After Midnight (34 page)

Taking a deep breath, Noah gathered his courage. “What had he done to her?”

“That son of a bitch took a beautiful, confident, outgoing, and loving child who gave affection freely and often, and turned her into a skittish woman. With walls and barriers she allows no one past. Not even me.”

“Do you think he abused her?”

“I know he did,” Thomas hissed through his teeth.

Acid climbed up the back of Noah’s throat. He closed his eyes, gathered his courage. “Sexually?”

Thomas’ gaze locked with his. He made no reply. He didn’t have to.

Noah’s denial was total, instinctual. No way. Not his Isabeau. It couldn’t be true, he wouldn’t accept that.

“Jesus Christ.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. Thinking about Isa suffering something like that tore at his insides, froze the blood in his veins.

“She’ll talk to you,” Thomas said softly.

Noah slipped from his stool, tipped his head to the ceiling and struggled to breathe. “I’m not so sure.”

His body trembled, his heart split apart as he pictured the little girl from the courthouse photo—so tiny, so terrified. So lost. She was no match for a grown man. No child was.

He had to force back the nausea that surged up the back of his throat.

“You’re the catalyst, Noah, you started this. It was only once you came into her life that she began breaking out of whatever hold Whitehorse still held on her. You got past her aversion to touch. I believe somehow you drove her to that piano today.”

“Thomas—”

“Ask her about those years, Noah. She needs to let go of them, share them with someone. There’s too much pain for one person to handle alone.”

****

Isabeau sat on the floor of her living area, frantically transferring the music from her head to the composition paper before her. The lights were dimmed, the stereo silent. Although she was chilled, she didn’t stop, even for the few minutes it would take to retrieve her robe from the end of the bed or a blanket from the back of the couch. She couldn’t stop, not until she got it all out, until the music was silenced. It haunted her, the melody that played over and over through her mind. Unnerved her in a way no melody had done before.

Dominic was right, this was the song to secure them a contract with the record company. It was also the song that insured Noah would leave her.

The song was spectacular—different to everything else out there in both lyric and composition. Not that the concept expressed was anything new, for love was timeless. But the depth of emotion behind the words, the way the music seemed to amplify that emotion, these were what drew the listener in. What made them experience the song instead of just hear it.

Closing her eyes, she couldn’t help but wish that she had never heard it. It had played through her mind endlessly since she stood in the studio, slowly dying inside. Somehow she’d managed to make it out of there without anyone seeing the pain. The heart-wrenching agony of discovering that while the song may have been written for her, it most definitely had not been written about her.

Noah’s ballad.

Black Phoenix’s future hit.

The story of a man and the feelings invoked in him by a woman he loved unconditionally.

As tears threatened, she closed her eyes. She was tired, so tired—physically drained, emotionally exhausted. She didn’t want to feel right now, she wanted to be numb. But she hadn’t been numb since Noah strolled into her life, bringing with him the relentless, unavoidable waterfall of music, constantly flowing through her head.

The music that was suddenly louder than normal.

Her head came up. She blinked to bring her eyes back into focus, absently wondering if she’d remembered to turn the lock on the door leading down to the bar. Aside from the fact that she didn’t want to see anyone right now, she didn’t worry about the identity of the person who turned the knob on her door in an attempt to get it. She didn’t have to. The only person to ever make the music in her head louder was Noah.

He’d called her a few times today. More than a few. Enough times that she’d turned off the ringer on her mobile phone. She didn’t want to talk to him. The truth was she couldn’t. Not now. Not yet.

A quick glance to where the phone rested on the table near her elbow told her that he hadn’t called again since the last time. Why would he, she wondered, when it was obvious he’d been staked out in her bar. It didn’t matter that it was long past closing time, Clint wouldn’t kick him out. Not when he would have been as worried about her failure to open today as anyone.

“Isabeau?”

Noah’s voice drifted through the door to wash over her.

“Isabeau, open the door, I need to talk to you.”

She glanced in the direction of the door, the pain in her chest so intense she was amazed that she could breathe at all. She had nothing to say to him, nothing left to offer. She’d given him everything she had and it wasn’t enough.

“Please, Isa,” he continued, his voice lowered with intimacy and touched by emotion. “I need to know you’re all right.”

Pulling her legs up to her chest, she wrapped her arms around them and rested her cheek atop her knees. Her lungs were burning, her body shaking uncontrollably. She wasn’t all right. At the moment, she wondered if she would ever be all right again.

Noah fell silent, but she knew he remained outside the door. The knob turned again, remained locked and he sighed. Immediately the image of him pushing his hand through his hair the way he did when things weren’t going his way sprang to mind.

The pain in her chest intensified.

“I’m sorry, Isabeau. I’m so damn sorry.”

So was she.

Noah didn’t speak again. A few minutes later, he left and she went back to work. She didn’t answer the phone when he called an hour later, even though she was still awake and composing. She didn’t answer it the next morning either. Only once did she pay the telephone at her elbow more than a passing glance, and it was when she called Pete and told him to expect her at noon.

Chapter Sixteen

Noah came to an abrupt stop the moment he caught sight of the piano centered in the recording booth. He scrubbed his hands over his face, wishing he’d gotten more than an hour of sleep and his eyes didn’t feel like they were filled with sand. Then he focused on Pete, taking up his customary position at the mixing board.

“You’ve heard from Isabeau?”

“She called first thing this morning,” the man replied as he leaned back in his chair and glanced at the clock on the wall above Noah’s head. “I expect her any time now. She told me she’d be here by noon.”

“How did she sound?”

Pete arched his brow, rubbed his hand over his chin. “Is there a way she was supposed to sound?”

“She’s pretty upset with me right now, for pushing her into this. No one has seen her for the last two days.” Just Thomas, who brought her home after her breakdown and then told him enough about her past to have Noah tossing and turning all night. “We shouldn’t have done this.”

“We?”

“I shouldn’t have done this,” Noah corrected. “I shouldn’t have pushed her. But damn it, I thought I was helping her.”

“I’ve known that girl her whole life,” Pete admitted, smiling broadly. “She was such a sweet little thing. Friendly and outgoing.”

His smile dimmed, his brow furrowed, telling Noah he knew something that didn’t make him happy. “You are helping her,” he stated bluntly. “But that doesn’t mean she’ll thank you for it.”

“Now where have I heard that before?” Dominic asked as he stepped into the room. Then, like Noah, he stopped abruptly and stared through the glass into the booth. “She’s coming in?”

“I guess so,” Noah replied.

Dom gave him a questioning look. “You haven’t talked to her?”

“No. She called Pete.”

“Who called Pete?” Alex asked, stepping into the room, Nick right behind him.

“Isabeau,” Dominic answered.

“Here she is,” Noah stated, as he stepped closer to the glass and drank in the sight of her.

She was wearing those incredible jogging pants of hers, the ones that rode low on her hips and hugged her amazing ass. Above those pants, and the two-inch gap of flesh that got his blood up, she wore a tank top. The kind with skinny little straps the only thing holding it up. Her hair was down, tumbling past her shoulders, reflecting the lights from the ceiling above her.

His stomach clutched at the dark circles beneath her eyes—eyes as colorless as her skin as she walked directly to the piano and sat, without ever looking toward the booth.

With the way the piano was positioned, Isabeau’s back was to them all. As Noah stared at the uncompromising set to her spine, he found himself silently urging her to turn around.

Pete pushed the button so that his voice projected into the booth. “Hey, sweetheart, how are you?”

“I’m ready.”

She didn’t bother to place the headphones over her ears. In fact, now that he thought about it, Noah noticed there wasn’t a pair out for her. He glanced at Pete to see that the man didn’t have the song cued and ready for her to listen to as she played.

“Give me a scale, would you, sweetheart?”

Back straight, hands steady, she positioned her fingers above the keys and began to play. He could only watch, transfixed as her fingers began to move up and down the keys, at times so quickly his eyes couldn’t make out their individual movement. Then she slowed down, and he recognized the first few measures of “One Last Breath.”

The song she was here to record.

“Thank you,” Pete stated as he made a few adjustments on the sound board. “Damn, it’s good to hear you play again.”

Though he hadn’t thought it possible her back straightened a bit more.

Pete didn’t seem to notice. “Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart.”

This time when she lifted her hands out of her lap, they shook.

Noah clenched his jaw.

The nerves that made her hands tremble didn’t have an effect on the skill with which she played. Isabeau played her addition to the song through once, from beginning to end without stopping. Perfectly, from start to finish. Without any errors. When she was done, she placed her hands in her lap and waited.

“Turn around, Isa,” he whispered, his voice pitched so no one could actually hear him. “Turn around and come in here.”

“Damn!” Alex exclaimed. “I didn’t think she could do it.”

“I still don’t believe it,” Nick said. “She heard the song once, only once.”

“That sounded perfect,” Dom agreed.

“It was,” Noah assured them. It would blend perfectly with what they had already recorded. He didn’t foresee any changes that would need to be made.

He kept his eyes on Isabeau’s back, waiting.

“Someone tell me how she did that,” Nick exclaimed.

“How did she perform nocturnes at five years old?” Pete asked, checking the playback. “Izzy plays by ear. That’s her talent. Once is all she’s ever needed to hear something.” He pushed the button so that she heard his next comment. “That was perfect, like always.”