his mocking smile and resented his tone. She could see why Calista had thrown the towel in. How was a young girl to cope with him?
“She romanticized me,” he continued, in the same infuriatingly smug vein. “She wanted to know what an invalid was capable of, I suppose. And she discovered that although I can’t walk, I can still—”
“Mr. Koumantaros!” Elizabeth jumped to her feet, suddenly oppressed by the warm, dark room. It was late afternoon, and the day had been cloudless, blissfully sunny. She couldn’t fathom why the windows and shutters were all closed, keeping the fresh mountain air out. “I do not wish to hear the details.”
“But you need them.” Kristian pushed his wheelchair toward her, blue cotton sleeves rolled back on his forearms, corded tendons tight beneath his skin. He’d once had a very deep tan, but the tan had long ago faded. His olive skin was pale, testament to his long months indoors. “You’re misinformed if you think I took advantage of Calista. Calista got what Calista wanted.”
She averted her head and ground her teeth together. “She was a wonderful, promising young nurse.”
“I
