Mistress of the Underground. Lisa Childs

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,