the door, Ramona stopped to call the front desk to find out if Dr. Cavanaugh was still available. Minutes later she entered his office, and the kindly older man smiled and stood. He walked over and hugged her hard, everything about his demeanor calm and soothing.
He guided her to a couch at the side of his office and he sat down beside her, holding her hand as he spoke.
“How are you, Ramona? You’re looking well today,” he said, his gaze inquisitive as he examined her.
“I’m fine, Dr. Cavanaugh. How’s mami doing?” she asked, not that she needed to be told her condition was growing worse. Despite that, his report still saddened her.
“Anita’s condition is deteriorating rapidly. Her moments of awareness and lucidity are fewer and fewer.”
Ramona thought of her mom, vacantly sitting in the chair, her mind gone but her body alive. Quite the opposite of her own state. Ironic.
“How long before…”
Dr. Cavanaugh gently squeezed her hand. “Before she can no longer function at all? Not long, unfortunately.”
Ramona sucked in a shaky breath, battling to remain calm. “The trust fund I’ve set up… It will be enough to take care of her for some time, right?”
“You needn’t worry about that. Concentrate on getting better yourself,” he said, and Ramona didn’t have the heart to tell him that there was nothing she could do to make herself better. All she could do was prolong her life just a little bit more. Just enough to make the money she needed to guarantee her mother would be cared for when she was gone.
“I will, Dr. Cavanaugh. I’ll be back soon to see mami,” she said, but as she left his office she sensed his scrutiny and knew he hadn’t been fooled by her words.
They both knew her promise to return might be an empty one.
Chapter 4
Deranged Artist Stalks Rich Millionaire. More on the news at ten. Ramona could not stop the odd thoughts as the two guards at the entrance to the van Winter building watched her closely, their hands crossed before them in that practiced pose law enforcement types must learn in a class called How to Look Menacing 101.
She’d been calling for days, but her many requests to speak to Mr. van Winter all met with the same response: he was in a meeting and couldn’t be disturbed.
Quite a difference from his behavior during the six months she had been busy copying the paintings. Then the reclusive millionaire would visit her at least twice a day to check on her progress and comment on her artistic abilities. The time they’d shared had alleviated some of her concerns about his reasons for copying the paintings.
Coming down to the building to try to speak to him hadn’t helped at all. She wasn’t on any approved-visitors list, and calls to van Winter’s assistant revealed that the woman was no longer with the company.
With determination, Ramona swept her gaze up the gleaming metal-and-glass structure of Van Winter Enterprises and thought, If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, I’ll just bring the mountain to Mohammed.
Julio Vasquez strolled from painting to painting, stroking his goateed chin with long, elegant fingers while Diego stood by patiently, waiting for his old friend’s opinion.
“Brilliant!” he said, and whirled to face him, his arms stretched wide. “Absolutely brilliant. I can see why you would toss me aside for these gems, amigo.”
Theatrical as always, Diego thought. He approached and laid his arm across Julio’s shoulders. “You know I would never toss you aside, but—”
“You have feelings for the señorita,” Julio teased.
Diego tried to defuse any further inquiry. “I believe in her work, Julio. Nothing more.”
With a flamboyant swish of his hand, Julio slipped from beneath his arm and walked to stand before one of the paintings again. After a moment, he called over his shoulder, “She desires, you as well. It’s here, amigo. In her work. Can you not see it?”
Diego stepped up beside his friend and examined the painting once again, the one he had stood before a few nights ago with Ramona at his side. The one that had led to that rather interesting, but ill-advised, encounter.
Once again he noted the loving sweep of the brush across the woman’s hip, the possessive strokes delineating the man’s arm as it wrapped around her waist. He tracked the line of that arm up to the indistinct face.
He had thought Ramona had left the man virtually faceless as her way of allowing the observer to complete the canvas in his or her own mind. Now, though, prompted by Julio’s words, he noticed the familiar line of the jaw, the way the hair—longish and of a similar color to his—fell forward as his might if he cupped her hips to him and bent his head to taste the flesh of her neck.
“Dios mio, amigo,” Julio said with a strangled breath, and Diego suddenly realized that with his friend’s vampire abilities, he would pick up on that thrum of power that sexual desire created in their kind.
“I have not felt that from you since Esperanza,” his old friend said, for Julio had been with him for so long. Had been instrumental in giving him the eternal life he now had.
Regret filled Diego as he remembered the events that had forever changed his world.
A shadow wavered before him, waking him.
“Esperanza?”
He opened his eyes, but instead encountered an old friend—another nobleman and an aspiring artist with whom he regularly shared a cup or two.
“Don Julio.” He lacked the strength to say more or ask how the lordly painter had managed to get past the guards. The torture earlier that day had sapped what little life was left in Diego.
“Amigo, you have managed to create quite a stir with your refusal to confess.” Don Julio helped him into a sitting position.
“I am innocent,” he said, but found it hard to speak due to the weakness in his body.
“You may be, but that won’t save you. Your wife and her lover are dying from a fever. Some say it is the devil’s work.”
Don Julio knelt beside him, and as the moonlight played across his old friend’s face, Diego noted it looked ashen, almost otherworldly in the pale glow.
“Are you well?” Diego asked, concerned for his friend.
“Never better, unlike you. You are to be burned alive in a few days. They prepare for an immense auto de fé in the plaza.”
So he was to die a public spectacle in the town square, deprived of dignity up to the very last second of his life? If there was any consolation, it was that his wife and her lapdog of a lover might shortly follow him to hell for what they had done.
“Gracias, amigo, for the news.”
Don Julio hesitated, and a glimmer of anxiety swept across his features before he said, “I bring more than news. I bring a chance for life.”
“Life?”
“Life such as you can’t imagine, Diego. Are you brave enough to take the chance?”
Diego thought of the vows he had made to himself in the last month. Of all the dreams he had yet to fulfill. Of Esperanza, with her kind eyes and gentle touch. Of how he had yet to properly thank her for all she’d done for him.
“Sí, I am brave enough.”
His friend nodded, and Diego watched with fascination and horror as the dark brown