by Debra Dixon
Mercy barely heard a word he said after he stroked her lip. With an effort, she resisted the temptation to run her tongue along the path his thumb had taken. She knew she should be angry, but she wasn’t sure at whom: Herself for misjudging her ability to intimidate the man, or Nick for allowing her to make a fool of herself with this charade. Letting go of her anger, she asked, “When did you figure it out?”
Before he answered, he leaned back, a section of his black hair falling against his forehead. “Right about the time I realized the idea of my peeling stockings off your incredible legs was as exciting to you as it was to me.”
“I wasn’t excited. I was …” Mercy didn’t bother to finish the sentence. Telling Nick that her face flushed because she was “hot” was not going to help her case.
“Oh, you were excited all right. I don’t think a bad girl on the prowl would go up in flames at the thought of being stripped. And you went up in flames, ma jolie fille.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“My pretty girl?”
“Whatever it means, don’t call me that. Or chère. Or darlin’. I’m not interested, Nick. All I want to do is get this fund-raiser planned and get back to fixing up my house.”
“Before it falls down around your ears?”
She ignored him. “Before I make a really big mistake and listen to my hormones.”
As he scooped up their tickets Nick asked, “And what’s wrong with listening to your hormones?”
“Because it would be asking for trouble.” Mercy slid out of the booth, brushing aside Nick’s offer of help.
Nick let her go, stopping long enough to pay the check, and then joined her at the elevator. “I’ve been called a lot of things, chère, but never trouble.”
“Can we drop this?” Mercy asked. “Just give me the tour and then let’s go see Sister Agatha about this damn party so I can clear the details with the station.”
“Is that going to be a problem?”
A secret smile hovered on Mercy’s lips. “Not if Dan wants me to consider staying in Louisville instead of taking Pittsburgh’s offer when my contract comes up this fall.”
Nick frowned and let her precede him into the elevator. No wonder she was in such a hurry to get her house in shape. She wanted to be able to sell it quickly if necessary. “You’re thinking about leaving Louisville?”
“Maybe,” was all she’d say. “Pittsburgh is a much bigger television market. Means more exposure.”
Eyeing her outfit with speculation in his gaze, Nick said, “I don’t think you have that much left to expose.”
After Mercy signed autographs for the staff on duty, the tour went quickly. The department was quiet, and the physical layout was limited. As they walked through the unit together she realized that, in his element, Nick was different, all business.
No, she decided, detached was the word she was looking for, as though he disconnected his emotions when he stepped into the ER. She had trouble reconciling the man at her side with the charmer who’d fixed her sink and slept in her chair. Believe it and get over it, she warned herself. He was a doctor just like her parents, and she should be thankful for the wake-up call.
No matter how much she’d like to believe he was different, he wasn’t. If a patient died, he would wash his hands and go on to the next one. He could probably cut off his feelings as easily as he could take off a coat.
“Everything looks so old,” Mercy commented, getting her thoughts off Nick and back on the hospital.
“With good reason. Most of it is. Take a good look at the ceramic tile on the walls. You can always tell how old a hospital is by the number of broken ceramic tiles on the emergency-room walls.”
“I don’t think you have a tile without a crack in it!”
“Proof positive that the ER could use a little goodwill in the form of cold hard cash,” he said. “God knows the waiting room needs an overhaul.”
Mercy immediately agreed. The dreary waiting room did nothing to calm the shredded nerves of family members anticipating the worst. Several of the nurses joined them, and after they added their perspective, Mercy’s head was spinning with a hundred ideas for how a well-spent chunk of money could improve Mercy Hospital. Nick unbent long enough to contribute a couple of dozen ideas of his own and even some jokes.
After he paged and spoke to Sister Agatha, Nick led the way out of Emergency. “She’ll meet us at her office.”
“Who gets to decide how the money will be spent?” Mercy asked. “You said something about a bigger medprep room, and the nurses are all for converting to the more modern drug carts.”
Nick rubbed the faint stubble of beard that shadowed his jawline. “If I have my way, it’ll be a joint effort between the community, administration, and the medical personnel. Sister said something about getting a community users’ group to help. The only thing I’m dead set against is hiring a fancy consulting firm to give an opinion that’ll cost several thousand dollars.”
“Good Lord, the last thing you need is to pay for opinions you can get for free around here. Everyone on staff seems to know exactly what would improve the situation!”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Nick said with a shake of his head. “When you feel like a little hamster in a squeaky wheel, going round and getting nowhere, you know exactly where to put the oil. The nurses have been spinning in that squeaky wheel a lot longer than I have. I appreciate your letting them blow off a little steam.”
Grinning, Mercy said, “No problem. If I was trying to save lives in an environment designed forty years ago, I’d be doing something a little more obnoxious than blowing off steam. It amazes me how you can function without enough space to do the job right.”
Nick rapped on Sister Agatha’s office door and then shot her a knowing look. “Personally, tight spaces have never bothered me.”
A half sigh, half groan escaped Mercy. This was the Nick she was used to, and she bit her tongue rather than say anything he could twist into another subtle reminder of the sensual undercurrents flowing around them. Of all the men who could have arrived on her doorstep and set off a hormonal chain reaction, why did it have to be a doctor?
At Mercy’s warning look, he laughed and knocked again. “When I paged her, Sister said we should wait in her office if she wasn’t back when we arrived. She’s stuck talking to the honorable Mrs. Oliver Reed, the wife of Dr. Reed, whose degree is administrative, not medical. He’s a member of the hospital board, and Mrs. Reed likes to use that fact to create trouble.” Finally, he opened the door. “Looks like Sister could be a while. Can you wait?”
“Yeah.” Mercy entered the semidark office. “You make talking to Mrs. Reed sound like a fate worse than death.”
“No, a conversation with Dr. Reed is a fate worse than death. He’s a sixty-five-year-old, narrow-minded prude who thinks the cure for sexually transmitted diseases is a nickel between the knees and a little willpower.” He shut the door as Mercy deposited her purse in one of the brown upholstered chairs in front of Sister Agatha’s desk. “By contrast, his wife is just a mildly unpleasant trip into an alternate universe.”
Intrigued by Nick’s characterization of the Reeds, Mercy turned and leaned against the top of the chair. “Is this idle gossip about the man or have you had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Reed?”
Nick reached for the lights and flipped them on, revealing a neat, well-organized office. “I’m not sure I’d call it a pleasure, but I have actually talked to Dr. Reed and his wife. I talked to all the board members before I approached the station about the fundraiser.” He leaned against the gray metal door, one hand on the knob and the other on his hip.
“Sounds like you did a little more than talk to Dr. Reed. Tell me the truth. What did he say that sounded your horn?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“Yeah, right. Then tell me in generalities,” Mercy pressed, and walked toward him. “This has got to be good. I want to know what makes you angry.”
“You might not like it, chère.”
“I’ll risk it.”
“Dr. Reed believes this little fund-raiser is in poor taste. He doesn’t think we should be linking the hospital’s good name with something as tawdry as a brainless television sexpot.”
“Brainless!” Mercy exploded. Sexpot she could let pass, but to be called brainless burned her up. She spent a great deal of time and energy researching each of the movies on her show. While she had to live with whatever movie package the program exec negotiated each year, she did everything she could to lift her show above the average and give her viewers a little something extra. “I do not look or act brainless.”
“Mercy, I believe Dr. Reed is more concerned with your bust measurement and how much cleavage shows than he is concerned with your IQ.”
Indignant, she put her hands on her hips. “I hope you told him to take a long walk off a short pier.”
“That came later.”
“There’s more?”
“Let’s just say he discovered that I’m not interested in his views on celibacy, or where I should draw the line in my intimate relationships.”
“Where do you draw the line?” asked Mercy, suddenly realizing that his answer was very important to her.
Nick took a step toward her, stopping a few inches away. Mercy looked like a woman waiting for bad news, standing very still, very quiet. Her sheer black shirt teased him with the soft curves that lay beneath the filmy veil. Dragging his gaze to her face, he knew better than to answer the wrong question. “Are you asking me how many women I’ve slept with, or are you asking me about the variety of my sexual experience?”
Appalled that she continued to fall into such intimate conversations, Mercy stammered an apology. “I’m sorry, Nick. It’s none of my business.”
Nick caught her elbow before she could back away. Without saying anything, he urged her closer, adjusting his legs to fit her snugly in the cradle of his thighs, even though her upper body leaned away from him. “But it is your business, chère. One of these days you and I are going to end up in bed together. You know it, and I know it. It’s only a matter of time.”
“I don’t know that,” Mercy argued, but the words were too shaky to be confident.
“I do, and I’m sure enough for both of us. Sure enough to wait until you know it too.”
“You’ll be waiting a long time.”
“What are you afraid of, chère? Me? Or you?”
“I’m not afraid.” But even as she said it her body called her a liar. Her stomach flipped the moment his palms rubbed along her arms, up to the shoulder and down to her elbows. Ever so slowly, he bent toward her, bringing his face closer as if to tell her a secret.
“Coward,” Nick accused softly, his words ruffling the hair at her temple.
Mercy closed her eyes, trying to fight the impulse to lean into his broad chest. “Stop calling me that.”
“Stop being one. All you have to do is kiss me.”
A sensation of excitement shivered through her. Nick dropped feathery kisses on her forehead, cheeks, and nose, inching closer to her mouth with every brush of his lips. All of her senses were screaming for him just to kiss her and get it over with, to take the decision out of her hands. But Nick wouldn’t do that. He continued to tease her with tiny nibbles designed to drive her crazy.
Every touch silently called her a coward. When his mouth began to slide down her neck, she sagged against him. She hadn’t wanted the small sigh of satisfaction to escape, but it did. Nick worked his way back up the column of her throat, his hands never leaving her arms, never crushing her to him or exploring her body. All he took were small soft bites of tender flesh. Toying with her. Playing with her.
Finally, with his mouth hovering over hers, he asked, “What’sa matter, chère? Can’t make up your mind?”
The tension inside Mercy coiled more tightly, demanding release. She surrendered and pressed her mouth to his.
FIVE
When she opened her mouth beneath his, Nick swept his tongue inside, sampling her sweetness, tasting the trace of peaches. The simple shift of her body as her arms crept around his neck forced a groan from him because her breasts replaced her hands on his chest. Her softness bore into him, a feminine counterpoint to the hardness in him.
The feel of her pressed against him produced an instinctive reaction, a need to feel her body beneath his fingers. Nick’s hands slid down to her waist and over the curve of her rump. Knowing the edge of her skirt was only inches from his fingertips excited him. He cupped her derriere, letting his palms soak up the velvety texture of the material as he aligned his lower body more perfectly with hers.
Mercy couldn’t remember a kiss like this one. A kiss that pulled at her soul and had heat pooling in her belly. When Nick pressed the ridge of his hardness against her, she felt the spark of a long-forgotten need. Raising on her toes, she rubbed against him, slowly lowering herself, deliberately teasing his erection. She’d forgotten the wonderful anticipation that could flow through her veins in a heated rush. She’d forgotten how easily lust could seduce her.
At the discreet cough from the doorway, Nick suddenly remembered that he was thoroughly kissing Mercy in the office of a nun. Although his closed eyes flew open, he broke the embrace as gently as possible. Nick could feel Sister Agatha’s gaze boring into his back, but couldn’t resist capturing Mercy’s bottom lip with his mouth one last time before he set her away from him. He wanted to take some time to enjoy the satisfied and dazed look in her blue eyes when she finally opened them, but Sister Agatha was waiting and watching. Carefully, he moved his hands as the sister coughed again.
“Oh no,” Mercy whispered as she landed back in reality.
“Mais yeah, chère.”
The nun shut the door behind her and crossed the room. As she dropped a couple of manila file folders onto the large calendar pad that protected most of her desktop, she said, “I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.”
Totally unrepentant now that he’d regained his composure, Nick gave the older woman a grin he hoped was irresistible. “Depends on your point of view.”
“Nick, please. You’re not helping,” Mercy said. She hadn’t been in the same room with Sister Aggie in years, but she felt like it was yesterday. Without much luck, she tried to divorce herself from the memories of a nineteen-year-old girl facing an authority figure she respected. Years of conditioning prompted the racing of her heart and the need to apologize. “Sister, this is your office, and we shouldn’t have … well, I’m sorry if we offended you.”
“I’m not the least offended, Mercy. Or easily shocked, which you should remember. I simply wanted to know if this was an important kiss or just an indiscreet display of infatuation.” Sister Agatha sat down behind her desk and motioned them to follow suit.
Mercy settled into a chair and braced herself, knowing that an old indiscretion was about to be dredged up.
“You always were an impetuous girl, but I would have thought you’d learned your lesson the first time you kissed a doctor in my office.”
“The first time?” Nick asked as he sat down on Mercy’s right. He shifted in his chair for a better view of both women, but he addressed his question to Mercy. “I thought you didn’t like doctors.”
“I’m older and wiser,” Mercy said. She kept her tone casual, making a joke of the situation. “I had a crush on one of the residents. He was gorgeous, but I had to give up on him when I discovered he couldn’t kiss worth a”—Mercy stumbled and finished—“darn.”
“You gave up on him when you realized that he was just like your parents,” the sister corrected. “All medical talk and no action. You’ve never had any patience with doctors. Not that you had any business playing doctor back then.”
“It was one innocent kiss!” Mercy informed both of them, and curled her fingers around the chair arms. The urge to throttle Nick was almost unbearable. Although he didn’t actually call her a liar, he conveyed that impression by
shrugging and leaning back with his legs stretched out in front of him. With an effort, Mercy regained her poise and asked, “Could we please drop the subject of my adolescent exploits and get back to the present?”
“The present? Let me see … that would be today’s not-so-innocent kiss?” Sister clasped her hands together on top of the manila folders in the middle of her desk, appearing to possess all the patience in the world as she waited for an answer.
Caught between the nun’s perceptive gaze and Nick’s obvious amusement, Mercy decided she was outnumbered. Sometimes the best defense was a well-organized retreat. “Maybe we should discuss the fundraiser?”
To her surprise, Sister Agatha agreed. “Before we start, would either of you like some coffee? A soda?” She paused and glanced toward Mercy’s chest before raising her eyes to Mercy’s face. “Perhaps a coat for you? The air-conditioning has made this room a bit chilly.”
Time stopped, and heat flooded her cheeks. She didn’t need to look down to know that her nipples were alert and clearly outlined by the sheer fabrics she wore. Mercy truly understood the expression “I just wanted the earth to open up and swallow me.” That’s exactly how she felt. She wanted to crawl under a rock.
Nick, on the other hand, was enjoying himself tremendously. Well, she’d be damned if she’d make a fool of herself by gasping and covering up like a silly schoolgirl caught in her underwear. As casually as she could, she angled her foot and managed to give the snickering doctor a kick in the ankle. To the nun she said, “No, I’m fine. Really.”
“All right.” The nun watched with interest as Nick leaned down to rub his leg. “I assume that Nick has already shown you our emergency department?”
“She got the nickel tour,” Nick confirmed, and straightened. “Right now that’s about all it’s worth.”
“In my opinion, it’s worth less than a nickel,” Mercy told them bluntly. “Working in that ER has to be like working in a dungeon. There aren’t any windows to the outside, and that old, stale smell is the medical equivalent to the smell in a mildewy, musty old house. No matter how much you clean it, you’ll never be able to get the smell out.”
