Midnight Hour

by Debra Dixon

  “Romantic? I don’t think so. Maybe I should refresh your memory, chère.” Slowly, very deliberately, Nick leaned forward, resting his elbows on wide-spread thighs. “Romantic implies hearts and flowers. You and I … we’re all birds and bees. Now, I’ll buy hot as an adjective, but not romantic. We were standing over there. You were between my thighs. We were belly to belly, and my hands were—”

  “I know exactly where your hands were!” she snapped.

  A smile broke across Nick’s face. “Good. I got that right at least.”

  “Witch, lie down!” Mercy ordered crossly when she couldn’t think of a suitable reply, much less deny that Nick was—as Sophie put it—good with his hands. After the dog stopped pacing and sank unhappily down, Mercy felt a pinch of guilt for taking her frustration out on her dog. Promising herself she’d make it up to Witch later, she returned her attention to Nick. “What you did or didn’t get right isn’t the point.”

  “Then what is the point?”

  “The point is that we can’t let the summer air and a starry night confuse us.”

  “Who’s confused?”

  Mercy wanted to scream with frustration. Nick was so good at derailing conversations, at making her doubt her common sense. Since the moment he stepped over her threshold, fire alarms had been going off in her bloodstream. If she didn’t put out the fire pronto, she’d end up just like her parents—another burned-out casualty of raging hormones.

  Gritting her teeth, she told him, “Both of us are confused. Everything about you is too much, too soon. You said yourself you didn’t know what you wanted from me. When I opened that door last week, neither one of us expected the other. What you really need is a friend, Nick. Someplace to fit in again. I can be your friend, but I’m not ready to be anything else. I can’t.”

  “You won’t.”

  “All right, have it your way. I won’t.” She folded her arms across her chest.

  “Why?”

  “You’re not my type,” she lied smoothly.

  Nick raised an eyebrow and mirrored her body language by folding his arms across his chest as he rocked the swing gently. “Ah, chère, you gonna have to learn to tell better lies.”

  Clenching her fists, Mercy ground out, “If you had the good sense to accept defeat gracefully, I wouldn’t have to tell them at all!”

  “Does that mean I am your type?”

  “No, it does not. I don’t have a type,” she told him flatly, resigned to the fact that winning an argument with Nick was a lot like spinning around in a circle and then trying to walk a straight line.

  “That’s what Sister said.” Nick nodded as if his suspicions had been sadly confirmed. “That you didn’t know your type.”

  Mercy began a count of ten. When she reached nine, she blew out the breath she’d been holding and began to speak very slowly. “Nick, I’m not sure what Sister has been telling you, but never having been married does not make me a charter member of the Louisville Lonely Hearts Club. And”—she emphasized her point with a raised index finger—“while I’m sure this news is going to burst your macho bubble, I think you ought to know that technically I’m not entitled to wear white at weddings!”

  “I have been wondering a bit about that point.”

  Mercy’s mouth worked for a moment before she could force out anything. “Well, now you can stop wondering! I’m not some sad little spinster, so you can call off the little ‘rescue mission’ you and Sister Aggie have cooked up.”

  “Cooked up? You make that sound like Sister and I are conspirin’ against you.” Nick pushed the swing as though he were enjoying himself. “You don’t really believe that, now, do you?”

  “Only because you are,” she informed him sweetly.

  “Not us, darlin’. It’s very hard to plot when the plotters don’t agree.”

  Knowing she’d be sorry, but unable to contain her curiosity, Mercy had to ask, “And what specifically don’t you two agree about?”

  “About you and Mr. Right. She thinks you’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places.”

  Mercy let that sink in for a moment while she ran her long nails through her hair like a comb, pulling the strands away from her face. “And what do you think?”

  “I don’t think you’ve been lookin’ for Mr. Right at all.” Nick stood up and smoothed his jeans down his thighs before he continued, “In fact, I don’t even think you’ve been lookin’ for Mr. Right Now.”

  Nick knew he’d hit the proverbial nail squarely on the head when her chin lifted sharply. Another little piece of the puzzle slipped into place. No doctors. No marrying men. No chemistry. Nothing that would challenge her nice, safe, little life. She never had answered his question about which scared her the most—the consummation of lust or the possibility of love. Until now, that is. He walked toward her, stopping in front of her, noting her lips had parted slightly and her breathing was shallow and a jot too rapid.

  He knew he could kiss her if he wanted, that she expected him to, was probably afraid he would. As Nick looked down into blue eyes darkened with concern, he realized why lust scared her, and the answer surprised him. Gently, he said, “Mercy Malone’s not looking for Mr. Right for the exact same reason she doesn’t want to move to Pittsburgh.”

  To her credit, Mercy didn’t flinch at his pronouncement. “Okay, Dr. Freud, let’s hear it,” she told him hoarsely. “Exactly why am I avoiding Prince Charming and committing career suicide?”

  “You’re gonna love this.” Nick laughed and started down the steps, turning on the bottom one. “You’re avoiding the Prince and Pittsburgh because you are scared to death you might upset the applecart.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “You worship the status quo. No gain, no pain.”

  Mercy’s eyes narrowed, and he could tell her temper was beginning to heat up by the way she raised her voice when she said, “If you’re going to spout clichés, then at least get them right! It’s supposed to be—no pain, no gain.”

  “Naw, not for you, chère. No gain, no pain is exactly right. No risk, no hurt. Like I said before, you are one very pretty coward.” He turned away and started for his car without waiting for a response. He’d stirred Mercy up. Now it was time to put the lid back on and let her simmer some more. Silence reigned for a second or two, and then he swore he heard the sound of her foot colliding with the wooden porch. Twice.

  “If I’m such a coward, then why the hell do you keep coming back?” she hollered as he walked away.

  When he pulled open his car door, he stared at her, taking in the tension in her posture, the way she leaned forward as if his answer mattered too much. Before he disappeared inside his car, he said, “I keep coming back because you make me forget.”

  Dropping his keys onto the nightstand, Nick fell back against the king-size bed. For once, the monotonous whirl of the ceiling fan’s rosewood blades didn’t irritate him. After an evening with Mercy, he needed the calm, rhythmic droning to help him unwind.

  Nick dragged himself up long enough to shuck his clothing and then flipped out the lights. Not that he expected to get much sleep. Three weeks ago he hadn’t been sleeping because of the silence in his life, and now he’d lie awake half the night because he couldn’t get the image of long legs out of his mind.

  Anticipation of future evenings with the real woman in his fantasies threatened to start the flow of adrenaline he usually felt only in the ER. After all this time he’d rejoined the living only to fall for the Queen of the Dead. Dieu! It felt good to want something again.

  He wanted Mercy. He wanted so many slices of life he’d forgotten about. Like finding two toothbrushes in the bathroom and that someone had used the last clean towel. He wanted someone to ask him for a glass of water “while he was up.” On cold mornings, he’d like to roll over and warm his nose in the tender flesh of Mercy’s neck. He wanted to fight over who the dog loved more. Suddenly he was greedy for another human being after years of rationing his involv
ement with women, with people.

  While the ceiling fan spun above him the wheels of his mind began to turn, and he looked for ways to solve the problem of getting Mercy to drop her defenses. Eventually, he’d get past her prejudice against doctors, but that wasn’t the biggest stumbling block. Not by a long shot.

  He didn’t need a rocket scientist to tell him that two parents plus six marriages equaled the answer to Mercy’s reluctance. Her folks had been married six times, and only once to each other. Thinking back on the conversation, he remembered she’d delivered that bit of information like the punch line of a joke. Her whole flip, sarcastic attitude about the subject of her parents’ broken relationships was about as subtle as waving a bright red emotional flag. No, he didn’t need a rocket scientist to draw him a diagram of Mercy’s secrets.

  Nick put his hands behind his head, pleased that he had a handle on the mystery of Mercy Malone. “I don’t care how smoothly she tells the story, or how many jokes she makes, those failed marriages bother her more than she wants anybody to know.”

  Suddenly Nick frowned. What bothered her was only half the equation. The other half was why? What the hell did her parents’ failures have to do with her? Being a poor judge of character wasn’t listed as a genetic trait the last time he checked a medical textbook. Besides, Mercy didn’t need to worry about making a mistake. At least, not this time. Not with him.

  Nick closed his eyes and refused to listen to the nagging voice of reason inside his head. His good sense was in a snit over the fact that he’d up and decided to get serious about a woman he’d seen a grand total of three times. Well, in a roundabout way, I have spent the night with her already, Nick qualified, and yawned. And I’ll be seeing her again tomorrow afternoon at the station.

  Chaos greeted Nick as he approached the faux marble counter manned by the television station’s receptionist. Before he could do more than get his name out, a harried young man rushed out of a door to Nick’s left, the receptionist grabbed for a stack of papers that fluttered off the top of her computer workstation, and Mercy walked through a door on his right.

  “Charlotte,” warned the twenty-something black man. “Don’t tell me it’s not here! I saw the truck.”

  Charlotte triumphantly waved a fat overnight-express packet. “This?”

  “Come to Papa,” he said as he snatched the packet out of the girl’s hands. The man let his breath out in a relieved whistle before he left with the package clutched in both hands, heaping curses on what Nick assumed was another television station.

  “Problem?” Nick asked the woman behind the counter.

  She grinned and answered, “Absolutely, positively not anymore.”

  “What she means is that Frank’s been sweating bullets since Friday,” Mercy said without making eye contact. “That’s when Frank wanted to work on the Monday-night late show and realized we didn’t have it yet.”

  “Then why did you schedule it?” Nick asked, and fought the urge to look down and see what was so darned interesting about his left shoulder that Mercy stared at it.

  “We didn’t,” Charlotte told him. “The program exec did, and Frank’s the worrying kind. Now that he’s finally got the tape in his hands, he can edit all the local and national commercials on to one nice tape with the movie so that the late crew doesn’t have to juggle three machines tonight.”

  Nick eyeballed the brass-trimmed wall clock behind the workstation. “Leaving it a little late, isn’t he? It’s four o’clock now. I hope he wasn’t planning to leave at five o’clock like the rest of the world.”

  “He’ll get it done.” Charlotte’s tone held supreme confidence. “We call him Mr. Impossible. Don’t let the plastic pocket protector fool you. Frank’s not as spastic as he appears.”

  “He has this phobia about biked tapes. Especially when someone drops the ball. It’s happened to him before.” Mercy motioned toward the way she’d entered. “Dan’s already waiting for us in the conference room.”

  “Ladies first,” Nick said as he reached to hold the edge of the dark green door. The small fantasy he’d been harboring about her eagerly awaiting his arrival evaporated completely. She slipped into the corridor without ever looking him directly in the eyes or acknowledging last night’s kiss by so much as a blush. Since last night was out as a topic of conversation, he asked, “What exactly does ‘biked’ mean?”

  “Biking. Like bicycling,” she elaborated, using the bland tone of a museum guide. “That’s what we call it when one station forwards a videotape to another station.”

  Nick digested her answer and her attitude. Mercy was every inch the detached professional, right down to the shoes that matched her blue silk suit, which was the exact color of the delicate, faded indigo blues of Cajun cloth. One of these days, he’d show her the few family heirlooms he had, like the rough, hand-made blanket of Cajun cloth that he kept in a trunk.

  He wanted to whistle as he watched her glide down the corridor, hips gently swaying. Had they been anywhere else, he might have complimented Mercy’s suit and told her about his grandmère’s passion for weaving, but for now, he decided to take his cue from her and stick to impersonal topics. Or try to. The station was her turf, and he could respect her need to keep her private life private. That didn’t mean he had to like censoring his conversation.

  With as much pretended interest as he could muster, he asked, “Mercy, now why would another station send you their movie?”

  “They’re not sending us their movie. Television stations don’t own the movies we show. We have to pay whoever owns the rights if we want to run a movie. Well, sometimes we get them for free.” When the corridor branched in two directions, Mercy tossed him a look over her shoulder to make sure he was following. Her gaze landed somewhere in the vicinity of his third shirt button.

  Instead of grabbing her and tilting her chin up until she had to notice him, as he wanted to do, he reminded himself of their surroundings and stuck to shoptalk. “Why would someone give you a movie for free if you usually pay for them?”

  “Because we agree to run the national advertising spots they’ve already sold and that are already on the tape. It’s sort of a package deal.” She turned right and climbed a flight of stairs.

  He trailed her up the steps, wondering how long they could drag out this conversation before resorting to small talk about the weather. “I might not know much about television, but even I know it’s damn hard to make money if you don’t sell advertising.”

  She latched onto his interest like a man mired in quicksand grabbed hold of swamp vine. “The national ads only fill about half of the advertising slots. We make our money by selling the remaining ten or so minutes of commercial time.”

  “Ah.” Nick nodded, suppressing a grin at Mercy’s game effort to pretend that this was a perfectly natural conversation for two people who’d recently been necking on her front porch.

  Mercy was trying so hard to ignore the chemistry between them that she only succeeded in increasing the tension swirling in the air currents. Being ignored was beginning to grate on his nerves. He controlled his irritation by reminding himself that this trip to the station was for the fund-raiser and had nothing to do with their relationship.

  Noting the stiff carriage of her body, he swatted the conversational ball back into her court. “And what do you do with the movies when you’re through with them?”

  “That depends on how we get them. The program exec does all the buying, and he decides how we take delivery of the programming.” She rattled on, not bothering to wait for a question this time, picking up speed as she went. “Sometimes we pull them off the satellite and then erase the tape. Sometimes we get a tape from whoever owns the film, which we then have to send back or bike it on to the next station that has the window to show that film.”

  When she paused a fraction of a second for breath, Nick knew he had to stop her before she stripped her vocal cords. Besides, she still hadn’t looked at him, and she obviously wasn’t going to
unless he forced the issue. “Okay, that’s it. Mercy—”

  She cut him off as she paused in front of a door and announced, “Here we are.”

  “All right,” he muttered in surrender. “Lead the way. I am perfectly willing to follow you to the ends of the earth, and it looks like that’s what it’s gonna take to get your attention,” Nick told her earnestly, hoping the line would rattle her composure a bit. It did.

  Mercy stopped right in the middle of knocking, and turned to truly look at him for the first time since he’d left her house the night before. Her baby blues widened, rounded, and blinked once before they settled into staring at him with apprehension.

  “Looks like I won’t have to go to the ends of the earth after all. I seem to have your attention. If your eyes were brown,” Nick mused quietly, “you’d look like a deer caught in headlights.”

  She blinked again and found her voice. “You’re mistaken, Nick. This is my impression of a silent-film heroine, strapped to the railroad track, and with no choice but to watch the shiny black, smoke-belching train barrel down on her as she struggles vainly against the inevitable.”

  “Then why worry? The hero always saves the heroine just in the nick of time.”

  “In the nick of time?”

  “Bad pun?”

  “Yeah. Really bad.”

  “Cut me some slack, chère. I haven’t had to be clever in a long time. I’m out of practice.”

  “I thought we settled this last night.” She knocked on the door and said, “You’re wasting your time, Nick. You should practice on someone who cares.”

  “Oh, but I am!”

  Mercy didn’t have time to answer because a gruff voice from beyond the door ordered them to stop standing around the hallway shootin’ the breeze. The door was jerked open and filled by a mountain of a man who topped Nick’s six-foot three-inch height by several inches.

  “You must be that Cajun doctor with the emergency.”

  “That’d be me,” Nick allowed.