After Midnight (14 page)

More than fine. His nearness put knots of tension in her stomach. The way he continued to look at her made the tightness she’d felt in her chest since he told her she was special, intensify. Desperate to put a bit of space between them, she asked, “Would you like to sit down?”

He sprawled—there was no other word for it—on the couch closest to him. Resting his arms across the back, he placed one booted foot atop the opposite knee. The position of his arms pushed the sleeves of his shirt up higher than normal and revealed a wrapping around his right upper arm. The light reflected off of it in a way that told her exactly what it was. “You’ve seen my father today?”

“I have.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Haven’t you spoken with him?”

She sank onto the second couch across from him and shook her head. “No. I didn’t know what to say to him. I hoped to hear back from Officer Grant before I told him about what happened to my vehicle.”

“What if I told you he already knows?”

“How? Did you tell him?”

“I didn’t have to.”

Removing the clip that held all her hair atop her head, she tossed it on the coffee table between them, then raked her fingers through her hair. “What did he say?”

“That he’d heard you had a bit of trouble. He asked how bad it was, and how well you were taking it. He also asked whether I believed Tommy was to blame.”

“And you told him what?”

He eyed her for a long moment. “That Tommy was the first person to come to mind when I saw the knife sticking out of your tire.”

Everything inside of her went still. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I should call him.”

“I’m sure he’d love to hear from you. He’s an interesting man, your father. He cares about you a great deal.”

She gave him a cool look. “Yesterday you questioned his integrity. You accused him of hurting me.”

“I didn’t accuse him of anything. I asked if he was the one who hurt you.”

“Who said anyone hurt me?”

He returned his foot to the floor and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “You did. I simply questioned whether your father was that someone.”

Her heart skipped a beat or two. He had no idea how close to the truth he was. Too close. She wasn’t going to talk to him about this. Her past was exactly where it belonged, in the past. She wouldn’t revisit it for anyone.

“Thomas isn’t my…“ Her voice wavered, and she dragged in a breath to steady it. “I’m not actually his daughter.”

“According to biology. If I asked him, I bet he feels differently. Otherwise, he never would have fought so hard to keep you.”

She went still for a long moment, her eyes closed, wishing he hadn’t just said that. There was only one way he knew of Thomas’s fight to win custody of her. “You’ve been on the Internet.”

“Only after you made your accusations that day in the bar. At the time, I had no idea what you were talking about. How much of what’s there is true?”

She hated this part. Telling people about her past.

Who was she kidding? She didn’t share her past with anyone. Ever.

“They got the major points right. There was an accident—my mother died, I nearly died. My biological father took Thomas to court to get custody of me and won.”

“Yet quite a bit is incorrect. You’re not horribly disfigured, or dead. And having met Thomas for myself, I do not believe he had anything but the truest of paternal love for you.”

“God, what the press made him out to be.” She dragged the heel of her palm across her forehead as tears welled in her eyes.

Noah rose off the couch, stepped around the coffee table and sank down next to her. He laid a hand over hers. “The press can be brutal.”

The touch of his hand atop hers warmed her blood. The understanding in his voice soothed the sharp edges of her memory.

“How did Thomas and Nicole meet?” he asked, surprising her by remembering her mother’s name.

“Through a mutual friend.”

“You were two?”

“Yes. They had two years together before that day at the symphony hall.”

“The day you first played the piano?”

“Yes.” The day she walked onstage after her mother’s rehearsal and sat at the piano. Pressed her fingers to the keys and turned the music world on its ear by playing the last number the guest soloist had practiced. Perfectly.

It was the first time she’d ever touched a piano, but far from the last.

“After that day, things got pretty out of hand. Instantly, I was an international sensation. A child with an ear for music; a raw talent that rivaled the masters of the time.” Her breath became shallow. She lowered her voice. “A child who’d only been doing what she loved and didn’t understand the fascination.”

“I can’t imagine,” he admitted. “How did you handle it?”

“At first, I was too young to realize how different I was. It was only after the fallout of my first television interview, the one where with the innocence of youth I told the reporter, ‘There’s music all around us. Only certain people hear it and even fewer take the time to listen,’ that I learned to keep my mouth shut about exactly how I played music after hearing it only once.”

“I never saw that interview.”

“Lucky you.” Nerves humming, she pushed off the couch and walked a few paces away. She never talked about it, never gave so much of her soul away. Noah needed to understand. He needed to know why she was not what he wanted.

“As I got older I began performing as a guest soloist throughout the world with well-known symphony orchestras. Between the tours, the appearances and the interviews, Mom and I were on the road more than we were home with Thomas. I always felt bad about that, that because of me, their time together was cut short.”

“Cut short? She was your mother, she wasn’t forced to tour with you, she chose to. She could have taken you back home after that first day, never to let the world find out about you.”

Isabeau closed her eyes and shook her head.

“Certainly you don’t believe you are the reason for her death?”

Her chest ached. It was her fault. The injury to her hand. Her mother’s death. All of it.

“Isabeau?” His warm hand settled on her shoulder and she startled, snapped her eyes open and came face to face with him. “You can’t hold yourself responsible for her death.”

“We had been on the road for ten weeks,” she explained, her voice barely above a whisper. “It was the last performance before returning home for the Thanksgiving holiday. I couldn’t wait. I was tired of touring. Tired of being put...I didn’t want to perform any more. I wanted to go home and see Thomas. I missed him.”

Her voiced hitched. She attempted to level it. “The performance went well. We were scheduled to fly home the next morning, but I convinced my mother to catch the red-eye instead. I hate to fly. Normally I would never do it sooner than necessary, but I was exhausted. I wanted it behind me.” She paused as it all came back to her with perfect clarity. “It was late, so mom decided to take a taxi home from the airport instead of waking Thomas. I remember asking if I could lie down in the back seat and mom insisting I couldn’t. She buckled my lap belt and we were off. We were only two blocks from home when the accident happened. It was snowing and the roads were icy. I remember taillights, a car swerving in front of us then…”

She closed her eyes against the painful memory. “My mother screamed. I’ll never forget that. She reached across the seat for me. Then there was this sound—metal bending—and this blur that must have been the car tumbling. Then, silence.”

His hand atop her shoulder flexed.

“Mom hadn’t buckled her own belt. She’d secured me in, but not herself. Her body was tossed around like a rag doll as we rolled over and over. She bled to death while I watched, while the wail of sirens echoed off the buildings.” Her stomach clenched painfully, her body trembled as, in her mind, she revisited the accident. “They were too late. Too late to save her.”

“I’m so sorry, Isa.”

“She was smart and funny, then in the blink of an eye, she was gone. I couldn’t get to her. I tried. I struggled and I tried to get across that backseat so I could hold her. I thought if I could hold her, I could save her. Of course what I had yet to realize was that my hand was pinned, crushed between the seat and the side of the car. I couldn’t possibly get to her.”

The palm he placed against her cheek was gentle. She reached up and pulled his hand from her face. But instead of letting go, she curled her fingers around his. “If only I hadn’t pushed her to come home early.”

“You’re not responsible for her death.”

“Aren’t I?”

“It was an accident, Isabeau, a tragic accident.”

She stared down at their joined hands, hers so small and tanned and scarred, his so much larger and paler. She had allowed him to cross a barrier, and suddenly he could touch her. If he could touch her, he could pull her toward him—literally and figuratively. She told herself she didn’t want that.

Liar.

“I miss her so much.” The words kept coming. Intimate. Revealing. “My mother would hold me. She was the sort who touched people often, not just to comfort or soothe. Every day, at least once a day she would stroke my hair and tell me how much she loved me. Every night she held me as I drifted to sleep. I miss that.”

He gazed at her intently. Without judgment, without that look of fear men tended to wear when emotion came into a conversation. Looking back at him, she felt it again—that thing that had been between them from the start. Stronger now. Not as easy to ignore.

“Tell me about her.”

“My mother was beautiful—blonde hair, blue eyes, about my height and build. She was friendly, a bit naive. My biological father was eight years older than she, twenty-six to her eighteen when they first met. She was twenty when she left him, pregnant with me. She struggled for a couple of years before being picked up by the New York Philharmonic, but she got by. Six months later, Mom met Thomas.”

“Whom she moved in with.”

“She wasn’t…a loose woman. No matter what Tommy said.”

“I’m not judging her, Isa, believe me.”

She eased away from him, wrapped her arms around her middle. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

He stared down at her. “You didn’t say, was your mother French?”

“No, but her great-grandmother was.”

“Is that where you got your name?”

She nodded. “Mom loved her dearly. When she died the year I was born, Mom gave me her name.”

“It’s a beautiful name.”

His soft statement jump-started her pulse. But it was nothing compared to the effect his next question had on her.

“What about your biological father? That’s how you always refer to him. Does the man have a name?”

“The devil incarnate,” she thought with a shudder of revulsion. Oh God, had she said that out loud?

She waited for him to comment. His expression was serious, but he remained silent. Thank God. No way would he let a statement like that pass. “His name was John Whitehorse.”

“Was he the man in the picture taken in front of the court house?”

Her spine went rigid. She didn’t have to ask him to know which picture he was speaking of. He meant the one taken at the end of the trial, when she’d literally been ripped from the arms of the only father she’d ever known and given to a man who didn’t want her, just her bank account. The media loved the drama of it, and had splashed that picture on the front page of newspapers nationwide.