“Trying to get her blood flowing.”

“The turning isn’t taking, is it?”

The butler had articulated what Gabriel didn’t want to acknowledge. He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed all negative thoughts out of his mind. “It will. It has to.” He touched her face again, but it was still as cold as it had been minutes earlier. “We have to help her body do the work.”

Gabriel shifted and looked at Carl and the clumsy way he rubbed her feet. If there was anybody even more inept with women than himself, it had to be Carl. He was barely touching her toes. “Let me do that. Take her hands instead.”

He shoved Carl aside and took Maya’s feet into his hands. He needed to get her blood circulating so it could reach every cell in her body and complete the transformation. The turning was a complicated chemical process, but normally the body knew what to do. It appeared Maya’s cells either didn’t understand the instructions they were receiving, or refused to comply.

The skin of her feet was soft and smooth, her toenails beautifully shaped and manicured. Ruby-red nail polish adorned them. Gabriel noticed how his own skin color virtually matched hers, though the texture couldn’t be more different. His callused hands bore no resemblance to her softness. Gabriel had never seen more kissable feet. No, he couldn’t let a woman as perfect as her die.

With renewed determination, he massaged her feet with his hands, rubbing up and down her soles, kneading them, then stroking up her ankles, then back down again. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been doing it before he finally heard voices from below.

Drake had arrived. He heard fragments of the explanations Samson gave him as they rushed up the stairs. A moment later, they burst into the bedroom.

“About time,” Gabriel growled.

Carl released Maya’s hands instantly and stepped back from the bed, clearly relieved to be released from his duty. “I trust you don’t need me anymore now that the doctor is here.”

Without waiting for a reply, he bolted from the room.

“I’m not sure how much help I can be. I’m a psychiatrist, not a physician,” Drake stated, not that the explanation was needed. Both Samson and Gabriel were fully aware of the man’s credentials or lack thereof when it came to the practice of actual medicine.

“That’s the best we can do,” Samson insisted. “The nearest vampire physician is in Los Angeles. We don’t have time to get him up here.”

“Fine, but I want you to sign a waiver that I won’t be sued if she doesn’t make it. I can’t be held responsible if—”

Gabriel seized Drake by the throat and cut him off in mid sentence. “If you don’t stop babbling, you won’t have to worry about a lawsuit, because you won’t be around to appear in court. Are we clear on that?”

“Gabriel!” Samson’s reprimand cut through the tension in the room.

Gabriel released the doctor, who cut him a sour glance.

“Fine.” With a jerky movement, Drake approached the bed and looked at the woman. Gabriel watched his every movement, for some inexplicable reason feeling protective toward her. And why shouldn’t he, since Samson had assigned him this case? It was just like in the old days when he’d started working for Samson’s company as a bodyguard, long before he’d worked his way up to his current powerful position as Scanguards’ number two. He was merely acting as her bodyguard. Only, he’d never guarded a body as perfect as hers.

Drake lifted one eyelid then the other to look at Maya’s pupils before he pried her lips apart and examined her teeth. He slid his finger along her upper teeth and probed.

“Hmm.”

“What’s wrong?” Gabriel asked, impatient to hear the doctor’s assessment.

Drake turned to him and Samson. “Her fangs aren’t growing, and the white in her eyes is not returning. Samson, you said your men found her and think they interrupted the vampire who did this?”

Samson nodded. “Yes, they saw somebody run away, but weren’t fast enough to catch him. They were more concerned with getting her to safety first.”

“Makes sense. I think he wasn’t finished. The turning is only halfway done. She probably barely received any vampire blood. Her human body is fighting it. And her vampire side isn’t strong enough. It’s not sufficient to turn her, but it’s sufficient to make her remaining human impossible. You have to make a choice.”

“A choice?” Gabriel heard himself ask, then felt both the doctor’s and Samson’s stares on him. Did they realize that he had more than a passing interest in her?