Mistress of the Underground
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“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?”