Read Online Vacation with a Vampire & Other Immortals by Maureen Child, MAGGIE SHAYNE - Free Book Online

mean.”
    He nodded, saying nothing. The conversation had taken a turn for the awkward.
    “Because I have no home to return to, no job, no money, and only another month or so before I’m due to…you know…check out. If it all goes down the way Mary said it would.”
    “It is a dilemma,” he agreed, and then he nodded. “Here we are. Why don’t you cook some of that fish while I take care of a few chores around the island, hmm?”
    She frowned at him, but nodded. “Chores?”
    “I’d like to spend some time working on my new sailboat. In the workshop.”
    She smiled. “I’d love to see it sometime.” Then she frowned. “But I’m so tired just from the walk back from the beach, I don’t think—”
    “There will be another time. You’ll love this boat, being a sailor yourself. She’s all wood, twice as big as the Santa Maria XIII. ”
    She smiled, visualizing. “How close are you to being ready for her maiden voyage?”
    He shrugged. “A few more weeks. No longer.” He smiled at her eager excitement over his project, a work of the heart, truly. And he found himself eagerly anticipating taking her out to his workshop, showing her the boat, watching her reactions. Damn, she was getting to him. Far too deeply.
    She was staring back at him, deep into his eyes, and looking as if she wanted to do more…as if she wanted to embrace him. But she held herself off and said, “Go ahead, then. I’ll make enough fish for both of us, if you want.”
    “No need. I’ve…already eaten.” He hadn’t, and that was part of the problem, wasn’t it? He was hearing the gentle call of her, the thrumming rush of blood flowing through her veins just beneath her supple, warm, salty skin, and it was doing things to his mind. Making him want to blurt that she should just stay here, with him, for the time she had left. Making him want to take her in his arms, to taste her skin, just a little. Maybe take a sip, one tiny droplet, to sate himself.
    Right. And then the next thing he knew, he would begin to care for her. To believe that she cared for him, too. And then he would tell her that she didn’t have to die. That she could live by night, endless night, as he did. He would tell her what he was, and offer to share the Dark Gift with her.
    And she would pretend shock and surprise, and then calm, beautiful acceptance, and she would accept the Gift. He would drink from her, drain her to the very edge of oblivion, and then he would feed her from his own veins. And she would awaken a newborn vampire, a fledgling with wonder in her eyes.
    And then she would leave him, laughing at his naive belief that there would be some fairy-tale ending, some happily ever after, for the two of them. She would leave him, laughing at his innocence, his trust. She would leave him, alone, in the paradise he had wanted to share.
    He saw it all playing out in his mind, the memory stabbing into his heart like a red-hot blade. Cassandra laughing at how easily he had fallen for her. Laughing as she told him she had what she had come for and would be leaving now. Calling him a sap—and worse.
    No, he would not fall so easily again. Not again.

Chapter 7
     
    H e left her at the door, and as Anna watched him go, she felt a sense of clarity. That was, she supposed, the positive side of facing one’s imminent demise. Clarity. It suddenly became very, very easy to see what was important and what was not. It became easy to know what you wanted and almost impossibly irrational to do anything other than go after it.
    And right then she knew what she wanted with that clearness of mind that only a condemned woman could have. She wanted to stay here, on this island, with this man, for whatever time she had left. Because no matter what he said or what tale he told, she knew she had met him that night near the lighthouse. And she knew he was the one she was meant to be with. She didn’t know how it could be true. She didn’t know what he was, exactly, only that he