Midnight Heat (Black Phoenix Book 2) (2 page)

She needed them to pull herself together.

As requested, Karmen had located Isabeau’s number in the cell phone’s contact list and placed a call to the woman. She was on her way. Rebecca didn’t know how she felt about being minutes away from coming face to face with the new woman in Dominic’s life. A woman important enough to him that she was the first person he’d asked to be notified. The only person.

Liar.

She knew exactly how she felt. A little pissed off, a little frustrated, and a whole lot devastated. Even after nearly three years she wasn’t free from the drag of hurt that came when she thought of the last time she’d seen him. She’d confessed her love. He’d run. End of story.

Only, apparently, it wasn’t. Dominic was back. Back in the states, back in California. The fact that this time, she was the one who wanted to run didn’t escape her.

Damn it.

A few deep breaths helped. Gathering her courage, she pushed through the door into trauma one. On the gurney, which had been raised to a semi-upright position, Dominic lay on his back. As the door swung closed his gaze locked onto her. She did her best to remain unaffected as her pulse took off.

“Where did you run off to?” he demanded.

Ironic, given the direction of her thoughts. “Your X-rays show no broken bones. Blood looks good, too. We’re just waiting for radiology to take you down for a CT scan.” As she spoke she placed his chart next to the small sink at the far end of the room and took down a suture tray from the cabinet above. “Your abdominal ultrasound found bruising of your liver, but no tears, so that’s good. The ribs…they’re also bruised but not broken.” She looked over at him. “I see someone cleaned you up.” With a bit more care than normal. No doubt just for the chance to be near him.

He had that effect on women. Women of all ages swarmed around him. Not that she could blame them. To say he was good looking was an understatement. Dominic Price was truly delicious—physical perfection, with a British accent and a smile that could convince a woman to throw caution to the wind.

She would know. One smile from him and she’d not only taken him home, but in the back seat of her Chevy before they even made it out of the parking lot. Rebecca shook the memory loose. So not a place she needed to go right now. Not if she wanted her hands steady while she placed his sutures.

“You’re not here to ask more questions, are you? I only just got that chattering nurse of yours to clear off.”

She glanced over. He’d closed his eyes. “I only have a few routine questions.”

“There is a God.”

“Of course, once I’m done with you and you’re taken upstairs for the night, another overly chatty nurse will make sure to rouse you every so often and ask you a series of questions. She’ll have impeccable timing, usually arriving just after you’ve drifted to sleep.”

“Fuck.”

She grinned. “Still as articulate as ever, I see.” He made a sound that could have been a laugh. She wasn’t sure. “Do you have any allergies to medications?”

“No.”

“Are you taking any daily medication?”

“No.”

“Are you allergic to latex?”

He said nothing for a long, silent beat. “You know I’m not.”

Her body reacted before she could school herself against it. Images flashed through her mind like a slideshow. They’d burned through more than a few condoms during their time together. Just the memory sent a burst of heat snapping along her nerves.

Commotion in the hall drew Rebecca’s attention to the door in time to witness a petite woman storm in and skid to a stop. For a split second Rebecca wondered how she kept her balance in her knee high boots with four inch heels, but the thought was lost as the woman stepped to the gurney. She curled her right hand around the railing. “Dominic?”

She was young, mid-twenties maybe, and not what Rebecca would call beautiful. Concern colored her gray-blue eyes—really, very interesting eyes. Pale, in a complexion that spoke of Native American heritage. Her hair was black, straight and hung to the middle of her back. A black leather jacket, belted at her waist, topped distressed denim jeans. The kind you paid lots of money for, not the kind you had in your closet for years.

Rebecca’s patient opened his eyes. “Hey, Isabeau.”

So, this was Dominic’s Isabeau.

“Are you all right? How badly are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, luv. No worries.”

She stroked Dominic’s hair away from his face with a hand that trembled. “You scared the hell out of me, Dom.”

“Scared hell out of me, too,” he admitted softly.

Rebecca couldn’t take her eyes off the pair. Specifically, the rock on the hand that continued to touch Dominic with a familiarity that made her chest ache. A princess cut diamond set in a simple platinum setting. At somewhere around four carats, it wasn’t the biggest rock Rebecca’d seen, but with her petite frame, anything larger would have looked ridiculous on this woman. Instead it looked elegant. Particularly when paired with the equally impressive diamond eternity band next to it.

Dom was married?

She flicked her gaze to Dominic’s left hand—his ringless left hand. He wore jewelry; his left ear was pierced, something she used to tease him about, and on his right index finger was a black tungsten band. When she’d known him, he’d also had a black leather cord bracelet he wore habitually. So why not a wedding ring? Especially when the set Isabeau wore was so well chosen, in size as well as statement. You couldn’t look at that set and not know she was loved.

Acid burned a hole in Rebecca’s stomach.

“Where’s Noah? You didn’t leave him behind did you?”

“No, I—”

“Leapt from the car before it was parked,” the newest arrival in the room stated as he joined the woman at the gurney. Tall and lean, a build similar to Dominic’s only a bit more muscular, with dark blond hair and green eyes: Dom’s best friend and band mate, Noah Clark.

He hadn’t changed much in the three years since she’d seen him. Well, except for his hair. The last time she’d seen Noah his hair had been shorter. Nowhere near long enough to brush the top of his shoulders, as it did now.

Rebecca frowned. The last time she’d seen Noah he’d held her as she sobbed, crying her eyes out over the same man who brought them together today.

“She’s definitely a force to be reckoned with.” Dominic laughed softly, then squeezed his eyes shut and groaned.

“Dom?” Isabeau asked.

“Bloody hell,” he said cautiously, sounding pained. “My head feels like it’s been run over by a truck.”

Isabeau clenched the rail tighter. “You were run over by a truck.”

“I was? Well, that would explain it.”

The concerned expression slid off her face in exchange for a troubled one. “Don’t you remember what happened to you?”

Dominic let out a slow, careful breath. “No.”

Rebecca should have been concentrating on getting everything prepared, but she couldn’t take her eyes off of the scene before her. Even though watching it unfold tore a hole inside of her. This woman, this tiny little thing, owned Dominic’s heart. A heart she’d believed he would never give to a woman. She closed her eyes against the cold, hard reality. He’d been willing to give his heart to a woman, just not to her.

“Dom,” Isabeau said softly, “you were broadsided by a semi. Luckily, it was the passenger side that took the hit.”

“So your SUV is—”

“Totaled,” Noah stated. A muscle ticced in his jaw. “It’s still at the crash site, which we were unfortunate enough to drive past on the way in.”

Isabeau shivered. Then the most interesting thing happened. Noah shifted, settled a hand on her lower back—his left hand. The move confused Rebecca, right up until she noticed a platinum wedding band on the ring finger of that hand.

What is this?
She looked from Dominic to Isabeau and then to Noah.
Interesting
.

Isabeau might be comforting Dominic in a way that spoke of familiarity, but she was leaning into Noah in a way that spoke of something far more intimate. Dominic may have wanted Isabeau called, but she was not
his
Isabeau.

She was Noah’s.

The tightness in her chest lessoned a degree.

“Damn, I’m sorry, Isabeau,” Dominic said.

“No worries,” she parroted.

The smallest smile crossed his lips. “At least you’ll get to enjoy that new car smell again. I know how you like that.”

“At six months old, my old car still had that new car smell.”

His smile broadened, and he actually opened his eyes to look up at Isabeau. “About your SUV—”

“No one gives a shit about my SUV. All that matters is that you’re okay.”

“Did you just swear?”

“Dominic.”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you swear before.”

“Dom…” Isabeau released a soft sigh. “You are okay, aren’t you? Dominic?”

He’d been clearly teasing Isabeau in order to distract her. Now his face was pale, clammy. With a groan he shifted. His breathing altered, his body went taut. “Shit,” he rasped through his teeth as his smile faded.

“Dom?”

“I believe I’m going to be sick.”

“I’ve got this.” Rebecca grabbed an emesis basin from the cabinet at her back. She circled Dominic’s visitors and placed the basin in his left hand. He groaned, gagged, but managed to keep his stomach contents in his stomach.

“Rebecca?” Noah’s lips curved, but his eyes remained sober. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, and you? How have you been?” She broke eye contact with him to glance at his wife. “Really good I’m going to guess.”

Isabeau smiled—the kind of friendly smile that had to be returned. “Isabeau Clark,” she supplied. “We didn’t mean to be rude. We didn’t realize you were standing back there.”

“Dr. Rebecca Dahlman, and don’t worry about it. You were preoccupied.”

“We were worried.”

“I understand.”

Isabeau’s gaze slid over Dominic, and she frowned. “Can you tell me how he’s doing? What is the extent of his injuries?”

“His X-rays are negative, no broken bones. His blood work is good. He’s got a few lacerations, multiple contusions, and a concussion. We’ll be moving him up to the I.C.U in a bit, where we can monitor his hemoglobin levels and—”

“Hemoglobin levels?”

“Dominic has a bruised liver. We need to monitor his hemoglobin levels overnight.”

“You mean he’s bleeding…” Isabeau’s eyes went a bit unfocused, her color faded to gray.

It wouldn’t do to have this wisp of a woman pass out on her. “It’s a relatively mild injury.”

“But?”

She didn’t miss much, did she? Rebecca believed she’d done an adequate job of hiding her misgivings. Apparently, she hadn’t. She sighed, wishing like hell she could tell them something definitive, something to ease their worry, but she didn’t have all the information yet. “My greatest concern is the head trauma. His test scores indicate a concussion, but dilated pupils and loss of consciousness for greater than thirty minutes usually indicate a more severe brain injury.”

Isabeau reached over her shoulder and fisted her hand around Noah’s jacket lapel. Noah covered his wife’s hand with his own.

“I’ve ordered a CT scan. That should tell me what I need to know.”

Noah stared at her. “Jesus,” he finally said. “And if it’s the more serious injury? Then what?”

“He’s in a lot of pain, probably more than he lets on, but he’s doing really well,” Rebecca reassured them, as well as herself. “He still doesn’t recall the accident, but he understands where he is, so he’s forming new memories. He can carry on a conversation and pieces of his personality are showing. That’s a good thing, as severe traumatic brain injuries can cause personality changes. I’ll know more when his CT scan is done.”

Her color slightly improved, Isabeau swallowed. “How soon will that be?”

“I’m going to repair his lacerations. Then, if they still haven’t come for him, I’ll go see about expediting his scan.”

“We’ll be in the waiting room,” Noah said.

“Sure.”

Rebecca watched them go, Noah holding the door open for his wife, his hand settling on her lower back as he slipped out behind her.

Chapter Two

Dominic couldn’t recall the last time he hurt this damn bad. Which could mean one of two things: either he had a more serious injury than Rebecca was letting on, one that messed with his memories, or he’d never hurt this bad. For now, he was going to go with the latter.

He kept his eyes closed because he hurt less that way. At least with his eyes closed, his eyelids provided some barrier against the laser bore of the overhead lamp. He wished like hell he could turn it off, but Rebecca was there, preparing to sew him up and she needed the light.

Rebecca
. Bloody hell. That he’d ended up in her hospital…he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. What were the odds? They had to be astronomical.

He still couldn’t recollect what had happened. The band had been in the recording studio, working on their first new album in ten years. It hadn’t been going well because… His head throbbed in perfect harmony with his heartbeat. A wave of nausea washed over him and he tightened his hold on the little plastic basin.

Shit.

He recalled driving, racing down the interstate toward Sacramento. Thinking how he needed to get laid. Knowing it wasn’t going to happen because he was in California. He hated this state. Hated the memories it evoked—the memories that pressed in on him no matter how fast he traveled.

Next thing he knew he awoke to a familiar voice barking out orders, demanding action. A voice edged with urgency and perhaps a tinge of fear. A voice that tugged at his memory.

“Dominic?”

Yeah, that voice.

“I’m going to repair the laceration on your bicep first. Dom?”

“Shhh.” If she didn’t stop yelling, his head was going to explode.

She went quiet, the only noise in the room the squeak of the stool she’d pulled up to the left side of the bed, and the ticking of the clock on the wall. Then there was a soft snick.

His head throbbed.