For Love or Money Bundle (Harlequin Presents)

by Sarah Morgan

  ‘So you haven’t asked her? You should. She might have something very enlightening to say.’

  Jade shook her head, more at herself than at the arrogant voice on the other end. No way was she going to be swayed by his lies and diversions.

  ‘This is about you,’ she said into the receiver, ‘not Grace. And you made a promise—one million dollars for the foundation if I had dinner with you. I kept my end of the bargain.’ With interest, she thought bitterly, resenting herself for the way she’d fallen so readily into his bed, but determined not to let her stupidity deter her from what she had to do. ‘Now I expect you to keep yours.’

  ‘I’ll sort it out.’

  ‘Make sure you do—today!’

  She broke the connection, her hands trembling, all of her shaking, as she gave herself up to the aftermath of the phone call.

  Damn the man!

  The clock on the wall told her she had less than thirty minutes to get herself under control before her first patient. She searched her desk for her schedule, trying to replace the chaos of her mind with order. Her eyes found the list, registering the first name with a sense of creeping unease.

  Pia Kovac.

  Why, today of all days, did she have to be scheduled for laser surgery?

  Reluctantly she reached for the file.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SOMETHING was wrong. There was a disturbance coming from inside the surgical rooms. Jade heard a clatter, a crash, and then a theatre sister pushed out through the doors, the expression on her face a mixture of fear and panic.

  ‘Dr Ferraro!’ she called, her eyes lighting on hers. ‘Thank God you’re here. Come quickly.’

  ‘What is it?’ Jade asked, breaking into a run behind the turning nurse.

  ‘Something’s wrong with Dr Della-Bosca,’ she replied breathlessly, pushing open the swing doors through to the scrub room and into the prep room beyond. ‘She thinks she’s doing a breast augmentation, but you’re down for laser surgery on this patient. When I tried to tell her, she went mad.’

  Oh, my God!

  Jade took one look inside the room and froze as she took in the bizarre tableau in front of her. Boxes of medical supplies and instruments were scattered all over the floor of the room, in the centre of which stood Grace, felt-tipped pen in hand, calmly marking out lines on the naked breasts of the blonde girl lying on the trolley.

  The girl seemed completely out of it, and fear cranked up inside Jade—she wasn’t down for a premed before her laser treatment, so what the hell had Grace given her?

  But before she could take care of Pia, it was Grace’s condition that worried her more right now. The apparent calmness with which she continued with her geometrical markings was at complete odds with the scene of devastation all around her.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jade asked, knowing for all Grace’s apparent air of normality that something was desperately, frighteningly wrong. Quickly she turned to the theatre sister, mouthing the word ‘security’ and seeing her brief nod before she backed purposefully out of the room.

  Then she looked back at Grace, and what she saw in Grace’s eyes made fear and anxiety come together inside her like a tangled, stinking clump of seaweed, pushed up by the tide and left to decompose on the shore.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ Grace assured her. ‘We don’t need you yet.’

  ‘But Pia is my patient this morning.’

  Grace looked up from her work and over at Jade. ‘You’re not even gowned up. I might as well make a start if you’re not ready.’

  She had to be ill! Her behaviour was too far out of the ordinary, yet too calm for all that had happened between them this morning.

  Then Jade reassessed the tiny pinpricks of the older woman’s eyes peering out at her, and in one heart-sinking moment the tangled seaweed ball inside her congealed into something much more knowing.

  Drugs. While everything she knew about Grace begged her to be wrong, her brain screamed that there was no question that this woman was under the influence of a mind-altering substance. She’d taken something—most likely some kind of opiate—to make her so calm and make her pupils look so unnaturally pinprick-sized. But from the way she was behaving, the way she was so far out of control, she must have misjudged and overdosed herself.

  Oh, Grace, she thought, blaming herself, her heart heavy for her friend even as concern for Pia was foremost in her mind, what have I done?

  She moved closer to the woman, keeping a steady eye on the encouraging rise and fall of Pia’s chest, fuelled by the welcome sounds of commotion outside. Help was coming. ‘Grace, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I think you might want to come with me. Let’s go and sit in your office.’

  ‘What are you talking about? You don’t tell me what to do. You think you’re so good, so perfect. Sweet, perfect Dr Ferraro. But you’d be nothing without me—nothing! Mind you,’ Grace continued, waving the blue pen around as if it was a wand, ‘you do have some good ideas from time to time. That foundation idea of yours was the best one you had. All that lovely money. All for me.’

  ‘No! That money is to help the children who can’t afford surgery.’

  ‘Such a clever plan! I knew I kept you around for a reason.’

  ‘Grace, you’re not well,’ Jade persisted, not believing what she was hearing, trying to ignore the stinging remarks in her concern for her friend. ‘Have you taken something?’

  Grace laughed then, a hideous cackle that chilled Jade’s blood. ‘Of course I’ve damned well taken something! Everybody in this town does. How else do you think we make it through the day? You really are a hick, aren’t you? I should have left you back there where you came from. I never should have bothered with you.’

  All that was left of her feelings for Grace shrivelled up and died. This wasn’t a one-off, triggered by her earlier revelation of Mayor Goldfinch’s infidelity. This was a regular event. Grace was a user.

  ‘But you’re not well. Let me help you—please!’

  ‘I’m perfectly well! Get out of my way so I can operate.’

  Grace focused her attention once more on drawing blue lines on Pia’s bare breasts.

  Jade took advantage of her bowed head and, knowing Security would soon be with them, moved again—close enough to reach out and…

  With one fluid movement she lifted the pen from Grace’s hands. The shock in the older woman’s eyes and the reaction of her fingers were made all the duller by whatever drug was pumping through her veins.

  Then the doors burst open—but it was not the security guards she’d been expecting. The first person into the room stopped dead, his six-foot-four frame coming to a halt just inside the doors, his face like thunder. His granite-hard eyes rapidly took in the room, flicking over the two woman standing next to the trolley and widening with shock and recognition when they encountered the gowned occupant beneath them.

  ‘Loukas—’ Jade said, totally bewildered as she attempted to find words to explain what was happening even while still holding onto the pen she’d taken from Grace’s hands, as if she’d been the one wielding it.

  ‘What the hell are you doing to my sister?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  JADE’S world collapsed around her in the following few days. The clinic was closed and Grace was whisked away by the authorities, with moves already underway to have her deregistered.

  And Jade was next in line. She spent hours answering seemingly endless and repetitive questions from the police, ‘assisting them with their enquiries’, as they so diplomatically put it.

  What did she know of Grace’s drug use? Who was her supplier? Who had financial responsibility for the clinic and the foundation bank accounts?

  She answered as best she could, her spirits in a slump, her voice a monotone. And the more they asked, the more she realised how stupid she’d been, how hopelessly naïve, how easily she’d missed the signals about what was going on around her—like Grace’s constant interest in the accounts and her late hours working
into the night.

  Because she hadn’t wanted to see them—hadn’t let herself see them.

  Because her stupid ill-placed loyalty had blinded her.

  How she made it through the battery of one round of questioning after another she didn’t know. Maybe it was because she was numb, so deeply in shock over what had happened that it felt as if nothing could ever touch her again. And that was good. She didn’t want to feel.

  Because then she couldn’t feel pain.

  At last the police decided that she had helped them as much as she could and that there was no reason to hold her any longer. She was free to go.

  Escorted by an officer, she was waiting for the lift that would come and return her to the outside world when the doors of one of the other interview rooms opposite opened. She almost looked away—until she saw who spilled out, and then she gasped.

  Flanked by two officers, Grace walked, head held high, even though her arms were handcuffed behind her. But, despite the angle of her chin, she looked suddenly old, with dark circles under her eyes and her skilfully raised cheekbones suspending hollowed flesh beneath.

  Across the waiting area their eyes met. Grace’s glinted coldly in the glow from the artificial office lighting above.

  Jade involuntarily took a step forward, her lips turning up instinctively, before she realised where she was and why they were both there. Her smile slid away again. But she wanted to say something—just to let her know that if Grace needed her…

  ‘Grace—’ she began.

  The officer alongside her put his hand on her arm to keep her where she was, but she’d already stopped at the ice-cold glare from Grace’s eyes.

  ‘You bitch!’ Grace said, her voice so sharp it cut the air between them like a scalpel. ‘You did this to me! I made you what you are, and this is how you repay me? I should have let you rot in that Outback town of yours. I should have burned that birthmark black!’

  The lift doors opened and Jade stumbled in, waiting for what seemed like an eternity before the doors hissed closed and the lift began its grinding descent, gradually blocking out the sounds of the screaming woman, although the echoes of her words and the painful reminder of her early life continued to ring loudly in her ears long after she’d left the building.

  There was a crowd gathered outside the gates of the mansion—almost as if there was a party and everyone had been asked to park outside. But the cars weren’t convertibles or coupés. These were trucks and vans with dishes and aerials on their roofs.

  Uncertain, she asked the cab driver to pull up several houses away, where she stood on the kerb for a few seconds, wondering how she’d get into the house without being noticed.

  ‘You gonna pay me, lady?’

  She blinked and paid the fare automatically in response, not thinking that she’d be better off getting right back in and finding somewhere else to stay. By the time she’d worked out that it was a crowd of reporters swarming around the entrance to the mansion the cab was already disappearing into the distance.

  She looked around. The street was otherwise as it always was—quiet, serene, and a haven from downtown traffic. There was little chance of another cab passing.

  Someone in the distance called out, ‘It’s her!’ and suddenly the pack was in motion, picking up cameras and other equipment, heading straight for her.

  ‘Dr Ferraro!’ they called. ‘Dr Ferraro!’

  She knew instinctively she should run. She knew instinctively she should hide. But there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run—and, just as her mind felt frozen, her feet seemed welded to the spot. It was all she could do to watch the hungry pack draw closer.

  Then, from somewhere close behind her, came the roar of an engine and a squeal of tyres, and a voice yelled out, ‘Get in!’

  Loukas?

  She looked around. The passenger door of the car hung open and he was waiting inside for her to join him. She tried to shake her head. None of this could be happening. Why would Loukas be here? Surely not to save her? Not after what he’d thought about her from the start. Not after all she’d done to stop him.

  And all the while the pack drew closer still, the leaders now only seconds away

  ‘Come on! Get in,’ he urged. ‘They’ll tear you to pieces.’

  And something in her mind clicked into place. After spending the best part of two days being interviewed by the police, the last thing she could face right now was reporters jamming their cameras into her face, wanting more of the same, wanting every last sordid detail of the scandal that was rocking Hollywood to its core.

  Whatever fate Loukas had planned for her, at least he could save her from that.

  She slid down into the seat alongside him with the first reporter only metres away. But she didn’t close the door. She didn’t have to. The car’s powerful acceleration took care of that, swinging the wide door closed as Loukas steered away from the kerb and past the ribbon of disgruntled reporters, cheated of their prey.

  She took a deep breath and settled back into the luxurious leather seat, finding the familiar smell of his car much more to her liking than the stained cab she’d just exited. Until she realised what it was that she liked about it—it bore the imprint of Loukas’s own signature scent.

  And suddenly she didn’t feel comfortable. She didn’t want to think about that side of Loukas. She didn’t want to be reminded of the times they’d spent in this car on their way to the beach house, anticipating what was to follow, their sexual excitement mounting as they drew closer to their destination, the hunger between them building.

  Dammit! She couldn’t afford to think about those nights.

  Because they were gone. Just the same as her strident defence of Grace—blown to smithereens by the truth, the real truth that Loukas had known all along and that she had fought so hard against the whole time.

  She pushed her head back into the leather-upholstered headrest as the enormity of one simple fact worked its way clear from the fog of her mind. She’d been the one who was wrong.

  It was Loukas who had been right all along.

  Her throat tightened, her mouth ashen. How could she even start to admit it?

  How the hell could she begin to tell him how much she was sorry? How much she wished she’d listened to him instead of blocking out everything he said as if his words were poisoned? His warnings should have made some sort of sense, given she’d been starting to have her own concerns about Grace’s hunger for money. Instead she’d blocked it out with walls made of her loyalty to Grace. Her stupid, ill-placed loyalty that had been shattered until it tumbled down and now lay in ruins around her.

  She turned her head a fraction and glanced at his profile. His jaw looked set, his eyes rigidly glued to the traffic. Hardly a surprise. He was bound to be angry with her. She hadn’t believed his claims and then she’d all but accused him of cheating the foundation out of a million dollars. And that was all before he’d found her standing over his sister, preparing to operate, as if she was the one who was crazed.

  She had to be crazy.

  But suddenly being crazy seemed the easy option. No longer did she recognise her world. It had tilted way off axis, turning truth to lies and lies to truth and heroes to villains. And still none of it made sense. She was a stranger in a strange new world.

  Even the fact that it was Loukas who had come to her rescue tonight was crazy. He was the last person she would have expected to whisk her away from more embarrassment and more pain. He must hate the very sight of her.

  So she’d ensure he didn’t need to put up with her company any longer than was absolutely necessary. She took a deep breath.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said finally, sounding too loud as she fractured the silence between them. But she owed him at least her thanks for getting her away from the reporters—even if being trapped with him in his car was hardly what she’d call sanctuary. ‘You can drop me at a hotel anywhere convenient.’

  He only grunted in response and kept right on driving. She
turned her head away, determined not to be affected by his obvious distaste for her. But when they’d passed an entire strip of hotels she turned to him again. ‘I said you could let me out. What’s wrong with any of these places?’

  ‘You’d be tracked down by the media in ten minutes flat.’

  ‘Look, I can take care of myself.’

  ‘Which is what you were doing back there so impressively, no doubt.’

  ‘Then where are you taking me?’

  ‘Where do you think? Somewhere you’ll be safe, and the last place they’ll think to look for you.’

  Panic welled up inside her. He couldn’t be serious!

  ‘No! Not the beach house. I won’t go. You can’t expect me to stay there.’

  ‘You have no choice. Right now you have nowhere else to go,’ he said, closing down the argument.

  Loukas was garaging the car when she entered the living room. The first thing she noticed were the newspapers scattered on the coffee table, the headlines screaming out at her.

  Fallen From Grace

  The Deepest Cut

  No Saving Grace

  A Foundation of Evil

  She picked up the least inflammatory-looking paper and skimmed the front-page article before dropping the newspaper back down on the table and sliding open the glass doors leading out to the deck.

  The story was splashed all over every one of the papers, with the Demakis name everywhere, and yet for all that it looked as if it wouldn’t do the Senator’s chances in the upcoming primaries any harm at all.

  Pia was clearly the helpless victim, with Loukas painted as the hero—saving her from disfigurement or death or maybe even both.

  On the other hand Grace was portrayed as a crazed psycho who believed the myth built up around her so much that she actually thought herself to be a goddess—way above both other mere mortals and the law.

  Maybe there was some truth in that, Jade acknowledged as she leant down and rested her forearms on the deck balustrade, relishing the tang of the fresh sea breeze after being stuck in the airless box of a police building answering questions for so long.