by Debra Dixon
“Don’t answer it,” Nick told her, working his way down her neck.
“We have to. It might be for you. Might be an emergency.”
“It might be Publishers Clearing House with my million dollars, but I don’t care.”
Ignoring him, Mercy wiggled and stretched until she could reach the phone. “Hello? Just a minute.” She covered the receiver. “Would you stop that. It’s for you.”
Annoyed, he lifted his mouth from paying homage to one rosy nipple and grabbed the telephone. “Devereaux. And this better be good.”
While he listened to the voice on the phone, Mercy slipped on a robe and hugged the knowledge of his love close. Something she’d never dreamed possible had finally happened. She’d found someone she could trust with her heart. Wonders never ceased, because he was a doctor to boot.
Suddenly very still, Nick said, “I’ll be right there. Give me about fifteen minutes.” He let the receiver slide down his chest and then hung it up.
Children and teenagers were always the toughest for him, because he wanted to care more than he should. Lately, pushing back thoughts of Catherine lying helpless in an emergency room took every ounce of willpower he had. With an effort, he locked away his feelings and prepared himself to face what lay ahead. “I’ve got to go to the hospital.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, aware of the controlled quality of his voice and the emotional distance created by Nick’s sudden aloofness.
“An eighteen-wheeler plowed through the railing of an expressway overpass and crushed a busload of teenagers coming back from band camp. They’re kids from the hospital neighborhood.” He paused long enough to reach for his clothes lying at the foot of the bed. As he pulled on his pants he told her, “The regional trauma center’s going to have more than it can handle once they start pulling bodies out of the wreckage. We’re the closest hospital, so we’ll be getting the overflow.”
“How many? Did they say?”
Without so much as a look in her direction, Nick gave his tux shirt a good shake and slid into it. “Paramedics told the hospital to figure that as many as ten were coming our way. Some with serious injuries.”
“But you’re not equipped or staffed for something like this! You said so yourself. How are you going to handle so many cases?”
“Triage,” he told her absently, his mind already going over details he’d have to handle once he got to the hospital.
“Triage?”
“It’s a protocol for treating the most seriously injured first.” Nick finished buttoning his shirt, the adrenaline beginning to flow as he focused on the task ahead. “Even then, we may have to make hard choices. If I can save three lives, with the same resources it would take to save one, I’ve got to save three. Or risk losing all four.” He scanned the floor. “Have you seen my shoes?”
Mercy didn’t answer. She was remembering her first tour of the emergency room, how he’d disconnected his emotions and become all doctor, all business, just like her parents. “You really are prepared to make choices like that,” Mercy whispered, cold fingers closing around her heart. “You can decide who to help.”
“It’s a matter of priorities. You gotta make a decision and move on.”
Priorities? Move on?
How could the warm, caring man who shared her bed moments before turn off his emotions like that? She didn’t know the dispassionate and detached man standing in front of her. How could Nick talk about protocols and priorities instead of worrying about people and pain? How could he divorce himself so totally from his emotions that he could accept the loss of one patient and walk calmly to the next based on priorities?
Until this moment she hadn’t wanted to believe he could be cold and unfeeling like her parents. She’d fooled herself into believing that he was different. But he wasn’t different; he didn’t care about people. He cared about the high he got from playing God. She wasn’t any better at choosing men than her mother.
“I gotta go, chère. I’ll call you when I’m done.” His brief kiss good-bye felt mechanical, almost like an afterthought.
When the door shut behind him, Mercy let the tears roll down her cheeks. She’d been a fool for ignoring the other side of Nick, the side she’d seen during the hospital tour. She’d been an even bigger fool for believing she could spend so much time with him and not fall in love.
“Dear God in heaven,” Mercy whispered as she rocked, hugging a pillow to her midriff. “If he can decide when to care, if he can turn it on and off, what’s to say he won’t stop loving me when it’s no longer convenient?”
How can you love a man you can never be sure of?
“How do I stop loving him?” She threw the pillow across the bed.
She’d ignored all her rules, and now she had to pay the price. Nick might be able to flip his emotions on and off like a switch, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t stop loving him, but neither would she spend every day waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for him to flip a switch and forget why he loved her. The longer she waited, the more it was going to hurt. She had to cut it off now, before it got any worse. Before she gave him an even bigger piece of her heart to break.
Making up her mind, Mercy knew she’d have to tell Nick she’d mistaken her feelings. Now that the benefit was over, everything could go back to the way it was before he showed up on her porch. She didn’t need Nick; she never had to see him again after she said good-bye. All she needed was her life back and the hurt to go away.
All she needed was to get somewhere safe, like home.
Suddenly she realized that even going home would hurt. Reminders of Nick were everywhere—the shiny red toolbox in the front closet; chicory coffee in the pantry; cloves of garlic in a hanging basket in the kitchen window; a soft, well-worn jersey that smelled like him; a spare toothbrush in the bathroom. Even the sound of the rain against the windows would remind her of him.
Little by little Nick had crept into her life and into her soul. She couldn’t say he hadn’t warned her about broken hearts. He had. He’d said when a woman got her heart broken, she knew who and where and when. He was right.
For the first time in a long time, tears pricked Nick’s eyes, and he needed a minute to compose himself before he walked into the waiting room. Nine patients had come through the hospital doors. Only eight of them were still alive. The last kid—Tommy—had fought every inch of the way, and so had Nick. But now all that was left of Tommy was memories.
Because of Catherine, he had insulated himself from becoming too attached to the people he treated. He hadn’t allowed himself to hurt this much in a long time. Now all he wanted to do was curl up beside the woman he loved and forget that his best hadn’t been good enough to save a thirteen-year-old kid—a kid whose only request had been that they not lose his first-place band-camp ribbon as they cut off his shirt.
How did he tell two loving parents that his best hadn’t been good enough to save their child? How could he possibly hope to make this easier on them? By pretending to be steady and calm? By throwing technical jargon at them to discourage them from asking questions about how their son faced death?
Non. Not anymore.
Swinging around, Nick made a decision and retrieved the ribbon from the treatment room. He was through pretending he didn’t care. It didn’t make him hurt any less. It didn’t take away the fear that Catherine had died alone in a cold room surrounded by strangers. He would have given the world to know that someone held Catherine’s hand at the end. That someone had cared enough to fight like hell for her.
Tommy’s parents were going to know that. They were going to know the courage their son had possessed, how he had hung on to life. They were going to know that he hadn’t died among strangers—even if telling them opened up his old wounds. It was time to let go of the past.
Nick inserted the card-style key and opened the hotel-suite door. As soon as he tiptoed into the bedroom, he realized his efforts to be considerate were wasted. The bed was empty. Tapping on t
he closed bathroom door, he said, “I’m back.”
When she didn’t answer, Nick tapped louder. “You in there, chère?” Frowning, he called, “Mercy? I’m comin’ in.”
The cavernous lavatory was not only empty, it was also spick-and-span. Not so much as a washcloth had been used. Nick’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. Mercy had made her feelings about crawling out of bed at the crack of dawn very clear. She didn’t get up before seven, and yet she was already up and gone.
Walking back to the bed, Nick picked up the phone and rang the front desk. “This is Nick Devereaux in Room 910. Did someone leave a message for me? No? Thanks.”
Without waiting, Nick depressed the hook, then dialed again. This time he keyed in Mercy’s home number. He let it ring fifteen times before he hung up. Then he dialed Sophie, who told him that yes, Mercy had made it home safely about five o’clock in the morning; no, she didn’t think anything was wrong with the phone; and yes, she’d keep an eye on Mercy.
Thoughtful, Nick thanked her and returned the receiver to the cradle. Mercy hadn’t left a message and wasn’t answering the phone. Surely she wasn’t upset about his going to the hospital in an emergency. After all, she was the one who’d answered the phone. What in hell bothered her so much that she felt she had to go home without saying a word? He swore softly and tried to remember everything that happened from the moment the hospital called.
Bon Dieu! He’d just gotten through telling her how much he loved her! And she loved him! Not that she’d actually said the words, but the sentiment was implicit in how she responded to him. How could one phone call change all that?
Concentrating, he put his head in his hands and went back over their conversation. He told her about the accident. They talked about how many cases the hospital was expecting. She worried about how they could handle that many. He told her about triage, and—Nick’s head snapped up as he remembered a quiet comment.
You really are prepared to make choices like that.
He hadn’t explained how difficult the choices sometimes were, or how little time the staff had to evaluate patients when lives hung in the balance. He hadn’t told her that having to live with the decisions was his own personal nightmare. He hadn’t told her that he pretended not to care so he didn’t think about Catherine being alone and dying.
Non. He hadn’t told her any of that. What had he done instead?
The memory of his answer tasted bitter in his mouth. He’d assured her he could make that choice. He’d told her it was a matter of priorities, of making a medical decision and getting on with it. In short, he’d told her he was a cold-blooded, emotionless machine. Everything she was afraid of.
“Ah, chère, how we gonna get anywhere if you keep running away?”
Maybe it was time he told her about Catherine. Starting out for Haunt, Kentucky, Nick only stopped long enough to toss his key to a clerk at the front desk.
The rumble of Nick’s car engine sounded angry to Mercy as she sat on the sofa by the whelping box. Apprehensive, she got up and went to unlock the door, knowing that there would never be a “good” time for her to face Nick. She didn’t imagine that coming back to an empty hotel room put him in a terrific frame of mind—not to mention that he hadn’t been to sleep in more than twenty-four hours. Until this moment she hadn’t realized how much she’d been counting on his exhaustion to buy her some time, but it seemed her time had just run out.
As she reached for the lock a subtle irony occurred to her. In the last few weeks she’d given him the key to her heart, but never got around to giving him a key to the door. If she’d been smart, she would have done it the other way around. A lock was a lot easier to change than her heart. Bracing herself, she pulled open the door and was struck by a feeling of déjà vu.
A gorgeous man stood on her porch, pulled off his sunglasses, and their eyes met. His were shadowed and tired, just like they had been before. Only this time she knew why he hadn’t gotten much sleep.
Unable to stop the knee-jerk reaction of concern, she told him, “You’re dead on your feet. You shouldn’t have driven all the way out here.”
“I wouldn’t have had to if you’d picked up the phone.” When she didn’t say anything or open the screen door, Nick swore in French and said softly, “Ah, chère, we gonna do this the hard way, or you gonna tell me straight up what’sa matter?”
Mercy didn’t give up her position in the doorway, blocking his passage.
“Non? You gonna make me stand out here on the porch and guess?”
Before she answered, she warned herself that appearances were deceiving. Nick might look concerned; he might say all the right words, but she knew better than to trust him. He’d given her a perfect demonstration of his ability to make a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn in the emotion department. “I was going to call you.”
“When? Tomorrow? Next week? Not good enough!” Nick had to remind himself that Mercy didn’t know how to fight for a relationship. She’d never had any practice, and her parents sure as hell hadn’t taught her. Calmly, he put his sunglasses in his pocket and got a grip on his temper.
“Why’d you leave the hotel, Mercy? Is this some sort of test to see if I would even notice? To see if I’d come after you? Are you such a coward that you’re gonna waste all your time measuring my commitment instead of enjoying what we have?”
Mercy stiffened. He was back to calling her a coward again, but this time she didn’t take the bait. This wasn’t about losing her nerve. This was about trusting Nick, and she couldn’t do that anymore. “What do we have? Really? We have some good nights and a few laughs. That’s all. What did you think we had?”
Nick was stunned. He rested his hands on his hips and said, “Some good nights and a few laughs were obviously a helluva lot more precious to me than you. I thought we were on the way to making a life together.”
Looking away for a moment, Mercy had to steel herself against the passion and conviction she heard in his voice as he talked about a life together. He made it sound so real. Her heart wanted to believe him, but she knew better. She’d seen him go cold. “You thought wrong. We never made each other any promises.”
The expression on Nick’s face called her a liar. “If we weren’t making a life, then what we had, chère, was an emotional chicken game. And darlin’, you drove off the road first. I didn’t. I’m still here.”
“But for how long?” she whispered before she could stop herself.
Nick wondered if she realized what she’d said, how much she’d exposed to him about her fears. He wondered if she truly knew how much he needed her, or even how much he loved her. Softly, he said, “I’m not going anywhere, chère.”
She almost believed him, and then she remembered how easy it was to believe what you wanted to believe. Her mother always did. That’s why she made such bad choices. She always saw what she wanted to see. Shaking her head, she said, “Whether or not you’re going anywhere doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t,” Nick told her hotly. He wasn’t about to let her pretend not to care. He knew all about pretending. It didn’t help. It didn’t make the hurt go away. It didn’t make everything all right.
Mercy forced herself to meet his gaze, which scorched her despite the wire screen between them. “Don’t make this difficult, Nick. Last night was my wake-up call. I realized that I let this relationship get out of hand. I made a mistake.”
“Mais yeah! You made a mistake all right. You fell in love with a man who loves you back.” The intensity in his eyes underscored the passion in his declaration.
Her bottom lip quivered for a minute and her resolve wavered, but she pulled it together before a single tear escaped. She couldn’t trust him, not for always. She couldn’t forget that. “I didn’t fall in love. I fell in lust. Call it temporary insanity. I got real life confused with Midnight Mercy. It’s the only possible explanation for why an intelligent woman managed to forget every principle of her existence. I didn’t mean to fall into a relations
hip with you.”
“You didn’t mean to? You didn’t mean to?”
Nick was through waiting for an invitation. He flung open the screen door so hard that it hit the house and the old spring snapped. After a bounce, the door stayed wide open, and Nick tried to get a handle on his temper. Mercy was right in front of him, and he so badly wanted to make her tell him the truth so they could deal with it out in the open.
“If I walk away right now, what are you gonna do, Mercy? Go back to the way you were—adopting furniture instead of having a family of your own? Picking up the pieces of your parents’ lives when they remember you’re alive?”
“It’s better than picking up the pieces of my life.” She stood her ground and held his gaze, daring him to argue and hoping to God he would, telling herself that he couldn’t be that angry if he didn’t really care.
“Dieu, Mercy! You don’t throw away something precious because you think it’s broken or might break. You fix it and make it stronger. Don’t you get it? A relationship is just like this house. You don’t go out and buy everything new when something goes wrong. You fix it. We can fix it.” He walked into the entrance hall and kicked the door shut behind him. “Whatever’s wrong, we can fix it. Together, Mercy. Together.”
A tear threatened until she tilted her head back and took a deep breath. She backed away from him. It was either that or risk melting into his arms and ruining her chance to make a clean break of it. “The difference between what we have and this house is that this house is at least standing on a solid foundation.”
“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?”