Vacation with a Vampire & Other Immortals by Maureen Child, MAGGIE SHAYNE Page B

did. Why wouldn’t they?
    Okay, so she needed to get a handle on this. Probably apologize to him, and maybe try to explain what had led to her outburst. And then she would get back to the task at hand, convincing him to let her stay. Because no matter what he said, she had no intention of leaving. He would have to carry her bodily off this island if he wanted to get rid of her. Whether to tell him that, too, was still up in the air in her mind.
    She opened her eyes, feeling better, empowered, calm, resolved, and found herself focusing on a stain in the white sand.
    A red stain. Like blood.
    It was right beside the spot where Diego had been sitting, on the side of him that had been farthest from her. She frowned, bending closer, wondering if he’d been injured and unaware of it, or—
    And then she saw the wineglass, sitting empty on the log, and knew it wasn’t blood. That stain was wine. She bent closer, sniffed. Yes, it was wine. He’d poured himself a glass, but as her mind replayed the events of the past hour, she realized she had never actually seen him take a single sip of it.
    And in her mind she heard the actor Bela Lugosi in the role that had made him famous, saying, in his thick Romanian accent, “I never drink…wine.”
    “Oh, come on, Anna,” she said aloud. “Just cut it out, already.” And yet her eyes were glued to that stain in the sand.
    She shifted her gaze to look out at the moonlight beaming down on the water, as perfectly beautiful as if it were the backdrop on a movie set. And her mind kept on taunting her. He’s nocturnal. He said so himself. And you’ve certainly never seen him in the daylight.
    “He hasn’t seen me in the daylight, either,” she argued.
    No food in the house. And not just curtains on the windows, but heavy drapes, and window shades, and shutters to boot.
    “Just because he doesn’t like the sun, doesn’t mean…”
    You’ve got to get a look inside that bedroom.
    But then her thoughts ground to a sudden halt, as she heard him cry out in what sounded like pain. She was on her feet, turning toward the path back and even starting forward, before she realized she hadn’t heard the shout with her ears.
    She’d heard it with her mind.
    And she felt it still, that sense of him, hurting and in distress, ringing in her head, a feeling, not a sound. She was compelled to go to him. She dropped her wineglass beside the empty bottle in the sand and ran.
     
     
    He’d been careless. Angry, frustrated, stupid and careless. Because he wanted so very badly to believe her when she told him she wanted to stay on this island…to stay with him. But he’d been told the same thing before. By a woman in the very same circumstances.
    He’d taken his angst out on his work, and now the circular saw lay on the floor, its teeth clinging to bits of his flesh, and his forearm was gushing blood at a pace that would kill him in very short order.
    “Oh, my God! Diego!”
    And then she was there on the floor beside him, and acting without any kind of hesitation or panic or delay. She looked around, assessed the situation and sprang into action, grabbing a box cutter from his workbench and quickly slicing the power cord off the saw. Kneeling beside him, she wrapped the cord around his arm, above the gash, then knotted it once, tightly. Getting up again, she grabbed a big screwdriver and laid the blade atop the cord, then knotted the cord again over the blade to create an instant tourniquet. She twisted the screwdriver, tightening the cord around his arm, and he couldn’t help but cry out in pain.
    She shot him a look—and he saw tears welling in her eyes. One spilled over and rolled slowly down her cheek. “Don’t die,” she said.
    He couldn’t look away. “I…tend to bleed like…like a hemophiliac,” he explained. “It’s not going to clot.”
    “I’m the same way,” she told him, wonder at that in her eyes, and then she pushed her questions aside. “I can stitch it up.”
    He