Page 66 of Blood Stone

“Just answer her, Garrett. Not answering has a meaning for her, too, you know.”

He looked up. “I’m beginning to understand a little why Nial was drawn to you.”

Winter laughed. “He knew way too much about me before he even met me. Sebastian fed him tall stories for years before he got to meet me. I think the real live version of me was possibly a letdown for him.”

Garrett shook his head. “An adjustment, maybe. Not a letdown.”

Winter grinned. “And you’re changing the subject.” She picked up his hand and turned it over, so the cellphone was face up and got to her feet. “I’ll leave you alone so you can answer. Be nice. You weren’t the only one who was in the beer garden that night.”

“Do you know what happened?” he demanded, shocked.

She shook her head. “But I felt your heart racing when I turned your hand over just then and I know it’s not me making it do that. It’s Kate and whatever happened the other night. Vampire hearts don’t race for just anything. And Kate isn’t your average insensitive director. She would have been affected, too.”

Winter picked up the laptop from the desk and left the trailer, leaving him alone as she had promised. There was a blast of hot air and a swirl of sand as the door opened, then the noise was muted again.

He rested his thumbs against the keys, staring at the two lines on the screen and marvelling once more at the depth of perception those two simple lines of text represented.

* * * * *

Kate almost jumped when her phone buzzed by her hip.

@Lind’stream. Best leave this alone. Please. Go hug Adrian.

Melancholy rose within her even as she told herself that this was as it should be. Garrett had given the only proper response possible.

She turned back to the meeting, trying to sell herself on the idea that it was for the best, but now all she could think about was all the late night silent, intimate conversations she’d had with him.

How much she had admired Garrett over the years for his business acumen and outrageous strategies that had always worked.

Hell, they’d even worked against her. For now, anyway.

* * * * *

Winter shook Sebastian awake. “I think someone’s poking around the server trailer. It sounds like they’re testing the door.”

He was instantly awake. He slid out of the bed and padded to the chair where he had tossed their clothes, sort of, as he had seduced Winter onto the bed. With the whole production ground to a halt, they had stolen a moment when no one would be looking for them to shuck off their disguises for a while.

Sebastian glanced out the window. “I can’t see anything with all this sand.” He looked back at her as he tied back his hair and pulled on a tee-shirt. “How come you heard it and I didn’t?”

“You were snoring.”

He looked affronted. “I don’t snore.”

He didn’t snore. It was hard to describe what he did as sleep. It was the lightest kind of sleeping, if it was. Since she had “healed” his vampirism, he wasn’t exactly human anymore either, so his metabolism didn’t need the full restorative sleep normal humans did. But Winter just smiled at him, enjoying his indignation.

Sebastian glanced out the window again, frowning. “If they’re fucking with my servers I’ll kill ‘em.”

“Spoken like a true nerd,” Winter said.

The blast of acrid air and sand as he opened the door convinced Winter she didn’t need to go with him. She settled back under the sheet, more than happy to sleep, even if that meant shedidsnore.

* * * * *

When her phoned buzzed again, Kate really did jump. It made everyone stop and look at her.

“Sorry,” she apologized, picking it up. “I need to get this.”

The chime was Adrian’s unique signature and he wouldn’t have interrupted her production meeting with a call for anything trivial.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him.

“Not on the phone,” he said. “Can you meet me in the extras tent? Now.”