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

“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.