Immortal Unchained(83)

"Now that I can believe," she said with a grin, and then tilted her head and asked, "He is a good man, si?"

"Yes," Sarita answered without hesitation. "He is a very good man."

"How?" she asked at once.

Sarita blinked in surprise, but didn't have any trouble answering. "Well, he's strong and smart and brave. He's considerate too. And he can cook," she added, that was pretty important since she couldn't. "And I think he must be the most patient man I've ever met, and-" Sarita paused and glanced at her grandmother uncertainly when she released a little sigh. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," her grandmother said quickly.

It was Elizabeth Dressler who said, "I'm afraid your grandmother and I have allowed ourselves to dabble in fantasy a bit more than we should to relieve the boredom here. We had rather built up the hope that someday perhaps Ramsey would die, and we would be free to invite you here. We were sure once you met my Thorne, the two of you would fall in love and we could live happily here with the pair of you producing several grandbabies for us to spoil."

"What?" Sarita gasped, her eyes wide with shock. Turning on her grandmother, she said, "You didn't!"

"Well, Thorne thought you were pretty when he saw your picture . . . and he enjoyed your letters as much as we did," her grandmother said defensively. "And he is a good man, Chiquita. He is so good to us, but he is so lonely. He deserves to be happy too." She sighed and shook her head. "But if you love this Domitian then . . ." She shrugged.

"I never said I love Domitian," Sarita squawked with alarm, feeling her cheeks heat up with embarrassment. "We hardly know each other. We only met a couple days ago on the little island. I can't possibly love him." 

"The things you said about him suggest you know him well, and they sounded like love to me," her grandmother said and then glanced to Elizabeth Dressler. "Did you not think so, Elizabeth?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

"Si." Her grandmother glanced back and shrugged. "But if it is not, then bueno. There is a chance still for you and Thorne."

"Er . . ." Sarita said weakly.

"Come on, Maria," Mrs. Dressler said, sounding amused. "Thorne was making tea. Let's go see if it is ready and leave Sarita to dress."

Nodding, her grandmother moved around behind the woman's chair and wheeled her out.

Sarita watched them go and then blew out her breath and shook her head.

"Unbelievable," she murmured. The pair had been marrying her off to Thorne in their fantasies before she'd even met them, let alone the man in question. Wow. So this was what having a grandmother was like?

The thought made her smile faintly. Sarita's grandparents on her mother's side had died while she was quite young. Her memories of them were fuzzy at best. They consisted of a grandfather who always had a smile on his face and a cigar in his hand, and a grandmother who had smelled of lavender. That was it. It looked like having a grandparent was going to be interesting.

Shaking her head, she began to pull the borrowed clothes on over her swimsuit.





Thirteen




"You must be tired after swimming all night."

Domitian tore his eyes away from the closed door to Mrs. Dressler's room at that comment from Sarita's grandmother and turned his attention back to the people seated at the tiny kitchen table with him. Mrs. Dressler, Maria Reyes, and Thorne. The table seemed almost too small for the three of them to eat at. He hadn't thought they'd fit five chairs around it. They'd managed it, though. It was tight, but would serve for having tea.

"Yes, I am a bit tired," he said finally, mostly because they would expect any normal person to be tired after such a trek. But while Domitian was tired, he was also in pain. He'd definitely used up a lot of blood with the swim here and needed more. However, he wasn't going to feed off any of the people here at the table. The women were both in their late seventies by his guess, and fragile. Feeding off them could cause a heart attack. As for Thorne-

His gaze shifted to the man. Thorne looked to be in his early thirties, but there was no way he was that young. This house was old and the walls thin, Domitian had had no trouble hearing what Mrs. Dressler had told Sarita about her marriage and her son's birth. If he'd been born eight months after she and Dr. Dressler married and moved to Venezuela, then he knew Thorne was in his fifties.

It wasn't Thorne's age, however, that removed him from consideration as a blood donor. It was the fact that he wasn't wholly human. Domitian had no idea how the DNA splicing had affected Thorne's blood, or how his blood would affect him. He wouldn't risk it.