LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER THREE

      ZOE set the table while he watched her. The little girl was watching him out of the corner of her eye, not meeting his gaze directly. Table done, she turned to a corner desk holding a computer. The machine looked like something out of the Dark Ages, big, cumbersome and ugly. She checked the Internet, waiting until the Khryseis information downloaded—seemingly by slowboat from China.

      But finally the websites in Khryseis were on the screen. By the look of the bookmarks, she and Elsa spent a lot of time browsing them.

      He tentatively showed her where he lived on the island—or where he’d lived as a child. She reacted with silent politeness.

      He checked the other bookmarks for the island. They were marine sites, he saw. Research articles about the island.

      Worth noting.

      ‘So you and Elsa spend a lot of time studying…fish?’ he ventured and got a scornful look for his pains.

      ‘Echinoderms.’

      Right. Good. What the hell were echinoderms?

      And then Elsa was back. Same uniform as before—shorts and faded shirt. She was tugging her curls back into a ponytail. Still she wore no make-up, and without the suncream her freckles were more pronounced. Her nose was peeling and her feet were still bare.

      She walked with a slight limp, he noted, but it was very slight. A twisted ankle, maybe? But that was a side issue. He wasn’t about to focus on an ankle when he was looking at the whole package.

      She was so different from the women in the circles he moved in that her appearance left him stunned. Awed, even.

      He’d implied she was dishonest. There was nothing in this place, in her dress, in anything in this house, that said she was taking advantage of Zoe. His investigator had shown him Christos’s financial affairs. If they were both living totally on Christos’s life insurance…

      ‘How much outside work do you do?’ he said, carefully neutral, and Elsa pulled up short.

      ‘You mean how much of my obviously fabulous riches are derived from honest toil and how much by stealing from orphans?’

      He had to smile. And, to his relief, she returned a wry smile herself, as if she was ordering herself to relax.

      ‘I’m not accusing you in any sense of the word,’ he assured her. ‘What’s in front of my eyes is Zoe, in need of your care, and you, providing that care. Christos’s life insurance wouldn’t come close to paying for your combined expenses.’

      ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

      ‘So tell me.’

      She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but Christos never spoke of you, as a cousin or as a friend. As far as I know, neither Christos nor his mother ever wanted to have anything to do with anyone from Khryseis. How can my finances have anything to do with you?’

      ‘I do want to help.’

      ‘Is that right?’ she said neutrally. She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. Look, can we eat? I can’t think while I’m hungry and after a morning on the beach I could eat a horse.’

      She almost did. There was cold meat and salad, and freshly baked bread which she tipped from an ancient bread-maker. She cut doorstop slices of bread and made sandwiches. She poured tumblers of home-made lemonade, sat herself down, checked Zoe had what she needed—the sandwich she’d made for Zoe was much smaller, almost delicate in comparison to the ones she’d made for herself and for him—and then proceeded to eat.

      She ate two doorstop sandwiches and drank three tumblers of lemonade, while Zoe ate half a sandwich and Elsa prodded her to eat more.

      ‘Those legs are never going to get strong if they’re hollow,’ she teased, and Zoe gave her a shy smile, threw Stefanos a scared glance and nibbled a bit more.

      She was trying to eat. He could see that. Was his presence scaring her?

      The idea of frightening this child was appalling. The whole situation was appalling. He was starting to have serious qualms about whether his idea of Zoe’s future was possible.

      Except it must be. He had to get this child back to Khryseis. Oh, but her little body…

      It didn’t take his medical qualifications to realise how badly this child was damaged. The report he’d read had told him that four years ago Christos, his wife and their four-year-old daughter had been involved in a major car accident. Christos had died instantly. Amy, his wife, had died almost two weeks later and Zoe, their child, had been orphaned. No details.

      There was a story behind every story, he thought, and suddenly he had a flash of what must have happened. A camper van crashing. A fire. A death, a woman so badly burned she died two weeks later, and a child. A child burned like her mother.

      He knew enough about burns to understand you didn’t

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