Midnight Hour

by Debra Dixon

  When she judged Nick had had time to accomplish his mission, she turned on the faucet slightly, mixing cold and hot water evenly. Anyone looking at her would have thought a minor miracle occurred when the water poured through the faucet and none leaked through the patch. “It worked!… Oh, no. Not you, Joan. I was talking to myself.”

  Nick walked in and Mercy beamed, pointing at the sink and getting out of his way so he could check the miracle for himself.

  “No, Joan, I won’t forget. You know me, I’m a sucker for a good cause. If you think someone’s going to bid fifty dollars for a Mercy Malone picnic basket, then I’ll be glad to contribute a basket. Look, Joan, I have company. Could I call you back about this?… Thanks.”

  Very pleased with himself, Nick closed the cabinet doors and turned off the faucet. When he heard the click of the phone returning to the wall, he said, “Darlin’, I believe you owe me dinner.”

  Since he’d saved her a night of worrying and a hefty service charge, Mercy had to agree. She picked up the phone again, punched in a number, and looked at Nick. “With or without anchovies?”

  Nick sat at the oak table, chair pushed back and a half-empty imported beer bottle cradled on his thigh as he considered his chances of survival if he reached for the last piece of pizza. Slim at best, he decided, so he gallantly offered what he knew better than to take in the first place. “Go ahead, Mercy. You tackle that last piece before my conscience starts laying on the guilt trip about starving children of the Third World.”

  “Ha! You’re just afraid I might stab you if you try and take it,” she teased, well aware of her lumberjack appetite.

  A wide grin answered her. “Well now, the possibility of your stabbing me with that knife did cross my mind.”

  “Okay, so now you know the real reason I moved to Haunt. Tony’s Pizza-To-Go is to die for. ‘Almost Heaven’ is his trademark pizza and worth every extra lap I’ll have to swim at the pool tomorrow.”

  Nick watched as she shook more of the dried hot pepper topping onto the piece. Hot and spicy. How he normally preferred his women. Until he met Mercy and discovered he liked sexy and wholesome just as much as hot and spicy. At this moment Mercy was the farthest thing from an enchantress that Nick would have found, but nevertheless, he was completely spellbound.

  Except for the tiny smudge of pizza sauce on her cheek, her complexion was flawless. Untamed russet hair fell several inches past her shoulders in shiny waves. Clear blue eyes twinkled at him as she bit the point off the last slice of pizza.

  Taking a pull on his beer, Nick contemplated how content he felt here. He couldn’t remember the last time he sat in a kitchen, backdoor open, listening to the patter of soft summer rain against the porch. Another pull on the beer, and a memory surfaced all too clearly. Not since Bayou Teche. Maman always said he was happiest with rain on the roof. Seemed the only nights he slept anymore were wet nights when the steady thrum of rain lulled him to sleep.

  Only a fool would have missed the world-weary shadow in Nick’s eyes as he rubbed his thumb across the label of his beer bottle. Mercy didn’t miss it, noting that Nick looked sad as well as tired. She tossed the crust back into the carton and asked, “Are you ever going to tell me why you drove all the way out here?”

  “Does that mean I’ve aroused your interest?”

  “Piqued my curiosity,” Mercy rephrased instantly.

  She scooped up the pizza box and deposited it in the kitchen garbage, which was a heavyweight durable plastic container suitable for curbside pickup, then secured the lid tightly with an elastic cord that spanned the top of the lid, and hooked under the rim of each side.

  “Expecting raccoons to invade the house tonight?” asked Nick, amused by her complicated routine.

  “No, my dog does a fine job all by herself.”

  Startled, Nick looked quickly around. “I missed an entire dog?”

  Mercy laughed and started toward the front of the house, waving for him to follow. “She’s gone right now. She’s in Memphis with the stud of her dreams. The breeder wanted a litter out of her, and I promised when I bought her that I’d breed her one time when she finished her championship. I miss her, but she’ll be back next week after she’s been bred.”

  In the living room, Nick immediately chose her favorite wingback chair, which was set at an angle to the sofa. When he sat down he propped his feet up on the matching midnight-blue ottoman and nodded his approval at her. The ease with which he made himself at home in her house was not lost on Mercy.

  Opting for the navy-and-cream striped sofa, Mercy said, “My life is going to go to the dogs in about nine weeks. That’s when the puppies will be due, assuming everything works out the way Mother Nature intended.”

  “One way or another everything always works out exactly the way Mother Nature intends.” Nick nestled his head against the right angle of the wingback and enjoyed the view of Mercy’s legs. “Try and cross Mother Nature, and the old broad will make your life a living hell. So what kind of dog do you have? Considering that you live in a town named Haunt, I assume it’s something suitably spooky like a hound of Baskerville?”

  “Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid, but still appropriate for Haunt—a black Labrador retriever named Witch.”

  “Clever name.”

  “I thought so.”

  Companionable silence stretched between them as Nick lounged in the big chair. Finally Mercy prompted, “The favor?”

  “Right, the favor. Mercy Hospital is a small hospital with an even smaller budget in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood.”

  Mercy nodded. “This I know.”

  “Sister Agatha’s order has run that place for forty years, and done a fine job for the most part. Now, she would be the first to admit that the extraordinary load of charity cases drains hospital resources, but she also adamantly refuses to bring in administration specialists. Bean counters like that would crunch the numbers and increase profitability by reducing services and charity beds.”

  “And Sister Agatha won’t let that happen.”

  Nick adjusted a little for comfort. “All of which means that basic simple health care and not cutting-edge medicine is practiced at Mercy Hospital.”

  “This I also know,” she repeated. “You certainly take your time getting to the point.”

  “I’ve never had any complaints, chère.”

  He didn’t move a muscle, but Mercy felt the intensity of his response like a wave of flame. God! Was there anything the man couldn’t turn into sexual innuendo? “What do you want, a donation? You want me to put the financial bite on my parents, who got their start at Mercy Hospital? What?”

  Ignoring her impatience, Nick continued in the same calm, reasonable voice in which he’d begun, “We’re seeing big increases in elderly and disabled patients who can’t afford health insurance or early treatment, which means they put off getting help until it’s critical. Most of our patients come from the area around the hospital, which isn’t the wealthiest or safest of neighborhoods.”

  Mercy made an abrupt derisive noise. “Well now, there’s a news flash, Slick. Can I just say yes and get this community history over with? Whatever it is you want, I’m sure it’s a wonderful idea and a worthy cause. I’ll write a check. You don’t have to sell me!”

  “I’ll take the check, but that’s not what I want. No, I am afraid I need more than that. I want you.”

  THREE

  The silence was so complete, Nick thought perhaps even the grandfather clock in the hallway had stopped ticking. Bit by bit, the world began to breathe again; the rain pattered ceaselessly again; and the clock began to tock. Nick allowed himself to relax even more in the accommodating chair and gave his body up to the familiar tiredness that haunted him. Otherwise he might have had the energy to smile at Mercy’s widened eyes.

  “Excuse me?” she said softly, almost in a whisper.

  “I thought I made myself perfectly clear. I want you, Mercy Malone,” Nick repeated lazily.

>   “I know what you said. I want to know what you meant!”

  “I want your help with a fund-raiser. What’d you think I meant?”

  The color flaming in her cheeks made it clear exactly what she thought. Nick made a disappointed clucking sound. “It is hard to have a conversation with you, darlin’, when your mind is constantly on sex. Is there a particular reason you associate everything I say with lovemaking?”

  Mercy narrowed her eyes and stood up. “Tell Sister I’ll call a few people and see what kind of money I can drum up.”

  “Yeah, well, this is the tricky part.” Nick adjusted his head to look up at her, but he didn’t stand. He wasn’t sure he could wake his muscles long enough to heave himself out of the chair.

  “The calls would be nice,” he agreed, “but what I need is a splashy event. I’m not looking to raise a few picayune thousand. No, chère, the hospital needs to revamp the emergency unit from the bottom up. For that, I’m gonna need Midnight Mercy in all her glory. I’m gonna need you to whip Louisville into a fever pitch, and when you do … I want a thousand of them to fork over one hundred dollars a plate for an evening with you and a chance to host The Midnight Hour.”

  Slowly, Mercy eased back down on the sofa, partly because she sensed that this was important to Nick—despite his casual air—and partly because of the exhaustion she saw creeping into his expression. “That’s some evening you’re planning, Nick. Why didn’t you call the station? They take care of the promotional end. They love good deeds that generate publicity.”

  “Now, there’s a clever idea.” Nick rubbed his eyes with a thumb and index finger as though he couldn’t believe he had to spell it out. “I’ve been trying to convince your station manager for two weeks. To do this thing right, I want the television station to kick in airtime and produce the promos, not to mention letting somebody host your show.”

  “Dan didn’t say anything to me about it.” Mercy frowned, leaned back into the striped pillows, and propped her feet on the edge of the coffee table. “He usually checks with me before turning down a charity request for my help. It’s sort of an unspoken agreement. Are you sure you talked to Dan Harris?”

  “Sounds like Gentle Ben with an attitude?”

  Mercy chuckled. “That’s the one.”

  “In that case, I have had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Harris. His response was—Grrrr.” Nick’s growl was low and menacing. “I took that as a no.”

  Laughing out loud, Mercy acknowledged the similarities between her station manager’s rough, gravelly voice and Nick’s growl. “I’d like to say he isn’t usually like that, but lately I’m afraid he is.”

  “So, what do you say? You gonna help me, Mercy?”

  “Sure,” Mercy agreed without hesitation. “As long as you tell me why.”

  “Because you’re a sucker for a good cause?” Nick tried hopefully, parroting what he’d heard her say on the phone.

  “Wrong. Well, I am a sucker for a good cause. You got that right, but you answered the wrong question. What I want to know is why this is so important to Dr. Nick Devereaux.”

  “You mean besides giving me an excuse to meet the Mercy Malone?” he asked as if that privilege alone would be reason enough for a man to face any number of hardships.

  “Stop fooling around, Nick,” Mercy warned, raising her brow. “You’re asking for a big commitment, and all I want to know is why you’re doing this.”

  He rested his eyes for a moment and then dragged them open again, answering her as honestly as he could. “The unit functions, but I feel like I’m spinning my wheels sometimes. Before we even talk about additional medical equipment, you gotta know the physical layout’s all wrong. The medprep is a small—I emphasize small—converted janitors’ supply room. The waiting room’s depressing as hell, and the nurses would give their eyeteeth not to have to tear the place apart to find a blood-pressure cuff small enough to give them an accurate pressure on a six-year-old.”

  Staggered by the very real frustration in his voice, Mercy asked, “Is it really that bad?”

  “Worse. Oh, Mercy Hospital meets all the minimum standards, but there is a world of difference between minimum and adequate. A whole lot more between adequate and excellent.”

  Mercy worried her bottom lip with her teeth and readjusted the topaz ring she wore. Her conscience pinched her slightly because she hadn’t visited the hospital or Sister Aggie in several years. “Will one hundred thousand dollars bring your emergency room up to excellent?”

  “A lot closer,” Nick allowed.

  “What will it take?” Mercy pushed.

  “More than we can raise with one fund-raiser.”

  “Fine. We’ll do more.”

  “Hold on,” Nick cautioned. “One step at a time. First, let’s see if we can pull off this one. I don’t want to turn Mercy Hospital into a trauma center. I just want to improve the emergency department that we’ve already got.”

  “What? No grand plan? No ambition?”

  “Not anymore,” Nick said bluntly, his reaction loaded with lessons learned from past mistakes.

  “Sorry,” Mercy said quietly. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “Yes, you did.” His smile took the sting out of his words. “I’ve done my time in the big hospitals. It wasn’t for me.”

  Mercy curled her legs beneath her. “Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Only when I’m expecting a pop quiz from Sophie.” Mercy grinned in an attempt to lighten his mood. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll have to make up something juicy.”

  “If I answer this, can we go back to fund-raising?”

  “I suppose we can, but how am I going to be any help to you if I don’t know anything about you or what you want? This is a perfectly reasonable line of questioning.”

  “Depends on your definition of reasonable.”

  Mercy heard the teasing note in Nick’s complaint, but she also recognized a reluctance to talk about himself. While she idly traced the rolled seam of a couch cushion, Mercy said, “You hypocrite. You can dish it out, Dr. Devereaux, but you can’t take it.”

  A cocky light in Nick’s eyes disputed her statement very neatly and more strongly than words could have. Unswayed, Mercy refused to drop the subject. She’d managed to find a tiny hole in Nick’s armor, and she intended to poke around a bit. “You love asking other people intensely personal questions, but you don’t like coming under the microscope yourself. Now … why is that?”

  “You really want to know why personal questions aren’t my favorite questions to answer?” Nick asked, pinning her with a serious gaze, warning her that she might not like the answer.

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Darlin’, I’m out of practice at answering them, ’cause I don’t have anyone who asks anymore.”

  Mercy immediately recalled the shadows in his eyes and the weariness she could feel beneath the surface in that brief moment at the kitchen table. She began to wonder why no one cared enough about Nick Devereaux to ask him personal questions. Lightly, she said, “I don’t believe a word of that. I have eyes, Nick. I’ll bet you have nurses swooning at your feet, asking very personal questions.”

  “If you believe that any of my nurses would swoon, you’re sadly mistaken.” He jerked forward as if shocked by an interesting thought and then settled into the nook formed by the chair back and wing. “Bon Dieu, you probably believe in love at first sight too.”

  “Hardly. I don’t even believe in love at second sight!” Mercy scoffed, and realized her response was delivered much too sharply. Damn! How did a personal discussion about Nick end up being about her? Because he was better at this game than she was.

  “Ah, no, chère, don’t say that. Everyone believes in love.”

  “Not everyone. Not me. Now, lust I believe in, but love is—you’ll excuse the expression—a pipe dream.”

  Nick templed his fingers over his abdomen and studied her solemnly, finally asking, “So which of the two scares
you most? The consummation of lust or the possibility of love?”

  Mercy sucked in a breath and wanted to throw something. Preferably at Nick. He lounged in that damn chair like a cat lazily watching a mouse that would soon be dinner. Surely he didn’t expect an answer? An honest answer?

  If he did, he’d have to wait until Miami averaged winter temperatures below freezing. She didn’t answer, but she silently considered his question. Since she didn’t believe in love, she obviously couldn’t be scared of it, but she did tuck tail and run at the first sign of attraction. Lust scared the hell out of her, because lust invariably fooled people into believing in marriage and love.

  She’d watched enough marriages wash up on the rocks to last a lifetime. Her own parents had significantly contributed to the wreckage piling up on the shore of divorce. Her father had been married three times, and her mother was just about to take the plunge for the fourth time. When this one sank like all the rest, Mercy would have to help her pick up the pieces one more time.

  “You’re stalling again,” Nick told her.

  “I’m thinking again!” she shot back. Sidestepping chemistry was the easiest way to avoid lust, and over the years she’d done a good job of picking and choosing whom she dated. If Mercy was more than mildly attracted to a man, she simply didn’t go out with him. Unfortunately, Nick wasn’t like the other men she’d politely sidestepped in the past.

  He didn’t appear to be satisfied with a pat on the head and being sent on his way. He liked to discuss things; he wanted answers and reasons. Nick obviously knew women, knew she ran from chemistry, and he seemed to think it was funny. Damn, that made her mad!

  It wasn’t as if she were a spinster who’d never had chances. She’d had chances! Lots of them. He had no right to waltz into her life and in a few short hours have her feeling as though she’d behaved like a coward—all because she hadn’t been willing to take any of those chances.

  “Come on, Mercy,” he pressed gently. “You can tell me. What scares you? Lust … or love?”

  “Doctors. Doctors scare me the most,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “Especially the ones who think they know absolutely everything about lust and love, which is impossible since they’re generally too damn busy saving the world from disease and pestilence to notice much of anything beyond the hospital door!”