Her Sworn Protector. Marie Ferrarella

Mr. Plageanos.”

      Milos sighed, sliding slightly against his black satin sheets as he shifted. “Better now that you are here.”

      Taking out her stethoscope, Kady looked at him pointedly. “And before I was here?”

      Milos spread his hands wide with a little half shrug. “Not so good.”

      Men didn’t like to talk about health. Kady knew that like so many people, Milos had harbored the thought, the dream, that he was immortal. That whatever illnesses had been visited upon his forefathers wouldn’t dare touch him. Finding out that he was wrong did not sit well with him.

      She looked at the man, not with pity or sympathy, but with understanding. No one liked to think of their own mortality.

      “I need more than that, Mr. Plageanos.” Kady paused to look over her shoulder at both Byron and Ari. The latter lumbered to his feet. “I need you two to wait outside while I examine my patient.”

      Ari went out. After a moment’s hesitation, Byron turned to do the same. “I’ll be right back,” he told his employer. “I want to talk to the driver about the car. It was making a weird noise when it turned left.”

      Milos nodded. “See why I keep him? Details. He is always thinking about details. A good man to have around.” And then he smiled and winked at Byron as he walked past him. “Maybe this time she’ll have her way with me,” he chuckled.

      Kady put the stethoscope around her neck. “I came to prevent a heart attack, Mr. Plageanos, not to give you one.” Tickled, Milos began to laugh, so hard he started coughing. She was quick to place her hand on his chest, as if to steady him. “Easy, Mr. Plageanos, easy.”

      As the laughter died and the door to the bedroom was eased shut, Kady unbuttoned the top of Milos’s silk pajamas and placed the stethoscope to his chest.

      He yelped. “That’s cold!” he cried as he shivered.

      She pulled it back immediately. “Sorry.” Kady blew on the silver surface, rubbing it against her palm to warm it up. After a beat she tried again. This time he didn’t jerk back. “Better?”

      He nodded, never taking his eyes off her face. “Better.”

      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