“Why are you around now, Ben?”

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.”

If she was worried about him falling for her again, it was already too late—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 have patients. I have a responsibility to them.” No matter what they were.

“What about us? You can’t protect me if you’re not here.”

“I’ll be here,” he vowed.

Dear Reader,

I am so thrilled to be writing for Mills & Boon® Nocturne™. I’m especially happy to be back in the city I created in my Nocturne Bite, Secret Vampire Society, and revisited in Nothing Says Christmas Like a Vampire, which appears in the M&B Christmas with a Vampire collection.

In Mistress of the Underground, Paige Culver discovers the Secret Vampire Society, but no mortal can learn about that secret group and continue to live. Unless that mortal is Dr Benjamin Davison, Paige’s ex-husband, who has reluctantly become the surgeon to the supernatural.

Ben can heal beasts, but his secret life prevented him from saving what mattered most to him—his marriage. When attempts are made on Paige’s life, Ben tries to protect her but worries that he’s only endangering her more. To save her, he might have to finally let her go.

I hope you enjoy your return to the Underground with Paige and Ben.

Happy reading!

Lisa Childs

Mistress of the Underground
Lisa Childs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author

LISA CHILDS has been writing since she could first form sentences. At eleven she won her first writing award and was interviewed by the local newspaper. That story’s plot revolved around a kidnapping, probably something she wished on any of her six siblings. A Halloween birthday predestined a life of writing paranormal and intrigue.

Readers can write to Lisa at PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA, or visit her at her website, www.lisachilds.com.

To Tara Gavin, my amazing editor, who always understands how important my characters are to me.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to tell Paige and Ben’s story!

Chapter One

You don’t belong here…

The skin tingled on the nape of Paige Culver’s neck, and she shivered. To assure herself she was alone, she glanced around her small, windowless office. Light penetrated the green glass shade of the lamp on her desk but didn’t dissipate the shadows clinging to the worn-brick walls.

You don’t belong here…

That voice wasn’t real; it had to be only in her head. Her own voice verbalizing the doubts that had tormented her since she’d bought Club Underground. She was a lawyer. What the hell did she know about running a lounge?

Actually, she wasn’t a lawyer anymore—at least not one with a firm where she could practice. So she’d bought the club, which occupied the basement of a traditional brick office building in downtown Zantrax, the city which had replaced Detroit as the urban metropolis of Michigan. The building was the only thing traditional about Club Underground.

Music throbbed through the sound system, tempting Paige to leave the office and join the action. She pushed paperwork aside and stood up, swaying slightly on her stilettos as nerves assailed her again.

Opening night. Actually, reopening night, under new management, but yet she’d hidden herself back here, away from the club patrons. Would everyone else think, as she did, that she did not belong here?

“To hell with them,” she murmured with the flash of pride and stubbornness that sometimes irritated the people she cared about. And to hell with what she thought, too. “There’s no turning back now…”

With a slightly trembling hand, she smoothed down her flyaway strands of blond hair. Then she smoothed her hands over her hips, settling the red silk against her body.

Would he be out there? Waiting to congratulate her? Or to question her sanity? She didn’t care which, as long as he was near—close enough to touch.

Anxious now, she hurried from the office, barely remembering to turn the lock before pulling the door closed behind her. In the hall, the music played louder, the bass lower and sexier. She glanced toward the door that separated the hall from the lounge. Then she glanced back the other way. To the door in the brick wall at the end of the hall. The door that led nowhere—according to the club manager. Then why was it locked?

You don’t belong here…

The voice had to be inside her head; how else could she have heard it over the volume of the music? She shivered again, but from cold, not fear, and considered unlocking the office to retrieve her sweater. But it would ruin the effect of the dress with its thin straps and low neckline.

She didn’t regret her decision, at least regarding the sweater, as she stepped into the lounge. It would have been out of place, would have made her look more out of place than she already felt among the bodies gyrating on the dance floor. She didn’t have the tiny waist or sharp curves of the women; her curves were rounder, fuller. And she was so much older, not just in years but in experience, than those laughing, flirting girls.

They were twenty-one, at least, or they wouldn’t have been allowed inside the club. But no lines creased or dark shadows touched their clear skin. Self-conscious, Paige lifted a hand to her cheek. From her sleepless nights, she had dark circles and lines of stress. Not just because of her impetuous purchase…

But because of him…

She glanced around the bar in the lowest level of the turn-of-the-century building. Like her office, the outer walls were exposed brick, and the interior ones were dark paneled and as highly polished as the hardwood floors. The lights were dim, candles on the intimate tables and booths, strobes flashing sexily across the dance floor. She recognized no one among the crowd. Had none of her friends shown up to wish her well? Of course, she hadn’t given them much notice about the club. She hadn’t told anyone about what had been going on in her life. Not even he knew everything.

He knew nothing—actually, not a thing about this woman…but that she was gorgeous. The muscles tightened in Ben’s gut as he studied her moving around the club, as bright and fluid as a flame. He tracked her through the crowd. In her red dress, with her golden hair, she stood out among the others with their dark clothes and their darker agendas. She didn’t belong…for so many reasons.

“Hey—”

He ignored the voices calling out and the hands reaching for him and slipped through the crowd, following her. She glanced back, as if aware of his presence. From the first moment they’d met, they had always had an uncanny awareness of each other.

But she didn’t stop walking. The sway of her hips, as she maneuvered through the crowd of club patrons, seduced him. He wanted to talk to her.

Who the hell was he kidding? He just wanted her.

Finally, he caught her—near the bar. She leaned over it, shouting out an order to the bartender. And he leaned against her, his hands sliding over the soft curve of her hips. Silk brushed across his palms, and his skin tingled from the heat of her flesh. He wanted the silk gone—the crowd gone. He wanted only her and him—and skin on skin.

Despite the heat of the crowded club, and his touch, Paige shivered. Her heart kicked against her ribs with excitement…and anticipation. “I’ll be out of your way in just a minute,” she murmured over her shoulder.

“Out of my way?” his deep voice rasped in her ear.

His warm breath raised goose bumps along her nape, and she nodded. “So you can get your free drink.”

“Free drink?”

“Opening night special,” she explained. “First drink is on the house.”

“What if I don’t want a drink?”

She tilted her head so that her gaze met his. His eyes, big and dark and fringed with thick lashes, studied her intently. His hair was dark, too, but for the strands of gray sprinkled throughout; it was also cut short, but not so short that she couldn’t run her fingers through its softness.

“Is there something else you—” she swiped the tip of her tongue across her bottom lip “—want?”

His fingers flexed against her hips, digging gently into her flesh. “I want the special.”

“I haven’t told you the special,” she reminded him with a teasing smile.

“I know what’s special,” he said, his gaze intent on her face.

Sadness tugged at her, pulling down the corners of her lips. If only she could believe him…but she knew better. If only she knew him better…

But they were strangers.

She whirled away from the bar and shoved past him. He caught her wrist, but she tugged free and slipped through the crowd. Voices murmured complaints as she bumped into hard bodies in her haste to escape him—and them—and that voice inside her head that pursued her all the way back to the office.

You don’t belong here…

Paige’s fingers trembled, and her keys jangled, as she pulled them from her small spangled clutch. She glanced to the end of the hall and that strange locked door.

Was the voice not inside her head? Was it coming from behind that door? The door that supposedly led nowhere? Now her legs trembled slightly as she passed the office and continued down the hall—toward that riveted steel door. When she neared it, still several feet away, cold air rushed around or through the steel and over her skin. She gasped and shuddered.

Then arms wrapped around her as a hard, warm body pressed against her back. And she screamed.

“No one can hear you,” he said, his voice a deep rasp in her ear as his lips brushed the lobe. “Not back here, not over that music…”

Even though her heart raced, her lips curved into a smile. “Are you threatening me?”

“Warning you…”

He’d warned her before, but she hadn’t heeded. Then. Now she was older and wiser. She knew this was the last man with whom she should get involved. Yet, instead of pulling away, she turned in his arms. He was taller than her, nearly a foot, with broad shoulders testing the seams of his black sweater. He wore all black: black shoes, black pants and that black sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He could have been a cat burglar or a stalker.

She should have been afraid, and part of her was, her stomach quivering as she acknowledged the danger of what she was about to do, the risk she was taking. But she didn’t care. She lifted her hands to his chest, settling her palms against the sculpted muscles. Heat and the rapid beat of his heart emanated through the thin cashmere.

“You’re not going to listen to any warning,” he said with a sigh of resignation, even as his dark eyes burned with desire. “No matter what I say…”

“You talk?” she teased, but her skepticism was real.

His mouth, wide and sensual, lifted in a slight grin. “What’s the point when you won’t listen?”

She lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug, which drew his attention to the skin bared by her low bodice. His eyes darkened even more as his pupils dilated. Desire thickened her throat as she murmured, “There is no point to talking…”

She didn’t want to talk or listen or think. She wanted the rush of passion pounding through her veins to drown out the voice and her doubts—not just about buying the club but about him.

His hands loosened their grip on her waist, but before he could step back, she reached up and clutched his shoulders. Then she lifted her face to his. For his kiss.

Instead of lowering his head to hers, he shook it. Then he manacled her wrists and pulled her hands away from him. He glanced over her head, at that steel door, and a shudder rippled through his hard, muscled body. “Not here.”

“You…you feel it, too?” she asked.

“I feel this between us—” he released a ragged sigh “—even though I don’t want to…”

“I don’t want to, either,” she insisted, even as her skin heated with desire for him. She tugged her wrists free of his hands and fumbled inside her bag once again for her keys. After jabbing the key in the lock, she turned the knob and opened the door to her office.

Just as at the bar, strong hands slid over her hips. Then he pushed her through the doorway and closed and locked the door behind them. Locking them inside the small, windowless room. Alone.

Her pulse quickened with excitement, but her stinging pride tamped down that excitement. “I thought you didn’t want to…that you didn’t want…me…”

He leaned back against the door, his arms crossed over his muscular chest. “Yup, you never listen…” He sighed again. “I didn’t say that I don’t want you.”

“But that you don’t want to want me.” She listened; too bad he hadn’t ever really talked to her before.

“This is so complicated, Pai—”

“Shh,” she said, interrupting him, reminding herself that she didn’t want to talk or listen anymore. “You don’t know my name, and I don’t know yours. We’re just strangers who met at a bar.”

“Is that the game we’re playing this time?”

It wasn’t a game, not really. “We are strangers,” she repeated.

“You don’t want this, either,” he pointed out, “or you wouldn’t have run away from me at the bar. You nearly ran me over trying to get away from me.” He shook his head and clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Hell of a way to treat your customers.”

“Are you a customer?” she asked, fighting the smile that teased her lips.

He lifted a brow, dark with just a touch of gray. “Maybe not,” he said, his voice a deep rumble. “I haven’t had my free drink.”

“Why not?” she asked, leaning against the edge of her desk because her knees trembled. She blamed the high heels; she wasn’t used to wearing them anymore. “Can’t you decide what you want?”

“That’s never been my problem,” he insisted as he straightened away from the door and advanced on her.

She didn’t care what he was implying because he was wrong. She knew exactly what she wanted. Him, closer. Close enough to touch.

“I know what I want,” he said, his hands closing over her bare shoulders, his fingers toying with the thin spaghetti straps of her dress. He wanted to talk. Just talk. That was what he’d told himself as he’d descended the stairs to Club Underground.

But now, touching her, her skin silky soft beneath his fingertips, he wanted only her. He pushed down the straps of her dress, exposing more of the luscious slopes of her breasts. “You are so beautiful…”

Her lips curved into a self-deprecating smile. “Back here—where it’s just you and me. But not out there—among all those beautiful young girls.”

“You’re beautiful,” he insisted.

“But I’m no young girl.”

And neither were most of her patrons. But he couldn’t point that out to her without having to explain things that defied explanation.

“You’re a woman.” His woman.

“For a guy who doesn’t like to talk, you’re talking too much now,” she complained, but with another smile. Then she reached for his waist and slid her hands beneath his sweater, scraping her nails up his abdomen.

Ben shuddered again—this time for a good reason. Because only her touch could incite his desire to the point that he forgot everything else going on in his life and everything that had happened between them.

He lowered his head to hers. “Paige…”

“Shh…” she murmured as she kissed him.

The silkiness of her lips, the sweetness of her mouth, seduced him further, so that his control slipped. His hands shook as he gripped her waist and lifted her onto the desk. She lifted her legs, sliding her calves up the back of his thighs and over his butt to lock around his waist.

His cock hardened, throbbing behind the straining fly of his jeans. He pushed his hips forward, pressing against hers. She arched into him—as if there were no clothes between them…or secrets…or pain…

Only passion. It pumped through Ben’s body, fast and heavy, and elicited a groan from deep in his throat. Paige answered him with a moan, and her hands clutched at his sweater, dragging it up his body.

He pulled his mouth from hers as she yanked the cashmere over his head and tossed it onto the floor. He fumbled with the clasp at the back of her dress, unhooking it before dragging down the zipper. As the red silk fell away from her body, his breath caught in his lungs, then escaped in a ragged gasp. “Damn it, woman…”

She wore no bra beneath the dress, so her breasts, so round and full, were bare to his hungry gaze. “You only get more gorgeous.”

“And you get more charming,” she said with a smile, as if she didn’t believe his compliment.

But he’d never lied to her…except by omission. There was so damn much he’d omitted over the years.

If she wouldn’t believe what he told her, he’d have to prove it to her with his desire. He cupped her head in his hands, holding her face still for his kiss, for the possession of his mouth as he pressed her lips apart and slid his tongue across hers. She arched again, and her nipples rubbed against his bare chest.

Desire pounded in his head and his heart and he couldn’t think rationally. He couldn’t think at all…beyond the fact that he had to have her. He swept his arm across the desk behind her, knocking her papers and a cup to the floor. Ceramic cracked and broke, but he didn’t care. He cared about nothing but her. Always her.

His hands shook as he fumbled with his zipper, pulling his pants down. And he took her. She was ready for him, wet and hot as he thrust inside her.

Her nails sank into his shoulders then scraped down his back, as she shifted and arched against him. He lowered his head and caught first one rose-hued nipple then the other in his mouth, laving it with his tongue.

Her fingers tangled in his hair as she pressed his head to her breast. He reached between their bodies, sliding his fingers through her golden curls until he found the nub of her femininity. He pressed and stroked the pad of his thumb back and forth across it until she came, screaming against his lips as he kissed her deeply. His tongue slid in and out of her mouth, matching his rhythm as he moved in and out of her body. Her muscles clutched at him, holding him inside her.

And he came. He broke the rules of her little game—as he screamed her name. He couldn’t pretend that they were strangers. He could only pretend that they could actually be together…even though he knew they had no future.

Chapter Two

Paige pulled her spaghetti straps back up her shoulders, making certain her dress wasn’t on backward. The back dipped as low as the bodice. Warm lips brushed the bare skin between her shoulder blades. Shivering despite the heat racing through her, she leaned away and protested, “Only the first drink was on the house.”

“Miss Kitty never kicked Marshal Dillon out of bed,” Ben protested, then groaned as he flopped back down on the couch in her office.

The supple burgundy leather shifted beneath him, nearly knocking Paige from where she perched on the edge, trying not to touch him again so that she would be strong enough to resist temptation. She smiled at his reference to the old western series about the female bar owner and the lawman. Late at night, after making love, they’d often watched reruns of the series.

“You’re not Marshal Dillon,” she told her ex-husband, who was actually a renowned cardiologist. But tonight, Dr. Benjamin Davison had been just a stranger in a bar. For these trysts, they usually pretended to be strangers. Unfortunately, they really weren’t pretending despite having been married for ten years.

“And you’re not Miss Kitty, Paige.” He wedged his elbow behind his head, his dark eyes studying her. “This is crazy, you know…”

“Sleeping with you in my office? Yes, this is crazy,” she agreed. But the craziness had everything to do with the fact that she’d never been able to resist him. She picked up his sweater from the floor and tossed it onto his chest, trying to conceal the wide expanse of hair-dusted muscles from her view.

To further steel her resolve, she stood up and padded barefoot across the hardwood floor to her desk. She needed some distance between them—even though moving out and divorcing him hadn’t given her nearly enough distance. Every time they’d run into each other in the four years since the divorce, they’d wound up in each other’s arms. Her hands shook as she picked up the papers and files he’d swept to the floor.

“It is crazy,” he agreed—a little too heartily for her pride. “I didn’t come here for this…” He stood up and stretched, muscles rippling in his arms, chest and wash-board lean stomach.

Paige bit her bottom lip to hold in a lustful sigh; it wasn’t fair. At forty-three, he was supposed to have a potbelly and love handles; he wasn’t supposed to be as lean as he’d been in his twenties and thirties. She held in another sigh, a mingled one of relief and disappointment as he pulled on his pants and dragged his sweater over his head. His hair, the soft mixture of rich, dark chocolate and glittery silver, was mussed from the cashmere.

“So you came here for that free drink,” she quipped, refusing to let him get to her again. Still. She had worked so hard to get him out of her heart; she couldn’t let him back in. Because he had never let her in…

“I came here to talk to you,” he said, “just talk.”

She tensed, holding back the hope that threatened to rush over her. She could not allow herself to believe that he was really willing to share with her. During their marriage, he had shared very little of himself with her. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I want to know what the hell you’re doing,” he said, lifting a hand to gesture around the office. “I want to know why you quit the law practice and bought this club. What’s going on with you?”

Despite having tamped down the hope, her heart constricted with regret. “You don’t want to talk, Ben. You want me to talk.”

“I want to understand you.”

We don’t always get what we want. She couldn’t speak the words aloud, not without her voice cracking with pain. She’d wanted to understand him, too, so badly, but he’d never given her the chance.

“Why?” she asked. “Why now?”

“You’re not acting like you.”

And divorcing him, no matter how much she’d loved him, had been? And making love with him every time they had seen each other since?

“No, I’m not,” she admitted, but he was the one who caused her to act out of character. Falling for him at all had been out of character; she’d known better than to risk her heart on anyone.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, dragging a hand over his hair, settling it back into place. “Why would you give up a career you love, that you lived for, for this?”

She’d lived for him, not her job. But she hadn’t given up practicing law; the law practice had given up on her. Pride choked her, so that she couldn’t admit she’d been fired. Finally she found her voice and injected a sassy edge, “Why not?”

“You don’t belong here…”

She shivered in reaction to those chilling words. Was Ben’s the voice she’d been hearing? “That’s not fair,” she murmured. He’d already messed with her heart; she couldn’t have him messing with her head, too.

“You’re cold,” he observed, closing the distance between them with two strides. But he didn’t touch her; he just stood close, so close that the silk of her dress brushed against his pants, the skirt swirling around his legs, binding them together. But even though there was so much binding them together, so much more kept them apart.

So many secrets. His. She had no idea what he kept from her; she just knew that he kept something. But more than secrets had caused their breakup—the loss and pain that they hadn’t been able to share.

“Tell me why you would do this,” he urged. “You have to know it’s a mistake.”

If so, it wasn’t the first one she’d ever made.

“I don’t—”

“You know nothing about running any club,” he said, “let alone one like this.”

“Like what?” she asked as nerves fluttered in her stomach. “What’s this club like?”

“You should have checked that out before you bought in,” he criticized her.

And Ben had never criticized her—not even when she’d made the mistake that had cost them both so much. “That’s not fair,” she accused him again. “You have no idea what I did or didn’t check out.”

“I know you’re not aware of everything about Club Underground. I know because you wouldn’t have bought it if you knew its secrets.”

She gasped. “Secrets?”

The last thing she wanted in her life was more secrets—more answers just beyond her grasp. Like that voice that taunted her…

A fist hammered against the door, startling her nearly as much as his revelation. Apparently—from the way he’d closed his eyes and clenched his jaw—a revelation he regretted making.

“Paige!” a deep voice called through the door, “I have to talk to you.”

She blew out a breath that stirred a lock of hair near her cheek. “Great. Usually nobody wants to talk…”

Ben’s fingers skimmed along her jaw, tilting her face back to his, as he insisted, “Paige, we’re not done.”

Didn’t she know it? They wouldn’t be done until the day she summoned the willpower and strength to resist the sensual hold he had on her.

“I need to open the door,” she said, her voice soft and a bit breathless as she struggled against the pressure in her chest, building with every word he spoke, every glance of his dark, mesmerizing eyes. “Ben…”

“You’ve made a mistake, Paige, just like you did when you…” He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to. She knew what she had done. They both did. She’d accepted that she would never be able to forgive herself; now she realized that neither would he. Hell, she had always known that too much kept them apart. But now more than his secrets—that pain and loss stretched between them.

The fist hammered again, rattling the wood in the jamb.

“I need to get that,” she said, stepping around her ex-husband to open the door before the club manager pounded it down.

But Ben called her back, “Paige…”

She ignored him to focus on Sebastian, the tall dark-haired man standing the doorway. Like Ben he wore black, but in a tailored suit. A silk tie, nearly as deep a red as blood, provided the only splash of color against a black shirt. “Hey, what’s the emergency?” She hoped like hell there wasn’t one, because she would have no idea how to manage it.

Sebastian Culver’s dark blue eyes narrowed as his gaze moved from her to Ben, then back. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ben remarked. He usually teased her younger half brother, but now his voice held a noticeable trace of bitterness.

She shook her head. “No, Ben and I were finished.” A long time ago, and they needed to remember that. “Do you need me in the club?”

“Your friends are here,” Sebastian said. “I put them at the quiet table in the back and set them up with drinks.”

Her friends. Would they think, like Ben did, that she’d made a terrible mistake, that she didn’t belong in Club Underground? She sucked in a breath, bracing herself to find out. She didn’t glance back at Ben as she turned and walked away. But she did glance again at the door at the end of the hall.

In ten years of marriage, she had never learned Ben’s secrets. She wouldn’t live that way again. As soon as her friends were gone, she intended to find the key to that door and find out exactly what was hidden behind it.

Watching her walk away—again—had anger gripping Ben. He was used to the frustration and resentment he always struggled with when he was around Paige. But this time there was more, and his anger boiled over to Sebastian. He clenched his hand into a fist, tempted to slam it into the other man’s handsome face. But he dragged in a deep breath and forced his fingers to relax. He hadn’t controlled his urge for violence out of any affection for his ex-brother-in-law but because, as a surgeon, he couldn’t risk injury to the instruments of his livelihood.

Even though he resented his career as much as he sometimes resented Paige, he couldn’t do what she had. He couldn’t give it up—no matter how much it had cost him. He didn’t understand her leaving the law firm now when she’d had better reasons for leaving before. The resentment flared up again, twisting his gut. Despite all the years he’d known her and how much they were alike in some ways—like their lacking childhoods—he had never really understood Paige.

He grabbed the taller guy by the lapels of his tailored suit. “What the hell were you thinking—letting her get involved with Club Underground?”

Sebastian wrested free of his grasp and stepped back. “C’mon, Ben,” he began with his patented charming grin.

He was too angry to listen, let alone be charmed. “We agreed to keep her away from here.”

“Yeah, right, like either of us has ever been able to keep Paige from doing anything she wants.”

Like divorcing him. She’d been the only one who wanted that, but he hadn’t tried hard enough to change her mind. Hell, he really hadn’t tried at all. He’d never been able to give her what she’d needed and deserved—all of himself.

“But why would she want to do this?” he asked, gesturing around the basement office. “You must have said something to her…something about the club closing.”

Sebastian sighed and pushed a hand through his overly long black hair. “I did, but I never intended for her to get involved. I tried to get financing on my own, so that I could buy the club. But I didn’t qualify and the place would have had to close down.”

Ben flinched, blaming himself. He’d tried to save the previous owner, but he’d been in surgery at the hospital and hadn’t gotten to the club in time. Sebastian hadn’t asked him for the money, probably because he’d already cost Ben too much.

“So Paige came to the rescue.” As she had often rescued her brother and anyone who’d been fortunate enough to have her representing them in court.

“You two have that in common,” the other man told him. “You’re both rescuers.”

Ben shook his head, refusing to let Sebastian diffuse his anger with compliments. Especially unfounded ones. “We both know that’s not true—or the club wouldn’t have been at risk of closing.”

“You did everything you could. More than anyone else could have done,” Sebastian assured him, then patted his own chest. “I’m living proof of your skills.”

“Okay, I understand her giving you the money.” Because how could anyone refuse this man anything? “But why’d she have to quit her job and get involved in the day-to-day operation?”

Sebastian shrugged. “I guess you’re not the only one keeping secrets now.”

“I’ve never been the only one keeping secrets,” Ben reminded his ex-brother-in-law. “You’ve got to get her out of here. It’s not safe for her to be here.”

The other man nodded. “I know that. What I don’t know is how to get her to leave.”

“You have to think of something,” Ben insisted. “She’s going to get hurt. Just being here puts her in danger.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Sebastian’s usually smooth voice vibrated with frustration and fear. “You’re the only mortal who can know the truth and live.”

Ben snorted with derision. “That’s hardly an honor.” Knowing the secret had ruined his life and his marriage.

“It’s a necessity,” Sebastian admitted. “You’re a necessity.”

“So can’t I barter for her protection…?”

Sebastian shook his head. “You don’t think I tried?”

“But I have more leverage than you do,” Ben pointed out, with no pride. “I’m the only one who can keep the undead really undead.”

Sebastian pressed his hand against his chest, as if to assure himself that his heart still beat. “Don’t I know…”

“Don’t they know that?” Ben asked, frustration clenching the muscles in his stomach. “Don’t they remember what I’ve done for them—for most of them?”

“They respect the hell out of you, Ben. Nothing’s going to happen to you. But…”

“So doesn’t that respect give me leverage to protect Paige?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Not now. You two aren’t together anymore.”

He could argue about that since they had just been very together. But they now lived separately. Hell, even when they’d been married, they’d lived separate lives.

“And that’s because of this damn secret—this damn secret life I’ve been living,” Ben said, the frustration threatening to consume him now.

“There’s more to your breakup than that,” Sebastian said, his voice soft with commiseration.

Ben closed his eyes on a wave of regret and pain. “I can save you—all of you—but I couldn’t save my own. I couldn’t save what was mine.”

A strong hand closed over his shoulder and squeezed. “You have to stop blaming yourself.”

“I—I can’t…”

“That’s something else you and Paige have in common then,” Sebastian said. “You can’t stop blaming yourselves—for things over which you had no control. And you have no control over this, Ben. No matter what you mean to the Underground community, the secret society, you can’t protect Paige.”

“Then you better.” He jabbed his fingertip against Sebastian’s heart—the heart from which Ben had removed a wooden stake a decade ago.

He had saved Sebastian’s life but ended his own—at least the life he’d once known. The life to which he could never return.

As much as Paige needed to stay away from Club Underground, Ben needed to stay away from her. She only reminded him of all that he’d lost—and all that he could never have again.

Chapter Three

He was gone. Paige knew the moment Ben left Club Underground. Her pulse slowed and her skin stopped tingling. But even though he was gone, she could still feel his touch—could still taste him.

With a slightly trembling hand, she lifted the flute of champagne to her lips. She needed to wash away his flavor. If only she could wash away her feelings for him as easily.

“Wait!” Campbell O’Neil yelled over the music, which was too loud even at the quiet corner table. Then the redhead grasped Paige’s arm, holding the glass just shy of her mouth. “We have to make a toast first.”

“We have to wait for Kate before we do that,” Dr. Renae Grabill leaned across the table to add.

Paige glanced around, hoping to catch a glimpse of the tall brunette in the crowd. She really needed a drink. And she really needed her friends—all her friends—but most especially Lieutenant Kate Wever. Perhaps the Zantrax major case detective could help her discover the secrets of Club Underground. “Is she working late?”

“She was here,” Elizabeth Turrell said from where she sat at Paige’s side. “Then she thought she recognized someone in the crowd.”

“She knows someone here?” Renae asked doubtfully as she young trauma surgeon studied the bodies gyrating on the dance floor.

Campbell snorted. “A lot of these people look familiar to me, too.”

Nerves fluttered in Paige’s stomach. “It’s probably not a good thing that a prosecutor and a detective think my customers look familiar.”

“Your customers,” Elizabeth mused. “You shouldn’t be here. You should be back at the firm.”

Paige met her friend’s gaze; guilt darkened the other woman’s brown eyes. “Lizzy…”

“It’s my fault that you’re not,” Elizabeth said.

Paige squeezed the other woman’s hand. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“No, blame that dick you married,” Kate remarked as she joined the group of friends.

Lizzy’s ex—and Paige’s former employer—had fired Paige to spite Lizzy for finally finding the nerve to divorce him. He probably hadn’t wanted to fire Elizabeth, who was a divorce lawyer at the firm, because he might have had to pay more child support. So Roger had fired his ex’s friend instead. If Paige could have proved it, she would have sued him, but despite her suspicions and Lizzy’s certainty, she’d had no proof. And no job.

“So was it him?” Campbell asked.

“Who?” Kate asked.

“Whoever you thought you recognized,” the assistant D.A. reminded her.

Kate shrugged as if unconcerned, but her face was tense with distress, her skin drained of all color. “I don’t know…” She drew in a shaky breath, then fixed her gaze on Paige’s face. Her pale blue eyes narrowed. “I’m obviously not the only one who doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing. What were you thinking, Paige, to buy this place?”

Goose bumps rose on Paige’s skin. So she hadn’t imagined that there was something strange about Club Underground. “What is it about this place? What do you know?”

Kate shrugged again. “Nothing I can prove.”

Elizabeth uttered a nervous laugh even as she shivered. “C’mon, Paige, don’t let Detective Wever’s cynical view of the world affect yours.”

Paige sighed. “I actually have my own cynical view.” And maybe that had colored her judgment regarding the club. If she didn’t dare care about it too much, she wouldn’t lose it, as she had lost everything else that mattered to her. First her father, then her mother, and more recently her husband, her career and her…

“Well, let’s toast for a brighter view,” Elizabeth suggested as she lifted the glass of champagne.

Kate lifted her glass, too, but she offered a warning instead of a toast. “We’re not done yet. We can celebrate your new gig tonight, but we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

Paige smiled. “I’m counting on that.” She needed to talk to Kate and find out what exactly the detective couldn’t prove, but the club was too crowded and too loud for them to have the conversation they needed to have. Kate nodded, as if she’d read Paige’s mind and had agreed to meet another time.

They were the kind of friends—all of them—who knew, instinctively, when she needed them and when she needed to be alone to regroup and recover. But even when they left her alone, they never completely left her—like so many other people in her life had.

“I’m so sorry that you got caught up in my personal mess,” Elizabeth said.

“Stop apologizing.” Paige slung an arm around Lizzy’s shoulders and squeezed. “I didn’t buy the club because I lost my job. I would have bought it had I still been working. Sebastian was looking for financing so he could buy it himself.” He’d been managing the club for years, ever since he’d shown up at her door a decade ago. Until then, she hadn’t even known she’d had a sibling, but she hadn’t been surprised given her father’s playboy reputation.

“Sebastian’s always looking for something,” Campbell remarked with a chuckle as, with her champagne flute, she gestured toward the dance floor.

Paige’s younger brother, a mike clutched in his fist, moved among the dancers as he sang a haunting ballad of love lost. A chill chased up and down her spine as she connected with the song; she had lived it. While they hadn’t grown up together, having had different mothers, Sebastian had been there for her when she’d needed him most. If not for his support, she might not have survived losing her love.

“You could have told him no,” Renae said with a snort of disgust.

Campbell laughed again. “I doubt any woman has ever summoned the willpower to tell Sebastian Culver no.” Apparently her brother hadn’t fallen far from the paternal tree.

She had had the willpower but nothing else—so she’d thought she had nothing to lose. Nothing but money. Now she worried that something else was at stake here in Club Underground, like perhaps her life.

Once the door closed behind the last patron, the club fell eerily silent. The click of Paige’s heels against the hardwood echoed as she walked down the hall toward her office. If she hadn’t left her purse in her desk, she wouldn’t have gone back because of the memories of what had happened earlier that evening.

She’d made another mistake—just the latest of many in her forty years. At least this time the only one who’d probably get hurt was herself.

She needed more. So did Ben. But the thought of no longer playing the sex games they’d been playing since shortly after their divorce filled Paige with dread. Her stomach churned at the prospect of dating real strangers, at having to weed through losers and potential serial killers to find a man she could trust as she trusted Ben. And the idea of never touching Ben, of never being with him again…

But even when they’d been living together, they’d never been completely together. From the day they’d met, Ben had always held a part of himself back from her. She’d excused it because he’d spent his childhood in foster homes, and because of his profession. He’d learned not to get attached, not to get involved. Her first mistake with him had been thinking it would be different with them, that she could love him enough to break down the wall he’d built around himself. Maybe she would have…had she been able to give him what he’d really wanted…

She pushed open the door Ben had left unlocked and dragged in a deep breath. The room smelled of him—that mixture of musk and leather and sweet cigars. But there was another scent she recognized. It could have been from him; he had often come home smelling of it after a particularly hellish night in the O.R.: death.

She glanced at her desk and noticed someone had brought in a flower arrangement. This was no congratulatory bouquet from her friends. The roses were black. A dozen of them, dried and dead, so brittle that petals dropped onto her files and closed laptop. The stems protruded from foam that someone had carved into a shape of a heart. But more than stems penetrated the foam: a wooden stake pierced the heart.

Hand shaking, she reached for the card that was stuck to the stake. Red ink, smeared like blood, spelled out the words: “You’re going to get what you deserve.”

She replaced the card and stepped out of her office. Once again a strange chill swept down the hall…from that maddeningly locked door. While that door was locked, her office hadn’t been. Anyone could have left the hideous bouquet. “Sebastian!”

She wasn’t afraid. She was tired.

“Paige! Are you all right?” Sebastian called out, his voice rough with emotion as he ran down the hall toward her.

“I’m fine,” she assured him, unsettled that he’d been so easily rattled. Hopefully she hadn’t sounded that upset; she refused to let some misguided joke or a case of nerves unsettle her. “I just found something in the office…”

“What? Another rat?”

They had found one the night she’d taken possession. She’d seen a rat in her office as a bad omen. And that had been even before she’d started hearing the voice telling her she didn’t belong.

“There’s no rat, just those,” she said, pointing toward the black roses as she had the rat droppings, with disgust. “I hope you didn’t waste your money on those hideous things.”

“I didn’t send them.”

“What?” she asked, unsure if she should believe him. Along with his considerable charm, Sebastian had quite the sense of humor. “Yeah, right.”

Hurt flashed in his bright blue eyes. “Paige, I wouldn’t purposely do anything that might upset you, especially tonight.”

She believed him but wished he was lying. “But if you didn’t send them…”

Who had? The question raised all kinds of sinister possibilities in her mind.

Chapter Four

Ben’s heart pounded against his ribs as he crashed through the unlocked door of Club Underground. He’d done this so many times, so many other nights, that he should have been used to the summons. But tonight was different—tonight he knew the emergency concerned Paige.

His hand shook so badly he had to tighten his grip on the handles of his medical bag. Sebastian had assured him that she wasn’t hurt; Ben didn’t need the bag. But he’d gotten used to carrying it with him as he never knew when he’d need it. Or when a member of that damn secret vampire society needed him.

As Ben walked into the dark bar, he called out for Sebastian.

“Down here,” his ex-brother-in-law replied, his deep voice drifting from the hall.

Ben headed toward that door Paige had found so fascinating, but before he reached it, strong fingers grasped his arm.

“In the office,” Sebastian said, tugging him inside the room he had not wanted to see again.

Hell, he never wanted to see any of Club Underground, but yet he came every time they called. Because he had no choice. And now Paige owned the place, which actually gave him another reason to stay away. He’d never brought her anything but pain. “Is she all right?”

“Yes. For now.”

“What happened?”

“Those happened,” Sebastian replied, pointing toward a bunch of black roses.

Ben noticed the stake embedded in the makeshift heart, and he understood the concern wasn’t about the flowers. “What the hell. Someone’s threatening Paige?”

Sebastian sighed. “After the bar closed down for the night, she found the arrangement in her office.”

“An office she shouldn’t even have here.” Ben ran a trembling hand over his hair. “But why use the stake to threaten Paige? It makes no sense. She’s not one of the society.”

“Maybe that’s the threat.”

“That they’ll make her into one of you? Then what? Kill her? It makes no sense,” Ben said, frustration and fear gnawing at him.

“Sometimes it doesn’t make sense,” Sebastian reminded him. “Sometimes somebody needs no motive other than madness.”

Ben shuddered, remembering the destruction he’d seen and tried to treat that had resulted from such madness.

He glanced at the flowers and the stake again. “There’s a note?” He reached for it, but Sebastian pulled his hand back.

“It says she’s going to get what she deserves.”

“I want to see it,” Ben said. “Maybe I’ll recognize the handwriting.”

“Don’t touch it,” Sebastian advised. “She wants to report this special delivery to Kate, the Zantrax major case detective.”

Ben groaned. “If Paige reports this to her, it’ll put them both in danger.”

“I talked her out of calling Kate tonight, but I think that was just because she was too tired to argue with me. And she probably didn’t want to wake up Kate.” Sebastian pushed a hand through his hair. “She cares more about her friends than she does herself.”

“She’s never done very well taking care of herself,” Ben remarked. “But neither of us did very well taking care of her, either.”

Sebastian’s face flushed with color and he protested, “Hey, that’s not fair—”

“We almost lost her once,” Ben reminded him. “Where is she now?”

“Home.”

“Alone?” Pressure tightened the muscles in his chest as his fear for her safety conflicted with his fear that she might not be alone. Although they’d been divorced four years, he wanted her with no one but him. Which made him selfish as hell, since he couldn’t give her what she deserved—happiness, security…

“She thinks she’s alone,” Sebastian said.

“But you have someone watching her?” Ben asked, the fear rushing back.

The other man nodded.

“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.

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