THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

on my hands than finding an assistant. And you, quite frankly, have bigger problems than finding a job.”
    She smiled again, this one more genuine if somewhat self-mocking. “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Doctor Bowen. I need immediate employment and I intend to find it.”
    “But there’s no way—”
    “You think this’ll slow me down?” She nodded toward the IV assembly. “I’m stronger than I look. I’ll be back on my feet and will have landed a job by week’s end. You can bet on it.”
    “But Ms. Crawford—”
    “If this job’s off the table, just say so. I’ll find another.”
    “Ms. Crawford, you were bitten by a vampire tonight,” he said. “Has it not yet crossed your mind that you might have been infected?”
    From her sharply indrawn breath and the way her fingers dug into the blankets, he realized the notion had not occurred to her. And he was the worst kind of bastard for raising the specter, particularly when he knew it wasn’t even a remote possibility. The vampire had been feeding, pure and simple. He would not have imbibed so deeply and weakened her so thoroughly had he planned to turn her. And in any case, he’d have had to abandon the carotid artery in favor of the jugular vein, which he had not done. The blood that spurted from Ainsley’s neck was definitely the bright red of arterial blood, not the slower, bluish-tinged venous blood. Ergo, no infection could or would ensue.
    “Infected?” The word emerged on a faint breath.
    He forced down the self-revulsion that rose in his gorge. “Yes. As medicine will one day be obliged to accept, vampirism is an infectious disease, viral in nature, inducing an extraordinarily rapid genetic mutation in the afflicted. We’ll need to monitor you carefully for the foreseeable future, take frequent blood samples to screen for the virus and so forth.”
    “Omigod, I could be infected .”
    “There’s an equally good chance you’re not,” he said gently. “But we have to treat it as a possibility.”
    She threw back the covers and tried to swing her legs out of the bed.
    He restrained her easily. “What are you doing?”
    “I need to get to the hospital.”
    “They can’t help you.”
    “I know a virologist. If I could just—”
    “Listen to me carefully, Ms. Crawford.” He waited until she subsided again on the pillow before continuing. “This is one disease state to which mainstream medicine is willfully blind. If you try to open their eyes to it, I can guarantee you that the local psychiatric ward will quickly become your new address of record.”
    “But—”
    “And if you’re actually infected … well, God help you. Your attempts to feed, to survive , will be greeted with restraints and higher and higher doses of antipsychotics and sedatives, until you die a slow, excruciating death from starvation approximately 26 days after onset. And this despite all the nutrients they will force you to ingest through a digestive system that can no longer sustain you.”
    She covered her mouth with her hand, but a moan escaped.
    He cursed himself, but didn’t let up. “Do you see what I’m saying, Ms. Crawford? They can’t help you. Worst-case scenario, they will literally kill you with their ignorance. Best-case scenario, you turn out not to have been infected and will eventually be released, albeit permanently stigmatized by your mental illness . Do you understand?”
    She didn’t nod or otherwise signal comprehension, but the spreading bleakness in her eyes was all the confirmation he needed.
    “They can’t help you,” he repeated. “But I can.”
    Hope flared in her eyes, taking a savage bite out of his conscience.
    “This is my domain,” he continued softly, hypnotically. “It’s my sole area of inquiry and has been for my whole career. I assure you, if anyone can help you, it’s me.”
    “That’s the blood disorder you’re investigating!”
    Ah, so she’d checked his credentials. Smart girl. “Someone’s been doing their homework.”
    “I’d hardly make an evening appointment with you if I hadn’t already checked you out. Though much good it did me.” She narrowed those unusual violet eyes. “So, how much did you pay them to say you were legit?”
    “I assure you, Ms. Crawford, I am legit.” Granted, he was the majority shareholder of Bio-Sys Genomix, but it was as legitimate as the next bio-pharm company. “And just because conventional medicine isn’t ready to accept the research is