Midnight Heat (Black Phoenix Book 2) (22 page)

“I would have to disagree with you there.”

“Oh, you’re a charmer, aren’t you? No, I was a schoolteacher when I met Richard. A totally unacceptable career choice to a family of surgeons. However, he ignored his parents’ warnings and married me anyway. It helped I was pregnant with Rebecca at the time.” She smiled wistfully. “Rebecca is so much like her father.”

Becca didn’t sound anything like her father.

“She is smart, driven, stubborn. On the contrary, she has a softness he’s never had. A compassion for people, young or old, rich or poor. And she’s a dreamer.”

“Becca?” He saw Becca as focused, always in control – unless he was pleasuring her – with her head firmly planted in reality. “A dreamer?”

“Oh, yes. When she was thirteen she dreamt of seeing the world. She wanted to be…oh, what is his name…Indiana Jones.”

Becca?

“She put posters all over the walls of her room, papered every surface with her favorite rock stars, teen idols and faraway places she longed to travel.”

No way.
He smiled at the knowledge this was something he could give her: the rock stars
and
world travel.

Camille frowned into her tea. “Her father made her take it all down. Told her to get her head of the clouds and forbade her to listen to that—”

“Rot?” he suggested, thinking it was a suitable word the stodgy, unfriendly man he’d met a few minutes ago would use.

“Close enough.”

Her father sounded like a controlling ass.

“I should have put my foot down. There were so many things I should have stopped. She was already so different from everyone else, so much smarter.” She fiddled with the handle of the cup again. “She needed normalcy. He gave her home schooling on top of her private education. Schedules and order. He’s molded her since birth with one goal in mind: for her to become the next best neurosurgeon.”

“Like her father,” Dominic guessed. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the idea of Rebecca as a neurosurgeon. She had the brains, but did she possess the desire? She’d never mentioned it, not three years ago or now.

Camille sighed. “There’s a part of him that knows he pushes too hard, asks too much of her. He’s not completely devoid of compassion. He loves her, but he can’t seem to stop himself. Upbringing you know, years of receiving the same sort of treatment from his own parents. It’s the only way he knows how to be.”

Dom understood that, how upbringing and experience could mold a person. How difficult it was to go against something that had been ingrained in you from a young age.

“Her father pushes, and Rebecca takes it. I don’t even think she wanted to become a doctor.”

“Really?” How could that be? She’d always been so in tune with her job. So very good at it.

“Her one act of rebellion was her refusal to specialize in neuroscience.”

Dominic blinked, doing his best to take it all in.

Camille covered his hand with her own. “And you,” she said softly.

“Me?”

“Richard won’t approve of you. Rebecca knows that.”

Because he was a musician, who’d crawled his way out of the shit.

Her eyes sparkled. “Yet…here you are.”

His throat constricted. “You don’t have the same concerns about me?”

Her smile took ten years off her face. “Breeding doesn’t mean shit to me. My daughter does. And you, Dominic, are exactly what she needs. I could see it on her the moment she walked in.”

“What?” he asked, hating the unsteadiness of his voice.

“Joy.”

Chapter Nineteen

“I spoke with Nathan yesterday,” Rebecca’s father said the moment her mother and Dominic stepped out of the entryway. “He says he’s concerned about you.”

“I’m fine, Dad. The man is harmless.” Nothing more than a grieving father venting his anger on the easiest target. Her.

“That man is anything but harmless, Rebecca. Just look at your mother. She’s already fallen under his spell.” He shook his head. “And what he’s done to you…it’s disgraceful.”

It took a moment for her to figure out who her father was talking about. “Dominic? What has he done to me, Dad?”

He took in her clothes, his frown deepening as he focused on her T-shirt. “It is impossible to mistake that scandalous shirt as belonging to anyone but him.”

Scandalous?
Her gaze settled on the shirt in question. She read the words plastered across her chest and barked out a laugh.
Bass players do it deeper.
How had she not noticed that? Rebecca laughed until her eyes watered.

Her father glared at her. “You have social standing in this town, Rebecca.”

“No, that would be you. I’m just an ER doc.”

“Rebecca Jane—”

“What, Dad,” she asked, hugging herself. It was always the same thing with him. It never changed. “I’m never going to be enough for you, am I? Not good enough, smart enough, successful enough. I’m a disappointment.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Hope blossomed, only to be crushed by his standard mantra.

“You just need to further your education. A mind like yours shouldn’t be allowed to atrophy.”

Disappointment nearly choked her. No worries. She’d been letting him down for years. “What about what I need?”

He gave her a look that suggested she couldn’t possibly know what was best for her. “I want what’s best for you, Rebecca.”

“How is molding me into the mirror image of you what’s best for me?”

“It’s better than…”

“What?” she asked forcefully. “It’s better than what, Dad?”

“That man.”

She let out a breath and considered at him. The person she’d spent her whole life trying to please. The one she’d bowed and bent to, altering her path and giving up what she wanted for. She wouldn’t do it this time. Not anymore. Rebecca couldn’t control the fine tremor of emotion that wracked her body. “
That man
has a name.”

True to his personality, her father ignored her, his tone implying that a musician was the absolute worst thing in life a person could be. “That man is not for you. He’s a musician, for God’s sake.”

“Yes, and a damn successful one.”

“Rock music, how…disreputable.”

“Richard,” her mother warned.

Her father snapped his mouth shut.

Rebecca turned. Dominic stood next to her mother near the kitchen door. He’d heard everything. She pinched the bridge of her nose and said the first thing to pop into her head. “Fuck.”

Her father’s back went ramrod straight. “Rebecca Jane Dahlman, watch your language!”

“I’m not a child anymore, Dad.”

“No, but you are in my house.”

“You’re right. For that I apologize.” She dropped her hand away from her face and focused on the woman across the room. “I’m going to go now, Mom.”

A frown marred her mother’s face. “Come back soon, Rebecca. Bring Dominic with you.”

There was a smile on Dominic’s face. Not the one that always made her want to remove her clothes, but one that affected her just as powerfully. He grounded her, calmed the storm of anger raging inside. He’d heard everything. The insults and intolerance. Everything. Dominic knew that even though her father didn’t know him, he didn’t
want
to know him. Based on something as asinine as breeding and career. Still he smiled.

A smile that said he was there for her. A smile that said so much.

Her heartbeat settled just looking at him. Any doubts she had about bringing him here today fled in that one moment. They were in this together.

“You know what, Dad? Do you know what I see when I look at Dominic? I see exactly what I need. I need more than droll conversation and proper standing in the community. More than just a respectable career. In fact, I’m going to quit my job.”
God, it felt good to say that out loud.

“It’s about time you went back to further—”

She kept her gaze on Dominic, as his was the only opinion that mattered. “I think I’m going to become a professional groupie.”

His smile grew, shifting, changing. There it was, the one that made her want to remove her clothes. Desire curled low in her belly.

“I’ll get a piece of shit blue Chevy that smells like cheese and follow the band from city to city.”

“That’s right,” Dom said softly. “It was a Chevy.”

Heat shimmered in the air between them at the shared memory. Was there time to take him back to her condo before her shift at the hospital? Or pull to the side of the road and take him in the backseat like the good old days? God, the rush of power and passion he brought out in her was heady.

“Don’t do that, dear,” her mother said softly. “I’m sure he’d let you on the bus.”

Rebecca nearly choked on her tongue. By the sound her father made, he
had
choked.

“Camille!”

“Well, he would,” her mother replied, unfazed.

“I would,” Dominic agreed with a glance at her mother.

Rebecca shook her head and softly uttered, “Bloody hell.”

* * *

Rebecca leaned against the car, with her face tipped toward the sun, and sighed. After the whole tour bus bit, she hadn’t gotten out of the house fast enough. “Do you know how miserable I was as a child?”

“Yes.”

She laughed without humor. “Thirty minutes with them and you’ve already figured that out?”

He brushed his fingers over her arm and Rebecca took hold of his hand. “The other day in the studio, you said you remembered the first time we met. How you were…?”

“Gobsmacked. You were so beautiful. I couldn’t believe that you wanted me.”

She opened her eyes and locked onto his. “I don’t understand that. I was never the pretty girl in school, Dom. I was the geeky little brainiac. The orange-haired, freckle-faced girl who threw off the curve and was ruthlessly picked on by the other kids.”

He shifted her hand to his chest, directly over his heart, and flattened it beneath his. “I still like your freckles.”

She ran her nails over his goatee as her heart skipped a beat. “I didn’t fit in, so I buried myself in books. I was fifteen when I headed to college.” And those years were worse than the others. “Far too young to be accepted. My father was so proud of me and I was so lonely and miserable. He expected me to follow in his footsteps, but I didn’t want it.”

Dominic squeezed her hand. She lowered her voice and told him the rest. “I’m not sure I ever wanted to be a doctor. It kept me separate, even as an adult. I was one of the ‘elite’. Maybe at first I enjoyed it, kind of an ‘in your face’ to those kids who so ruthlessly picked on me. But all I’ve ever really wanted was to fit in. I just wanted to be normal.”

“What the hell is normal, Becca?”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve never known.”

“Are you really thinking about ending your career?”

“Yes.”

“What will you do?”

She opened her eyes and smiled up at him, losing herself for a moment in his blue depths. “You don’t think I should become a groupie?”

“I think you should do whatever makes you happy.”

“What if I don’t know what that is?” She slipped her hand out from beneath his, running it over his pec, his shoulder, to brush her fingers over the red suture line from his accident. “I honestly don’t know. I want to do more. I want to affect change in a person. Positive change. It seems as if all I see is the bad. I don’t get to follow up, to see if any good comes from what I do.”

“You save people’s lives, Rebecca.”

“Sometimes.” And sometimes there was nothing she could do. They died no matter how hard she worked, or returned to the spouse who was abusing them, only to wind up back in front of her, beaten half to death. She couldn’t take it anymore. She needed more positivity, more life affirming goodness. Her hand unconsciously tightened on his bicep. She closed her eyes, opened them. Blinked back the tears.

He pulled her closer, pressed his cheek against her temple. “You can’t save everyone.”

Her breath hitched as the remembered image of the boy’s broken body returned. “He was just a baby,” she whispered. “Barely three years old.”

“Ah, damn Becca, I’m sorry.”

And his father. So angry, full of blame. A tremor went through her body.

“You can talk to me, you know.”

“I know,” she eased her head away so she could look into his eyes, while cupping his face in her hands. “And I will, I’ll tell you just…not now. Not after Dad.” She took a moment to pull herself back under control. “I’m not ashamed of you, Dominic. It’s just that Dad…no one’s good enough in his eyes and I…didn’t want you to have to hear that. That’s why I never brought you over to meet them.”

“You were protecting me.” A look came over his face that she couldn’t identify. “You’ve done it again. You’ve left me gobsmacked.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer. “You were trying to protect me,” he whispered.

It took a moment for her sleep deprived brain to figure it out. Then she knew. Why he couldn’t seem to string enough words together. Why he looked so astounded. She thought of his mother, the one person who should have protected him right from birth and how she had left him exposed and endangered.

“I guess I was.” She caught the hot glint in his eyes and reached for him just as his mouth came down on hers. He wrapped her in his embrace, pulled her flush against his body and kissed her. In her parents’ driveway. Where everyone could see. Rebecca threw her head back and laughed, too happy to contain it. Then she kissed him again.

This one took a little longer to recover from.

Dominic opened the car door for her. “Come on, I’ll buy you an ice cream before you have to be at work.”

“I’m dieting.”

“Again with the dieting,” he said as he slid behind the wheel. He put the key in the ignition, started the car and buckled up, all before turning to look at her. His gaze moved slowly over her. “Your body is perfect just the way it is.” His voice was all low and completely sexy. Rebecca shivered. “But if you’re that worried about it, you don’t need to be. I’ll burn the extra calories off of you when you’re done with your shift.”