LITMIR.BIZ

      To Tara Gavin, my amazing editor, who always understands how important my characters are to me. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to tell Paige and Ben’s story!

       Chapter 1

      You don’t belong here….

      The skin tingled on the nape of Paige Culver’s neck, and she shivered. To assure herself she was alone, she glanced around her small, windowless office. Light penetrated the green glass shade of the lamp on her desk but didn’t dissipate the shadows clinging to the worn-brick walls.

      You don’t belong here….

      That voice wasn’t real; it had to be only in her head. Her own voice verbalizing the doubts that had tormented her since she’d bought Club Underground. She was a lawyer. What the hell did she know about running a lounge?

      Actually, she wasn’t a lawyer anymore—at least not one with a firm where she could practice. So she’d bought the club, which occupied the basement of a traditional brick office building in downtown Zantrax, the city which had replaced Detroit as the urban metropolis of Michigan. The building was the only thing traditional about Club Underground.

      Music throbbed through the sound system, tempting Paige to leave the office and join the action. She pushed paperwork aside and stood up, swaying slightly on her stilettos as nerves assailed her again.

      Opening night. Actually, reopening night, under new management, but yet she’d hidden herself back here, away from the club patrons. Would everyone else think, as she did, that she did not belong here?

      “To hell with them,” she murmured with the flash of pride and stubbornness that sometimes irritated the people she cared about. And to hell with what she thought, too. “There’s no turning back now….”

      With a slightly trembling hand, she smoothed down her flyaway strands of blond hair. Then she smoothed her hands over her hips, settling the red silk against her body.

      Would he be out there? Waiting to congratulate her? Or to question her sanity? She didn’t care which, as long as he was near—close enough to touch.

      Anxious now, she hurried from the office, barely remembering to turn the lock before pulling the door closed behind her. In the hall, the music played louder, the bass lower and sexier. She glanced toward the door that separated the hall from the lounge. Then she glanced back the other way. To the door in the brick wall at the end of the hall. The door that led nowhere—according to the club manager. Then why was it locked?

      You don’t belong here….

      The voice had to be inside her head; how else could she have heard it over the volume of the music? She shivered again, but from cold, not fear, and considered unlocking the office to retrieve her sweater. But it would ruin the effect of the dress with its thin straps and low neckline.

      She didn’t regret her decision, at least regarding the sweater, as she stepped into the lounge. It would have been out of place, would have made her look more out of place than she already felt among the bodies gyrating on the dance floor. She didn’t have the tiny waist or sharp curves of the women; her curves were rounder, fuller. And she was so much older, not just in years but in experience, than those laughing, flirting girls.

      They

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