Livia Reasoner - Dark Nights - Mistress of the Underground / The Vampire Affair

“Where’s Ben?” Paige asked as she struggled to hold up her lids. Maybe Renae had given her a sedative, or at least something that had numbed Paige from feeling the pain of the stitches that had closed the wound on her neck.

A muscle twitched along Sebastian’s cheek. “He had to leave. He had to…see a patient,” Sebastian explained. Or lied on Ben’s behalf.

“Why did he have to leave then?” she asked. “Isn’t his patient here in the hospital?” Ben didn’t keep regular office hours; as a surgeon, he primarily worked out of Zantrax Memorial Hospital. The only office he used, besides the O.R., was a private suite on one of the floors of the hospital.

Sebastian nodded. “Yeah, he’s probably around here somewhere.”

“That’s good,” Kate said from where she stood next to the gurney on which Paige lay, a curtain separating her from the other patients in the E.R. “I’ll have him paged, then, since I have some questions for him.”

“I can answer them,” Sebastian offered. “I was there with him tonight…when we heard Paige’s screams.”

She flinched, her throat burning as she relived those terrifying moments—crying out in fear and desperation. She’d thought no one would hear her.

“You both were there?” Kate asked. “He was never out of your sight?”

“No,” Sebastian claimed. “We were having a drink at the bar.”

Paige bit her lip so that she wouldn’t call her brother on his lie. While Kate was her friend now, she’d always been a detective first and foremost. It was bad enough that Detective Wever had suspicions about Ben; Sebastian didn’t need to get added to her suspect list.

“I don’t have questions just about tonight,” Kate clarified. “I want to question him about how he happened to be with Paige the last time…when the vehicle was vandalized. And wasn’t he also at the club the night the flowers were left in her office?”

Sebastian shook his head. “You’re wrong about Ben.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Kate said.

“You don’t need to interview him, Kate,” Paige finally said, struggling to clear her vision and her mind. “I know he’d never hurt me.”

“He wouldn’t?” She arched a dark brow in apparent skepticism. “He hasn’t?”

“Not intentionally,” Paige insisted.

Kate shrugged, obviously unconvinced. “I’m going to see about getting him paged.”

As soon as the detective slipped around the curtain, Sebastian leaned over the steel railing of the gurney. “You believe that, right? That Ben has never meant to hurt you.”

She nodded. “Of course. But I have been hurt….” She touched her fingers to the gauze taped to her throat, but this was not the wound Ben had inflicted. That wound was on her heart.

“He regrets that,” Sebastian claimed. “He would do anything to protect you…even risk his own life.”

“What are you telling me?” The adrenaline that pumped through her veins chased away the effects of whatever drug Renae had given her. “Is Ben in danger?”

A muscle twitched along Sebastian’s tightly clenched jaw as he nodded. “I’m afraid that he is.”

Ben winced as he eased out of the driver’s seat of his Escalade. Pain radiated from his bruised ribs, echoing the pounding at his temples. He hadn’t been attacked during the meeting, as he’d momentarily feared. Instead, he’d been attacked as Paige had been—in the dark. As he’d been ascending the stairs to the street, someone had stepped out of the predawn gloom and knocked him down the steps.

By the time he’d made it back to the hospital, Paige had already been checked out. Sebastian had assured Ben that she was home—safe and sound. Since the sun had risen, he believed that she was safe—for the moment. So he could sleep without worrying about Paige. Until the sun went down again…

He walked across the garage to the service door to the kitchen. After punching in the security code, he stepped into the kitchen with its rich cherry cabinets and white marble countertops. And he saw Paige’s touch. She had decorated it as she’d done pretty much everything during their marriage—alone. Maybe that was why she hadn’t wanted it in the divorce: it held too many memories for her. Or maybe she’d wanted him to have it more than she’d wanted to keep it. Maybe despite how little he’d shared with her, she’d known that the house had become something to him that he’d never known growing up. A home.

After his mom had died, he’d been shuffled from foster home to foster home, and to group homes when he’d gotten older. Because no one had been able to locate the father who’d taken off when his mom had first gotten sick, no one had been able or willing to adopt him for fear that his father would come back and take him away.

Unlike Paige’s father, his had never come back. Just as Paige had never come back to this house; it had to be that it held too many painful memories for her. While he’d told her about his past, he’d never really shared with her what it meant to him—that he’d become a cardiologist because of the helplessness he’d felt watching his mother slowly die of heart failure.

He opened the fridge to look for an ice pack for his ribs. But he didn’t care about his own injuries. He cared about Paige. He should be with her, taking care of her.

But she wouldn’t let him now…even though she had a stalker. Maybe after last night, she would finally admit she had one; that it wasn’t all a mistake. But then there was so much Paige insisted on denying. Like her feelings for him.

They were still there; he saw them every time she looked at him, her gorgeous blue eyes soft with emotion. Every time she touched him, her affection flowed over him with sweet generosity. She might admit to having a stalker now, but he doubted she would admit to her feelings about him. What was the point, since they had both already agreed they had no future? They only had a past.

One he’d screwed up. A pain jabbed his chest, but it wasn’t from his ribs. He didn’t need an ice pack right now. All he needed was a soft bed and as many hours of sleep as he could manage before someone paged him.

Actually, all he needed was Paige.

He headed up the back stairwell to his bedroom. The master bedroom, but it had always been more Paige’s than his, with its periwinkle walls and lacy curtains and spread. He should have moved out when she had; he should have sold the house.

But he’d kept holding out hope that she would change her mind. That after she’d taken the time she’d needed alone, she would come home. But she’d never come back to this house. The last of his hope had evaporated when she’d had him served with divorce papers. But still he hadn’t sold the house…even after he’d signed the papers, unwilling to fight with her then when they’d both been hurting so much.

He pushed open the door to his bedroom. With the wooden shades closed at the windows, it was dark, the darkness beckoning him to bed. After some sleep, he would talk to Paige whether she liked it or not. And this time he’d get through to her; she had to give up the club. And maybe, after he got through to her about that, he would attempt to talk to her about some other things, things they should have talked about four years ago.

He stepped into the master bath, off the bedroom, brushed his teeth, then headed toward the bed, dropping his clothes as he approached. He pulled back the blanket and crawled between the cool sheets. But when he shifted, warmth reached out to him, from the blankets and from the naked, curvy body next to his. “What the hell!”

“Don’t you mean who the hell?” Paige murmured as she struggled to fully awaken.