She knew Kristian would eventually go. But it’d be a struggle.
Sitting in the library, Kristian heard the English nurse’s footsteps disappear as she went in search of the kitchen, and after a number of long minutes heard her footsteps return.
So she was coming back. Wonderful.
He tipped his head, looking up at nothing, since everything was and had been dark since the crash, fourteen months and eleven days ago.
The door opened, and he knew from the way the handle turned and the lightness of the step that it was her. “You’re wrong about something else,” he said abruptly as she entered the library. “The accident wasn’t a year ago. It was almost a year and a half ago. It happened late February.”
She’d stopped walking and he felt her there, beyond his sight, beyond his reach, standing, staring, waiting. It galled him, this lack of knowing, seeing. He’d achieved what he’d achieved by utilizing his eyes, his mind, his gut. He trusted his eyes and his gut, and now, without those, he didn’t know what was true, or real.
Like Calista, for example.
“That’s even worse,” his new nightmare nurse shot back. “You should be back at work by now. You’ve a corporation to run, people dependent on you. You’re doing no one any good hiding away here in your villa.”
“I can’t run my company if I can’t walk or see—”
“But you can walk, and there might be a chance you could see—”
“A less than five percent chance.” He laughed bitterly. “You know, before the last round of surgeries I had a thirty-five percent chance of seeing, but they botched those—”
“They weren’t botched. They were just highly experimental.”
“Yes, and that experimental treatment reduced my chances of seeing again to nil.”
“Not nil.”
“Five percent. There’s not much difference. Especially when they say that even if the operation were a success I’d still never be able to drive, or fly, or sail. That there’s too much trauma for me to do what I used to do.”
“And your answer is to sit here shrouded in bandages and darkness and feel sorry for yourself?” she said tartly, her voice growing closer.
Kristian shifted in his chair, and felt an active and growing dislike for Cratchett. She was standing off to his right, and her smug, superior attitude rubbed him the wrong way. “Your company’s services have been terminated.”
“They haven’t—”
“I may be blind, but you’re apparently deaf. First Class Rehab has received its last—final—check. There is no more coming from me. There will be no more payments for services rendered.”
He heard her exhale—a soft, quick breath that was so uniquely feminine that he drew back, momentarily startled.
And in that half-second he felt betrayed.
She was the one not listening. She was the one forcing herself on him. And yet—and yet she was a woman. And he was—or had been—a gentleman, and gentlemen were supposed to have manners. Gentlemen were supposed to be above reproach.
Growling, he leaned back in his chair, gripped the rims on the wheels and glared at where he imagined her to be standing.
He shouldn’t feel bad for speaking bluntly. His brow furrowed even more deeply. It was her fault. She’d come here, barging in with a righteous high-handed, bossy attitude that turned his stomach.
The accident hadn’t been yesterday. He’d lived like this long enough to know what he was dealing with. He didn’t need her telling him this and that, as though he couldn’t figure it out for himself.
No, she—Nurse Hatchet-Cratchett, his nurse number seven—had the same bloody mentality as the first six. In their eyes the wheelchair rendered him incompetent, unable to think for himself.
“I’m not paying you any longer,” he repeated firmly, determined to get this over and done with. “You’ve had your last payment. You and your company are finished here.”
And then she made that sound again—that little sound which had made him draw back. But this time he recognized the sound for what it was.
A laugh.
She was laughing at him.
Laughing and walking around the side of his chair so he had to crane his head to try to follow her.
He felt her hands settle on the back of his chair. She must have bent down, or perhaps she wasn’t very tall, because her voice came surprisingly close to his ear.
“But you aren’t paying me any longer. Our services have been retained and we are authorized to continue providing your care. Only now, instead of you paying for your care, the financial arrangements are being handled by a private source.”
He went cold—cold and heavy. Even his legs, with their only limited sensation. “What?”
“It’s true,” she continued, beginning to push his chair and moving him forward. “I’m not the only one who thinks its high time you recovered.” She continued pushing him despite his attempt to resist. “You’re going to get well,” she added, her voice whispering sweetly in his ear. “Whether you want to or not.”
CHAPTER TWO
KRISTIAN clamped down on the wheel-rims, holding them tight to stop their progress. “Who is paying for my care?”
Elizabeth hated played games, and she didn’t believe it was right to keep anyone in the dark, but she’d signed a confidentiality agreement and she had to honor it. “I’m sorry, Mr. Koumantaros. I’m not at liberty to say.”
Her answer only antagonized him further. Kristian threw his head back and his powerful shoulders squared. His hands gripped the rims so tightly his knuckles shone white. “I won’t have someone else assuming responsibility for my care, much less for what is surely questionable care.”
Elizabeth cringed at the criticism. The criticism—slander?—was personal. It was her company. She personally interviewed, hired and trained each nurse that worked for First Class Rehab. Not that he knew. And not that she wanted him to know right now.
No, what mattered now was getting Mr. Koumantaros on a schedule, creating a predictable routine with regular periods of nourishment, exercise and rest. And to do that she really needed him to have his lunch.
“We can talk more over lunch,” Elizabeth replied, beginning to roll him back out onto the terrace once more. But, just like before, Kristian clamped his hands down and gripped the wheel-rims hard, preventing him from going forward.
“I don’t like being pushed.”
Elizabeth stepped away and stared down at him, seeing for the first time the dark pink scar that snaked from beneath the sleeve of his sky-blue Egyptian cotton shirt, running from elbow to wrist. A multiple fracture, she thought, recalling just
