Midnight Hour

As soon as the little girl on his emergency-room table was out of danger, Nick Devereaux stripped off his latex gloves and allowed himself one small moment of celebration. He’d beaten death again. He smiled at the child.

“You’ll be all right,
chère
,” he said, his Cajun accent creeping into his speech.

His smile faded as he thought of the two hotshot paramedics who’d brought the girl in. Tonight confirmed his hunch that a pattern was forming. Those two boys kept turning up in his emergency room with patients they should have taken to another hospital. An official reprimand seemed a little too much like an arrogant power play from the new doctor in town, so Nick decided a little heart-to-heart chat was in order. As soon as possible.

Checking his watch, Nick frowned. Paramedics didn’t hang around hospitals very long, especially not in the ER staff lounge at Mercy Hospital. The lounge
was a spartan affair, boasting only a lumpy sofa, two chairs, a tiny refrigerator, and a primitive coffee maker. No radio. No television. Just yesterday’s paper.

“I don’t suppose they hung around tonight?” Nick asked the nurse who’d come in to check the IV.

“Bobby and John? They might have. They just brought in Mr. Peterson. I think he really did break his hip this time. We’ve got an orthopedic resident who’s been working nights with him.”

“Good. I’ll be in the lounge having a little chat with Bobby and John.”

“I’d check the waiting room first.” She grinned at him. “It’s after midnight on a Friday night. If they’re here, they’ll be clustered around the television set, trying to catch a few minutes of
The Midnight Hour
while they drink some coffee.”

“Television,” Nick whispered with a shake of his head. He’d moved to Louisville, Kentucky, a couple of months ago and still didn’t understand the city’s fascination with
The Midnight Hour
. Of course, he’d never seen the show. “Doesn’t anybody in this city do anything else on Friday night except watch that show?”

The nurse laughed. “Not if they can help it.” As he pushed aside the curtain to leave, she said, “Hey, Doc. You do good work.”

Walking away, Nick looked over his shoulder and said, “
Oui
, but then we have no choice, you and I.”

Rolling his shoulders eased the ache between them; he pushed open the door to the waiting room. He was bone-tired, only on his feet because he was too stubborn to close his eyes and too familiar with the wretched furniture that graced Mercy Hospital to sit
down. He paused long enough to reassure the child’s parents and tell them they could see her before the staff moved her upstairs.

The smiling couple hurried away, and Nick let his gaze sweep the depressing room. Drab green vinyl and chrome had never been favorites of his. Nor was he any fonder of gray speckled linoleum, patched so many times it resembled a crazy quilt. Institutional was the kindest adjective he could summon for the waiting room. Not warm, reassuring, or even comfortable. Just
institutional
. Considering the private, nonprofit hospital’s shoestring budget, the room was never likely to become anything more.

Right now his problem wasn’t the waiting room, but the two paramedics huddled in front of the old television set. They jostled one another for position and obscured the screen from Nick’s view as he approached. Bobby, tall and thin, swore softly at the screen. John, who looked more like a surfer than a paramedic, intoned reverently, “Have
mercy
on my soul.”

“Hold that thought,” Nick advised drily. “You gonna need it by the time I’m through with you.”

Both the men whirled, but John spoke first. “Hey, Doc! How’s the little girl?”

Nick held on to his temper, deliberately making himself answer calmly. “She’ll make it. But if you’d gone down the road ten more blocks, you could have admitted that girl to a hospital better equipped for pediatric emergencies. Gentlemen, that’s the fourth patient you’ve delivered here who
could
have gone down the road. And I’d like to know why.”

“The girl’s parents asked for Mercy Hospital,” John answered with a shrug. “We gotta go where the patients tell us.”

“You expect me to believe that the parents wanted you to bring their child to this hospital?” Nick raised an eyebrow. “We can barely manage to scrounge up a pediatric blood-pressure cuff.”

“We didn’t bring her
here
,” Bobby clarified with a grin. “What John’s trying to say is that the parents are from the neighborhood. The word’s out on the new doctor who likes working Friday-night shifts. The girl’s parents figured she had a better chance with
you
. Ten blocks up the road don’t have Nick Devereaux.” A tone from Bobby’s beeper put an end to the conversation, but as the young man backed to the door he added, “Face it, Doc, you’re beginning to get a reputation around here—a reputation for getting the job done.”

About to sprint away, John called over his shoulder, “You look like hell, Doc. If you won’t go home, why don’t you take a load off, and let Midnight Mercy do the rest?”

Nick waited until they’d gone before he dropped into the chair. He didn’t need to watch television. He needed eight solid hours of sleep. Closing his eyes, Nick leaned his head back against the seat. A low sigh escaped him as he finally admitted that moving away from New Orleans hadn’t changed a damn thing. He still never slept for more than four hours at a time, and he was no closer to finding a place to call home than he had been before.

Life hadn’t felt right in a long time. Not since
his world fell apart years ago. Not since a voice on a telephone informed him that his parents and his little sister hadn’t survived the accident.

Slowly, seductively, a woman’s husky voice penetrated his thoughts of the past. It was the kind of voice that grabbed a man’s soul and turned him inside out. “I’ll do anything once, but even I won’t invite a vampire to dinner unless he promises not to bite the neck that feeds him.”

Nick’s eyes flew open, and he stared at the water-stained tiles in the ceiling. Some masculine spark of self-preservation warned him to turn away from the siren’s voice while he still could. Laughing at the absurdity of the thought, Nick pushed himself to a sitting position and got his first look at Mercy Malone, Louisville’s hip horror queen, hostess of the Friday-night-movie showcase,
The Midnight Hour
.

“Be still my heart,” Nick said aloud, and then Louisiana heat warmed his voice as he added, “
Bon Dieu, chère
, you could definitely raise the dead.”

Spike heels supported legs that were probably outlawed in less progressive countries. Besides black fishnet hose, the woman wore only a tuxedo jacket, strategically buttoned somewhere in the vicinity of her waist and falling just past the sweet curve of her rump. No bra or at least not one that showed at the deep vee of the jacket.

Nick wasn’t satisfied with guessing. It seemed suddenly important to know if she wore a scrap of sexy lace that pushed up the creamy flesh. Her hands slowly rubbed their way down her body, hinting at curves beneath the jacket before she tucked her red-tipped
fingers into the pockets of the tux. Lost in the illusion she created, Nick leaned forward, resting his forearms on his wide-spread knees.

Russet, he decided. Her hair was russet, a deep reddish brown shot with bits of gold. Definitely long russet hair, tumbled and mussed in an incredibly sexy way. Just the way he’d muss it when he made love to her. Mercy’s head was slightly tilted. One strand of hair fell artfully against her forehead and across one eye, as if begging him to reach out and push it away as he kissed her.

When the camera zoomed in for a close-up of her face, she peered up from a tangle of eyelashes and sexuality as she said, “Don’t touch that … dial.”

Nick let out a long slow breath. Mercy Malone was raising something, and he was fairly certain it wasn’t the dead. No wonder the male population glued itself to the television set every Friday night. He’d heard that half the female population did too.

After seeing her, Nick understood why. Mercy might be a living, breathing male fantasy, but she didn’t buy into the fantasy. The half smile and the twinkle in her eyes appealed to anyone with a sense of humor. Unfortunately, Nick was both male and possessed of a sense of humor. He didn’t know whether to chuckle or take a cold shower.

During the commercial, he hauled himself out of the chair, wanting to walk off some of the energy Mercy had managed to spark within him. Calculatingly, Nick scanned the waiting room as he paced, noting again the dilapidated condition of the place. To no one in particular, he announced, “If that blue-eyed angel can raise the dead, she can probably raise a few
bucks for a worthy cause.” He stopped pacing. “And causes don’t get more worthy than this place.”

Nick nodded, satisfied with the neat solution of his two newest problems—fund-raising and Mercy Malone. Engineering a meeting might take a couple of weeks, but he never doubted for a moment that he would pull it off. As he paced he began to plan his attack. First, he needed to talk with Sister Agatha, the nun who ran Mercy Hospital. If the gossip was true, that woman had incredible connections around town. She knew virtually everybody.

Then with her approval, he’d talk to the hospital’s board members. How could they say no to any scheme that would raise money for the emergency room? Rubbing his hands together, Nick realized he was finally looking forward to the future instead of getting bogged down in the past. He had places to go and people to see, all because Mercy Malone had given him an idea and jump-started his emotional battery.

Mercy stared at the disaster and thanked every one of her lucky stars that a new kitchen floor hadn’t made it to the top of her remodeling list. A half hour earlier she’d climbed out of a cool shower, completely relaxed. And then disaster had struck. Or more accurately, the plumbing from hell struck and flooded her kitchen floor. Her
old
kitchen floor, she thought with some satisfaction, and reminded herself that this sort of thing was to be expected when you lived in a hundred-year-old house. In for a penny, in for a pound.