CHAPTER THREE
COSIMA and Andreas. Kristian was surprised his English Nurse Cratchett knew their names, as it was Cosima and Andreas who haunted him. And for very different reasons.
Kristian shifted restlessly in bed. His legs ached at the moment. Sometimes the pain was worse than others, and it was intense tonight. Nothing made him comfortable.
The accident. A winter holiday with friends and family in the French Alps.
He’d been in a coma for weeks after the accident, and when he’d come out of it he’d been immobilized for another couple weeks to give his spine a chance to heal. He’d been told he was lucky there was no lasting paralysis, told he was lucky to have survived such a horrific accident.
But for Kristian the horror continued. And it wasn’t even his eyes he missed, or his strength. It was Andreas, Andreas—not just his big brother, but his best friend.
And while he and Andreas had always been about the extreme—extreme skiing, extreme diving, extreme parasailing—Andreas, the eldest, had been the straight arrow, as good as the sun, while Kristian had played the bad boy and rebel.
Put them together—fair-haired Andreas and devilish Kristian—and they’d been unstoppable. They’d had too much damn fun. Not that they hadn’t worked—they’d worked hard—but they had played even harder.
It had helped that they were both tall, strong, physical. They’d practically grown up on skis, and Kristian couldn’t even remember a time when he and Andreas hadn’t participated in some ridiculous, reckless thrill-seeking adventure. Their father, Stavros, had been an avid sportsman, and their stunning French mother hadn’t been just beautiful, she’d once represented France in the Winter Olympics. Sport had been the family passion.
Of course there had been dangers, but their father had taught them to read mountains, study weather reports, discuss snow conditions with avalanche experts. They’d coupled their love of adventure with intelligent risk-taking. And, so armed, they had embraced life.
And why shouldn’t they have? They’d been part of a famous, wealthy, powerful family. Money and opportunity had never been an issue.
But money and opportunity didn’t protect one from tragedy. It didn’t insure against heartbreak or loss.
Andreas was the reason Kristian needed the pills. Andreas was the reason he couldn’t sleep.
Why hadn’t he saved his brother first? Why had he waited?
Kristian stirred yet again, his legs alive and on fire. The doctors said it was nerves and tissue healing, but the pain was maddening. Felt like licks of lightning everywhere.
Kristian searched the top of his bedside table for medicine but found nothing. His nurse must have taken the pain meds he always kept there.
If only he could sleep.
If he could just relax maybe the pain would go away. But he wasn’t relaxing, and he needed something—anything—to take his mind off the accident and what had happened that day on Le Meije.
There had been ten of them who had set off together for a final run. They’d been heli-skiing all week, and it had been their next to last day. Conditions had looked good, the ski guides had given the okay, and the helicopter had taken off. Less than two hours later, only three of their group survived.
Cosima had lived, but not Andreas.
Kristian had saved Cosima instead of his brother, and that was the decision that tormented him.
Kristian had never even liked Cosima—not even at their first meeting. From the very beginning she’d struck him as a shallow party girl who lived for the social scene, and nothing she’d said or done during the next two years had convinced him otherwise. Of course Andreas had never seen that side in her. He’d only seen her beauty, her style, and her fun—and maybe she was beautiful, stylish, but Andreas could have done better.
Driven to find relief, Kristian searched the table-top again, before painfully rolling over onto his stomach to reach into the small drawers, in case the bottles had been put there. Nothing.
Then he remembered the bottle tucked between the mattresses, and was just reaching for it when his bedroom door opened and he heard the click of a light switch on the wall.
“You’re still awake.” It was dear old Cratchett, on her night rounds.
“Missing the hospital routine?” he drawled, slowly rolling onto his back and dragging himself into a sitting position.
Elizabeth approached the bed. “I haven’t worked in a hospital in years. My company specializes in private home healthcare.”
He listened to her footsteps, trying to imagine her age. He’d played this game with all the nurses. Since he couldn’t see, he created his own visual images. And, listening to Elizabeth Hatchet’s voice and footsteps, he began to create a mental picture of her.
Age? Thirty-something. Maybe close to forty.
Brunette, redhead, black-haired or blonde?
She leaned over the bed and he felt her warmth even as he caught a whiff of a light fresh scent—the same crisp, slightly sweet fragrance he’d smelled earlier. Not exactly citrus, and not hay—possibly grass? Fresh green grass. With sunshine. But also rain.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked, and her voice sounded tantalizingly near.
“I never sleep.”
“In pain?”
“My legs are on fire.”
“You need to use them, exercise them. It’d improve circulation and eventually alleviate most of the pain symptoms you’re experiencing.”
For a woman with such a brusque bedside manner she had a lovely voice. The tone and pitch reminded him of the string section of the orchestra. Not a cello or bass, but a violin. Warm, sweet, evocative.
“You sound so sure of yourself,” he said, hearing her move again, sensing her closeness.
“This is my job. It’s what I do,” she said. “And tell me, Mr. Koumantaros, what do you do—besides throw yourself down impossibly vertical slopes?”
“You don’t approve of extreme skiing?”
Elizabeth felt her chest grow tight. Extreme skiing. Jumping off mountains. Dodging avalanches. It was ridiculous—ridiculous to tempt fate like that.
Impatiently she tugged the sheets and coverlet straight at the foot of the bed, before smoothing the covers with a jerk on the sheet at its edge.
“I don’t approve of risking life for sport,” she answered. “No.”
“But sport is exercise—and isn’t that what you’re telling me I must do?”
She looked down at him, knowing he was attempting to bait her once again. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his chest was big, his shoulders immense. She realized that this was all just a game to him, like his love of sport.
He wanted to push her—had pushed her nurses, pushed all of them. Trying to distract them from doing their job was a form of entertainment for him, a diversion to keep him from facing the consequences of his horrific accident.
“Mr. Koumantaros, there are plenty of exercises that don’t risk life or limb—or cost an exorbitant amount of money.”
“Is it the sport or the money you object to, Nurse?”
“Both,” she answered firmly.
“How refreshing. An Englishwoman with an opinion on everything.”
Once