After Midnight

by Grimm, Sarah

  “Okay.” He rocked back on his heels and continued to watch her in a disconcerting way. She was unable to read his expression until the music on her stereo changed to the next CD. As the first few beats played, his smile returned. “Aren’t you a little too young to be a fan of Thin Lizzy?”

  “You can never be too young or too old for great music.”

  “How do you decide what is great and what isn’t?”

  “You expect me to say by the artist’s skill, don’t you? But that’s only part of it. Personally, I judge music by the way it makes me feel.”

  “And how does Thin Lizzy make you feel?” he asked, as he crossed the room to her fireplace and the racks of compact discs that littered the mantel top. The fact that he appeared totally comfortable in her home, while she was a mass of nerves, filled her with dismay.

  “Energized,” she replied. “Happy.”

  His fingers traced over the spine of each disc until he located and removed one. “What about this one? How does it make you feel?”

  She shifted her gaze, then wrinkled her nose. “You can have that one if you’d like. It gave me a headache.”

  Amusement slid into his eyes. “No, thanks. It had the same effect on me.”

  Her lips curved.

  “You have an extensive collection,” he commented, his attention back on the collection he spoke of.

  “It’s a passion,” she admitted, then crossed the room to stand next to him. “Some might call it a compulsion, but I love all kinds of music.”

  “Do you ever listen to your own music?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “Sometimes.” He faced her. In his hand, he held one of his own CDs. “I’m surprised you have this one. It didn’t sell very well.”

  “No?”

  He opened the case and discovered it was empty.

  “In the CD player.” She had one of those players that held over three hundred CDs. She kept it full. “Number thirty-two.”

  He shifted to stand before the player, studied it for a minute, then turned the dial. The machine responded immediately, shuffling through the discs until it reached the correct slot. An electric guitar riff filled the room, immediately followed by his voice.

  “Tempted”; her favorite song.

  He shook his head.

  “You didn’t believe me?”

  “I thought perhaps you were being kind.”

  “Why would I be kind?” She winced the moment the words left her mouth. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  He gave her a slow, alluring smile that turned into laughter. “I’m not certain if you’re good or bad for my ego, Isa.”

  She couldn’t breathe. For a split second, she forgot how. The man’s smile was powerful enough, but when he laughed? Nothing had prepared her for the power of his laughter. Her knees turned to jelly. Her blood heated.

  “I think your ego will survive,” she managed around the knot in her throat.

  His gaze moved over her with a touch as sure as his fingertips had been a few moments ago. “You think your opinion of me doesn’t matter?”

  “In the grand scheme of things, I don’t see how it would, but you don’t need to worry, I like you just fine.”

  More than fine. His nearness put knots of tension in her stomach. The way he continued to look at her made the tightness she’d felt in her chest since he told her she was special, intensify. Desperate to put a bit of space between them, she asked, “Would you like to sit down?”

  He sprawled—there was no other word for it—on the couch closest to him. Resting his arms across the back, he placed one booted foot atop the opposite knee. The position of his arms pushed the sleeves of his shirt up higher than normal and revealed a wrapping around his right upper arm. The light reflected off of it in a way that told her exactly what it was. “You’ve seen my father today?”

  “I have.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Haven’t you spoken with him?”

  She sank onto the second couch across from him and shook her head. “No. I didn’t know what to say to him. I hoped to hear back from Officer Grant before I told him about what happened to my vehicle.”

  “What if I told you he already knows?”

  “How? Did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t have to.”

  Removing the clip that held all her hair atop her head, she tossed it on the coffee table between them, then raked her fingers through her hair. “What did he say?”

  “That he’d heard you had a bit of trouble. He asked how bad it was, and how well you were taking it. He also asked whether I believed Tommy was to blame.”

  “And you told him what?”

  He eyed her for a long moment. “That Tommy was the first person to come to mind when I saw the knife sticking out of your tire.”

  Everything inside of her went still. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I should call him.”

  “I’m sure he’d love to hear from you. He’s an interesting man, your father. He cares about you a great deal.”

  She gave him a cool look. “Yesterday you questioned his integrity. You accused him of hurting me.”

  “I didn’t accuse him of anything. I asked if he was the one who hurt you.”

  “Who said anyone hurt me?”

  He returned his foot to the floor and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “You did. I simply questioned whether your father was that someone.”

  Her heart skipped a beat or two. He had no idea how close to the truth he was. Too close. She wasn’t going to talk to him about this. Her past was exactly where it belonged, in the past. She wouldn’t revisit it for anyone.

  “Thomas isn’t my…“ Her voice wavered, and she dragged in a breath to steady it. “I’m not actually his daughter.”

  “According to biology. If I asked him, I bet he feels differently. Otherwise, he never would have fought so hard to keep you.”

  She went still for a long moment, her eyes closed, wishing he hadn’t just said that. There was only one way he knew of Thomas’s fight to win custody of her. “You’ve been on the Internet.”

  “Only after you made your accusations that day in the bar. At the time, I had no idea what you were talking about. How much of what’s there is true?”

  She hated this part. Telling people about her past.

  Who was she kidding? She didn’t share her past with anyone. Ever.

  “They got the major points right. There was an accident—my mother died, I nearly died. My biological father took Thomas to court to get custody of me and won.”

  “Yet quite a bit is incorrect. You’re not horribly disfigured, or dead. And having met Thomas for myself, I do not believe he had anything but the truest of paternal love for you.”

  “God, what the press made him out to be.” She dragged the heel of her palm across her forehead as tears welled in her eyes.

  Noah rose off the couch, stepped around the coffee table and sank down next to her. He laid a hand over hers. “The press can be brutal.”

  The touch of his hand atop hers warmed her blood. The understanding in his voice soothed the sharp edges of her memory.

  “How did Thomas and Nicole meet?” he asked, surprising her by remembering her mother’s name.

  “Through a mutual friend.”

  “You were two?”

  “Yes. They had two years together before that day at the symphony hall.”

  “The day you first played the piano?”

  “Yes.” The day she walked onstage after her mother’s rehearsal and sat at the piano. Pressed her fingers to the keys and turned the music world on its ear by playing the last number the guest soloist had practiced. Perfectly.

  It was the first time she’d ever touched a piano, but far from the last.

  “After that day, things got pretty out of hand. Instantly, I was an international sensation. A child with an ear for music; a raw talent that rivaled the masters of the time.” Her breath became shallow. Sh
e lowered her voice. “A child who’d only been doing what she loved and didn’t understand the fascination.”

  “I can’t imagine,” he admitted. “How did you handle it?”

  “At first, I was too young to realize how different I was. It was only after the fallout of my first television interview, the one where with the innocence of youth I told the reporter, ‘There’s music all around us. Only certain people hear it and even fewer take the time to listen,’ that I learned to keep my mouth shut about exactly how I played music after hearing it only once.”

  “I never saw that interview.”

  “Lucky you.” Nerves humming, she pushed off the couch and walked a few paces away. She never talked about it, never gave so much of her soul away. Noah needed to understand. He needed to know why she was not what he wanted.

  “As I got older I began performing as a guest soloist throughout the world with well-known symphony orchestras. Between the tours, the appearances and the interviews, Mom and I were on the road more than we were home with Thomas. I always felt bad about that, that because of me, their time together was cut short.”

  “Cut short? She was your mother, she wasn’t forced to tour with you, she chose to. She could have taken you back home after that first day, never to let the world find out about you.”

  Isabeau closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “Certainly you don’t believe you are the reason for her death?”

  Her chest ached. It was her fault. The injury to her hand. Her mother’s death. All of it.

  “Isabeau?” His warm hand settled on her shoulder and she startled, snapped her eyes open and came face to face with him. “You can’t hold yourself responsible for her death.”

  “We had been on the road for ten weeks,” she explained, her voice barely above a whisper. “It was the last performance before returning home for the Thanksgiving holiday. I couldn’t wait. I was tired of touring. Tired of being put...I didn’t want to perform any more. I wanted to go home and see Thomas. I missed him.”

  Her voiced hitched. She attempted to level it. “The performance went well. We were scheduled to fly home the next morning, but I convinced my mother to catch the red-eye instead. I hate to fly. Normally I would never do it sooner than necessary, but I was exhausted. I wanted it behind me.” She paused as it all came back to her with perfect clarity. “It was late, so mom decided to take a taxi home from the airport instead of waking Thomas. I remember asking if I could lie down in the back seat and mom insisting I couldn’t. She buckled my lap belt and we were off. We were only two blocks from home when the accident happened. It was snowing and the roads were icy. I remember taillights, a car swerving in front of us then…”

  She closed her eyes against the painful memory. “My mother screamed. I’ll never forget that. She reached across the seat for me. Then there was this sound—metal bending—and this blur that must have been the car tumbling. Then, silence.”

  His hand atop her shoulder flexed.

  “Mom hadn’t buckled her own belt. She’d secured me in, but not herself. Her body was tossed around like a rag doll as we rolled over and over. She bled to death while I watched, while the wail of sirens echoed off the buildings.” Her stomach clenched painfully, her body trembled as, in her mind, she revisited the accident. “They were too late. Too late to save her.”

  “I’m so sorry, Isa.”

  “She was smart and funny, then in the blink of an eye, she was gone. I couldn’t get to her. I tried. I struggled and I tried to get across that backseat so I could hold her. I thought if I could hold her, I could save her. Of course what I had yet to realize was that my hand was pinned, crushed between the seat and the side of the car. I couldn’t possibly get to her.”

  The palm he placed against her cheek was gentle. She reached up and pulled his hand from her face. But instead of letting go, she curled her fingers around his. “If only I hadn’t pushed her to come home early.”

  “You’re not responsible for her death.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “It was an accident, Isabeau, a tragic accident.”

  She stared down at their joined hands, hers so small and tanned and scarred, his so much larger and paler. She had allowed him to cross a barrier, and suddenly he could touch her. If he could touch her, he could pull her toward him—literally and figuratively. She told herself she didn’t want that.

  Liar.

  “I miss her so much.” The words kept coming. Intimate. Revealing. “My mother would hold me. She was the sort who touched people often, not just to comfort or soothe. Every day, at least once a day she would stroke my hair and tell me how much she loved me. Every night she held me as I drifted to sleep. I miss that.”

  He gazed at her intently. Without judgment, without that look of fear men tended to wear when emotion came into a conversation. Looking back at him, she felt it again—that thing that had been between them from the start. Stronger now. Not as easy to ignore.

  “Tell me about her.”

  “My mother was beautiful—blonde hair, blue eyes, about my height and build. She was friendly, a bit naive. My biological father was eight years older than she, twenty-six to her eighteen when they first met. She was twenty when she left him, pregnant with me. She struggled for a couple of years before being picked up by the New York Philharmonic, but she got by. Six months later, Mom met Thomas.”

  “Whom she moved in with.”

  “She wasn’t…a loose woman. No matter what Tommy said.”

  “I’m not judging her, Isa, believe me.”

  She eased away from him, wrapped her arms around her middle. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

  He stared down at her. “You didn’t say, was your mother French?”

  “No, but her great-grandmother was.”

  “Is that where you got your name?”

  She nodded. “Mom loved her dearly. When she died the year I was born, Mom gave me her name.”

  “It’s a beautiful name.”

  His soft statement jump-started her pulse. But it was nothing compared to the effect his next question had on her.

  “What about your biological father? That’s how you always refer to him. Does the man have a name?”

  “The devil incarnate,” she thought with a shudder of revulsion. Oh God, had she said that out loud?

  She waited for him to comment. His expression was serious, but he remained silent. Thank God. No way would he let a statement like that pass. “His name was John Whitehorse.”

  “Was he the man in the picture taken in front of the court house?”

  Her spine went rigid. She didn’t have to ask him to know which picture he was speaking of. He meant the one taken at the end of the trial, when she’d literally been ripped from the arms of the only father she’d ever known and given to a man who didn’t want her, just her bank account. The media loved the drama of it, and had splashed that picture on the front page of newspapers nationwide.

  “He was the man pulling me away from Thomas, yes.”

  Eyes eloquent, he reached up and cupped his hand against the side of her face. His thumb swept back and forth across her cheek. She closed her eyes. It would be so easy to fall for him, to forget that he wasn’t the guy for her. There was something about him that made her want. More than she’d ever wanted before.

  A lot more.

  Shifting away from him before she did something she would regret later, she circled the couch and reclaimed her spot on the end. “Enough about me. Tell me something about you.”

  He leaned his hip against the back of the couch. “What do you want to know?”

  “What did you do after you stopped singing? You said you went back to London?”

  “Yes, for about six years. The first few months of which I did nothing but wallow in grief. I drank too much, didn’t sleep enough, and was very unpleasant to be around. Then my grandfather decided he’d had enough. He came over and dragged me back to life, literally. Right out the front door and into the
rain. Left me out there until I sobered up, after which he hauled me back inside, sat me down, and explained to me how things were going to change. He made certain I understood that my behavior would no longer be tolerated.”

  “An intervention.”

  His mouth curved. “I guess it was.”

  “He loves you, he didn’t want to see you waste away.”

  His smile faded as he gazed at her. She curled her left hand around his wrist. “What’s the matter?”

  “Henry’s not a young man any more. I’m worried about him. I could see the last time I spoke with him that his health is failing.”

  Without thinking, she slid her hand down and linked her fingers with his. She ached for him, knowing how difficult it was to lose a loved one. “When is the last time you saw him?”

  “Right before I moved to the new house. About six months ago.”

  “You should go see him again, once your demo is done.”

  “I plan to.” He shifted their joined hands, used his free hand to trace the length of her pinky and ring finger. “Your fingers are cold.”

  “They always are. They sustained too much damage in the accident.”

  “Any nerve damage?”

  “Yes. Not the way you’d think though. They’re actually more sensitive than the other fingers.” Overly sensitive. The brush of his fingertips sent a shock of electricity up her arm, jolting her already raw nerves. Her body hummed as his warmth began to seep into her hand, then into her bloodstream.

  “It’s a miracle you can still play at all,” he commented softly.

  Her stomach crawled into her throat. At one point in her life she would have agreed with him, but that time was long past. “I don’t play anymore.”

  His hand tightened on hers as she tried to pull away. “Because you choose not to.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you regained the ability, should you ever change your mind.”

  She met his gaze. “I won’t change my mind.”

  His lips curved, but his smile was not reflected in his eyes. “After Henry’s intervention, I straightened up my act. I was happy—I had a job, a woman—I never thought I’d go back to performing.”

  She didn’t miss performing. She would never admit it to him, but there were times she did miss playing. Like the night they’d met, when she longed to relive the joy only the piano brought her. But performing, sitting in a hushed symphony hall, with all those eyes focused on her…