Midnight Hour (14 page)

Although she’d been around hospitals most of her life, Mercy hadn’t paid much attention to emergency departments. In her mind, a spade was a spade and a doctor was a doctor. “What do you mean flexible schedules?”

“I work a bunch of long days and then get a chunk of time off.”

“How many days and how big a chunk?”

“I work a seven-
A.M.
-to-seven-
P.M.
shift one week, and the next week I’m off.”

“A whole week off?”

“Yeah. Free-as-a-bird.”

“Except for your beeper.”

“I don’t carry a beeper,
chère
. You can frisk me if you want,” he offered. The swing wobbled a little as he spread his arms.

“Every doctor carries a beeper or one of those cellular phones. The AMA made an amendment to the Hippocratic oath or something. How else is the service going to get a hold of you?”

“They don’t need to. And I don’t carry a beeper,” he repeated. “Neither do the other ER doctors at Mercy Hospital.”

“God forbid they should need you in an emergency.”

“The nurses know how to dial a phone,
chère
. I keep telling you, but you don’t seem to understand. Mercy Hospital is a small, community hospital, not a trauma center. If the nurses need us after seven at night, they just start calling. But unless they’re expecting multiple cases from a bar brawl, or a building collapses, they don’t call us. They call the patient’s doctor. Sometimes the patient’s already called his doctor before he shows up. Most people would rather have an orthopedic specialist set their leg or a plastic surgeon sew up their face.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Mercy admitted. “But what good is an emergency room without doctors? Patients could bleed to death waiting for one of you guys to answer the phone!”

“That’s what big trauma centers are for. The paramedics will get the patient where he needs to be. I’d love to see Mercy Hospital staffed twenty-four hours a day, but none of the small emergency departments can afford that. We only have a couple of residents
covering the whole hospital at night. You saw our facility.”

“Yeah.” Mercy remembered all the broken tiles, the barren lounge, the dungeonlike atmosphere. “No money.”

“Since I got here, we’re working a twelve-to-twelve shift on Fridays instead of a seven to seven. In fact, the other doctors are complaining that it’s turning into our busiest night.” Nick grinned. “You’d think we were running two-for-one specials or offering a free gift with purchase.”

That drew a small, pained laugh out of Mercy. “You make it sound like working at the cosmetic counter of a department store.”

“There are similarities. People step up to the counter looking for miracles. Sometimes we don’t have ’em.”

“Is that what you hate most? Losing?”

“Among other things,” Nick evaded smoothly.

“Like what?”

“Disarming the patients.”

“What?” Mercy thought maybe she hadn’t heard him correctly.

“Disarming the patients. It’s an inner-city hospital, Mercy. Our client base isn’t only poor families. We also provide care to the drug addicts, the dealers, and the gangs. I’ve taken knives off them. Guns. Whatever. And it’s not just the patients. Their buddies that bring them in are armed too.”

Mercy shuddered. “Ever think about changing specialties? Or going into family practice?”

“Nope,” he answered without hesitation. Family practice with its intimate, long-term patient care
was out of the question, and once he made up his mind, he rarely changed it. Pursuing Mercy was the one exception in recent memory. When he left New Orleans, he’d made up his mind that he was better off alone, starting over well away from the reminders of a different time. That is, until he met Mercy. In a heartbeat, she changed his mind about being alone. Now all he had to do was change hers.

Reminded of the real reason for his visit today, Nick decided it was time to put his cards on the table. Papa Jack always told him it never hurt to ask. “You ever thought about giving a doctor the benefit of the doubt?”

“How do you mean?” Mercy countered uneasily.

“If I remember correctly, Sister Agatha said your opinion of doctors is that they’re all medical talk and no action. I’d like to prove you wrong.” Nick wove his fingers into the hair that hung down her back, slipping through the russet curtain and testing the satiny skin at the nape of her neck. Lowering his voice, he added, “If you’ll give me the chance.”

Mercy shivered at the first contact, melted when his expert fingers began to massage the muscles of her neck, and felt the vibration of the earthy tone of his voice all the way down to her toes. “You said you’d behave.”

“I said I’d try.”

“What happened to friendship and honesty?” She forced herself to stand up and move away from his touch.

“They’re still here,
chère
,” Nick assured her softly as he followed her, taking her arm and turning her.
“They’re not gonna go away just ’cause I want more.” When she didn’t pull away, Nick cupped her head with his hands and urged her to look into his eyes. “Good or bad, there is something going on between the two of us.”

Mercy couldn’t deny that any more than she could deny the racing of her heart. She could only tell him the truth. “But I don’t want there to be.”

“Aw, darlin’, you can’t hide your head in the sand and pretend we don’t strike sparks off each other.”

“Why not?” It sounded like the perfection solution to her.

“Because I won’t let you.”

“That’s not fair,” she whispered.

“I don’t care,” he told her as he widened his stance and leaned against the house. Nick dropped his arms to her waist and pulled her into the spot, created by his parted thighs. “It’s been a long time since I wanted anything, and I’m not going to let you hide from this.”

“But what do you really want from me, Nick?”

“I don’t know,
chère.
I don’t know. Maybe just a little time to figure it out. Maybe just a place to be that feels right.”

Nick’s simple human need to connect with another person tugged at her emotions. Mercy drew her breath in sharply when Nick’s hands shifted again. This time to her hips, bringing her all the way in, refusing to let her maintain even the smallest distance from the heat of his body. Her hands rested on the soft cotton of his black T-shirt, and her traitorous fingers itched to explore the contours beneath them.

Get a grip, Mercy May, she ordered, and focused her gaze on the topaz ring she wore. She couldn’t risk looking at Nick.

Given an inch, Nick Devereaux would take a mile. Maybe that’s what scared her about him. He never gave her time to adjust to one level of their relationship before he began the assault on the next plateau. And her body was on his side! It was like fighting two enemies at the same time. She understood how the Mummy must have felt when faced with both Abbott and Costello.

“You feel good here,
chère.
” His palms rubbed slow circles high on her hips, rocking her and pressing her against his erection. His dark eyes caught and held hers. “Kinda like you were made for this spot. And you’re gonna go and tell me that I should ignore this? I don’t think that’s right.”

A soft groan slipped out of Mercy as her body wrenched the reins of control from her and responded to Nick’s suggestive motions with a nudge of its own. “We can’t afford this kind of tension if we’re going to work together.”

“Then, as your doctor, I’d have to recommend you relieve that tension.”

This time Nick didn’t wait for Mercy to come to him. He took the kiss he wanted. Her lips beneath his were warm and responsive as he ran his tongue between them, teasing past the barrier of her teeth as he slid into the welcoming velvet of her mouth. He groaned at the sensations created by the thrust and parry of their tongues. His hands found her arms, and he moved them up to circle his neck, reveling in his victory when she wove her fingers into his hair.

Nick pulled back slightly, letting their tongues mate in the air before sealing his lips to hers again. He couldn’t get enough of her, needed to touch her everywhere at once. His hands bracketed her sides beneath her shirt, and his thumbs rubbed rhythmically up and down her rib cage, coming closer to the sweet fullness of her breasts each time.

When he finally swept his thumbs against the swell of tender flesh, Mercy made a low, soft noise in the back of her throat, which generated an instant
response from his already hard body. One quiet signal of pleasure created an intense desire to hear that sound again and again. And he had no intention of being denied. Slowly, he caressed the small of her back with one hand and continued to tease her breast with the other. The textures of smooth skin, satin, lace, and the nub of her aroused nipple had him hot as hell as he smoothed his fingers over the lush landscape of her body.

When he felt her push her breast into his hand, he broke the kiss and let his lips slide down the column of her neck. Mercy wanted him as much as he wanted her. Regardless of her staunch determination to draw the line at friendship, right now she wanted the same things he did. Instinctively, he pressed his arousal against her belly in cadence with the pulsing blood that fired his passion.

Mercy barely could think by the time Nick had pulled his lips away from her mouth, but that had been no respite. He merely began an assault on the hollow at the base of her throat. His mouth teased her with a preview of what his lips and tongue would feel like against her nipples. His fingers created incredible sensations in her breasts that were echoed at the apex of her thighs.

She wanted him. Right or wrong, this hunger needed to be sated. For once, the future and the past were forgotten, because the present was so much more important and common sense eluded her.

If all hell hadn’t suddenly erupted behind them, Mercy would never have stopped what was happening between them. But all hell did erupt. Witch growled deep in her throat, and then everything happened
at the speed of light. As the Lab sprang to attack an unknown enemy, her compact body collided with Mercy’s already rubbery legs and sent her reeling. Nick’s back thudded heavily against the house siding as he struggled to steady himself.

Both of them watched in stunned shock as Witch leaped onto the swing, scrambling for balance, and then lunged at a shadow between the potted flowers as the swing neared the porch railing. The hiss of a surprised wild animal was unmistakable, and Mercy’s gorgeous pots of blooming flowers started plummeting to the ground when the animal sent them flying as it fled from the dog.

Witch would have jumped the railing and followed if Nick’s deadly serious command hadn’t forced her to halt. “No! Get back!”

The dog teetered in the swing for a moment, barking and looking longingly toward the side of the house. Witch was clearly torn between obedience and instinct. Eventually, she hopped off the swing, but she continued to pace back and forth across the porch beneath Nick’s watchful eye.

Mercy wanted to believe that the shaky feeling inside her bones was a direct result of Witch’s having scared the daylights out of her, but she knew the shakes were from coming so close to making a very big and very irreversible mistake with Nick. A mistake she’d sworn not four hours ago to avoid. Careful to keep her distance, she surveyed the damage. In an unsteady voice, she asked, “What was that all about?”

“Well,
chère
, unless you’ve got an awfully big, silver,
striped-tail, pointy-faced, black-masked cat in the neighborhood, I think you had a
chaoui
come callin’.”

“A raccoon?”

Turning to look at her, Nick said, “Yeah. And as far as I’m concerned, he couldn’t have picked a worse time.” He leaned back against the wall, drawing one knee up and resting the flat of his foot against the side of the house. When she started to inspect the broken shards of red clay pots, Nick said, “That mess will wait. I won’t. Come here.”

“I don’t think so.”

“
Non? Mais yeah, chère. Viens ici
,” he ordered again, and waited for her to come to him.

With a shake of her head, Mercy took a step backward, putting more distance between herself and the man who seduced her with words she couldn’t translate but understood completely. However, understanding what he wanted didn’t mean she had any intention of complying. Not now. Barking dogs and shattered pots had broken the spell and reawakened her common sense. “Look, that kiss was a bad idea. It’s only going to get in the way of our working together. I don’t know what I was thinking before when—”

“If you could still think, then I wasn’t doing it right,” Nick said, and straightened, more than willing to give kissing another try.

“Dammit, Nick! Stay over there!” Her eyes sought his in the darkness, and he stopped. “We need to talk.”

“I’m all talked out.”

“But I’m not,” Mercy told him sharply. “And this time I want you to listen to what I’m trying to tell you.”

Without another word, Nick acquiesced to her demand, holding his arms extended, palms out. Then he dusted potting soil off the white porch swing and sat down. “So … talk to me.”

Mercy huffed disgustedly and paced in a tiny circle.
So … talk to me.
He managed to make even those innocuous little words sound like pillow talk. Face it, Mercy May, she told herself, the problem isn’t Nick. The problem was her reaction to him, and it scared the hell out of her. He was the first man she couldn’t put out of her mind the moment he left a room.

Life had been so much easier when she’d been the one doing the picking and the choosing instead of the one doing the wanting. In her mind, admitting that she wanted Nick was tantamount to accepting that she’d eventually turn into one of the walking wounded. Just like her parents.

Both her parents bled when relationships ended. Her father stopped the bleeding with alcohol while her mother believed in starving a cold and feeding a depression. Mercy didn’t want that for herself. And she didn’t want Nick to sell her a ticket for a roller coaster of emotional binging. She wasn’t sure she could turn her emotions on and off the way Nick had learned to do as an ER doctor.