Midnight Hour (24 page)

“Why are you so afraid to believe in us?”

“I’m afraid because we jumped into this relationship without looking where we were going. We’re standing in a swamp and up to our ass in alligators! And I don’t have to be bitten before I know it’s time to move on!”

“No gain, no pain,” he murmured as he walked toward her. “Is that it? Are we back to that?”

“No, that’s not it! This isn’t just about me. It’s about you.”

“Then help me understand why you walked out!” He grabbed her arms and pulled her to his chest. “You owe me that. Say it, Mercy. Tell me why you’re afraid of loving me.”

“Because someday you’re going to flip the switch on your personal emotions exactly like you do in the emergency room,” she yelled at him, hurt, angry, and scared. All of those feelings made her cry, and in combination they were deadly. She gave up and let the tears flow as she whispered, “Someday you’re going to stop caring, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.”

“Yes. There is.” Gently, he reached out and curved
his palm along her jaw and rubbed a tear away with his thumb. The hard part was over. For her anyway. She’d said the words. She’d gotten her fear out. Now it was up to him to make her believe. The only way to do that was to tell her the truth.

“What you can do is give me a chance to prove that who I am and what I do aren’t the same thing. More than anyone else, you ought to understand. Who are you really? Midnight Mercy or Mercy May? What you do isn’t who you are.”

She closed her eyes and fought for control again. His touch was so seductive. He was always so good with words, twisting everything until it made sense. Pulling away from him, she brushed a hand across her wet eyes and paced. “Nick, what I do is make-believe. What you do is real. It’s not the same.”

“Sure it is,
chère.
Almost everything about my life until I met you was make-believe. After my parents and Catherine were killed, I didn’t have the guts to practice real medicine, so I chose emergency medicine. I didn’t have to give away a piece of my soul to every patient.” His voice hardened. “God forbid that I should let myself feel something real, that I should let myself care for someone beyond the generic caring of one unknown human being to another.”

Abruptly, Mercy stopped her pacing. The self-damnation in Nick’s voice captured her complete attention, and he didn’t even know it. He was sitting on the staircase staring at his clasped hands, forcing himself to continue.

“And then I met you. The pretending got harder after that. And tonight, for the first time, it was impossible. You see,
chère
, in emergency medicine, the injury
is supposed to be the important thing. You do the best you can, and you walk away. Only tonight I couldn’t walk away. I keep thinking about the thirteen-year-old kid I couldn’t save. A kid who was named Tommy, had braces, and played the trombone … that he was proud of his blue ribbon … that he grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go.” Finally he looked up. “And I knew I couldn’t pretend not to care anymore. No matter how much it hurt.”

Nick’s pain was real, so real Mercy could feel it in every pore of her body. His knuckles were white from how tightly he clasped his hands, as if he were forcing himself to tell her everything. When he ran a hand across his face, taking a deep breath, she tensed. Instinctively, she knew the worst was yet to come.

Pulling the gold chain out of his shirt, Nick rubbed the medallion between his thumb and forefinger. “I was fifteen years old when my sister was born. This was Catherine’s, a gift from me the day she started school. She wore it every day for two years.”

“Patron saint of children,” Mercy said, closing her eyes against the wave of uneasiness that flowed over her. When she opened them, she had somehow moved closer to Nick. Close enough to touch his shoulder in support if she wanted. And she wanted to. She wanted to sit down beside him and tell him it didn’t matter anymore. That she didn’t need to hear this. But she didn’t. She let him say what he needed to say.

“Yeah, patron saint of children and the patron saint of travelers. Catherine gave it back to me the day I left for medical school. She thought I needed it more.” Nick shoved himself up from the stairs and walked away from her. “She and my parents were
killed in a boating accident the next day. She was eight years old, and it tore my heart out. A voice on a phone regretted to inform me that my world had just been blown apart.”

“Oh, my God.”

He turned and continued as if Mercy hadn’t said anything. “I raised Catherine just as much as my parents did. I walked the floor when she was sick. I held her hand when she needed a big brother. See,
chère
, before I met you, I knew all about heartbreak. I knew all about caring. The one thing I don’t know was the people who come through my emergency room. If I did, then I’d have cared, and I couldn’t care about them. I couldn’t let them tear my heart out every day.”

Mercy was crying again, this time for Nick’s pain. She took a step closer, but Nick stopped her from reaching out with a shake of his head. He wasn’t finished.

“You were right about me. I tried to turn off my emotions. I didn’t want to know too much. Every time a patient died, I didn’t want to carry them with me. I didn’t want to think of Catherine dying all alone. I didn’t want to think of losing the people I loved. I even managed to pretend for a while. But I can’t anymore. I can’t because I’m in love with you. You brought me back to life somehow.”

Mercy’s heart thumped heavily against her chest and any thought she had of walking away from this man vanished. As Nick extended his hand she let him pull her close.

“I wear this medallion because I can’t let go of the people I love. You’re one of those people,
chère.
I want to marry you. I’m not going anywhere. You should have believed me when I told you I wasn’t near through with you. And never will be. Nothing you can do is going to change the way I feel or make me disappear.”

All of her doubts vanished. Knowing that everything she wanted was hers, Mercy tried not to cry as she said, “How could I make you disappear? I can’t even make you take no for an answer.”

“Then say yes.”

“Yes.”

“Now say I love you.”

Her eyes shining, Mercy repeated, “I love you, Nicholas Octave Devereaux.”

“
Mais yeah, chère.
Let me show you how we seal an engagement on the bayou.”

Mercy laughed as he slung her over his shoulder in a credible caveman imitation and carried her up the stairs. When he deposited her on the bed, Mercy told him, “You know we have to tell Sophie first. She’ll never forgive me if she hears it somewhere else.”

“Darlin’, she knew it before we did. She’s already got her mother-of-the-bride dress all picked out. Now kiss me.”

“With pleasure.”

One

It was his thirty-sixth birthday.

As a waiter cleared away the remains of his birthday dinner, Morgan Abbott absently touched the silvering temples of his chocolate-brown hair and decided that birthdays were overrated, embarrassing, and only fussed about by people whose birthday it wasn’t. After all, he
was
thirty-six. and not a nine-year-old, excited about presents and birthday cake. He didn’t even like desserts anymore.

But George Boswick, his friend and business associate, had insisted on celebrating this milestone by taking him out for drinks and dinner at an elegant North Shore Chicago restaurant, since he, Morgan, had been away from home on a business trip on his birthday. George and his wife had even provided a kind of date for him to make the party a foursome.

Morgan glanced at his date. Lisa, an attractive
blonde, was a junior executive in the accounting department of George’s electronics supply company. She had just the right amount of brains, ambition, and soothing personality to take her far in the corporate world. As chairman and chief executive officer of Abbott Industries Morgan knew that she was exactly the kind of person he wanted working for him. Lisa knew it, too, he thought, as she gave him a polite, yet acknowledging smile that meant she was happy with her job, but was open to another company’s offer of more money and quicker promotions.

Realizing he was vaguely thinking of her only as a prospective employee, Morgan ruefully chuckled under his breath. He was getting too damn old.

He silently conceded that recently there had been very few women in his life. In fact, there had been very few women in his life, period. Running a corporation demanded all his time.

Briefly closing his eyes, he wished he could find
the
woman who would be his first priority in life.

Instantly Morgan gave himself a silent lecture. Making a silly birthday wish at his age! He had never met a woman challenging enough to take the place of Abbott Industries in his life and probably never would. Lisa was certainly someone who could understand his often twenty-hour workdays, but she wasn’t a challenge. Nothing about her was new or different. There were no hidden facets to discover. One quick reading of her résumé, and he could accurately guess the rest. Lisa was the typical, career-oriented, no-nonsense modern woman. He saw too many Lisas striding purposefully along AI’s corridors to be more than mildly interested in her.

A slight grimace crossing his sharply etched features,
Morgan decided why he was still a bachelor at thirty-six. He was damn picky.

Amused by his private thoughts, he absently gazed around the crowded dining room. And instantly froze, when he caught sight of a lone woman standing in the entryway. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and she was looking directly at him.

His gaze roved over her oval face. Delicate reddish-brown brows arched over wide, dark eyes, contrasting alluringly with her milky skin. A hint of a sensual smile played on her full lips. Lips made for a man’s kisses. Her nose was slim, and her chin was raised at an almost haughty angle. Flaming red hair was wrapped in an intricate chignon. It seemed too heavy for her slender neck, yet she held her head proudly.