Authors: Sarah Grimm,Sarah Grimm
After Midnight (2 page)
“You would be the first,” he mumbled under his breath.
She shifted her attention from the bar to his cool green eyes.
He flashed her a knock-out smile. “How did this conversation turn to me? We were talking about you.”
“We were?” She pretended nonchalance as panic reigned. Two days had passed since he’d first stepped through those doors, two days during which she’d almost managed to write off her reaction to him as a silly adolescent crush. Except that the music playing in her head remained so loud she couldn’t sleep, and the electric charge in the air was real, not the by-product of decade-old girlish fantasies.
He should have forgotten her the moment he’d stepped into the night. She was nothing special or memorable. Just a girl in a bar. Only, he hadn’t forgotten her. And he looked at her as if she
was
special.
She’d waited her whole life for a man to look at her like that.
“Isa? Isabeau?”
God, this was hard. She wanted to be seen, held, to be special to someone. Without the music.
“Why don’t you play anymore? Didn’t you enjoy it?”
“It was like oxygen.” The admission slipped out unintentionally and all too heartfelt, exposing more of herself than she meant to expose. Already he could see far more in her than anybody else. If she wasn’t careful, he would see the truth.
He locked his gaze with hers and everything inside of her softened, reacted to him in ways she’d never before experienced.
“Oxygen. I like that. I know that. Not many people do.”
She fought the flash of understanding, of connection she felt with him. She couldn’t soften. She couldn’t change the past, and she refused to relive it. Not even for a man who would understand her on a level no one before him ever had. “The girl you’re looking for no longer exists.”
“What girl am I looking for?”
“The one who lived to create music. She died thirteen years ago. The woman who’s left, she’s just a bartender.”
“I don’t believe that.”
She stacked the compact discs and pushed them a few inches away from her. “It’s true. I no longer make music. I leave that to others.”
“You can’t ignore it, you know.” He sounded as if he spoke from experience.
“No?”
“Music is everywhere. It’s inside you, you can’t ignore that.”
The comment hit her like a slap in the face. She covered her mouth to keep a startled cry from breaking free. Pain, sharp and blinding, knotted her stomach.
She should have known, guessed it when he strolled into her bar carrying her music. Her pain-filled past could be uncovered with a few keystrokes in any Internet café. Her entire life spelled out in black and white, and a bit of it in all too vivid color. He’d seen it all—the truths as well as the lies.
Old fears and uncertainties returned. Her hand dropped away from her mouth to fist against her thigh. “Tell me something, Noah. Is it morbid curiosity that brings you in today, or something else?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Of course he did. Not for a minute did she believe the confusion that flashed across his face. “I don’t play anymore because the music is no longer inside of me. It’s gone.” Except it wasn’t. It cantered through her skull like a caged beast finally set loose. “Now if you want to know anything else, you’ll have to go back to your source.”
“What if I want the truth? Will I find it there as well?”
He couldn’t possibly know of the lie that burned her tongue like acid. “Since when does anyone care about the truth?”
“I care.”
She shook her head in denial. He sounded so sincere she almost believed him. Almost.
“Leave.” She paused at the emotion in her voice. “There’s nothing for you here.”
He hesitated.
Desperate to have him gone, to quiet her painful memories as much as her mind, she shoved the compact discs across the bar top. The stack tipped, one slid off the other and spread out as she’d arranged them a few moments ago. Three unblemished, cherubic faces looked back at her, reminding her of how much she’d lost. “Please go.”
Noah plucked the CDs from the bar without taking his eyes off her face. He didn’t understand that she clung to the slippery edge of control. But then, he didn’t need to understand. He needed to leave her.
Then he did. Just like she’d wanted.
So why did she suddenly feel empty?
Chapter Two
The place hadn’t changed at all. It remained as memory recalled. But the woman behind the polished, chestnut bar was better.
Noah Clark slid into the booth in the far corner, his gaze drinking in the dark-haired beauty. Her hair was parted in the center and framed her face in layers that started at her chin and continued to the base of her shoulder blades. Sometime over the past two months she’d cut it, for he remembered it longer, all one length and hanging to her waist. Although he couldn’t see them from this distance, he knew her eyes were the most remarkable shade of gray-blue—pale and misty. Set in a complexion that appeared darker now, kissed by the summer sun.
She wore faded jeans that hugged her slender hips. A black tank top revealed arms sleekly muscled in a feminine way that told him she was stronger than she looked. Her legs were surprisingly long for a woman her height. His gaze lowered, lingered on her legs before arriving on her boots—a pair of those high-heeled, pointy-toed boots that made him wonder how she kept her balance as she approached a nearby table with a tray full of drinks.
While classic rock blared from the speakers, he took a moment to study the profile that looked both soft and angular. She wasn’t beautiful in the traditional sense, but compelling. She had a way of looking at a person as she spoke with them, like they were the most important person in the room. And a wide, friendly smile that could steal a man’s breath. He’d been on the receiving end of it once, just once, and he’d yet to fully recover.
Keeping his eyes on her, he settled more comfortably into the booth and thought about what brought him back to her bar on a Monday night, after midnight. Ten weeks before, a meeting with the record company already set and nowhere to begin work on their demo, he’d gone in search of somewhere to record. The studio had to be small, private, and reputable, somewhere outside of the mainstream recording industry, where they could make their own hours and work at their own pace.
He’d had his mind made up, his eyes set on a private studio near Sacramento when he’d come to New York. The man who ran the studio in Long Island City was a friend of the band’s manager, Tony, so heading back home without seeing this final place hadn’t seemed right. Still, even with the scheduling problem that would need to be worked out, California felt like the best fit.
Until the night he’d decided he didn’t want to spend his birthday alone in some strange city. The night he allowed the flashing neon to lure him through the doors into Izzy’s and he’d set eyes on its namesake.
She’d stolen his breath. One look and every nerve ending in his body stood at attention. One smile and he’d been lost.
Right then, that first night, he’d made the decision and started the ball rolling. Later he asked Pete Knowles, the man whose studio he’d signed on with, if he knew the woman who owned the bar down the street and learned her name.
Isabeau Montgomery.
He went back, to the bar and the woman who irresistibly drew him. Only to discover that what she felt for him was anything but pleasant. So here he sat, ten weeks later, living out of a hotel because of a woman he couldn’t forget. A woman he felt a connection to despite the fact that, by all accounts, she couldn’t stand the sight of him.
Noah sighed. He tracked Isabeau’s smooth glide across the hardwood floor. On her tray remained one lone bottle—his preferred brand. He didn’t want the lager, but kept that information to himself.
“Isabeau.” A jolt of electricity arced through him. Stronger than he recalled. “You look well. You cut your hair.”
Surprise flickered across her features. The corner of her mouth began to tip up, then stopped. Her gaze, carefully cleared of emotion, moved slowly over his face, down his body. Heat flared, followed the path of her eyes. Desire curled in his stomach.
“I did,” she verified, her voice pitched to be heard over the sudden burst of laughter from a raucous group at the far end of the bar.
He shot the group a cursory glance. “Busy place tonight.”
“They’re celebrating a job promotion. Although that group never needs much of an excuse.”
One glance told him as much. “No?”
“They’ve convinced me to keep the kitchen open, so if you’re hungry let me know.”
“I didn’t know you offered food.”
“Just soup and sandwiches. Everything is homemade by me using only organic ingredients.”
“Not sprouts and tofu?”
“Who doesn’t enjoy a good bean sprout sandwich with their lager?”
He shuddered; caught the barest hint of a smile before she controlled it.
“Organic as in no chemicals used in the growing process,” she corrected. “Today’s special is roast beef on rye. Having food available helps to keep the level of inebriation under control.” As if on cue, the sound of a glass shattering carried to them. It was immediately followed by more laughter. Isabeau sighed. “Well, usually.”
She turned her head, her gaze settling on a waitress carefully picking up the larger shards of glass. “I apologize if they’re disturbing you. They’ll be gone soon.”
The group didn’t look eager to leave. “How can you be sure?”
“I called their wives and girlfriends.”
“Smart.”
“Yeah, well they’re a bit too grab happy for me tonight. It’s time for them to go.”
The muscle in his jaw began to tic double time. He leveled his gaze on the men across the room, while the urge to teach them some manners flared.
“I should get back to it. Let me know if you need anything else.”
Fighting the foreign compulsion, he could only nod as she turned and walked away. A knot settled in his gut as she skirted the tables, taking a wider than normal path around the noisy group. He scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck, eased out a breath.
There’d been no note with the package she’d sent him, no way of knowing why she’d taken the time to mail him the compact disc. There’d been no return address either. Only the disc itself told him the identity of the sender—her disc, the one he’d been missing.
He’d thought of her often in the weeks since receiving the gift. Why did she send it? What did it mean? He wondered again tonight, as he watched her, unable to gauge her reaction to his sudden reappearance in her bar.
“Nick said I’d find you here. It seemed out of character enough that I had to check it out.”
Noah shifted his attention to the man leaning against the wall at his right, hands tucked in the front pockets of his jeans. Dominic Price was tall and wiry, with wavy black hair that hung just past his shoulders and a face women swooned over. Today that face was lined with fatigue. The wall appeared to be the only thing keeping him upright.
“Dom, how was your flight? Did you get settled into the hotel yet?”
