THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

four to six hours, culminating within twenty-four to thirty hours.”
    “It’s all been a lie?”
    At her shaky tone, he looked up, meeting her wide, shocked eyes.
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    The simple question raked at his conscience with vicious talons. He shrugged. “Because I needed your blood.”
    “You needed my blood?”
    He made no reply.
    “Well, it looks like I made it easy for you, didn’t I, getting attacked like that right outside your—”
    She leapt up. Delano shot a hand out to catch her chair, saving it from crashing to the tiled floor.
    “Omigod! You engineered that, didn’t you? So I would fall into your hands, giving you a plausible reason to draw my blood twice a day for all these weeks.”
    “Yes.”
    Her chest was heaving now, as though she’d run up every one of the twenty-nine flights to this penthouse instead of having ridden the elevator.
    “I can’t believe this. You put me in the path of that monster? You had no right!”
    “You’re quite right. And I’m sorry for your pain and worry, but I had no option.” Much as he wanted to let his gaze slide away, he held her furious glare. “Don’t you see? I had to take a broader view.”
    “A broader view? Delano, this is my life. My health, my livelihood—” She broke off, but her eyes no longer seemed to see him. “The hospital… Did you have anything to do with that? Did you engineer my dismissal? Answer me, dammit!”
    “No!”
    But she wasn’t listening.
    “Omigod, of course you did!”
    Her gaze had come back into focus once more, and he felt the full weight of it. “Dammit, Ainsley, I had nothing to do with any of that business at the hospital. I swear. Didn’t I promise to answer all your questions truthfully?”
    “It makes so much sense now.”
    Delano pushed his own chair back and surged to his feet. “On my wife’s grave, I had nothing to do with your dismissal.”
    “You got me fired, then dangled this so-called job in front of me when I was at my most desperate—”
    Her gaze still looked inward, and he knew he hadn’t reached her. Dammit, she had to listen to him.
    “I did no such thing! You think I arranged for you to notice the anesthetist was siphoning off the product? And for you to blow the whistle on him?”
    “Why not? You seem capable of orchestrating anything.”
    “That’s ludicrous. Next you’ll accuse me of somehow engineering your friend’s flight from her abusive husband, thereby putting you in the financial bind that placed you at my mercy. I am not God , Ainsley. I am not responsible for every aspect of your predicament. I may have taken advantage of it, but I didn’t create it.”
    She drew her next breath in on an agonized hiss and he realized his error.
    “Goddamn you, Delano.”
     
     

 
    Chapter 14
     
    AINSLEY SAW by his expression that he realized his mistake. He hadn’t meant to give that away.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “Sorry?” She heard her voice rising, but there was nothing she could do about it. “ Sorry? You think that makes me feel better?”
    “Of course not. But if you’d—”
    “You said you didn’t know why I needed the money. You said you didn’t care. But I guess you lied about that, too, didn’t you?”
    “No. I didn’t lie about that. Not at first. But circumstances have—”
    “I can’t believe this. You’ve invaded my life like a choking, noxious fucking … weed! ” She could hear her own breathing, ragged breaths as though she’d been running. “You investigated me within an inch of my life, and decided I was the perfect patsy. Then you dangled me in front of that creature — a serial goddamn killing monster! — so you could ‘rescue’ me, then harvest my blood under the pretense of helping me.”
    “Yes, I did those things, but—”
    “Then you jeopardized my life again by keeping me under your roof in St. Cloud. Good Lord, I could have been killed when Janecek attacked that night! Then you dragged me here, where I’ve been living virtually under lock and key for these past weeks, unable to go anywhere without a bodyguard breathing down my neck.” Her fists clenched and unclenched with impotent rage. “And still I was naively rolling up my sleeve for you twice a day. Do you have any idea—”
    Her voice broke and she had to swallow a few times before she could continue.
    “Can you for one goddamn minute imagine how terrified — I mean, how scared-to-the-bone I was, thinking I might turn into a beast like the