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“Someone you can trust?”
Sebastian flinched. “You’re the only one I really trust—”
“Damn it, you promised you’d watch over her—that you’d make sure she didn’t get hurt.” And Ben shouldn’t have trusted anyone with that responsibility but himself. But, as Paige had often reminded him—when he’d tried to give her alimony—since he’d signed the divorce papers, she was no longer his responsibility.
“She’ll be safe,” Sebastian insisted. “The person watching her is too afraid to hurt her or to let her get hurt.”
“Afraid of you?” Ben asked, arching a brow with skepticism. Sebastian had the reputation of being more of a lover than a fighter.
“Afraid of you,” the other man clarified.
“Then I should be the one protecting her,” Ben said. The divorce hadn’t stopped him from caring about her no matter how much Paige wanted to keep things light and impersonal between them. All sex and no emotion. He couldn’t blame her after the way he’d hurt her.
Now he had to make certain no one else hurt her. He turned toward the door just as a guttural moan echoed down the hall. From all the years he’d been a surgeon, Ben readily recognized the cry of pain. While the cry was familiar, the voice was not. Ben grabbed his bag and hurried out to find his patient collapsed on the floor. Blood spurted between the fingers of the hand that the guy clutched against his throat.
“Son of a bitch,” Sebastian murmured from behind Ben. “Is he mortal…?”
“I think we’re about to find out.” Someone could have tried “turning” the guy into a vampire, but that process proved such a risk. Ben had treated many mortals as they turned; he’d lost more of them than he’d been able to save.
He focused on this patient, refusing to lose another one—even while he worried that he might lose Paige. Again.
The sun had yet to rise when Paige returned to Club Underground. An outside light illuminated the cement steps leading down to the bar. Trying to sleep had been pointless—with all the thoughts racing through her mind and chasing her back here to reinspect that sinister flower arrangement. She hurried down the stairs, the skin pricking between her shoulder blades as if someone’s gaze bored a hole in her back. Ever since she’d left her condo, she’d had that sensation, the one of being watched.
Her hand shook as she shoved the keys in the lock and opened the door. As she crossed the dance floor to the hall, her foot slipped and she fell, one leg forward, her other one folded beneath her. She sucked in a breath of pain over her forced splits. “What the hell…?”
She’d trusted Sebastian to supervise the cleaning crew, but one of the crew must have missed a spilled drink. She ran her hand across the polished floorboards, smearing something sticky across the wood and her skin. To identify the substance in the dim security lighting, she lifted her hand to her face. “Blood?”
And it wasn’t just on the floor. A streak had spattered across the wall next to the door to the hall leading to her office. Fear clutched at her heart—not for herself but for her brother. Was Sebastian all right? She opened her mouth to scream his name, but then a noise—a bump and a clatter—echoed down the hall. From her office or the locked door?
She reached for her purse, and the cell phone inside it. But when she’d fallen the contents had spilled out and scattered across the floor. Tears of frustration stung her eyes; she needed to call for help. She scrambled to her feet and ran for the bar, moving behind it to the phone sitting next to the register.
Another bump and a mumbled curse echoed down the hall. Her hand passed over the phone, and she closed her fingers around the neck of a bottle instead. No matter who she called, they wouldn’t arrive in time to protect her. She had to protect herself.
Adrenaline pulsing in every nerve ending, she headed around the bar to the hall—the liquor bottle clutched tight in her hand. Her flower sender was about to get his first round free—against the side of his head.
Paige stepped into the hall, brandishing the bottle as a weapon. But before she could swing at the shadow that stepped out of her office, strong fingers closed around her wrist.
“Damn it, Paige,” the man remarked, “you almost got me with that. What the hell—”
“Ben!” She smacked his shoulder with her free hand. “What the hell are you doing here—besides scaring me half to death?”
“Hey, you’re the one who nearly knocked me out,” Ben said. “I’m here because Sebastian asked me to come down.”
“Is he all right?” she asked, glancing around her ex to search for her brother. However, the office was empty except for that gruesome flower arrangement.
“He’s fine,” Ben said. “He’s already taken off.”
“What about the blood out there on the dance floor? Is that his?”
Ben shook his head. “No. It wasn’t his.”
“What happened out there? Who got hurt?”
His broad shoulders lifted in a weary shrug. “I don’t know. One of the cleaning crew must have cut himself. Sebastian didn’t say anything about it.”
“You didn’t notice the blood?”
He shook his head again. “After all the years I’ve spent in an O.R., I guess I’m desensitized to it.”
If only she could get desensitized to him…Because where his fingers still gripped her wrist, her skin tingled and heat streaked throughout her body. She lifted her gaze to his face, and while his eyes darkened with desire, lines of fatigue radiated from them. And a dark shadow clung to his jaw.
“Why did you come back down here?” she asked. “You look like you need your sleep.” But in all the time she’d known him, he’d never gotten enough rest. The man did not know how to take it easy.
His mouth shifted into a sideways grin, as if he was too tired to curve his lips into a complete smile. “Is that a nice way of saying I look like hell?”
She laughed. “Don’t pretend I’ve wounded your pride. I’m sure there are plenty of females down at the hospital—staff and patients—who stroke your ego quite enough.”
“Now you’re calling me conceited.”
“Conceited?” She paused as if considering and then shook her head. “Arrogant, yes.” But not without damn good reason. The man had all kinds of talents. Thinking about the one he’d shown her in her office just hours before had heat flushing her skin.
He chuckled, as if he’d read her mind. Why hadn’t he been able to do that when they’d been married?
Embarrassed and frustrated at her weakness, she glanced away from him. Her gaze landed on the door at the end of the hall.
“You’ve done it again,” she said.
“What?”
“Avoided answering my question.” Maybe the divorce had been more his fault than hers. “Why did you come back down here, Ben?”
Anger replaced the flare of desire in his eyes. “Sebastian wanted me to see that opening-night gift you got.”
Damn him. And damn Ben for coming. “And here I thought you’d developed such a drinking problem that you can’t get enough.”
“I can’t seem to get enough of something, but it isn’t alcohol,” he admitted, his fingers stroking over her skin before he released her wrist. But he took the bottle, turning his attention to the label. “The hard stuff, huh?”
“If you’re going to bean someone over the head, you better use the hard stuff.” She stepped away from him, just resisting the urge to rub her wrist where his touch still burned her skin.
“You didn’t think I was a desperate drunk,” he scoffed at her claim, “you thought I was whoever left those flowers in your office.”
“And the stake,” she reminded him as she walked over to her desk where the hideous arrangement remained, despite Sebastian’s offer to get rid of it. Heck, he’d done more than offer; he’d insisted. She was surprised he’d listened to her when she’d explained that she wanted to hang on to it. “You know…all those years as a lawyer and the first time I’m called a vampire is after I’m no longer practicing law.”
“You’ll always be a lawyer, Paige,” Ben insisted. “It’s being a bar owner that you should probably rethink.”
“Why are you so against my owning this place?” she asked, remembering that earlier he had seemed to have a problem with it.
His lips curved into that half grin again. “And see, more questions. You’re a lawyer through and through, Paige. I don’t understand why you would give that up now…”
“When I hadn’t before when you wanted me to?” Regret and resentment overwhelmed her. She couldn’t deal with him…or the flowers…not without losing it.
Chapter Five
Paige pushed past him and ran out in the hall. This time Ben didn’t just watch as she walked away; he hurried after her. “I never wanted you to quit, Paige. I only wanted you to take it easy…to take care of yourself.”
She’d had to take care of herself because he’d been too busy taking care of everyone—and everything—else. As he followed her into the bar area, he glanced at the blood on the dance floor and the wall.
That patient was a member of the secret society. His girlfriend, also a society member, had gotten a little too passionate and nicked his carotid. While he wouldn’t have died, necessarily, the blood loss had weakened him to the point of helplessness. Stitching the wound and administering a transfusion had brought back his strength—so much so that Sebastian had already taken him home and left Ben to clean up the mess.
Along with the blood, he’d been supposed to dispose of the flowers before Paige saw them again and followed through on her inclination to call the police. Hell, maybe she should; Ben hadn’t protected her before. He didn’t trust himself to protect her this time, either.
“I take care of myself,” Paige insisted. “What happened…it was…”
Something they’d never talked about before. Even now, he couldn’t find the words to express his regret and loss and pain. Instead he glanced down at the bottle he still held—the one with which she’d nearly clocked him. As softly and gently as he liked to caress Paige’s naked skin, he ran his fingers over the label on the Dewar’s bottle. Hello, old friend…
Scotch had brought him comfort many a night after Paige had left him. Too many nights.
If he’d had a little less control, he might have become dependent on alcohol. But he’d had too many people—both living and undead—depending on him. So he had fought off the temptation then, and he would do so now because Paige needed him. He had to stick close to her, to protect her without her realizing what he was doing.
God, sticking close to Paige…
His body hardened at the thought of being close to her again—as close as they’d been earlier in her office, him buried inside her. So that he didn’t reach for her, he stepped behind the bar to place the bottle next to all the others. He’d been in Club Underground so many times—too many times—but he had never really noticed how elegant the club was. Appreciatively he ran his hand over the sparkling granite surface of the polished mahogany bar.
“If you’re thinking about a career change, too, I could use another bartender,” Paige offered.
“I could no more stop being a doctor than you could stop being a lawyer.” Yet there had been times, since he’d learned of the secret society, that he’d wanted to quit. But they’d made it clear to him that the only way out for him was death.
She lifted and spread out her arms to encompass the darkened lounge. “Look around. No law books, not a contract in sight. I’m not a lawyer anymore.”
“Why not?”
“You know,” she scoffed. “You’re too thick with my brother for him to have kept his mouth shut.”
“He said it was your secret.”
She arched a dark blond brow. “And you couldn’t have gotten it out of him?”
He probably could have, but he wanted her to tell him. He wanted her to share her life with him. Shame washed over him at his selfishness. How could he expect her to share her life when he couldn’t share his?
“I can’t believe Sebastian dragged you down here over those flowers,” she said, neatly avoiding his question as he had so many of hers over the years. “He was the one who told me they were nothing—that they’d probably been delivered to the wrong place.”
It might have been what he’d said, but it wasn’t what Sebastian believed. He hadn’t wanted her to call the police because an investigation might uncover the secret society and put everyone at risk. Ben would have preferred that to having Paige at risk. He uttered a sigh of frustration. “He’s probably right.”
She nodded. “There is no other logical explanation.”
Even if she learned the secret, she would never understand it. Paige had never been able to accept that some things defied logic.
“I’m sorry that you came down here for nothing,” she said.
“How could I not?” he asked. “If you need me, I’ll always be here for you.”
Liar. She refrained from shouting at him, from letting all her resentment and pain spill out. He hadn’t been there for her…when she’d needed him most. When she’d left the office earlier, she should have kept running; she shouldn’t have let him stop her. “We both know better than that, Ben,” she gently reminded him.
He flinched as if she had screamed at him. “You’re right. You were right to leave me, too.”
“Oh, Ben…” God, they weren’t good for each other. They had nothing between them anymore but guilt and pain…and a crazy, irresistible attraction.
“I’m not Ben,” he said, with a luminescent gleam in his big, brown eyes.
“Oh, you’re not?”
He shook his head. “Who was I last night?”
“Stranger in a bar,” she said, as if reading a role from a playbill.
“So today,” he said as he ran his fingertips across the granite again, “I’m the lonely bartender.”
Somehow she suspected “lonely” wasn’t part of the role he wanted to assume, but already part of who he was.
“So who am I?” she asked him.
“Last night you were the sexy bar owner.”
“Still am,” she quipped, no matter that no one—including him—thought she belonged at the club.
His mouth lifted into a little grin. “No, today you’re a patron who left her purse here and came back after hours to pick it up.”
“I have a feeling that my purse is not the only thing I’m supposed to pick up,” she said, her pulse quickening with excitement.
“I have your bag back here,” he said, lifting the hinged counter so she could join him, “behind the bar.”
She smiled now. “Did you get this scenario from a country song? I didn’t think you listened to country.”
“I listen to everything.”
Even her? She shook her head. No, she would have had to talk for him to listen; he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t shared all his feelings during their marriage. She hung on to her smile, with an effort. “I thought you were just into that boring elevator music.”
“Come here,” he urged her, “and I’ll show you how boring I am.”
Weren’t they fighting because he thought it was crazy that she’d bought the bar? She’d rather not remind him of their argument. Better to distract him or herself from her fear that he was right.
“You know you should be wearing the uniform,” she said as she stepped behind the bar and walked toward him. She’d love to see him in the black pants and a pleated tuxedo shirt.
“I already changed out of uniform,” he said, gesturing toward the black pants and sweater he wore. The ones that had lain on her office floor just hours before.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be wearing anything at all,” she suggested, reaching for the hem of his sweater. She dragged it up and over his head, tossing it onto the bar.
His chest was bare, except for the light mat of black hair covering the sculpted muscles. Despite his hectic schedule, he somehow found time to work out.
