LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      ZACH HAD RECEIVED the message he had been waiting for while he was stuck in traffic. Sometimes a first-hand knowledge of the back streets of Athens, combined with a flexible attitude to rules, came in useful.

      Zach possessed both.

      For some of his formative years he had lived by his wits on those streets, finding it infinitely preferable to living with the grandmother who had resented having her daughter’s bastard foisted on her, and the drunken uncle who had perfected bullying into an art form.

      It took him just under half an hour and a few probable speeding fines to reach the hospital. He remained oblivious to the covetous stares that followed his long-legged progress from his car and through the building. It took him three more minutes to reach the intensive care unit where Alekis Azaria had spent three days in a medically induced coma after being successfully resuscitated following his last cardiac arrest.

      Zach, as the closest thing the older man had to either friend or family, had been there the previous day when they’d brought him out of the coma. Despite the warnings that he had chosen not to hear, he had fully anticipated that Alekis would simply open his eyes.

      The consultant had explained this sometimes happened but admitted there was a possibility that Alekis might never wake up.

      Given the fact that the Greek shipping tycoon’s presence here was on a strict need-to-know basis, it was no surprise that the same consultant who had issued this gloomy prognosis was waiting for him now, at the entrance to the intensive care unit.

      The medic, used to being a figure of respect and authority, found himself straightening up and taking a deep steadying breath when the younger, tall, athletically built figure approached.

      Zach didn’t respond to the older man’s greeting; instead, head tilted at a questioning angle, he arched a thick dark brow and waited, jaw clenched, to hear what was coming.

      ‘He has woken and is breathing independently.’

      Impatient with the drip-feed delivery Zach could sense coming, he cut across the other man, impatience edging his deep voice.

      ‘Look, just give it to me straight.’

      Straight had never been a problem for Zach. His ability to compartmentalise meant personal issues did not affect his professional ability.

      ‘There seems to be no problem with Mr Azaria’s cognitive abilities.’

      A flicker of relief flashed in Zach’s dark eyes. Intellectual impairment would have been Alekis’s worst nightmare; for that matter it would have been his own.

      ‘Always supposing that he was fairly...demanding previously?’ the doctor tacked on drily.

      Zach gave a rare smile that softened the austere lines of his chiselled, handsome features, causing a passing pretty nurse to walk into a door.

      ‘He is accustomed to being in charge. I can see him...?’

      The cardiologist nodded. ‘He is stable, but you do understand this is early days?’ he cautioned.

      ‘Understood.’

      ‘This way.’

      Alekis had been moved from a cubicle in the intensive care unit to a private suite of rooms. Zach found him propped up on a pile of pillows. The events of the last week had gouged deep lines in the leathered skin of his face and hollowed out his cheeks, but his voice still sounded pretty robust!

      Zach stood in the doorway for a moment, listening, a smile playing gently across his firm lips.

      ‘Have you never heard of human rights? I’ll have your job. I want my damned phone!’

      The nurse, recovering her professional poise that had slipped when she’d seen Zach appear, lifted a hand to her flushed cheek and twitched a pillow, but looked calm in the face of the peevish demand and stream of belligerent threats.

      ‘Oh, it’s way above my pay grade to make a decision like that, Mr Azaria.’

      ‘Then get me someone who can make a decision—’ Alekis broke off as he registered Zach’s presence. ‘Good, give me your phone, and a brandy wouldn’t come amiss.’

      ‘I must have mislaid it.’ Zach’s response earned him a look of approval from the flush-faced nurse.

      Alekis snorted. ‘It’s a conspiracy!’ he grumbled. ‘So, what are you waiting for? Take a seat, then. Don’t stand there towering over me.’

      Zach did as he was bade, lowering his immaculately clad, long and lean, six-foot-five athletic frame into one of the room’s easy chairs. Stretching his legs out in front of him, he crossed one ankle over the other.

      ‘You look—’

      ‘I look like a dying man,’ came the impatient response. ‘But not yet—I have things to do and so do you. I assume you do actually have your phone?’

      Zach’s relief at the business-as-usual attitude was cancelled out by his concern at the shaking of the blue-veined hand extended to him.

      He hid his concern beneath a layer of irony as he scrolled down the screen to find the best of the requested snapshots he’d taken several days earlier for Alekis.

      ‘So how long before the news that I’m in here surfaces and the sharks start circling?’

      Zach selected the best of the head shots he had taken and glanced up. ‘Who knows?’

      ‘Damage limitation is the order of the day, then.’

      Zach nodded and extended the phone. ‘I suppose if you’re going to have another heart attack, you’re in the right place. I’m assuming that you will tell me at some point why you sent me to a graveyard in London to stalk some woman.’

      ‘Not stalk, take a photo...’

      Zach’s half-smile held irony as he responded to the correction. ‘All the difference in the world. I’m curious—did it ever occur to you I’d say no?’

      Zach had been due to address a prestigious international conference in London as guest speaker to an audience consisting of the cream of the financial world when Alekis had rung him with his bizarre demand, thinly disguised as a request.

      Should he ever start believing his own press he could always rely on Alekis to keep his ego in check, Zach mused with wry affection as the short conversation of several days before flickered through his head.

      ‘You want me to go where and do what?’

      ‘You heard me. Just give the address of the church to your driver—the cemetery is opposite—then take a photo of the woman who arrives at four-thirty.’

      ‘Try not to let it give you a heart attack this time,’ Zach advised now, placing his phone into the older man’s waiting hand.

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