by Lisa Childs
“I’m not alone,” she pointed out. “Sebastian lives here, too.”
“Casanova?” he scoffed. “How much time does he really spend here?”
“Not much,” she admitted. “But I’m fine alone. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“But I do.” His throat moved as he swallowed hard. “Even before you picked up a stalker, I worried about you.”
“Ben, I take care of myself,” she reminded him, resenting that she had to. “I always have.”
“I know.” His brown eyes grew soft and wistful. “But I wish…”
“What?”
“I wish I had taken care of you when we were married,” he admitted.
She laughed at his thought of chivalry. “I didn’t let you.” If only she’d taken his advice…
“But I should have tried,” he insisted, his fingers clenching her shoulders. “I should have been there for you more.”
She shook her head, suddenly weary from more than making love. “That’s all in the past, Ben, and it doesn’t matter. We’re not married anymore.”
His eyes darkened with emotion. “What are we, Paige?”
She tried to pull out of his arms, but he held her tight, his fingers biting into her skin. “I don’t know, Ben.”
She didn’t have an answer for him or herself.
“We’re not married,” he agreed. “We’re not really dating. We don’t go out to dinner or a movie.”
“Who does that?” she asked. “We never went out to dinner or a movie.” They’d always been too tired from working such long, hard hours. Or he hadn’t been around. He’d been around for so little of their marriage.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Maybe we should have….”
She smiled, amused that he would think they could have. Neither of them was much made for leisure activities…except making love. “We were never those people, Ben, not when we first started going out or when we were married.”
“What people?”
“You know the ones, the couple who hold hands while they walk around the mall, the ones who stare into each other’s eyes over a candlelit dinner.”
His eyes softened with regret, as if he wished they had been. “Paige…”
They both carried too much regret. None of it could change what had happened between them, what had gone wrong.
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “We never had time to be those people. I was busy, too.” Not as busy as he’d been, but she’d submerged herself in her work, too.
At first, because she’d been determined to be exactly the opposite of her mother. But then she’d fallen for Ben. And she’d still worked too much, so that she wouldn’t notice how little he’d been there.
“We should have made time,” Ben said.
“It’s too late now,” she said again.
He shook his head, obviously unwilling to accept the finality. “It’s never too late.”
“We can’t change the past,” Paige insisted.
“No, we can’t,” he agreed. “But I can be here for you now. I can protect you, Paige.”
“You might be able to protect me from my stalker,” she said, “if I have one. But who will protect me from you?”
A muscle twitched in his cheek. But he didn’t profess his undying love or the fact that he’d never hurt her. They both knew he couldn’t promise her those things.
“We can’t change the past,” she said as she drew in a shaky breath. “And we can’t change the fact that we have no future.”
He’d already accepted that they had no future. If only he’d realized it sooner and let her go…then maybe she wouldn’t be in danger now.
“We don’t have a future together,” he agreed, but hated himself for the pain that darkened her usually bright eyes. “But we need to make sure you have a future. I need to move in here, so that I can protect you from physical harm.” As she’d already pointed out, he was the last one who could protect her from emotional harm. “And you need to stop going to the club. It’s not safe for you there.”
Her eyes crinkled at the corners as the sadness left them, and she laughed.
“I’m serious, Paige.”
“You’re deluded,” she retorted. “I may let you tell me what to do there—” she pointed to the rumpled bed “—but only there. You’re not my husband anymore. You can’t tell me how to live my life.”
Frustration had his temper snapping and he bitterly remarked, “We both know I’ve never been able to tell you what to do.”
As the hurt and guilt flashed in her eyes, he wished the words back. It wasn’t her fault. It was his. He was the medical expert—the friggin’ world-renowned and otherworld renowned cardiologist. He should have known.
Pride and anger replaced the hurt in her narrowed eyes. “No, you’d actually have to be around in order to tell me what to do,” she said, the smile leaving her face as bitterness sharpened her voice. “And you weren’t around for much of our marriage.”
He couldn’t argue with her, nor could he apologize—not without offering an explanation that would put her in more danger than she already was.
“Why are you around now, Ben?” she asked.
Guilt. Fear. Love. He could have named any of them and been speaking the truth. But then he’d have to explain something that defied explanation. The damn secret society.
“I’m worried about you,” he said. “You’re in danger.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know that….”
“The flowers, the car…”
“That all could have been a mistake,” she insisted stubbornly.
How had he forgotten how stubborn Paige could be? It was one of the things he loved about her. “You can’t take that chance. And neither can I,” he said. “Let me move in here. Let me take care of you.”
She laughed again, but this time tears sparkled in her eyes. “Oh, Ben, that would only set us both up for disappointment.”
“What do you mean?” If she was worried about him falling for her again, it was already too late. He had never fallen out of love with her, and he worried that he never would—no matter that they had no future.
“You keep leaving,” she reminded him. “You just take off, with no warning, with no explanation of where you’re going or where you’ve been.”
“I’m a doctor, Paige,” he said. “You knew that when you married me. You knew I’d work long hours and be on call twenty-four seven.”
She shook her head. “Maybe when you were an intern you needed to work those crazy hours. But not now.”
“I have patients. I have a responsibility to them.” No matter what they were.
“What about us?”
He flinched. “I know, Paige. I wasn’t there for you…like I should have been.”
“And you can’t promise that it’ll be different now,” she pointed out.
Despite all his secrets, she really knew him too well. “No,” he admitted with a heavy sigh.
“You can’t protect me if you’re not here.”
“I’ll be here,” he vowed. “I’ll stick close to you.”
She shook her head. “Don’t make a promise you’ve never been able to keep.”
He pushed a hand through his still-damp hair and sighed. Damn it to hell, but she was right, as usual. It was another of her traits that had charmed as much as it had annoyed him.
“You always leave me,” she reminded him, the tears overflowing her eyes to trail down her face like the rain on the window. “So do what you do best…leave.”
He sucked in a breath of pain over her resolute rejection. “Paige?”
“And this time, don’t come back,” she said. “I can’t keep doing this.”
“But playing these games was your idea,” he reminded her, with a flash of anger.
He had tried to do the right thing; he’d tried to stay away from her after the divorce. But after a few months of no contact, she’d starting coming to him. A blow job at his office. A quickie in the
backseat of his SUV. She’d shown up sporadically, weeks or sometimes months passing before she came to him again. And so desperate to see her, to touch her, to taste her, he’d started coming to her.
“It was a mistake,” she said, “to think that we could keep it light and unemotional. We’ve never been about fun and games.” She released a shuddery breath. “We’re all about secrets and pain.”
“I’m sorry.” Not just about the pain he’d caused her…but the pain she would not let him protect her from.
Paige held back her tears until the door closed behind Ben. But then, instead of shedding them, she blinked them away. She’d cried enough over him.
Her body hummed with the pleasure he’d given her—again and again. And over the past four years, she’d kept seeking him out for more. She hadn’t imagined the pleasure only he could give her, but she had forgotten the subsequent pain.
She couldn’t move on with her life if she kept him in her life. Even if she was really in danger, he couldn’t protect her. He could only cause her more pain, just as she had caused him.
Her heart contracted as she remembered the look on his face—the raw pain of her rejection. He hadn’t looked that upset even when she’d divorced him. In fact, she’d often thought that he’d looked more relieved than hurt when she’d served him with papers.
He hadn’t been relieved tonight. She wouldn’t kid herself that it was because he loved her. He had agreed with everything she’d said and was acting more out of obligation than love.
But it was time she protected herself. And she couldn’t do that by hiding away. That little voice in her head might be convinced she didn’t belong at Club Underground, but Paige was not.
At the moment, she had nowhere else to go.
Chapter 9
Ben expelled a breath but hesitated before drawing in another. He hated the smell of this place. The stench of the blood, the death, the sewer…
Sebastian shuddered. “Why’d we have to talk here?”
“Paige can’t see us together,” Ben said.
And she was out there, just beyond the steel door, down the hall in her office. The club had closed for the night; all the patrons had left but she had yet to go home. God, she was stubborn.
“Why not?” Sebastian asked. “I can’t talk to my ex-brother-in-law?”
Ben shook his head. “Not now. She’ll know what we’re talking about.”
“What are we talking about?” Sebastian asked.
“Her,” Ben replied. “You have to stick close to her. She won’t let me.”
Because she wanted nothing to do with him anymore. She wouldn’t take his calls or return his messages except to leave one of her own. I don’t want to see you. Or talk to you anymore. Please leave me alone….
He’d erased the message, but he would never forget the words—or the conviction in her voice. She’d been hurt and confused when she’d served him with divorce papers. She wasn’t confused anymore; she was certain she didn’t want him in her life.
“She won’t let me protect her, either,” Sebastian admitted with a heavy sigh. “It doesn’t matter if she sees us together or not. She keeps accusing me of hovering. She insists she’s not in any danger.”
“We both know better.”
Sebastian sighed again. “And so does everyone else. After Owen’s murder, I can’t convince anyone else to help me keep an eye on her.”
Ben shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t trust anyone else. You have to protect her.”
“But I don’t know—”
“This is your mess. You brought me into this,” Ben reminded him, frustration gripping him as he remembered the first time he’d seen this room. With the young man he’d believed his brother-in-law bleeding to death on the table, a stake protruding from his heart. “You brought her into this—you brought her into the world.”
And he had broken the law of the secret society when he had. Vampires were not supposed to procreate with mortals; they weren’t supposed to mate with them, either. But that was a law too many of the undead had broken for it ever to be steadfastly enforced.
Sebastian’s eyes glistened with regret and love. “She can never know that….”
“That you’re her dad instead of her younger half brother?” A claim she had too readily accepted as fact when Sebastian had showed up at their door ten years ago. “Yeah, that would kind of blow the damn secret out of the water.”
“And if she learns it…”
“If…” Ben snorted. “Does it matter? She doesn’t know it now, but she’s already in danger.”
“Is she?” the other man asked. “It’s been over a week and nothing else has happened.”
“Someone is threatening her,” Ben reminded him.
Maybe it was time he threatened back. He’d already lost Paige once because of the damn secret. He didn’t intend to lose her completely.
But then a scream penetrated the metal door, the voice shrill with terror. And terrifyingly familiar. Paige.
Was it already too late?
Paige pressed a trembling hand against her throat, where blood oozed between her fingers. With her other hand she fumbled for the light switch in her dark office. Before she could find it, the lamp flickered on her desk, and the faint glow of the bulb penetrated the shattered green shade and illuminated the trashed room.
She lurched to her feet and stumbled over the legs of the chair she’d thrown. Keeping that hand pressed against her wound, she tossed aside files and books as she looked for her purse and cell phone. Like the chair, the purse was upended—its contents spilled. She needed to get a purse with a damn zipper. Spying the glint of metal beneath the desk, she reached for the phone just as strong hands closed around her shoulders.
Thrusting her elbow back, she writhed and fought to free herself again from her assailant. “Let me go!”
“Paige, shh…it’s me,” a familiar deep voice assured her as he turned her to face him.
“Ben!” She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him. She’d never been so happy that he hadn’t listened to her and stayed away.
His hands trembling on her shoulders, he pulled her back. His dark eyes widened, and all the color drained from his handsome face. “You’re hurt! You’re bleeding….” His fingertips gently probed the wound.
“It’s just a scratch,” she assured him, feeling as if he needed more comfort than she did now.
His breath shuddered out. “It’s not deep, but I should take you to—”
“The hospital,” Sebastian interjected as he dropped onto his knees beside them. “You should take her to the hospital…if she needs stitches.”
She shook her head as she pushed aside Ben’s fingers and touched the wound. “It’s not bleeding much now.”
“I need to clean and dress it,” Ben said, his jaw taut. “Let’s get you to the E.R.”
She glanced back to her cell phone. “I need to call the police first.”
“What happened, Paige?” Sebastian asked.
She shivered. “I don’t know. It all happened so fast. One minute I was doing paperwork. The next it was dark and someone grabbed me.”
“You fought,” Ben said, his voice gruff with satisfaction and surprise.
He had every reason to be surprised. Until a week ago in her condo, she had never really fought with him. Or for him.
She nodded and wished she had fought before.
“Did you see who attacked you?” he asked, his hands tightening on her shoulders.
“No.” She trembled now, but with anger, not fear, over the way she’d been ambushed in the dark. “I couldn’t see anything.”
But she’d heard the voice, this time outside her head, in a whisper so raspy she’d been unable to tell if it was feminine or masculine. She shuddered now as she remembered the warmth of the breath against her neck as she’d been told again, “You don’t belong here….”
Bracing her hands on Ben’s shoulders, she levered herself to her feet. But as soon
as she stood, she swayed. Dizziness lightened her head and dimmed her vision. She drew in a steadying breath, but before she could regain her balance, Ben swung her up in his arms.
“I’m fine,” she said, even though she couldn’t stop trembling now that she’d started.
“No, you’re not,” Ben said. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“I need to call the police,” she insisted.
“You can call your friend from the hospital,” he said as he carried her down the hall.
“Where did you come from?” she asked. “You and Sebastian?”
“We were out here, at the bar,” her brother answered. “We were having a drink.”
She glanced toward the bar, but no glasses sat atop the shiny granite surface. Would they have washed them before responding to her screams? She doubted it. “If you were out here, in the light, you would have seen who it was,” she pointed out. “Who attacked me?”
A muscle twitched in his jaw as Ben shook his head. “We didn’t see anything, Paige. We only heard your screams.”
“I’ll bring your car around,” Sebastian offered, running out the door ahead of them.
When he was gone, Paige focused on her ex-husband. “Where were you, Ben?” she asked. The question was one she had wanted to ask him so many times before. But she’d been afraid of the answer—afraid that he might have been cheating on her.
“I told you I’d be here for you,” he reminded her.
Like so many times before, over the years, he hadn’t really answered her question. And he hadn’t kept her safe.
Ben stared at the undead who had responded to his summons and gathered at Club Underground just hours after the attack. Instead of seeing them, he saw Paige’s face—her skin pale but for the blood streaking from the wound on her throat. He recognized the mark, but fortunately only one fang had broken her skin. But if it had nicked an artery…
She wouldn’t have been able to fight off her attacker. There would have been no screams for him and Sebastian to hear. No warning of her impending death.
He forced that image from his mind, unwilling to contemplate the horror of it. Instead, he focused on the horror before him. They didn’t look like monsters; they looked like movie stars: beautiful, sexy and eternally young. But he’d seen some of the things they had done to one another and to mortals. He, more than anyone else, knew what they were capable of.