by Sarah Morgan
‘She’s married.’ He spat the words out impatiently, as if she should have known. ‘Her name is Kovac now.’
‘Kovac?’ The cogs in her mind freewheeled before crunching to a grinding halt before a petite blonde-haired girl with massive insecurities. Surely not. But the first name—she could have shortened it…
‘Are you telling me that Pia Kovac is your sister?’
‘Pia.’ He sniffed as his eyes lit up with a ferocious gleam. Of course. He should have known she’d erase anything from her life that reminded her of her Greek father. ‘So you do know her. You’ve known of her all along.’
‘I had no idea she was your sister. You two look nothing alike.’
That’s because she’s not my sister, he thought with a dose of bitterness, still getting used to the idea. Instead he said, ‘Olympia is the child of my father’s second wife.’
Who was obviously not of Greek descent, Jade thought, scratching to find any similarities between Loukas and Pia in either looks or personality that might have warned her the two were related. What had happened to his mother? She knew nothing about his family though she’d told him so much of her own. Why was that?
‘So when is she scheduled for surgery? I will come and collect her from the clinic before it.’
Loukas’s question broke into her thoughts, his assumption that he could just walk in and take control of his sister clashing violently with everything she knew about doctor-patient ethics.
‘Now, hang on! I can’t discuss that with you. Matters between a patient and her doctor are confidential.’
‘But you will talk to her about this surgery. Tell her not to go ahead!’
‘I’ve already spoken to her, and she wants to go ahead with the procedures.’ She didn’t have to tell him that she’d already tried to talk the girl out of the breast augmentation operation. Jade wasn’t comfortable with the extent of the surgery, or the way that Grace seemed almost too eager to accede to her requests. ‘And while I can advise her, ultimately it’s Pia’s choice—not mine, and most definitely not yours. Like it or not, you just have to respect that.’
‘You can’t let her do this. You have to stop her!’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t see how I can stop her. I don’t understand why I should even try.’
‘She will not be operated on by that woman! I won’t allow it.’
‘Then why don’t you tell her that? She’s your sister after all. Why don’t you just go and stop her yourself?’
He spun around and faced the window, looking out to sea. He was like a storm cloud in the otherwise clear night sky. He was crashing waves and dangerous reefs and she’d been well and truly shipwrecked. And she’d all but steered a course for those rocks herself, ensuring she’d be smashed to smithereens.
But maybe she wasn’t his only victim. Maybe she wasn’t all he’d wrecked.
‘I get it now,’ she said to the strong lines of his back. ‘You two don’t get along.’
‘She’s not talking to me at the moment. That’s all.’
‘So little sister doesn’t like being bossed around and bullied by big brother?’
‘It’s not like that,’ he said, facing her. ‘I was trying to stop her doing something stupid. I tried to stop her marrying that celebrity disaster, but she wouldn’t listen to me—and now she’s stuck with him.’
‘So it is like that! I can believe it. Well, I’ve got news for you. I don’t like being pushed around either! Whatever this communication problem you have with your sister, you work it out. Don’t expect me to do your dirty work.’
She turned and let her eyes scour the floor, looking to pick up her scattered clothes. His hand closed around her arm like an iron manacle.
‘I won’t have her so much as touched by that woman!’
She wrenched back on her arm, but it was stuck firm in his grip. ‘You’re mad,’ she sneered through bared teeth. ‘I don’t understand what your problem is with plastic surgery in general or with Grace in particular, but you’re wrong—you’re way off base.’
‘Am I? So the drug-taking, her operating stoned, the scarring she’s caused—the deaths!—all of that is off base too?’
‘What?’
‘You can’t pretend you don’t know. You can’t pretend you haven’t heard the stories—the botched surgeries, the hushed-up case histories.’
‘None of what you’re saying is true—none of it.’
‘Forget it, Jade. You don’t have to defend her now. I’m giving you the chance to come clean and tell the real story. Get it off your conscience.’
‘Okay. I do know the real story. I work with the woman. I live with her! And what I know is that you shouldn’t believe every piece of dirt you hear about a person. So you’ve heard rumours—they’re nothing more. How do you think Grace could keep operating if any of those stories were true?’
‘No!’ He let go his grip on her arm and slammed his open palm down on the dressing table. ‘You don’t get out of this with that rumour crap. I know those stories are real. I know what she’s like—what she’s done.’
‘And how do you know? What the hell is she supposed to have done that could be so damning? And don’t give me any more rumours or hearsay—I want to hear what you think you know. Just what has Grace done that is so damned bad?’
He loomed over her, looking larger and more dominating right now than she’d ever seen him. She saw the spark of fire in his eyes, saw his lips peel back from his teeth. He reminded her of a wild animal going in for the strike—and for the first time tonight she felt truly afraid.
‘You want to hear what she did? You really want to know? Then listen to this—because it’s no rumour. Your whiter-than-snow doctor murdered my fiancée.’
The room spun and whirled—or was it just her mind, overcome with Loukas’s crazy claims? She had to get away—he was too close, too imposing. The way his eyes flashed with something that looked like triumph—it had to be a form of madness, whatever was eating him up, and she was much too close to his madness here. She veered away, seeking distance from his wild eyes, putting the bed between them.
‘Do you realise what you’re saying? You’ve just accused Grace of murder. You can’t be serious.’
‘I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life. She did it. She murdered Zoë. And I’m going to make damned sure she doesn’t get the same opportunity with Olympia.’
His chest heaved under his dark and dangerous visage, his broad naked chest expanding rapidly with each sharp intake of air, emphasising the width of his shoulders and the power of his muscular torso all over, all the way down, down to where the skin disappeared beneath the denim. She swallowed.
Even now, even while he was accusing someone she looked up to more than anyone else in the world, even despite all that, she could hardly tear her eyes away. He looked like some supremely powerful predator, ready to spring, ready for the kill.
She battled to drag her eyes higher, refusing to think about what lay under that worn denim, what they’d been doing before the craziness had begun. Because if he was the hunter, then she was the prey—and he’d already feasted tonight. She’d as good as served herself up to him.
And yet, from what his words revealed, it had never been about her. Everything had been about Grace from the start! He’d been at the Gala not to meet Jade, as he’d said, but to feed some sick vendetta.
And she’d been caught up in his madness, had fallen victim to his rich magnetism, letting him keep her in his bed, letting him make love to her all those times.
Sickness pressed urgently in her throat—a vile taste that rebuked her for her own naïveté. How could she ever have believed she was falling in love with him? She’d been so gullible, so pathetically flattered by this man’s interest. Just like before. Just like the last time. And this time she’d even managed to convince herself that he cared for her too.
Maybe she was the one with the problem.
Maybe she was the one who was mad.
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His eyes trapped hers and flared, as if he knew what she’d been thinking, what she’d been trying to forget, and knew that she didn’t have a chance.
She willed her mouth to speak, to form the words that would indicate her silence had been more productive than merely used for a close inspection of his body.
‘I’m sorry for what happened to your fiancée—’
He snorted his disbelief.
‘Hear me out!’ she insisted, holding up her hand to stall his protest. ‘I don’t care if you don’t believe me, but if you expect me to believe you, you’d better start making some sense. How is Grace supposed to have carried out this so-called “murder”?’
For a few moments he said nothing, continuing to stare across at her with such potent force that she could almost feel the power of his hurt. Could it be true? Could Grace have done something so terribly wrong that a patient had died? She didn’t want to believe it, but at the back of her mind the increased frequency of legal action against her, the numerous settlements, all niggled at her certainty.
No. It couldn’t be true.
‘Well?’ she pressed. ‘You’re making serious accusations against the most famous cosmetic surgeon in the country. Surely you don’t expect me to believe you simply because you’ve managed to engineer me into your bed? You need to give me something concrete. What is it you think happened? What makes you so sure that Grace killed Zoë?’
His eyes glinted as they narrowed, a muscle twitching in his cheek. Then he jammed his fingers into his jeans pockets and turned towards the window, gazing out over the sea. It was some seconds more before he spoke, and when he did his voice was as flat and calm as the moonlit ocean beyond.
‘It was four years ago. We were due to get married in three months. Zoë had never been overweight, but she’d started dieting for the wedding. Everyone—her family and I—thought it was just normal dieting, that she was just trying to look good for the wedding pictures. We didn’t realise how thin she’d become. And still she kept on exercising for hours every day, hardly eating a thing.
‘We were worried she was becoming anorexic. I told her that I couldn’t marry her as she was; she was too fragile and she needed to get help. When she told me she’d booked into a clinic, I thought it was to get treatment for her condition.’
He sighed, pushing back his shoulders and stretching his neck. ‘But instead she’d booked in for liposuction. And your wondrous Dr Della-Bosca made sure she’d never have a weight problem again.’
Chills crawled down her spine. ‘Something went wrong?’
‘You could say that. She was released after the surgery, and she checked herself into a hotel because she couldn’t go home as she was. Progressively, she felt worse and worse. She rang the clinic twice, only to be told each time that the pain was normal. The third time she rang it was Della-Bosca herself who told her to stop wasting her time.’
Breath hissed through Jade’s teeth. Surely Grace would never say such a thing to a client in pain?
‘In desperation,’ Loukas continued, ‘she called her mother. She was out of it for much of the time, but she told her everything. By the time her mother and the paramedics found her, she was dead.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Jade whispered. ‘And you believe that if she’d received attention earlier she might have lived?’
‘I know she would have lived. And I know that it was Della-Bosca who killed her. The liposuction needle apparently pierced her abdominal cavity. It might have been peritonitis on the death certificate, but it was Della-Bosca who was holding that needle. It was Della-Bosca who murdered my Zoë.’
‘It was an accident. A horrible accident.’
He wheeled around. ‘No! It was no accident. She operated on a woman so wasted she could hardly stand up by herself. And instead of helping her, like she should have done, she fed Zoë’s self-doubts and insecurities. She should have turned her away, but there was no way she would turn away Zoë’s money.’
‘I can’t believe it. Grace isn’t like that. You make out like she’s some kind of mercenary. And she would never have operated if she hadn’t thought it was necessary.’ Yet even as Jade said the words she remembered another girl, another batch of operations scheduled, and the twinge in the back of her mind that something wasn’t quite right. What had Grace said? Satisfy her now and you’ll have a client for life. Had that been her reasoning with Zoë? So that even if she’d been anorexic Grace would have agreed to her request for surgery?
She shivered. It was too ghastly, too far-fetched. Grace wasn’t like that, not normally. And it had been Grace herself who had saved Jade from a life not worth living. She’d been the one person who’d made her life possible when everyone else had given up trying.
‘Loukas, I know you’re hurting, but you have to remember the good work Grace does—look at the foundation, and the countless children’s lives that will be improved. Just think of those children—no more will they have to hide their features in shadow; no more will they have to look at the ground so they avoid the looks from passers-by. Do you have any idea how that feels? To see the shock, then the horror and, finally, worst of all, the pity.
‘It’s Grace who gives those children a reason to wake up in the morning, to feel good about themselves and to hold their heads up high. So she might not be perfect—who is?—but I can’t believe this picture you paint of her.’
She shook her head, this time with more authority. ‘I can’t believe it. Besides, there must have been an inquest. That would have cleared everything up.’
He snorted his disapproval. ‘Zoë was dead. Della-Bosca’s lawyers made the most of her slinking off to a hotel—said that she’d brought about her own death.’
‘And the phone calls?’
‘The hotel records supported the three calls to the clinic, but her mother’s evidence wasn’t accepted. They claimed Zoë would have been too close to death by the time she was found to have been coherent. And the clinic gave a totally different account of those calls, as you’d expect. In the end nobody was found responsible. No charges were laid.’
After the turbulence of their earlier argument, the air now seemed strangely still around them. Loukas stood there, watching her, his eyes almost empty, and in spite of the way he’d treated her, in spite of the way he’d used her to get to Grace, Jade’s heart still wanted to go out to him.
It was no wonder he felt so strongly. He’d been cheated of his bride three months from their wedding—cheated of their future together. But nothing he could do would bring her back—least of all attacking Grace. He had to be made to see that.
She moved across the room to him, laying her hand on his arm.
‘You went through a dreadful experience. It’s not surprising that you have trouble accepting the findings, but you have to. You have to move on. Zoë would have wanted that.’
He shrugged off her hand as if it was some annoying insect and moved past her, picking up a shirt and hauling it on.
‘I don’t have to accept the findings. I know Grace killed Zoë and I’m going to make sure she doesn’t touch my sister—with or without your help.’
‘This is crazy, Loukas. Grace is nothing like you’re making out. You don’t know her like I do. She’s a good woman.’
‘If she’s such a good woman,’ he said, his words assured as he surveyed her, his eyes as polished and hard as the sheet of glass in the window behind him, ‘then why the hell did she attempt Zoë’s operation while she was stoned?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE reeled from this latest accusation, fury turning molten inside her. Enough of trying to placate the man. This was going too far!
‘That’s an outright lie!’
‘Is it? Were you there?’
‘Were you?’ she snapped back.
He smiled. ‘Nice try. No, but I have proof. I tracked down the theatre nurse who was there that night. She confronted Della-Bosca over her drug use after that operation and found herself unemployed and on the receiv
ing end of a considerable amount of cash to ensure she took a very long holiday and kept her mouth shut.’
‘If this is true, why didn’t she go to the police?’
‘She was too scared—of Della-Bosca and the police. I tracked her down, only to have her die in an interstate collision the day before I was to meet with her and take her to the police.’
‘And that, I take it,’ she said, unable to resist the opportunity to show his case up for the fanciful supposition it was, ‘was down to Grace as well?’
His eyes told her he half believed it.
‘You’re not serious?’
He shook his head. ‘There’s no proof.’
‘And likewise you have no proof that Grace is guilty.’
‘I believe what the theatre nurse told me.’
‘You’d rather believe someone who wasn’t honest enough to go to the police in the first place? Doesn’t that tell you something about her from the start? I don’t believe what she said for a minute. Grace doesn’t do drugs. Don’t you’d think I’d know if she did? How can it be that I’ve never heard any of these stories?’
‘Because your charming doctor friend has paid to hush them up, same as she’s done every time. Paid to hush up the woman rendered blind after a failed eyelid lift. Paid to hush up the girl who caught her snorting a line of coke in her office. Paid—’
‘Stop it!’ Jade yelled, her hand clutching the air. ‘I don’t believe it—any of it.’
He had her arms in his hands. He’d crossed the room so fast she hadn’t realised. ‘You don’t believe it? Or you just don’t like to think your cosy partner has been found out? It must be some team effort, covering up for all her mistakes. Is that why you had to invent the foundation—to provide more funds for her drug use, to provide more hush money to cover up her mistakes?’
She was thrashing in his arms, trying to get free. ‘I’m not listening to any more of this. Let me go!’