Her Sworn Protector. Marie Ferrarella

spent a good part of the night in the E.R., attending Wanda Kessler.

      According to Wanda’s husband, she had taken herself off her medication. Lucky for Mrs. Kessler, the woman had only had a minor heart attack. Just enough to put the fear of mortality into her.

      After doing a thorough workup on her, Kady had signed the woman in overnight for further observation. Leaving the hospital, she’d just gotten in and dropped facedown on her bed in the apartment she shared with two of her sisters, Natalya and Tatania—now that Sasha had gotten married—when her cell phone had started to ring. For the space of a minute, she’d had an overwhelming desire to ignore it, but she didn’t. She never did.

      Bringing the cell phone close to her, she’d mumbled hello only to hear Byron’s deep, authoritative voice rumbling in her ear. She knew what that meant. He was on his way to get her.

      Kady barely had time to get off the bed and put her shoes back on before Byron was at the door. She’d stumbled out the door, asking questions about Milos’s condition. He’d responded by saying that was what she was for, to assess the man’s condition. Byron had helped her on with her coat as they made their way to the elevator. She remembered thinking that for a large man, he had a very light touch.

      “How is he?” she asked again once the coffee became part of her system.

      Byron was a man of few words, most of them noncommittal. Technically, she’d known him for two years and still knew nothing beyond what she saw, which, while very easy on the eyes and very pleasing, didn’t satisfy her need to know.

      “He wants to see you,” Byron replied.

      She suppressed an annoyed sigh. “That’s not answering my question.”

      His wide shoulders rose and fell in a vague movement. Rather than look away, his deep blue eyes met hers. “I’m not the doctor, you are.”

      They were playing games, and this morning, she wasn’t in the mood for it. While she appreciated Milos’s generosity, she didn’t like the idea of being regarded as a puppet. He pulled the string; she danced. The image didn’t appeal to her.

      “You know, maybe Mr. Plageanos should have a doctor on staff,” she suggested.

      Byron looked mildly amused. “He offered you the job but you wouldn’t take it.”

      And she still wouldn’t. To her, being a doctor had never been about the money, it had been about the helping. About the good she could do. And about the fact that Mama was very proud of having so many doctors in the family. The last thought made her smile.

      “I’m not the only cardiologist in New York.”

      Byron regarded her for a long moment. In his experience, she was a rarity. A beautiful woman who didn’t try to use her looks for gain. Most women in her position would have had some kind of arrangement with Plageanos that did more than repair faulty wiring and buy X-ray machines for a Spanish Harlem clinic.

      “You know Mr. Plageanos. He wants what he wants and nothing else will do.” His lips moved into a slight smile. It was all she’d ever seen him capable of. “He’s paying you a big compliment.”

      She knew that in Milos’s mind, wanting her for his personal doctor was the ultimate compliment. “I appreciate that. But being a one-patient doctor is not the way I see my life going. Mr. Plageanos can afford to have anyone he wants attending him.” She thought of the clinic, of the defensive, frightened faces she came across almost every time she went. There was so much anger there, so much resentment at the world that had coldly passed them by. Charity seemed like just that: charity. “A lot of people can’t even afford to buy aspirin.”

      His expression gave nothing away. “Not going to get rich that way, Doc.”

      To which she smiled and shook her head. He was wrong there. “There are a lot of definitions of rich, Byron.”

      Byron merely nodded his dark head. Crossing his ankle over his thigh, he sat taking quiet measure of her.

      She felt as if she was under a microscope. What was he thinking about her? she couldn’t help wondering. She decided to turn the tables on him.

      “What about you?” she asked, edging closer on her seat. “Don’t you want to do anything different with your life than be at Mr. Plageanos’s beck and call?”

      “I’ve done ‘different,’” he told her, his tone dismissing whatever that “different” entailed. “This suits me fine.”

      He paused for a moment, and she had the feeling he was debating saying something more. But whatever it was, she never got to hear it because he didn’t open his mouth.

      And then, before she could try to coax anything further from him, they were pulling up before the massive structure that Milos had put his name to when he bought the apartment building.

      Each time she saw the building, a monument to the marriage of glass and steel, she was that much more impressed. And that much happier that she’d grown up in her parents’ small two-story house in Queens. The forty-two-story building was a testimony to Milos’s taste and his money. The lobby boasted original paintings from Milos’s private collection. Nonetheless, it felt cold, distant.

      They stepped into the elevator, and Byron pressed for the penthouse apartment. Kady swallowed twice, equalizing the pressure in her ears, before they reached their destination.

      A white marble floor stretched out before them when the elevator doors finally opened. Waiting for her to get out first, Byron shortened his stride to match hers.

      “I’d need a road map just to find my way around,” she murmured, still as overwhelmed by the layout as she had been the first time she’d been brought here.

      “You get used to it,” Byron replied with a dismissive shrug.

      The way he said it had her wondering. “Do you live on the premises?” Her words mingled with the echo of her heels on the marble floor. It had a mournful sound about it.

      Byron looked down at her before answering. “Mr. Plageanos likes his people close by.”

      Close was not a word she would have associated with the premises. God only knew how many people could actually live within the structure without once bumping into one another. “Doesn’t your wife mind not having a place of her own?”

      She thought she heard a slight sound, something akin to a short laugh, escape his lips. “She might. If I still had one.”

      Still. Which meant he’d had one once. Kady pressed her lips together. She’d done it again. Even though she tried to curb it, she had a habit of probing; she always had. Her father had told her more than once that it would get her in trouble one day.

      “It is good to having a mind that asks question,” he’d said in his heavily accented voice. “Not always so good to having a mouth that is doing the same thing.”

      As usual, her father was right. Kady was about to apologize but didn’t get the chance to follow through. They’d reached Milos’s bedroom and Byron was knocking on the ornate door. The next moment, she heard a faint voice telling them to come in.

      The room and the bed dwarfed him. Milos was not a little man in any sense of the word, but he appeared so in the custom-made double-king-size bed placed in a room that looked as if it could comfortably hold the population of a small third-world country. A giant hulk of a man she recognized as Milos’s other bodyguard, Ari, was standing quietly off to one side.

      “You should have been here sooner,” Milos told her. A giant paw of a hand was dramatically placed over his heart. He tightened his fingers around it. “I didn’t think I could hold on until you came.”

      Kady came forward, smiling at him, aware of the game. “And yet, you did.” Her smile deepened as she assessed his color and the way he drew air into his lungs. Both were favorable. “I’m very glad.”

      Milos’s eyes shifted to the man behind her.