Dead Calm
Dead Calm
Lindsay Longford
Detective Judah Finnegan didn't believe in happy endings - too many years fighting crime had left him cynical. But when the discovery of an abandoned baby brought him back into the arms of his lost love, he realized he would have to find a new way of looking at the world or risk losing the woman of his dreams. Dr. Sophie Brennan had always been able to see through Judah's bitterness into the loner's heart, but she could never convince him that he was worthy of love.As they worked to save the baby, they tried to stay out of each other's arms, but their old passion was too powerful to resist. Could their love survive a second chance?
Judah could short out all her circuits. Turn her into a gibbering mass of wanting.
Sophie had learned that. And she loved every minute of scorching to a crisp.
But not now.
The tip of his finger brushed the edge of her shirt.
“Why are you always touching me, Judah?”
He smiled. “I like touching you, Sophie. That’s why. Just…because.” His gaze held hers.
She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t, not faced with the sadness in his eyes. She didn’t have it in her to move away at the moment from the lost, damned look in Judah Finnegan’s eyes. It was that glimpse into the dark corners of his soul that got her. Every blasted time.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to another fabulous month of the most exciting romance reading around. And what better way to begin than with a new TALL, DARK & DANGEROUS novel from New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann? Night Watch has it all: an irresistible U.S. Navy SEAL hero, intrigue and danger, and—of course—passionate romance. Grab this one fast, because it’s going to fly off the shelves.
Don’t stop at just one, however. Not when you’ve got choices like Fathers and Other Strangers, reader favorite Karen Templeton’s newest of THE MEN OF MAYES COUNTY. Or how about Dead Calm, the long-awaited new novel from multiple-award-winner Lindsay Longford? Not enough good news for you? Then check out new star Brenda Harlen’s Some Kind of Hero, or Night Talk, from the always-popular Rebecca Daniels. Finally, try Trust No One, the debut novel from our newest find, Barbara Phinney.
And, of course, we’ll be back next month with more pulse-pounding romances, so be sure to join us then. Meanwhile…enjoy!
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Editor
Dead Calm
Lindsay Longford
LINDSAY LONGFORD,
like most writers, is a reader. She even reads toothpaste labels in desperation! A former high school English teacher with an M.A. in literature, she began writing romances because she wanted to create stories that touched readers’ emotions by transporting them to a world where good things happen to good people and happily-ever-after is possible with a little work.
Her first book, Jake’s Child, was nominated for Best New Series Author, Best Silhouette Romance and received a Special Achievement Award for Best First Series Book from Romantic Times magazine. It was also a finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA
Award for Best First Book. Her Silhouette Romance Annie and the Wise Men won the RITA
for best Traditional Romance of 1993.
Sometimes life throws you totally off balance. If you’re lucky, you find angels along the way. I did. My very own funky, funny, fantastic angels, Cathie Linz, Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Suzette Vandewiele, kept me flying through the storms. They saved me with their laughter, their support and their concern. How did I ever get so lucky?
I want to thank some special people at Silhouette, too: Karen Taylor Richman, Leslie Wainger and Tara Gavin. I don’t know why you didn’t throw me overboard. But I am blessed by knowing you.
Without all of you, the baby would have remained abandoned in the manger.
To My Readers
This is a book about hate, love and redemption. We live in a world that has too much of the first and too little of the second. But I still believe in the possibility of redemption, and so, with hope and faith, I write of love triumphing over hate. It’s my small attempt to shine a light into the darkness of fear.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
So many people were generous with their time and their knowledge on this book. As usual, I dived headfirst into subjects of which I was ignorant. These generous people helped me along the way. I am indebted to them. From the Greatest Class Ever of Manatee High School, Bradenton, Florida: Bruce Malcolm, CEO, Trilithic; Jeannette Floyd, funny lady extraordinaire, and Kerstin Knos, for help on Florida adoptions; Kaye Sneary Wood, for her research on Vietnamese customs; and Jim Vandelly, whom I will always remember for his performance in You Can’t Take It with You. Others who gave incredible help were Xuyen Ich Hinh, for his extensive help with Vietnam questions and language; Beth Schemenauer, aka Big Beth, the surfing queen; Bill Ritis, ever ready with anecdotes of a Russian childhood; Jacalyn Schauer, for her constant attempts to keep me supplied with pens and make sure I wasn’t by myself on holidays; and her cousin, Dr. William Gossman, Asst. Professor of Emergency Medicine at Chicago Medical School; Margaret Watson for the “felony flirting” line; and Josh Polak. The helped me take an idea and give it reality. All errors are, alas, mine.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 1
The biggest shopping day of the year was a killer, all right.
Sophie sidestepped a trail of plastic syringe tips.
Torn plastic wraps from hastily opened four-by-four gauze pads drifted in her wake. One step away from a full trot, she jammed her hands into the pockets of her medical jacket and grimaced at a blood trail dotting the black-and-white tiled floor. Third time that night.
Overstuffed with turkey both fowl and Wild, two good ol’ boys had duked it out in the Emergency Room hall earlier. Then they’d thrown up on her socks. “Damned shame waste of good likker,” one had said morosely. Boozily consoling each other, they’d left in the firm grip of one of Poinciana, Florida’s knights in blue.
Following the blood trail, Sophie automatically checked out the ER. All five treatment rooms were filled, the waiting room out front was packed to the corners with sniffling, bleeding people, and they all wanted her attention.
Now.
Five minutes ago.
Behind her, a bucket clanked against the floor and water slopped against her, trickled inside her lace-trimmed green socks. She swore under her breath and stopped, the bells on her shoelaces jingling.
“Sorry, Doc. Damned thing slipped.” Billy Ray Watley’s stringy ponytail swung with his quick grab for the cart. A yellow Caution—Wet Floor sign smacked against the wall. On the other side, the sign warned, Cuidado—Piso Mijado. He shot her a worried grin.
“No problem, Billy Ray. Don’t sweat it.”
“Your Christmas socks are ruined.” He jiggled the cart, his ponytail a pendulum to his jitters.
“Not really.” Even with soapy water squishing between her toes, she smiled. An effort after fourteen hours on duty, but Billy Ray was one of their own.
She reached down and plucked at one soggy sock. The bells clinked flatly. At six this morning, filled with energy and cold pumpkin pie, she’d pulled on orange socks. With turkeys prancing around the cuffs.
By four in the afternoon, the turkeys had yielded to plain white. She’d meant to save the jingles until midnight. No sense rushing the season, but she’d run out of her white socks. It was going to be a five-sock-change day before she could get out of here, thanks to Billy Ray, the barfing good ol’ boys and the teenager from the motorcycle accident.
Dumb kid. No helmet. No sense. She straightened and felt the pop and crackle of every vertebra in her back.
Billy Ray dunked his mop into the cleaning solution, wrung it dry. “I’m cleaning this mess up, Doc, I am. Don’t worry.”
She gentled her voice and tapped his arm. “You’ll handle it.”
“Yep. Getting it done. Billy Ray’ll stay on top of it.” The slap-slap of his mop erased the spill of water, the spots of blood. “Busy night.” He nodded toward the examining rooms, scratched his nose. “Busier than last night. I like busy nights.”
“It’ll get busier before morning.”
“I liked that pumpkin pie you brung us, too. Real good pie. Whole lot better than cafeteria pie.” He dipped his head, peering at her from beneath his hair.
“Glad you enjoyed it.” She shook her head and, bells jingling, headed toward the last examining area of the observation room.
Like the scrape of fingernails across a chalkboard, a shriek ripped from one of the treatment rooms down the hall and halted her in her tracks. The eerie keening lifted the hairs on the back of her neck. She grimaced. “That the gunshot?”
“Nah.” Billy Ray shifted uneasily, lanky arms and legs in constant motion. “The woman. You know.”
“Right.”
Shattered and broken beyond recognition, the woman had been found earlier in the evening by the Poinciana cops.
Sophie had stitched and bandaged. She’d listened to whimpers in a language she didn’t understand.
She understood pain, though. No translator was needed for that language.
Billy Ray sent her a quick glance, then concentrated on his mop. “Real bad, huh?”
“It is.” Sophie heard the melancholy jangle of her bells as she shifted, half turning away from Billy Ray to check out the treatment room.
She’d put casts on the woman’s frail, small arms. Taped ribs. Sutured the long gash that cut whitely through hair matted with blood and sweat. Under different circumstances, Sophie imagined that the woman’s hair would have been a swath of glossy black, a source of pride. Maybe she’d been pretty, this small Asian woman who kept calling for something that Sophie couldn’t provide.
The woman sure as hell hadn’t deserved this.
Nobody did.
Now, still unconscious but moaning and calling out, the woman waited for an empty hospital bed upstairs. Sophie had done what she could. Nothing more she could do now.
From the first, the plaintive wails in an unknown language had pierced Sophie. Horrible to be unable to ease the pain. Worse to be powerless to answer the woman’s anguished cries.
Sophie balled her hands into fists inside her pockets. Not in her hands any more. In someone else’s.
Maybe the start of the holiday season would be a good omen for the woman. Maybe she’d get a miracle.
Probably not.
Over the doors to the waiting room behind Billy Ray, Christmas lights mingled with leftover paper pumpkins.
Peace on earth, goodwill toward men? Right. Well, she could damned sure use a little goodwill toward women.
“I hope she’s gonna be okay. She gonna be okay?” Not meeting Sophie’s eyes, Billy Ray continued to work the strings of his two-foot-wide mop back and forth.
“It’s anybody’s guess, Billy Ray. We’ll find out. Who’s checking on her?”
“Ms. Cammie.”
“That’s good.” Sophie sighed and risked a glance back at the entrance to the emergency room, to the doors that led away from here, away from this mingled tragedy and comedy.
Outside the glass panels, red and green bulbs glittered along the swaying fronds of palm trees, reflected in the dark puddles underneath. Then the doors slid open and sweet-scented night air floated to her with a promise of escape, of air free of disinfectant and alcohol and despair.
That air teased her with the hope of fleeing this place where laughter was coming harder and harder these days, and when it did, it had an edge of desperation that crept insidiously into her spirit, stealing energy and joy with it. Silly socks weren’t much of a Band-Aid.
The curtain at the far end of the hall billowed, flattened.
Jerked back into the moment, Sophie shrugged and strode off, her muscles tight across her shoulders, the cuffs of her wet socks clammy against her ankles. “Gotta go.”
Another wail shivered through the hall.
Billy Ray plopped his mop on the cart and scurried down the hall. His raspy voice trailed behind him. “I’m keeping an eye on things.”
The desperate keening of the beating victim still ringing in her ears, Sophie shoved open the far curtain and glared at the newest patient.
In front of her, Santa sagged on the examining-room table. Blood dripped from his shoulder onto his seen-better-days polyester fur trim. His belly drooped over a cracked plastic black belt, and he clutched his fine acrylic beard with a lean, callused hand. A nurse had already cut him out of part of his suit, and a saline drip snaked down over his smooth tanned shoulder.
For a second Sophie paused, puzzled by a faint sense of familiarity. Something about the tilt of Santa’s head.
The reek of liquor filled the room.
He snugged the beard closer to his face, his long fingers disappearing into the crisp curls. Chilly blue eyes met hers impatiently. Warily.
Santa with an edge.
Not dying.
Just drunk and damaged.
Sophie shook her head and picked up the chart. Three wise men with frankincense, gold and myrrh would come waltzing through the door next. And they’d probably be two-stepping with the Easter bunny.
“Hey there, Mr. C. Rushing the season a little, aren’t you?” She flipped open Santa’s chart and scanned the nurse’s notes.
“Look, sugar, I don’t have all night.”
Sophie snapped the examining-room curtain shut. The rings rattled and skittered along the dividing rod. “Incidentally, that’s Dr. Sugar to you, Claus.”
Santa tugged at his beard, adjusting it around his face. Shifted one black-booted foot irritably. “I’ve got things to do, places to be.”
“Of course you do. And all before midnight, I’ll bet.” She smiled sweetly, acid etching her words. No sidewalk Santa reeking of gin was going to give her grief. Not tonight.
“Nah,” he grunted as she brushed by him and reached for the blood-pressure cuff. “No midnight curfew until the end of the month. Just working the elves overtime tonight.”
“Working’s what they call it these days, huh?” She pumped up the blood-pressure cuff and watched the numbers. One-thirty over eighty. He was in better shape than he looked.
From behind the beard and the cloud of white hair, his unfriendly eyes met hers.
Eyes that were almost sober. Their hostility caught her off guard.
Once more that sense of the familiar teased her brain.
Snapping on gloves, she inspected the jagged red line that began at the edge of his neck and disappeared under the ratty faux velvet of his suit. “Knife?”
Santa nodded, grunted a second time as he shifted uncomfortably on the table.
She touched the wound. A long, shallow cut. “Nasty bunch of elves you hang with, Claus.”
“Yeah, they can get testy. Like a lot of people.” His gaze held hers, and some emotion she couldn’t name stirred in the pissed-off blue depths.
With a flick of her hand, she stuck a digital thermometer in his mouth.
As her hand fell away, his gaze still held hers, and he tightened his mouth around the thermometer. It rose slowly, toward the ceiling.
A snotty challenge in the tilt of that whisker-hidden chin.
And that fast, triggered by his take-no-prisoners arrogance, by the heavy smell of alcohol on him, by too many cases gone wrong today, her exhaustion slid over into irritation.
She wanted to smack him.
Zipping down her veins like a skater on speed, her pulse skittered and jumped. This two-bit Santa with an attitude was getting under her skin, pushing buttons, making her jumpy. Damn him. This was her turf.
“Okay, Claus, let’s get the rest of your vitals.” Sophie picked up his wrist, counted his wrist and peripheral pulses, did her ABCs. Airway, breathing, circulation. Looking him over, assessing him, she focused on her job instead of the lick of anger that crisped along her skin whenever his eyes caught hers.
His heart beat steadily under her fingers, his skin hot to her touch even through her gloves. On his index finger the oximeter glowed cheerily. His fingernails were pinked up, not cyanotic blue.
An image of the Asian woman’s bruised face flashed through her mind, and she wanted to tell this Santa off the street that he was wasting her time, that she had really sick people needing her out there in the waiting room. She wanted to tell him to go home, stick a bandage on his wound, and sleep it off.
The strength of her reaction startled her.
She inhaled deeply and moved to his back, lifted his jacket. “Easy, will you? I’d like to salvage this damned outfit, if you don’t have any objections?” he snarled around the thermometer.
She managed not to grind her teeth. “Certainly. Whatever you say. I’ll give it my best shot.”
Slotting the thermometer to the side of his mouth, he sent her a quick look. “Best shot? You working the comedy clubs in between stitch jobs?”
“Be still. Please.” She eased the jacket away from his ribs where blood had caked it to his skin. This rag-tag Santa shouldn’t have been allowed away from whatever place passed for his North Pole. The tatty fabric brushed against her arm, and once again the smell of liquor rose pungently, gagging her.
Eau d’ER, they called it. Poinciana County Hospital’s Friday-night, any-night cologne.
“Don’t want to lecture you—” she began.
“But you’re going to anyway, aren’t you?”
Her teeth clicked audibly as she shut her mouth.
She was seriously tempted to slap the cold stethoscope up against his broad back. But, earning her pay, she warmed the disk and ordered, “Breathe in, Claus. Hold it.” Checking for temperature and dehydration, she pressed her finger to his skin. Oddly, the sleek skin and ridged muscles of his back didn’t fit his air of dissipation. Her eyes narrowing, she tapped his back with her hand, checking his lungs, moving around him to check the bronchial breath sounds under his armpits, around to his chest. “Exhale.”
And her busy brain went on autopilot, thinking, observing.
His chest moved easily with his long sigh. With the thermometer still in his mouth, he was finally, blessedly, silent as she quickly finished the basics.
Tapping his belly, she listened for fluid accumulation, not expecting to find any, but still checking. His stomach was flat, the muscles taut and elegantly shaped. The trace of a scar curled around one rib.
Caught by surprise, she hesitated as she stared at his lean, sharply defined abs. Santa’s smooth, hard belly was a six-pack, a world away from what he’d been drinking. The tiny hip-hop of her pulse embarrassed her. A sudden flush of heat in her face kept her silent, her face turned away from him.
Damn. She was a well-trained, thirty-four-year-old physician, not some fifteen-year-old star-struck by the school jock. All speechless and hormonal.
Swallowing, she cleared her throat. “Looks like you’ll live. Pulse rate’s good. Blood pressure’s terrific. The stitches will leave a scar, but not too bad. However,” she paused and jotted a note on his chart before continuing, “you might want to find a better way of spending your evenings, Claus.”
One fuzzy white eyebrow winged upward. “Figured you couldn’t resist the lecture.” The thermometer wobbled with his mumbled words.
She tapped her pen on the chart. “I have to call in a police report. But I’m sure you know that.”
Annoyance steamed off him.
“Too bad, Claus, but them’s the rules. You pays your money and you takes your choices.” She tried, she really tried not to relish his annoyance. A chat with Poinciana’s cops would do him good.
She snapped the thermometer out of his mouth and chucked the cover away.
“Sure you had time to get a good temp reading?” His scowl would have terrified small children and rabid dogs.
“What?” She scowled right back at him.
The fabric of his pants shushed along the examining table as he turned toward her, white beard twisting over his good shoulder. “God knows I don’t want to rush you.”
“Oh, I took all the time I needed.” She slammed a lid on the gremlins of temper wriggling free.
“Yeah, I noticed. Weren’t in any hurry, were you?”
“Of course not.” Under the beat of temper, her voice stayed cool, a tiny edge of malice icing it. “We pride ourselves here in the ER on our excellent, painstaking care. You’ll live to slide down another chimney, big guy.”
She took out the basin and grabbed towels and gauze pads to clean the area around his neck. Cammie, the best ER nurse around, had already laid out the Neosporin and irrigation syringes.
“I’m going to clean out the wound before I stitch it. This will take a few minutes.”
“Hell.”
His beard fluttered with his breath, the strands wisping against her cheek as she leaned toward him. Inside her damp sneakers her toes curled, another tiny, unnerving response.
She took a step back. “Gee, hate to inconvenience you. You think you can spare us that much time?”
“Just get on with it, will you?” Not a question. An order.
“My pleasure.” She pinched her lips. “Gotta tell you, Santa, you really need to work on your people skills.”
“You think?”
“Unless you’re a whole lot different around happy little children, yeah, that’s what I think. You’re mighty short on charm, Claus. Didn’t anybody spell out the job requirements?”
“I do just fine, thank you, Doc.”
“Not in denial at all, are you? Got a real clear picture of yourself, do you?”
His mouth twisted in the thicket of acrylic beard.
She grabbed the 60cc high-pressure syringe and the bottle of sterile water from the Mayo stand beside the examining table. Holding the towel under his shoulder, she began irrigating the wound, tidying up and moving the 4x4 sterile gauzes quickly over the area.
The tight muscle along the top of his shoulder twitched once and then was still.
“So what happened, Santa? On your way to a party, had too much to drink and you took a walk on the wild side?”
“Anybody ever tell you you talk too much?”
“Doing my job, Santa, that’s all.” She flung the stained gauze into the container and bent closer to his shoulder, angling the high-intensity lamp directly onto his neck.
Under the stink of liquor, his skin smelled clean, confusing her. He smelled way too good for her peace of mind. Too clean and fresh for a sloppy drunk. Sophie touched the edges of the wound, checking the depth. “Your drinking buddies roll you?”
“I was careless.”
Probing gently now, she cleaned the last of the blood away. “Stupid, more likely.”
“Yeah. Probably that, too.” His hard-edged eyes flashed her way. “But mostly careless.”
“Too bad. Carelessness causes a lot of trouble.”
“I’ll make sure I write that down so that I don’t forget. Next time.”
She looked up at him. “Hey, Claus, do the ER a favor and make sure there isn’t a next time? Save us all a lot of time?”
Even masked by the scruff of beard, his mouth was tight with resentment.
But his eyes followed her every movement. “Filled with sympathy and compassion, aren’t you?”
“For those who need it? You betcha.” She glared back at him for a long second before returning to her work. The sharp edge of contempt in his eyes bothered her, but she wasn’t sure why. What she did know was that he was ticking her off. And once more that disturbing sense that she was missing something here peeked out of the shadows. “You want to know if I have compassion, buster? Sympathy? Up to here.” Head down, she motioned to her chin. “But you? You’re a waste of my time, you and all the other bozos who make messes because you’re careless or just looking for a good time. I have to do the clean-up after you’ve had your fun. And sometimes, Claus,” she poked him in the chest, “sometimes I get damned tired of deliberate self-destruction. I don’t have the patience for it. There are people out there,” she gestured vaguely toward the world beyond the curtain, “people with real problems, problems they haven’t caused, and you’ve just created a paper-producing, time-consuming mess that I’m not in the mood to deal with.” She slapped the irrigation needle and bottle down on the tray. “Not tonight.”
“Long speech. It’s a wonder you didn’t pop a gasket holding all those words in this long.”
“No speech. Telling it like it is.” Finished with the irrigation, she yanked the edge of the beard around his jaw. “Beard’s got to go, Claus. I can’t stitch the wound with this mess dangling in the way.”
He turned. His face was suddenly too close, his warm, coffee-scented breath mingling with hers, the strands of his beard tangling with her hair. He reached up, those long fingers separating the commingled strands, and his palm brushed against her cheek, lightly, accidentally.
Then, as if he weren’t aware of his movement, as if his fingers moved with an unwanted will of their own, he tucked her hair behind her ear, a curiously personal touch that rippled all the way down her body to her toes, curling them in her damp green socks.
She blinked.
He frowned, dropped his hand.
Sophie spun to her feet. The stool wobbled and rolled away, careened into the wall. Like a crazed horse, her blood leapt and bolted through her veins.
Behind her, Santa cleared his throat.
Snapping open the supply cabinet, she pulled out cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol. As if it had a memory of its own, her ear still tingled where he’d touched. She stared blindly at the objects in her hands.
Coffee-fragrant? No smell of liquor on his breath? Alcohol stink only on his clothes?
She glanced back over her shoulder. His eyes were tired, bloodshot. Drifting shut, but focused.
That didn’t fit either.
Caught up in her irritation, she’d missed that sharpness.
And there was that damned, niggling sense that she should know him.
Not wanting to look at him, not wanting to be stranded in the unsettling ocean of his gaze, she pivoted and began pulling at the sticky edges of his beard, lifting it from his neck. She rubbed the alcohol-dampened swabs along his jawline, working swiftly, loosening the glued-on beard until it fell free.
And all the while her hands skimmed along his jaw and chin, she thought about the contradictions and that warm, intimate scent of him.
Tossing the blood-soaked mass of beard and swabs into the waste container, she turned and saw his face, fully, for the first time.
“Nice bedside manner, Dr. Brennan.” Santa was motionless.
“Oh, hell.”
His face was one of those southern Florida faces she’d come to recognize, long, all bones and angles. His blue eyes watched her carefully now, eyes she really, really should have recognized staring at her from a face that had given her sleepless nights for months.
“Swell to see you haven’t lost your gentle touch,” he said.
Not a drunken bum after all.
“Why didn’t you say something as soon as I walked in?” Her throat was tight, squeezing shut.
“My name’s on the chart. You should have seen it. I wondered if you knew who I was.”
“I didn’t look at the name. Detective Finnegan.” A sigh, the name slipped out as she stared at him.
“Yeah. Me. In the flesh. Alive and well. Disappointed, Sophie?” A flame that burned cold, challenge flickered in his chilly eyes.
After that first appalled glance, she couldn’t look at him. Still, she was proud of herself. Her hand didn’t tremble. She hadn’t flinched. But Finnegan would have heard a thousand things in the sound of his name. Even during their short time together a year ago, his ability to analyze every little bit of body language and nuance of voice had astonished her. Even then, even under the awful circumstances that came later.
On that disastrous Christmas Eve that changed everything between them.
Oh, yes, even then Detective Finnegan had been good at reading between the lines.
Both hands bracing him on the table, he leaned closer, so close that it was all she could do not to lean back as he murmured, “I didn’t know you were on duty, Doctor.”
She wouldn’t move an inch. Not for Finnegan, she wouldn’t. Not for anything he threw her way. “Why? You would have gone to a different hospital?”
“Hell, yeah. I don’t care if this is the only hospital in the county. If I’d known you were working ER tonight, I would have driven myself one-handed down to Sarasota instead of coming here. But here I am. And here you are. Fate’s a bitch sometimes, isn’t she?” His thin mouth tightened. “So, Dr. Brennan’s on duty the day after Thanksgiving.”
“Where else would I be?” She made the mistake of looking up.
“At Home Depot? Picking out a tree?” The tubing lifted with his shrug. “And if I’d had the least bit of luck tonight, another town? Another state?”
With jerky movements, she lifted the suture tray from the counter and placed it near the stretcher. Damn Judah Finnegan. Taking a deep, steadying breath she faced him, her smile as false as the tatty fur on his Santa suit. “I’m needed here.” In spite of herself, that year-old pain spilled out. “Besides, you look as though you’ve done enough celebrating tonight for both of us.”
“Appearances to the contrary, I don’t do trees, Christmas, or jolly.” Aggression radiated from every line of his long torso. “I’m not really a holiday kind of guy.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t be. Not under the circumstances.” She tightened her mouth and stared down at the suddenly foreign needles and antiseptic, a fine tremble now vibrating from her to the plastic tray.
“No, not under the circumstances.”
“But time passes. Things change. People change. Life goes on.”
“Not for all of us.” Gripping her chin with one hand, he forced her to look at him. Too thin with all those severe angles and hollows, his face was still compelling in its strength, a strength even she had to acknowledge. “And how tacky of me to bring up Christmas, huh, Sophie?” His fingers were cold against her flushed skin. “But I had to know. I would have bet a thousand dollars you’d forgotten. After all, hey, it’s been a year.”
“Really? You think you know me that well, Finnegan? How nervy can you get?” She jerked her head free.
“Pretty damn nervy when the occasion calls for it,” he said, tapping her with controlled ferocity on the chin. “But hell, yeah, sugar. You bet I’ve got your number. I think you put that episode with my partner out of your mind the minute you left the hospital last Christmas Eve. I wouldn’t have expected anything else, not from you. Not after the run-ins you and George had already had. You had it in for him from the get-go—”
“Never—”
“Sure you did. You and George were oil and water. Yeah, he was loud and crude. A jerk sometimes. But that night, hell. That night the patient was more than just another drunk who’d screwed up on Christmas Eve.” He leaned forward until his face was all she could see. “That night you couldn’t wait to run the blood test. Because it was George. Because he bugged you. Because he was mouthy and vulgar. You prissed up like a prune every time he came within five feet of you. It was George. It was personal.”
“No!”
“Shoot, sugar, your little butt was just quivering with righteousness. I thought you were going to cheer when the test proved Roberts was DUI.”
“He wrecked his cop car. He hit a light pole with the squad car, for God’s sake. He was lucky—” She stopped, appalled, wishing she could take the words back.
“You think he was lucky?” Finnegan smiled, a smile as bitter as any she’d ever seen. “Yeah, Roberts was lucky that the suits would probably let him ride the desk for the last three months before his retirement. Sure, he was going to be disgraced, demoted. His pension cut. Hell, you’re right. He was lucky.” He paused, and then, as smoothly as a surgeon’s scalpel, he added, “Personally, I never could figure out what the big deal was. Sure didn’t seem to me like he had any reason to go home that night and eat his gun.”
Instruments clattered on the tray she held.
“Or didn’t you know what happened to Sgt. George Roberts?”
“I read about his suicide in the Herald the next day.”
“And what did you think, when you read that bit of news? Anything? Feel bad about how you’d handled things? Wished you’d done anything different?”
“What I felt or didn’t feel isn’t any of your business. I did what had to be done.”
“Did you?” Soft, soft the accusation.
“You bet I did.” She’d walk across glass before she’d let him inside her soul to know how she felt about that night. Any doubts or second thoughts were hers and hers alone.
“Now get out of the rest of your suit, Detective. I can’t stitch you up like this.”
“Oh? I thought you could do anything. I thought you knew everything. You sure seemed damned certain you knew best last year. No doubts. No hesitation. Just a ‘gotcha’ for George.”
In the face of his bitterness, Sophie fell like a drowning woman on the raft of professional competence. She motioned to the green suture kit. “I’m going to numb the area before I sew you up.”
“Why bother?” With his free hand, he jerked apart the Velcro tabs along the front of his Santa suit. “Just more needle sticks.” Shark-like, his teeth flashed as he shrugged off the padded belly and jacket, letting them fall in a blood-red pile on the floor. “Besides, you might enjoy it too much.”
“I might.” She saw the rest of the old scar that curved down over his ribs and flat stomach to the tight semi-circle of his navel. “But I’m the doctor and you’re the patient. Guess you’ll have to trust me, won’t you?” She smiled in return, a smile as controlled and taunting as his had been. But her stomach twisted in knots.
“Trust you, Sophie? Lord, that prospect makes me shake in my boots. But stitch away. If you can stand it, I can.” He winced as she dabbed cold antiseptic along the line of the wound. “But hurry up. I have to get back to a stakeout.”
“Right,” she said, her grim face reflected back to her from the shine of the table. “Right. Whatever you want, Detective.”
She bent forward, and as she did, he whispered into the curve of her ear, his warm breath sliding around the rim and curling deep inside her. “In case you were wondering, Dr. Sugar, I’ve already filled out the police report. This was a job-related injury.” Contempt lifted the corners of his mouth. “You don’t have to worry that I’m getting away with anything.”
For a moment she paused. There were things she could say, should say. She wouldn’t. He was her patient. She’d give him the same care she gave everyone. The same care she’d given his partner last Christmas Eve. She could do that. And then he’d be gone.
She stitched. Silently. She didn’t trust her unruly tongue.
And the entire time she felt the burn of his eyes on the back of her neck as she bent to her task. Doggedly she moved the curved needle through his skin and wondered why in the name of all things good, Judah Finnegan had landed in her ER tonight.
She dressed the wound. Silently.
But even as her brain registered the animosity that rose like shimmers of heat from him, she was aware, too, at a tactile level, of his sleek skin and the supple muscles beneath it. Aware of the heavy stillness between them, a stillness and silence that would take only a movement, a word to turn into something…reckless.
She smoothed down the last piece of tape and took a deep breath. Almost home free.
As if she’d spoken aloud, Finnegan moved suddenly, his thigh brushing her hip.
She stepped back, a shade too quickly, but he remained seated.
“Done.” She handed him the list of instructions. “I need to go over these with you. One of the nurses will explain—”
The curtain flew open behind Sophie. She turned, relieved. “Oh, good, here’s—”
“Dr. Brennan!” Cammie stood there, the chubby shine of her face flattened with tension.
Just over Cammie’s shoulder Sophie glimpsed Billy Ray’s ponytail swinging against the back of his shirt as he hovered in the hall.
“Room 4. Code Blue.”
The beating victim.
There would be no miracles tonight.
Sophie dropped the instructions on the examining table, shoved her pen into her pocket, and pointed a finger at Finnegan. “You. Sit. Stay!” Her coat billowed around her as she ran to catch up with Cammie, who’d already disappeared.
The muttered “woof” behind her didn’t even slow her steps.
Finnegan eased off the table. He watched her race down the hall, her shoes jingling.
Sophie’s curly hair bounced wildly against her white medical jacket. Dark brown with the glow of fire. Not red exactly but not brown either. There was a word for it. Russet. Yeah. That was it. The gray material of her skirt bunched and pulled against the length of her thighs as she darted between oncoming techs, hands out, warning them out of her way.
Long, smooth-muscled thighs.
His fingers curled around the curtain. When she’d leaned in close to him, she’d smelled of cinnamon and pumpkin.
And antiseptic.
In a full-out run behind her, a tech followed with a crash cart.
Electricity buzzed along his skin. Whatever was happening was bad. He understood that sudden crackle in the air—like ozone before a storm. He’d smelled it on stakeouts gone sour.
It was always bad.
He watched as Sophie and her colleagues entered a room at the end of the hall and shut the door. For a second everything down the long corridor slowed down, became too quiet, one of those moments between a breath, a moment between life and death. Irrevocable what the next tick of the clock would bring.
He knew that too.
And then, as if everyone had inhaled, exhaled, movement and noise resumed. Only an occasional furtive glance at the closed door revealed the enormity of the moment.
Finnegan glanced at the examining table in back of him. Nothing there that he needed. Nothing more he needed or wanted in this place. Shrugging, he pulled the curtain silently shut behind him and walked toward the exit, stepped out into the night and took a deep breath of his own, sucking the damp air deep into his lungs.
Life and death. A thin line, nothing more than a second or a wrong turn, a wrong word, separated the two.
An hour later, heartsick and exhausted to her bones, sweat beading her forehead, Sophie returned to the examining room and shoved the curtain aside.
A pile of red velvet and bloodied white acrylic lay puddled on the floor of the empty room.
Chapter 2
In a cold, driving rain at two in the morning, they found the baby lying in the manger of the Second Baptist Church, directly across the street from Beth Israel, the only synagogue in the tri-county area.
“What the hell,” Finnegan muttered as rain spat into his eyes and seeped down the neck of his yellow slicker.
“Lord have mercy.” Tyree Jones squatted and reached under the rough wood roof of the manger. His broad dark hand touched the cradle, hesitated. Rain dripped from the edges of the straw spilling over the edges of the cradle. “Shoot, man, it’s a baby, that’s what.”
The spotlight in the shelter shone down on the baby. Chocolate-brown eyes stared back at them.
“I can see it’s a baby, Tyree, an Asian baby, in fact. The punk knifed my shoulder. Not my eyes. What’s a baby doing here?”
“All right, I’ll play.” Tyree’s forefinger brushed against the baby’s cheek. “What?”
“Damn it to hell, Tyree. Get the kid out of there. It’s got to be freezing.” Finnegan rolled his shoulders, easing the ache of the stitches, and stooped down beside Tyree.
“She’s not an it, Judah. She’s an itty-bitty baby girl, that’s what she is.” Tyree said as Finnegan bent over him and scooped her up with one hand, tucking the pink Winnie-the-Pooh sheet around her. “What a pretty girl you are, too, honey,” Tyree cooed. “Now why’d somebody go off and leave you here all by your lonesome, huh?” Tyree poked his face close to the silent baby.
Coming at them sideways now, the rain sliced against Finnegan’s face and drizzled under his slicker. “Go back to the car and get the blanket. She needs to be kept warm—”
“Judah,” Tyree said patiently as he rose to his full six feet three, “I have babies of my own. I know what to do.”
“Yeah, reckon you do, all right.” Holding the baby in a football grip, Finnegan shot him a wicked grin.
“Well, shoot, that too.” Tyree grinned back and loped toward their unit parked on the sidewalk. “Making babies is part of the re-ward, you know?”
“Kids? A reward? I don’t know. All those late nights and early mornings. Diapers and all that—”
“Be the same if I still worked patrol. I’d still have late nights, early mornings. More fun my way,” Tyree called back as he dashed toward their unmarked car.
Finnegan hunched forward, keeping the baby under the manger roof and near the warmth of the spotlight. “Got a story to tell, don’t you?” he said to her before looking off into the shadows at the sides of the church.
Rain glistened against the stained-glass windows. The branches of the huge banyan tree on the right side of the church lifted with the wind. Rain drummed the wide leaves and streamed to the ground. “You sure didn’t walk here by yourself.”
Considering him carefully, the baby’s eyes followed his face.
“Not very talkative? Can’t say I blame you.” Judah looked toward the unit, turning carefully so he wouldn’t slop water from his slicker onto the baby. “Not a fit night for dogs to be out. Much less you.” He looked away from the solemn face. Sheesh. Somebody dumping a baby on a night like this. On any night. What a world. First the undercover Santa lookout earlier in the evening, now this. No wonder a cop’s job was never done.
In the blaze of the car’s dome light, he could see Tyree speaking into the mike, shaking his head.
Huffing back, Tyree pulled the cotton blanket out from under his slicker and tossed it to Finnegan. “Nobody’s reported a lost baby tonight. Nothing but an anonymous call into dispatch saying we should check out the prowlers at the Second Baptist.”
“Prowlers?” Judah looked off into the darkness of the wind-whipped trees and back down at the unprotesting lump in his arms. “Funny kind of call, don’t you think? No prowler left this package.”
“Nope. Probably the mom. Not wanting to leave our little darlin’ completely alone.”
“You’re figuring it was the mom, then?”
“Most likely. Some kind of twisted maternal instinct.”
“Could be. I don’t know.” Judah stared back at Tyree’s face gleaming with rain and shadowy reflections. “Prowler? That’s an odd word choice, isn’t it? I think a mother abandoning her kid would refer to the kid as ‘my baby.’ ‘My child.’ Something, anyway, that would give a heads-up about an infant. But not prowler. It would be interesting to find out who made the call.”
“Going to worry it like a dawg with a bone, aren’t you? I swear, you think too much sometimes, Judah.” Tyree swiped rain out of his eyes. “Anyway, my man, whatever, whoever, our orders are to have li’l missy here checked out at our fine medical facility. Guess we’ll be making another run to your favorite establishment.” He sent Finnegan a sly, sideways look. “Some nights just don’t get any better, do they? This one’s been a world-beater. Got to play Santa, saved a baby, and now you get to revisit your favorite doc.”
“We haven’t been riding together long enough for you to go there, Tyree. Back off.”
White teeth sparkled as the big man gave him a huge grin. “So? I got my opinions. You gonna beat me up because I say what I see, Judah? You with that baby slung under your arm like you’re ready to gallop into some end zone? Huh? You think you can take me?” His grin glinted again as he did a little two-step in the rain, his arms moving in a smooth rhythm. He tapped Judah lightly on the chest, the shoulder. “Bring it on, then.”
“Oh, go to hell, Tyree.” Hunching over and draping his slicker across the baby, Finnegan stomped off toward the car.
“It’s a wonder Yvonna hasn’t whomped you upside the head, you know that?”
“Hey, I’m Yvonna’s sweet-talking man.” He slid under the steering wheel, fired up the engine, and slammed the door.
The baby jerked in Finnegan’s arms. He laid his hand lightly across her forehead. Too warm.
“Sorry ’bout that, baby girl. Didn’t mean to spook you.” The low velvet of Tyree’s words moved through the darkness, easing the sudden tension. Not looking at Judah, Tyree added quietly, “We got to talk about George sometime. You know we do.”
“No. We do not.”
“Fine. Be a jackass. But I’ll still be your partner.”
Finnegan clipped his seat belt in place and settled the still-silent child into his arm. “That can be changed, too, Tyree.”
“Partners share, Judah. That’s all I’m saying. We’ve partnered for four months now. And you don’t share. Ever. Hard enough being a black cop in this town without wondering if my partner’s gonna be at my back.”
For a long moment there was only the hiss of the heavy tires and the sound of the rain beating against the windows. Finnegan ran the back of his forefinger over the baby’s cheek and stared out at the neon lights sliding past in the darkness. The slap-slap of the windshield wipers punctuated the silence.
He sighed. “I’ve got your back, Tyree.”
“Okay, then.” Tyree let out a sigh of his own. “Didn’t mean to push so hard.”
“Yeah, you did.” Finnegan scooched down farther into his seat, adjusting the quiet infant against him. “You realize you’re plumb irritatin’, don’t you?”
“Hell, yes.” Tyree’s smile was quick and open. “Part of my charm.”
“Whoever said that was a damned fool.”
“Hey, man, don’t you go insulting my Yvonna, hear?” They slid to a stop under the protected entrance of Poinciana’s ER. Water spurted onto the side windows. “Not if you want any more of her potato salad.”
“Well, there you go then. Obviously Yvonna, a woman of brilliance and charm of her own, has adopted you as her very own charity case, Tyree. That’s the only explanation.” Yanking the hood of his slicker up with one hand, Finnegan hoisted the blanket over the baby, tucked her under his rain gear and slid out of the car. As he did, he added, “But in spite of her unfortunate taste in husbands, I sure do admire that woman’s potato salad.”
At his sudden movements, the baby waved its tiny fist under the blanket, gave a burp of movement and then lay still again as Judah shouldered his way through the ER doors.
He saw her, of course.
It had been that kind of night from the start. One screw-up after another. Why should he expect anything else at the end of a lousy day?
A flicker of movement caught his gaze, nothing more than her arm rising to her forehead, but he slowed. He wanted to look away, felt the urge so strongly that he almost believed for a second that he was walking toward the desk and the crowd of people in front of it.
But something about her gesture checked him, rooting him to the floor.
Unable to look away from the figure at the end of the hall, he watched her.
And resented her because he couldn’t look away. Resented the power she had to compel his attention.
Resented her most of all because he didn’t want to look away.
They were standing close together, Sophie and another doctor, the man stooping down to her. Her head was bowed. She’d jammed her hands into her pockets. From time to time she nodded as the man jabbed his finger in the air. With each nod, her dark hair bounced, swung forward, hid her expression.
It was the slump in her shoulders that held Finnegan’s attention.
Exhaustion.
Defeat.
He understood defeat, its nasty-ass gut-punch. That’s what his eyes read in the sag of her shoulders, in the brace of her sneaker against the wall behind her.
He just hadn’t figured cocksure, bold-as-brass Sophie Brennan for someone who’d ever look this defeated.
This diminished.
All the sparking, combative energy had drained away, leaving her small and helpless, the bells on her goofy socks silent.
Suddenly, as if he’d whispered in her ear, Sophie’s head jerked upright. She looked straight at him for a long moment.
Judah held her gaze, willing her to blink.
She didn’t.
The infinitesimal lift of her chin was the only sign that she saw him.
No, he thought. Not helpless at all. Not Sophie.
“Hola, tall, dark and battered. Back so soon? It’s only been three hours. Got something else you want sutured?”
“No thanks. And it’s been four hours.” He glared down at the woman tapping him impatiently on the arm. The picture ID clipped to the pocket of her blue scrubs gave him her name. Cammie Esposito. The same short, round-faced nurse who’d rushed Sophie out of the examining room earlier.
“What in the world do you have there? Not somebody’s pet poodle, I hope? We don’t do pets. Even for good-looking hombres like you, amigo.”
He pushed his parcel toward her. Once more a miniature fist pushed free of the blanket and banged his hand, a soft graze of skin against skin.
She lifted the edge of the blanket. “Oh, my.” All teasing gone, She took the baby from him and turned abruptly toward Sophie and the man still with her. “Dr. Brennan, you’ll want to see this.”
Sophie’s clear voice rode lightly over the relative quiet of the ER. “Sure, Cammie. Be right there. What’s the problem?”
“A baby.”
“A baby?”
He watched as Sophie pushed off from the wall, watched as she straightened her shoulders, and he recognized the effort. Like the last embers flaring in a gust of wind before dying out, she suddenly glowed. Even her hair gleamed now with that touch of firelight he’d noticed before sparking in the dark curls.
Her hands were still jammed in her pockets, though.
He noticed that, too, and wondered about that bit of body language and what it might mean.
Details.
His preacher daddy had been a humorless man with meanness bred bone deep. All his passion had been spent in an adoration of God that left no room for love of humankind. But he’d said one good thing to Judah. Judah didn’t believe in anything else his daddy had said, but he’d never forgotten the old man’s beautiful voice, sonorous, one of those hypnotic magic voices that could fill the pews of their small church, pronouncing, “God is in the details, Judah,” he pronounced. “Don’t you be forgetting that. You pay attention, hear?”
Then the preacher man had slapped him twice, once on each side of his face. Hard enough to leave a bruise. “Hear me?”
Judah heard.
And he’d remembered.
In his experience he’d concluded it was more likely the devil he discovered in the details. Still, he’d found that bit of instruction to be one of the few useful bits of his father’s legacy.
If Tyree knew it was Judah’s pa who’d taught him the basic rule of being a detective, Jonas suspected Tyree would hoot about that, too.
George had known.
With a quick tap on his arm, the nurse interrupted the melancholy flow of his memories. “What a doll. Girl?”
He nodded.
“Oye, muy bonita. Pobrecita. What’s the story?”
“It’s…she’s…” he corrected himself, “she’s been outside a while. Don’t know how long, though.” He rubbed his hands along the side of his slicker and water sluiced off, dripping to the floor and splashing against his jeans. “It’s a rough night. Don’t know anything about babies, but she seems okay. A bit warm, maybe. Quiet.”
“Sí, this baby’s come to the right place.”
Judah shifted as Sophie reached him.
“Detective.” Her expression dismissed him.
The hairs along his arms rose lightly as her scent reached him. “Doctor,” he replied politely.
Her gray-blue eyes glittered momentarily, then flickered to the bundle. “What brings you back this evening?” Her tone was cool and crisp.
“Morning, actually,” he said, matching her coolness.
“So it is. Do you need our attention again? Or have you managed to keep yourself out of harm’s way for a few hours?”
“I’m not your patient this time.” He pointed to the nurse’s blanket.
Sophie leaned toward the bundle, peered inside the blanket, and that scent that wasn’t perfume, wasn’t exactly soap, wasn’t anything except her filled his nostrils.
Funny, he thought, amused by his body’s awareness of her. An awareness he didn’t want, but there it was. That old devil sex could rear up and trip a man when he least wanted it.
Or expected it.
He’d thought this past year had made him immune to the very particular appeal of Dr. Brennan.
On edge, he gestured toward the baby. “Well. She’s all yours. I’m out of here.”
Sophie’s warm hands brushed against him as she lifted the baby out of the nurse’s arms and cradled her. Sophie’s face went soft, as soft as the curves of her breasts where the baby lay, and he thought he saw sadness in her eyes as she touched the baby gently and said, “Ah, you’re a little love, aren’t you? Let’s go see how you’re doing, sweetie-pie.” Her hands moved lightly over the baby, automatically evaluating, examining.
Finnegan turned around, ready to make tracks for the outside as fast as his size elevens would take him.
“Not so fast this time, Finnegan. We need some information first.”
Damn. “Whatever you say, doctor.” He gritted his teeth and swung back to her.
“What can you tell me about this baby?”
“Diddly squat. We found her at the Second Baptist Church, in the manger, under its roof. Nobody else was there. She doesn’t look abused, she doesn’t look like a newborn, but of course I’m not the doctor—” he let the word take a bit of ice “—and that’s all the information I have.”
Sophie’s gaze flickered from the baby to the nurse. “You know what I’m thinking?”
“Makes sense,” the nurse responded as she stared at the baby and then down the hall. “Might explain what the woman kept crying out, I guess.”
“Awful big coincidence otherwise.”
“Still, it could be coincidence. It’s not as though she’s the first Asian patient here in Poinciana.”
“And not the first beating victim, either. We’re getting a lot of them lately.” Anger rippled over her face. “And not just our Asian population. Boy, this is lousy. What in heaven’s name is happening to Poinciana?” Her eyes were huge, dominating the soft roundness of her face.
Judah shook his head, fighting for clarity. He was finally free of the baby, but something she’d said had struck him as important. He shook his head again. Got it. “Coincidence? What coincidence?”
Sophie’s mouth tightened as she glanced from the baby to him. “A patient we had earlier.”
He forced his brain to focus. “A patient?”
“A woman. Beaten.”
“What happened?”
“She died.”
“I see.” He scratched the bristles on his chin. “You think this is her baby?”
“I don’t know, Finnegan.” Her sigh echoed his own fatigue. Her gaze returned to the baby. “It’s all such craziness.”
“You’ll get no argument from me on that score.”
“Really? How remarkable.” Her quick glance mocked him. Taking the warmed blanket from the nurse, she passed him the one in which he and Tyree had cocooned the baby.
“This little girl looks all right. We’ll give her a thorough work-up and then—” She frowned. “Children and Families will take over. You know how the system works. It’s the way it is.”
“Yeah. I reckon.” Every inch of his skin twitched with the need to go home, collapse on his bed and sleep for a day. Or a week. How many hours had he been on duty? When was the last time he’d slept? Last night? The day before?
Every cell in his battered body craved relief from the fizzing running through him when he was around Sophie. He didn’t know which he wanted more—sleep, or just a release from the tension she created in him.
Every instinct he owned urged him toward her.
It had been like that from the first moment he’d seen her, jogging down Palmetto Avenue, her hair clumped together by a green clip on top of her head, beads of sweat pooling in the small triangle at the bottom of her throat. Beneath fire-engine-red frayed shorts, her thighs and calf muscles pumped and thrust.
And heat had licked through him like a flash fire.
He hadn’t even thought about what he was doing. He’d simply nudged the squad car over to the curb, letting it roll forward with her for a few minutes until she finally glanced his way.
She’d sent him a smart-alecky grin, saluted with a quick hand to her forehead, and shot off, her legs like slim pistons flickering in the late August heat as she disappeared into the path that curved along Poinciana River.
That was how it had started.
Dangerous, being this tired and this pissed off. Remembering. Remembering never led anywhere good.
A faint stirring of adrenaline roughened his voice. “Do I have permission to leave now, Doctor?”
Even as he spoke, she was already walking away toward one of the examining rooms, her head bent to the baby.
The nurse, Cammie, he made himself remember, sent him a quick smile and a thumbs-up.
And once more he found himself treated to the fine sight of Sophie Brennan’s butt, its curves shaping the jacket to her, the jacket moving with each hip sway. He swallowed. His mouth was dust-dry, the night’s fatigue vanished momentarily in a rush of blood.
“Look, but don’t touch, right?” Tyree’s smooth amusement snapped his head around. “Caught you, didn’t I?”
“What?”
“My, my, aren’t we grouchy? Guess doing without will make a man…irritable.”
“I was thinking, Tyree.”
“Sure you were, Judah. And I’ll bet you a nice, green hundred-dollar bill I know exactly what you were thinking.” His grin widened, crinkling his whole face. “Looks like it wasn’t the first time, too.”
Judah scowled at him. “Button it, Tyree.”
“Can’t blame you. The doc sure is one fine-looking woman.” He laughed. “But don’t tell Yvonna I said that, or I won’t be getting so much as a sweet kiss for a month.”
“Serve you right.”
“Nah, you don’t know Yvonna. She can be one tough lady when she puts her mind to it. She can make my life real…interesting when she wants to.”
“Yeah?” Judah listened with one ear, his attention still on Sophie.
“Anyway, c’mon. Another call came in while you were in here.”
“Right.” Judah’s gaze stayed on Sophie as she hovered over the baby, her every movement visible through the still-open curtain.
He couldn’t get over her—foggy-headed, he couldn’t find the word he wanted. Protectiveness. Yeah. He rubbed his head again. That was the word. She seemed so protective of the tiny scrap of life he’d brought to her.
Not cold at all.
Not at all the way she’d been with George.
And none of the prickliness she showed him.
One more puzzle piece.
But he couldn’t make sense of any of it until he’d had a couple of hours of sleep.
“Hey, Judah. Heads up. We’re needed over on 15th and Oak.” Tyree tugged at him, and with one last glance, Judah left, the glass doors snicking shut behind him.
“Detective Hunkster has left the house.” Cammie poked Sophie in the ribs.
“What?” Sophie lifted her stethoscope and patted the baby, her palm lingering and warming the tiny chest.
Cammie pointed to the exit. “The detective with the hormones and the ’tude.”
“Oh.” Lifting the baby, Sophie curled her over one shoulder, close to her neck. She looked toward the exit. The baby mewed softly and nuzzled closer. “What a sweetheart you are.” Reflexively she cupped the baby’s bottom, swaying slowly from side to side, rocking the infant.
She could barely make out the faces of Finnegan and his partner. A gust of wind puffed out Finnegan’s yellow slicker. Rain striped down his faded jeans, and he yanked the slicker closer to him, rolled his shoulder and vanished into the darkness.
His shoulder had to be hurting him. Anybody with any sense would have stayed and taken the pain scripts. But the stubborn idiot had chosen to assert himself and leave her ER instead of doing the sensible thing.
For all she cared, he could fall down in a heap if that’s what he wanted.
Absently she crooned to the warm baby.
Still, Judah had looked like the burnt end of a match when she’d walked up to him and Cammie. Stubble shadowed his cheeks, and black circles pouched the skin under his eyes. He’d looked like a hundred miles of bad road, as she’d heard one of the local doctors say.
Faded jeans, a look of weary dissipation, and that attitude. Attitude to burn.
But sexy.
It was in the eyes, she decided. He had that look about him that women talked about in hushed tones. The kind of man who would be hell on wheels in bed. The kind of man who could leave a woman smiling in the morning. Oh, no question. She knew exactly what Cammie meant about hormones. Judah Finnegan fairly reeked of pheromones and sex.
Dirty, lowdown, wonderful sex.
She’d felt the flutter of her pulse every time she’d thought of him during this past year.
He was exactly the wrong kind of man for a woman like her.
Even without their history.
Sergeant George Roberts might be dead, but even a year later his presence was a powerful ghost.
The night Roberts had killed himself he’d also killed the tenuous something building between her and Detective Finnegan.
Maybe if they’d had more time together first…
Maybe if they’d slept together…
No, she didn’t think so.
If they’d slept together? Impossible.
She’d known from the beginning that Judah was a man who kept his emotions under tight control. That had been part of the attraction. He was so different from her that it was tempting to see what it would take to make him lose that reserve. A buzz-cut, reined-in kind of guy, he wasn’t a man easily given to showing his emotions. Or handing out forgiveness.
Except with Roberts.
Cammie tapped her arm. “Want me to call the Department of Children and Family Services?”
“Yes, please.” Sophie looked away from the empty glass doors. “Until we find out where our little angel belongs, that’s our only choice. I hope the woman who died wasn’t her mother. I hope that somewhere out there is someone who’s looking for this beautiful baby.” Near her breast the tiny mouth moved damply, tugging at something deep inside her. “This little girl doesn’t deserve to be thrown into the system. Be passed around from foster home to foster home.” Sophie found her arms curling possessively around the infant. “She needs parents, Cammie. A mother.”
“All the babies do. It’s not our decision, though.” Cammie looked away. “If her parents or relatives can’t be located…you know how it is, Dr. Brennan. Like you told your cop. That’s where she’ll wind up.”
“I do. It’s a hard world sometimes, Cammie.”
“It is. Nothing we can do about it. It is what it is.”
Sophie shifted the baby to her other shoulder, settling her in snugly. “How long have you worked at Poinciana? Have things changed so much?”
Cammie shrugged.
“Because in the two years I’ve been here, it seems as though we’re seeing a lot more gunshots and beatings. Abused babies and kids. Or is it my imagination? I haven’t checked the hospital statistics.” Sophie tried to smile past the ache in her heart. “I know what you said earlier, but tell me it’s my imagination and the result of too many long hours, Cammie. Please. I need to believe that.”
“Poinciana’s a good town. People are good here. Most of them are. But, sí, things have changed. There’s a different feel to the town these days. All this graffiti springing up everywhere, overnight, it seems. Kids hijacking the Santa kettles. And these fires at places of worship, for heaven’s sake. Sometimes, I am afraid. It doesn’t feel like my town anymore. Not the Poinciana I knew.”
From the corner of her eye Sophie glimpsed stringy hair. She turned, snuggling the baby closer. “What is it, Billy Ray?”
“I wanted to see the baby. They said the baby was here.” He edged around the curtain into the examining room. “Is the baby all right?”
“Yes.”
His face scrunched up in something that she thought might be relief. “Okay, then. I was wondering, that’s all. What’s going to happen to her?”
“She’ll stay here for a day or two for observation. We’ll see if anyone can identify her.” Even saying the words felt so wrong to Sophie that she stumbled over them. “If she’s healthy and we haven’t found her family, then Social Services will come and take her to an out-placement home.”
Billy Ray twisted a strand of his hair. “That’s okay. I guess. She’s safe, isn’t she?”
“Sure she is.” Sophie held up the baby girl so Billy Ray could see her.
Sleepy brown eyes peered over the edge of the light blanket as Billy Ray leaned farther into the room. He chewed his lip. “She looks okay then. Okay. I gotta go finish my shift.”
And as abruptly as he’d appeared, he vanished.
Sophie watched him lurch away. “Did Billy Ray seem more Billy Rayish than usual? Or is that my imagination, too?”
Cammie laughed and reached for the baby. “He’s been Billy Rayish all night long. There’s a full moon. I’ll take the baby up to pediatrics and then alert Social Services. I see Dr. Bornes is finally here. You can head for home now, can’t you?”
An inexplicable reluctance kept Sophie’s arms around the fragile bundle. She stared down at the silky eyebrows and wide-open eyes watching her. “Oh, you decided to wake up and join the party, did you, sweetheart?”
From the safety of her blanket, Baby Doe reached up and caught a curl of Sophie’s hair and gripped for all she was worth, holding on as if she’d never let go, holding on as if she had understood every word Sophie and Cammie said.
Holding on to Sophie as if she were a lifeline.
“Cammie, I’ll take her up to Peds. And hold off on the call to Children and Families, okay?” she said abruptly and headed out the door.
With every step Sophie took down the long hall, she felt that tiny grip grow more powerful.
Felt those tiny fingers close around her heart.
Chapter 3
Hours later, as night melted into gray pre-dawn, Finnegan found himself at the beach off the island.
He hadn’t slept.
Earlier, Tyree had dropped him off at the station. Judah had waved him off, fired up his bike and taken off into a world filled with drumming rain. Blending with the roar of rain and wind, the Harley six-cylinder engine throbbed beneath him.
They were off-duty. It was time to go home.
He meant to go home.
He really, really meant to go home.
But he’d thought about the baby. Laying there in the manger for over an hour before they’d taken it to the hospital. He shook his head and slewed rain drops off his helmet. Not it. Her. Taken her to the ER.
To Sophie, who’d cradled that baby to her as if the tiny mite was her own.
Sophie, whose pale skin and big eyes had swallowed her face and whose scent lingered treacherously in his nostrils. A Judas of the senses, that perfume that was only Sophie.
Streaking down back roads and over bayou bridges, he’d lifted his face to the rain, let it wash over him, and he still smelled her, the scent of woman underneath the cinnamon and antiseptic.
Even with the sensory memories flooding him, the memory that sent a shiver of foreboding down him was the one of Sophie holding the baby.
An hour before dawn, with rain blinding him and Sophie’s scent filling him, he’d braked hard, tires screaming against slippery pavement, and headed west over one more bridge.
To the island.
To her house.
To Sophie.
He told himself he could interview her there just as well as at the hospital or the station house. No problem. He was cool. She didn’t have any power over him. He was immune. The interview would be official, nothing more.
A less honest man would have believed it, too.
Even so, even knowing he was being a damn bonehead, he crouched over the Harley and rode its rumbling engine into the storm wind. To Sophie.
The thought of her name brought her face in front of him, mixed the remembered scent of her with the clean rain smell and sent his blood skipping and slipping through his veins.
He didn’t pretend that the pulsing in his groin had anything at all to do with the throbbing of the bike beneath him. He didn’t want to see her again.
He wanted to…
And so he’d whipped the bike around and damned himself for a fool as he flew onto the bridge, coming down with a hard bounce that jolted him to the top of his aching shoulder.
Now, a surly gray sky shrouded gray surf thundering onto the beach. Storm-driven salt spray stung his face, clung to a two-day stubble and dripped down his jacket. Gritty with sand and sleeplessness, his eyes burned as he peered through rain and mist at the surf.
She was out there.
Far out on the horizon where the Gulf of Mexico blurred into the sky, he could see the narrow stripe of black against gray that was Sophie.
She hadn’t slept either.
Hunkered down, nothing more than a shadow in shadows on the beach, he watched as she rose from bended knees. She crouched over the board, riding the power, waiting. Her small hands gripped the side of the board. Then, balanced, steady, she stood upright, arms flung out parallel to the board.
He inhaled.
Breathtaking, that small shape out there in all that darkness, facing nature’s might. He clasped his hands tightly against his knees.
Watched.
And waited with her. Forever, it seemed, in those moments as he watched powerless.
Behind her the wave hung for a long time. Dark at the base, black in this light, its crest all white foam and shivering green glass.
He thought she hesitated as the wave came up under her. She was in the backwash. She bent her knees again, curved forward, and the wave took her, enveloped her like a careless lover. Threw her forward, sent her board spiraling up into the sky and covered her with boiling white water that splashed high into the sky.
Lunging to his feet, Finnegan scanned the distance and couldn’t see her, couldn’t find that sleek head bobbing in the water. He covered the three yards to the water without realizing he’d moved.
Surf roiled around his knees, clawed at his chest.
Far beyond him her board floated on the surge of a small wave and vanished into a trough.
He couldn’t see her anywhere in the pounding waves.
He yanked his shoes off and hurled them toward the shore behind him, struck out toward the deep. There, right between two waves, he could see her board again, could see now the wet white of her face as she crawled onto the board and slumped. Strands of heavy wet hair hid her face.
Unseen, treading water, he rose and fell on the waves, their bodies joined in the great rhythm of the gulf.
She struggled to hold onto the board, her arms trembling with effort.
Or he imagined the effort. He wasn’t sure.
Finally she brought her knees under her.
And waited again.
His eyes never leaving her, Finnegan sank beneath the water and moved slowly toward the shore behind him until his feet scraped against cold sand.
He hauled himself up the incline of the shore. Turning back, he saw her stand.
Behind her, bigger than the wave that had taken her under, a wall of water raced toward him. His throat tightened and in the roar of the waves that filled him, everything went silent. He wondered if her heart was thumping as hard as his. He yelled at her to let the damned wave pass, to wait for a smaller one, not to try this freakish thing leaping out of the Gulf.
The wind caught his shout, shredded it into nonsense.
Half crouched, arms balancing her, Sophie caught the edge of the monster and hung there, for hours it seemed, in the pre-dawn sky. Against the cold sand, his toes buzzed with the power of the wave. He could sense the thrust of the wave as it grew, its glassy green stretching, stretching, filling the horizon with shivering power.
Then, in one perfect moment, it crested, spitting white against the gray sky.
Puny against the glassy green, she rode its momentum all the way to the collapsing crash of soapy foam.
Over the surf noise, her laugh rang with triumph, a bright, bell-like sound, as she trudged to the sand with her board.
Arousal ripped through him. His skin rippled with it. He could smell it in the air, coming off him like bands of storm waves. He couldn’t even hear the surf over the roaring in his ears. His wet jeans flapped against his legs as he strode toward her. Even his fingertips thrummed with the need to—what?
Mid stride, he stopped, took a deep breath. A second one.
He forced himself to stroll toward her and was appalled at the struggle it took.
He’d been stupid.
Was being even more stupid. If he had an ounce of sense, he’d turn and run for the hills before she saw him.
But he didn’t.
Instead, water slopping at his heels, he approached her. Blowing off the Gulf, wind plastered his wet clothes to him. He should have been cold to the bone.
He wasn’t.
How could he be cold when his blood was pumping so damned hot through him? He half-expected to see steam rising from his every footstep. A pressure cooker of intensity, looking for an escape valve.
Burning even the roots of his wet hair.
He wouldn’t have been shocked if he’d swung around and seen a string of black, scorched footprints following him in the sand.
Flopped on the wet sand and facing the storm surge, she didn’t see him approaching her.
It gave him that extra second he needed.
It gave him the element of surprise he wanted.
Relief washed over him and left him feeling like a yellow-bellied coward as he pitched his voice lower than the booming waves. “Sophie.”
She leapt to her feet. The board bounced to the sand, kicked up a shell. “Finnegan? Finnegan?” She was breathing hard, her breasts lifting with her questions. “What—where did you come from? And why?” Strands of wet hair clung flatly to her head, lay against her cheek as she stared at him. “Judah. Here?”
“Yeah. Me. Here.” He stooped and picked up her board, handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she said automatically, her face crumpled with confusion. She held the board close to her, and that pulse in her throat was going ninety miles an hour. “You—”
“Scared you?” He’d like to scare her, just a little, just enough to make her drop that brittle mask she wore around him. He wanted to see her without all that clever self-possession, just once.
“Scared? No, no, you startled me. That’s all. I thought no one was here.” She lifted the board, tamped it onto the sand.
“How’s your shoulder?”
He shrugged. He hadn’t thought about his stitches once since he’d arrived at the beach. “It’s okay.”
“Good. Do you need any pain meds?”
He must have made a sound.
“No, tough guy, I guess you wouldn’t. Need anything, that is.” She bounced the board hard against the sand, shifted.
“So, Finnegan, exactly how long have you been here?”
“Long enough to see you eat pie on that wave.”
She glanced toward the Gulf, gave a small, delighted smile. “Big waves for the Gulf. I hadn’t expected anything like this.” From the east behind her, light was beginning to stain the sand, tint the water a softer shade of gray. “That beast stripped my rash guard off, right over my head and arms. Gone.” She paused before turning her attention back to him. “I hit the backwash. It popped me right off. I couldn’t hold it.”
“Too bad.”
“That’s surfing for you.” She looked out at the Gulf. “You play in God’s ballpark, you pay the price.” Absently she rubbed her elbow, calm as all get-out.
Except for that pulse going like a bat out of hell.
Hair flattened against her head, she was a sleek, otter-like silhouette against the lightening gray in her shiny black neoprene. He wanted to sluice the water dripping from her hair with his hands, he wanted to slide those same hands, wet with salt water, down the smooth, shiny curves of her, he wanted to taste that tiny pulse beating like a trapped butterfly under her skin—
She glanced back at him, frowned, the little pulse beat going lickety-split. “So. You’ve been here a while.”
“I have.”
He knew the second she regained control. It was caused by a tone in his voice. Or the look on his face. But the confusion softening her face disappeared, the restless shifting back and forth ceased as she registered his comment. She narrowed her eyes. With a quick assessment, she considered his wet clothes, sopping hair, and the seaweed still clinging to his worn jeans. “Looks like you ate pie yourself.”
“Not me. You couldn’t pay me enough to go out there at this time of day. I sure do admire a shark’s efficiency, but I’m not right fond of having breakfast with them. Or being their breakfast. Didn’t you know this was feeding time, Yankee Girl?”
“Not much of a risk on this coast. Different if we were down in the Keys.”
“There’s always a risk.”
“Hey, Finnegan, life’s full of risks. Don’t you know that?” Her laugh was a ripple of sound that furred along his nerve endings and made him catch his breath.
“Remember a couple of years ago? That huge migration of sharks in the Gulf off Tampa? Hundreds of them?”
She shrugged. “Surfing’s a controllable risk. I like surfing these fat storm waves. They’re as close as I can get to Hawaii. I like dawn patrol. And I like taking risks.” She ran her hands over her hair, spraying water onto his bare feet.
“Do you now?” The drops burned against his skin. An errant scent drifted to him and it took him a second to realize that it was the scent of her skin flavored by Gulf and an unknown tension.
“I’m an adrenaline junkie. Otherwise, I’d have chosen some other profession.”
“And here I’ve been thinking it was pure compassion that put you in your doctor whities.”
The wind carried the light sound of her laugh behind them, to the east and the still-shrouded sun. “Oh, come on, Finnegan. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Cops feed off that rush. Isn’t that fine testosterone rush why most of them go into the job? Isn’t it why you became a fine boyo in blue? And don’t try to play the innocent,” she mocked as he hesitated. “Because I know better.”
“I never thought about it.”
“You should…think about it.”
“Are we still talking about cops and robbers? Because all my fine detecting skills pick up something else here,” he drawled.
“Really? How perceptive of you.” She wrung water out of her hair, sent it spattering again onto his feet. “By the way, where are your shoes, Finnegan? Or are you the original barefoot boy with cheek of tan?” Her eyelashes sparkled with drops of water. Giving off a heat of their own, her eyes glittered.
“I’m a Florida cracker. Of course I’m barefoot.” He gave in, yielded to temptation and that siren heat. Reaching out, making himself move slowly, he brushed his forefinger along the edge of her lashes, let it skate slowly down her cheek until his finger rested in the hollow of her neck, just above the zipper of her neoprene vest.
The leap of her vein against his finger sent a painful pulse straight south. He stepped closer, stepped into the heat rising from her.
“Where did the seaweed come from, Finnegan?” Her breath puffed against his chin as he dipped to her face.
“Same place you did, Dr. Sugar.”
She stepped closer. Against him, through his clothes, through his jacket, she was a cold, supple shape moving in his arms.
And then, with a breath, hot skin everywhere his fingers slid. Cold neoprene and hot skin.
Unbelievable, the heat radiating from her.
From her cheeks, from the lobes of her ears.
All that silky skin should have been cold, blue-tinged.
Yet it blistered the palms of his hands as he cupped her face and tasted the salt lingering on her eyelashes. Dimly he wondered, why?
But the clean, salty smell of her skin spun him away from his memories of the night and its ugliness, sent him spiraling into a place where there was light and peace. “Delicious,” he murmured, absorbed in the scent and taste of Sophie.
He thought she would hesitate, expected her to step back, figured she would push him away. He hoped she would. But her eyes darkened, the pupils huge as she curled one black-clad arm around his neck and pulled him to her.
“Share, Finnegan,” she murmured into his mouth, her lips soft and pliant, as soft and pliant as the woman standing on tiptoes and stretching herself against him, one thigh slipping between his legs. “Nice,” she said. “I’d forgotten how nice touching you could be. I didn’t remember.”
He spread his legs and made room for her, let her come as close as wetsuit and soggy jeans would allow, and as he did, she reached up with her other hand and slid her fingers through his hair, holding his face still as she sipped at the corner of his mouth and sighed.
He wanted to believe it was a sigh of pleasure.
But deep in the sigh, he heard the sadness.
He hesitated, his fingers fumbling with the broad tab of her zippered vest. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“I don’t know about you, Finnegan, but this is the best idea I’ve had in weeks.”
He brushed her cheek with his thumb, trying to get his thoughts in some kind of order. “But—”
“If you stop now, Judah, I swear I’ll hunt you down and kill you. And no jury on earth would convict me.” Her voice was low and breathy as she slipped her hand between their bodies, closed it over his, tugged down, the slippery material opening as he slid his hand inside and found softness and heat, found the hard bump of her nipple.
And lingered, tugging, entranced by the contrast of cold suit and flushed skin.
Touching her, he remembered again how it had been for him the first time he’d seen her, the rush of wanting, the physical ache of needing to touch her.
Touching her, he could forget the past, could escape the prison of his soul by losing himself in her.
That was what he wanted most on this dismal, storm-wrecked morning, escape was what he’d craved and hadn’t known he needed.
Here, with her smacked up against him, he didn’t have to think about the creeps spraying graffiti around town, didn’t have to think about the jackasses stealing from the Christmas charity kettles. He didn’t have to think about the baby left in the manger, didn’t have to think about George. Didn’t have to think.
That was the blessing. It had been a lifetime since he’d felt anything, not anger, not joy. Nothing. But with Sophie in his arms, he could just feel.
This, he thought as he moved his mouth along the long line of her neck, this salvation in Sophie’s scent, touch, in the very texture of her skin under his seeking fingers, this was the light in the darkness. “Closer,” he muttered against the slope of her breast. His chin scraped against the metal zipper teeth as he nudged the vest opening wider. “You’re not close enough. I want you closer.” He cupped her butt with one hand and pulled her tightly to him.
From that first moment, he’d known it would be like this.
In this moment, only Sophie. Beginning and end of thought, of regret, of anger.
Right now. Alpha and omega.
Now.
Sophie.
She tasted the hunger in his lips and fed on it, felt his seeking fingers at her waistband.
“Two-piece?”
“Yes,” she exhaled into his ear. “Easier to get into.” She wiggled her fanny, and felt him shudder against her. “And out of.”
“Excellent.” He flattened his palm into the curve of her back.
She twisted upward. “Good hands, Finnegan. Ah, but you have good hands.” Her brain turned to mush as he edged a forefinger between the tight fabric and her spine.
The adrenaline rampaging through her had a focus now, and she leaned into it, just the way she would lean into a wave. Judah’s lean form. Judah’s hands on her. The movement of his hard body against her took all the energy the surfing hadn’t touched and channeled it, a straight line from him to her. She should have grabbed Finnegan instead of her surf board, she thought muzzily as his thumbs met in her belly button and pressed, circled lower.
How long had it been since she’d been touched like this? She couldn’t remember, oh, he was taking her breath away, she couldn’t breathe….
Her knees buckled, and he went with her, their knees bouncing on the packed sand, but she couldn’t turn him loose. Her fingertips hummed with the sensation of his hot skin against them.
His hands were on either side of her face, framing it and holding her still. “Inside. We need to go inside.”
“Too far,” she gasped.
“I can run.” He pulled her to her feet and lifted her off the sand, snugging one arm under her behind and staggering to his feet.
“If you think so.” She locked her legs behind his waist and buried her face in the crook of his neck, breathed and went dizzy with the feel of his skin against her cheek. “Go for it, tiger.”
He lurched with her up the slope of sand and sea oats toward the shadowy house. The rise and fall of his chest matched her own. “Damn. How much farther?”
“Two hundred yards. More or less.” She nipped at his ear and ran her hand down from his belt as far as she could.
“Not much farther, big guy.” His arousal surged against the heel of her hand, and she moved coaxingly against it.
He stumbled. She slid down his body. The soggy fabric of his jeans rubbed against her, sent sparks shooting through her.
“We’re not going to make it,” he muttered, frustration in every syllable.
Laughing, she let all the night’s misery drift away in the wind. “You don’t have to look so grim.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” He still held her snagged against him as he marched her backwards toward her house.
“Really?” she whispered slyly. “How…impressive.”
Stomping onward, he glowered at her. “What? What?”
“Nothing.” She stroked her hand down the hard front of his jeans, felt him throb into her curving palm.
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed.” She laughed again. She could never have hoped for this kind of ending to the horrible night. In Finnegan’s arms, all the destruction of the ER melted away.
Here was life. Here was pleasure. She moved her flat palm against him again. Here was power. His.
Hers.
Laughter kept bubbling up from deep inside. Her body fizzed and sparkled, everything inside her coiling and tumbling. And still he marched her relentlessly backwards, bumping against her, struggling with the waistband of her suit bottom as he kept moving. Trapped by his arms, the sides of her open vest bent back under her arms.
The wind blew against her bare breasts, tickling her with sand and cold. Her nipples brushed against his wet shirt, hardened.
“This is crazy, Sophie.” But he didn’t stop. Didn’t stop touching, didn’t stop moving her back to the house, his bare feet tangling with hers at every step, his pants legs flapping against her bare calves and knees.
Sensation everywhere. She was drowning in touch and smell. Drowning in Judah.
Careening backward, she tripped on the root of one of the pine trees and fell, a dizzying swoon of gray sky and his blue eyes.
Landing on the cushion of pine needles with Judah coming right after her, his arms still wrapped around her, she couldn’t stop laughing at the silliness of it all. Oh, she’d needed this, this laughter, this touching, this. How could she not have known how much she needed his touch? She slid her palms under his wet jacket, let them slip down wet skin, traced the contours of muscles, felt their response to her touch. Some rawness in her soul eased under the balm of touching and being touched and laughing.
And in some distant place in her brain she pictured them tangled together on the beach, a mess of sloppy wet clothes and sandy bodies and she laughed again.
“What’s so funny, Sophie?” His tongue traced the curve of her mouth, gently, dampening her lips, and the wind touched them, too, and everything in her shivered with delight.
She just wished Judah didn’t look so grim.
So lost.
She didn’t want him lost. She didn’t want emotion now, not his, not hers, only this physical exhilaration that blanked out memories and thought and everything except this.
“Easy,” she murmured. She smoothed the frown between his ocean-blue eyes. “It’s not the end of the world.”
Not answering, not meeting her gaze, he lowered himself over her, fitting his pelvis against hers, sliding his arms under her. “Any chance of getting this damn bottom off?”
“Finnegan, if I’ve learned one thing in this life, it’s that there’s always a chance.” She squirmed encouragingly, every nerve ending in her thighs and belly quivering with pleasure, with life. “If there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Tomorrow would come soon enough.
And in the meantime, here was Judah, filling her world with taste, with touch, with himself.
Easy, for the moment, so easy to let herself forget the ugliness. So tempting, this surrender to feeling, to the physical anodyne of what they were doing. Surrender to the power, to the wave of pleasure.
There were worse ways to end a day.
Chapter 4
He should have gone home.
Even as Judah slicked back the tangled hair hiding her ear and tasted her, he knew he should get up from the heat of her body, the salty tang of her skin, and leave.
He knew it. Like fingernails scraping down a chalkboard, his brain screeched warnings. Yet he lingered in the illusive comfort of her arms.
Stayed.
And hated himself.
Weakness, this craving to touch and taste. He despised himself for the need, for the loss of will. He hated this weakness that mewed stay when he knew he should flee as if the hounds of hell were on his heels.
Weakness.
And yet…
He stroked the slight swell of her flattened breast and lost himself in the warming whiteness of it, spellbound by the rose flush that crept upward from his touch.
A murmur. A sharp inhalation. Hers. The subtle accommodation of her hips to him fascinated him, whispered to the maleness in him, sang a silent siren song of movement and scent and urgency.
“This doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“You’re wrong. At the moment it makes all the sense in the world.”
“You? Me? No.” His brain kept jabbering and screeching, a discordancy of mind and logic against the need for touch and taste. “This is stupid.” He braced himself on his forearms, his hands framing her face and made himself look at her, forced himself to breathe the cool air and not her scent, made himself look at the woman who’d caused George’s death.
Dark streaks against white sand and green pine, her hair fanned out from her round face. She looked back at him, knowledge and sadness and sympathy blurring the blue-gray of her eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that, Sophie.”
“How am I looking at you, Judah?” Quiet as sunlight moving across a wood floor, her voice feathered over him.
“I’m only—”
“Don’t,” he said again.
“Don’t what, Judah?”
“Just…don’t.”
“Ah, Judah.” There was something like regret in that barely heard exhalation, something too much like pity.
From the corner of his eye, he saw her palm lift toward him. Before she could touch him, he fanned his hand across her face, stroked the skin at the corner of her eyes and drew her eyelids closed.
He hated her for the way she made him feel. Hated her for the sympathy in her eyes. Hated her most of all for the understanding glimmering there, an understanding so close to pity he couldn’t bear it. She had no right to see straight down to whatever passed for a soul in the darkness of his heart.
And yet he wanted her. Wanted her. Hated her. And despised himself. A sickness of body and mind he didn’t want to escape.
In that moment when the wind ceased, when all he heard was the pounding of his blood in his head, he learned a truth.
Despite logic, despite loyalty, despite everything, he was going to have Sophie Brennan.
He didn’t want to think about how he was going to live with that choice. Not with her soft and yielding beneath him.
With a quick, fierce movement, he pulled open the fastener of her pants. Her hands were right there on top of his, urging the skintight material down. Caught in the immediacy, he gritted his teeth and struggled with his jeans. Their hands bumped, tangled. She pushed his bumbling fingers aside. He pushed right back, hands and fingers melding in a dance of their own.
“Wait.” She lifted her pelvis and shoved the fabric past her belly.
“No.” Cool, damp, that skin suddenly under his palm. He dipped his mouth to her navel and blew softly against her.
Her belly fluttered beneath his mouth. “Ah,” she said, a tight, sharp sound of surprise.
He flattened his hand against her and pressed, his fingers stroking, testing her inner heat. “Here?”
“Oh, yes. There is good. There is perfect. There…ah.” One of her hands tightened in his hair, the other slid between them, seeking him as he continued pressing and stroking.
“Oh, yes,” and she surged upward, riding the rhythm of his touch as she’d melded with the storm waves. Urgency swamped finesse and he was clumsy, pushing and probing, the blind eye of need driving him into her. Awkward in his haste, no grace in the hurrying, no skill in his movements.
A sixteen-year-old would have had more control.
But she was in the moment with him, just as urgent, just as needy. The impatient sounds of her breathing merged with his, spoke to him in the silence.
He felt the wet denim of his jeans snick open, felt her warm hand, exploring, moving against his belly. Not shy, not delicate, her hands were those of a woman used to touching and examining, accustomed to the feel of the human body. Knowing. Confident. Incredibly seductive, that confidence. Behind his eyes a red haze burned. Then she freed him into the small curl of her hand and he bucked, thrust against her.
Need. Ugly.
Hunger roared through him, primal, finally blanking the monkey chatter in his brain. “Now,” he ground out through teeth clenched against the pleasure racing through him. “Now.”
He lifted her hips higher, positioned her, but she was ahead of him, already moving into him, her body welcoming and warm.
“Don’t—” She shifted, her body opening and taking him deeper, toward the limits of his shaky control.
“You want me to stop?” The muscles in his arms trembled. But he stopped. He would have sworn he couldn’t have. But he did. Head lowered, teeth clenched against a suddenly dry mouth, his whole body shuddering, he said again, “Stop? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No. Not that. Heaven help me, not that.” Her laugh was rueful, a coil of tension deep inside her that vibrated unbearably through him. Rising upward, she framed his face with her hands. “Don’t stop. That’s what I was trying to say.” Her head dipped into his shoulder, and she felt her breath against his skin as she murmured, “Don’t be careful with me. I don’t want politeness.”
“Believe me, manners are the last thing on my mind.” His thighs quivered with the effort needed to stay unmoving.
“What…do you want?” He heard himself and was stunned. He couldn’t say her name. Drowning in her, he couldn’t say her name. Didn’t want to. “Tell me.”
“The storm wave. Wildness. The deep blue sea. Can you give me that? I need—” She nipped at his skin, the scrape of her teeth a tiny command that slammed him over the edge.
Nothing but sensation in this moment, nothing but the blessed relief of skin against skin, touch and taste. Her body milking his, his palms sliding over the hot skin of her thigh, his touch sending shudders through her, through him.
Sex.
Simple. Something clear in his life for a change. Sex.
He surrendered to it, to her, letting the reins of control whip through his hands, letting himself sink into the whirlpool of sensation that was this woman.
And he didn’t care in that moment of release as his body pumped into hers in pure sensation, didn’t give a damn as he collapsed against her, that he couldn’t look in her eyes.
That he wouldn’t let himself say her name.
His cheek resting on the damp hair at her temple, he breathed in the light scent of her sweat, the salty air of the Gulf.
Overhead he sensed the movement of clouds, heard the angry squawk of seagulls.
For the first time in months, everything in his body and brain had stopped. He felt like a shell shimmering on the sand, abandoned by the tide.
Empty, washed clean.
And he wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, to slide into that darkness and stay there, unmoving.
The wind came off the Gulf and raised goose bumps everywhere Judah wasn’t. Sophie shivered, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t. She needed a minute to think. She couldn’t believe what she’d done. She’d just taken, dived headlong into the moment with no thought of consequences. She’d come off the waves with her anger and confusion not eased by the wild surf, and there was Judah. Frowning, hostile, but he was there, draped in seaweed and sending off waves of energy that bounced against her own unsettled emotions, his energy smashing against her own. Wind against current, the ninth wave of surfing, the big wave, the one surfers waited for.
Unthinking, not caring why he’d shown up, not wanting to think about the reasons for his anger, she’d simply reached out and clambered aboard the wave of their energy, ridden it to the end. It had been worth it, too, every second of that intensity.
Stupid?
Sure. Of course it was. No protection. All the questions about their relationship. The torturous mix of emotions. And in the aftermath, this loneliness and emptiness. But for those few minutes… She turned her head slightly and stared at the sand. Did she regret what she’d done?
Yes. No. Maybe.
She groaned.
At the sound, Judah shifted against her, moved away. Minus the blanket of his body, she was cold. Her teeth clicked together. Wrapping her arms around herself, she sat up. Her scalp itched with sand and dried salt. At least there weren’t any mirrors close at hand. Fine. She’d made her bed. She’d lie in it. So to speak. She pulled her top closed.
Beside her, she glimpsed Judah’s movements as he struggled to ease himself back into salt-stiffened jeans.
“So.” She stood up, caught the quick, sideways glance he threw her way. He was embarrassed. And now she was, too. Hideously embarrassed. And defensive. What had she done? And why?
Well, she could answer that question. She shoved her hair out of her face and took a deep breath. Could the aftermath of her craziness get any more humiliating?
“You must be wondering—” He cleared his throat.
“What must I be wondering, Judah? Tell me?”
“Why I’m here. What’s up.”
“I think that question’s been pretty well answered.”
He frowned, looked away. Then, taking a deep breath, he continued doggedly. “Why I’m here. You know what I mean.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/lindsay-longford/dead-calm/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Lindsay Longford
Detective Judah Finnegan didn't believe in happy endings - too many years fighting crime had left him cynical. But when the discovery of an abandoned baby brought him back into the arms of his lost love, he realized he would have to find a new way of looking at the world or risk losing the woman of his dreams. Dr. Sophie Brennan had always been able to see through Judah's bitterness into the loner's heart, but she could never convince him that he was worthy of love.As they worked to save the baby, they tried to stay out of each other's arms, but their old passion was too powerful to resist. Could their love survive a second chance?
Judah could short out all her circuits. Turn her into a gibbering mass of wanting.
Sophie had learned that. And she loved every minute of scorching to a crisp.
But not now.
The tip of his finger brushed the edge of her shirt.
“Why are you always touching me, Judah?”
He smiled. “I like touching you, Sophie. That’s why. Just…because.” His gaze held hers.
She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t, not faced with the sadness in his eyes. She didn’t have it in her to move away at the moment from the lost, damned look in Judah Finnegan’s eyes. It was that glimpse into the dark corners of his soul that got her. Every blasted time.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to another fabulous month of the most exciting romance reading around. And what better way to begin than with a new TALL, DARK & DANGEROUS novel from New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann? Night Watch has it all: an irresistible U.S. Navy SEAL hero, intrigue and danger, and—of course—passionate romance. Grab this one fast, because it’s going to fly off the shelves.
Don’t stop at just one, however. Not when you’ve got choices like Fathers and Other Strangers, reader favorite Karen Templeton’s newest of THE MEN OF MAYES COUNTY. Or how about Dead Calm, the long-awaited new novel from multiple-award-winner Lindsay Longford? Not enough good news for you? Then check out new star Brenda Harlen’s Some Kind of Hero, or Night Talk, from the always-popular Rebecca Daniels. Finally, try Trust No One, the debut novel from our newest find, Barbara Phinney.
And, of course, we’ll be back next month with more pulse-pounding romances, so be sure to join us then. Meanwhile…enjoy!
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Editor
Dead Calm
Lindsay Longford
LINDSAY LONGFORD,
like most writers, is a reader. She even reads toothpaste labels in desperation! A former high school English teacher with an M.A. in literature, she began writing romances because she wanted to create stories that touched readers’ emotions by transporting them to a world where good things happen to good people and happily-ever-after is possible with a little work.
Her first book, Jake’s Child, was nominated for Best New Series Author, Best Silhouette Romance and received a Special Achievement Award for Best First Series Book from Romantic Times magazine. It was also a finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA
Award for Best First Book. Her Silhouette Romance Annie and the Wise Men won the RITA
for best Traditional Romance of 1993.
Sometimes life throws you totally off balance. If you’re lucky, you find angels along the way. I did. My very own funky, funny, fantastic angels, Cathie Linz, Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Suzette Vandewiele, kept me flying through the storms. They saved me with their laughter, their support and their concern. How did I ever get so lucky?
I want to thank some special people at Silhouette, too: Karen Taylor Richman, Leslie Wainger and Tara Gavin. I don’t know why you didn’t throw me overboard. But I am blessed by knowing you.
Without all of you, the baby would have remained abandoned in the manger.
To My Readers
This is a book about hate, love and redemption. We live in a world that has too much of the first and too little of the second. But I still believe in the possibility of redemption, and so, with hope and faith, I write of love triumphing over hate. It’s my small attempt to shine a light into the darkness of fear.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
So many people were generous with their time and their knowledge on this book. As usual, I dived headfirst into subjects of which I was ignorant. These generous people helped me along the way. I am indebted to them. From the Greatest Class Ever of Manatee High School, Bradenton, Florida: Bruce Malcolm, CEO, Trilithic; Jeannette Floyd, funny lady extraordinaire, and Kerstin Knos, for help on Florida adoptions; Kaye Sneary Wood, for her research on Vietnamese customs; and Jim Vandelly, whom I will always remember for his performance in You Can’t Take It with You. Others who gave incredible help were Xuyen Ich Hinh, for his extensive help with Vietnam questions and language; Beth Schemenauer, aka Big Beth, the surfing queen; Bill Ritis, ever ready with anecdotes of a Russian childhood; Jacalyn Schauer, for her constant attempts to keep me supplied with pens and make sure I wasn’t by myself on holidays; and her cousin, Dr. William Gossman, Asst. Professor of Emergency Medicine at Chicago Medical School; Margaret Watson for the “felony flirting” line; and Josh Polak. The helped me take an idea and give it reality. All errors are, alas, mine.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 1
The biggest shopping day of the year was a killer, all right.
Sophie sidestepped a trail of plastic syringe tips.
Torn plastic wraps from hastily opened four-by-four gauze pads drifted in her wake. One step away from a full trot, she jammed her hands into the pockets of her medical jacket and grimaced at a blood trail dotting the black-and-white tiled floor. Third time that night.
Overstuffed with turkey both fowl and Wild, two good ol’ boys had duked it out in the Emergency Room hall earlier. Then they’d thrown up on her socks. “Damned shame waste of good likker,” one had said morosely. Boozily consoling each other, they’d left in the firm grip of one of Poinciana, Florida’s knights in blue.
Following the blood trail, Sophie automatically checked out the ER. All five treatment rooms were filled, the waiting room out front was packed to the corners with sniffling, bleeding people, and they all wanted her attention.
Now.
Five minutes ago.
Behind her, a bucket clanked against the floor and water slopped against her, trickled inside her lace-trimmed green socks. She swore under her breath and stopped, the bells on her shoelaces jingling.
“Sorry, Doc. Damned thing slipped.” Billy Ray Watley’s stringy ponytail swung with his quick grab for the cart. A yellow Caution—Wet Floor sign smacked against the wall. On the other side, the sign warned, Cuidado—Piso Mijado. He shot her a worried grin.
“No problem, Billy Ray. Don’t sweat it.”
“Your Christmas socks are ruined.” He jiggled the cart, his ponytail a pendulum to his jitters.
“Not really.” Even with soapy water squishing between her toes, she smiled. An effort after fourteen hours on duty, but Billy Ray was one of their own.
She reached down and plucked at one soggy sock. The bells clinked flatly. At six this morning, filled with energy and cold pumpkin pie, she’d pulled on orange socks. With turkeys prancing around the cuffs.
By four in the afternoon, the turkeys had yielded to plain white. She’d meant to save the jingles until midnight. No sense rushing the season, but she’d run out of her white socks. It was going to be a five-sock-change day before she could get out of here, thanks to Billy Ray, the barfing good ol’ boys and the teenager from the motorcycle accident.
Dumb kid. No helmet. No sense. She straightened and felt the pop and crackle of every vertebra in her back.
Billy Ray dunked his mop into the cleaning solution, wrung it dry. “I’m cleaning this mess up, Doc, I am. Don’t worry.”
She gentled her voice and tapped his arm. “You’ll handle it.”
“Yep. Getting it done. Billy Ray’ll stay on top of it.” The slap-slap of his mop erased the spill of water, the spots of blood. “Busy night.” He nodded toward the examining rooms, scratched his nose. “Busier than last night. I like busy nights.”
“It’ll get busier before morning.”
“I liked that pumpkin pie you brung us, too. Real good pie. Whole lot better than cafeteria pie.” He dipped his head, peering at her from beneath his hair.
“Glad you enjoyed it.” She shook her head and, bells jingling, headed toward the last examining area of the observation room.
Like the scrape of fingernails across a chalkboard, a shriek ripped from one of the treatment rooms down the hall and halted her in her tracks. The eerie keening lifted the hairs on the back of her neck. She grimaced. “That the gunshot?”
“Nah.” Billy Ray shifted uneasily, lanky arms and legs in constant motion. “The woman. You know.”
“Right.”
Shattered and broken beyond recognition, the woman had been found earlier in the evening by the Poinciana cops.
Sophie had stitched and bandaged. She’d listened to whimpers in a language she didn’t understand.
She understood pain, though. No translator was needed for that language.
Billy Ray sent her a quick glance, then concentrated on his mop. “Real bad, huh?”
“It is.” Sophie heard the melancholy jangle of her bells as she shifted, half turning away from Billy Ray to check out the treatment room.
She’d put casts on the woman’s frail, small arms. Taped ribs. Sutured the long gash that cut whitely through hair matted with blood and sweat. Under different circumstances, Sophie imagined that the woman’s hair would have been a swath of glossy black, a source of pride. Maybe she’d been pretty, this small Asian woman who kept calling for something that Sophie couldn’t provide.
The woman sure as hell hadn’t deserved this.
Nobody did.
Now, still unconscious but moaning and calling out, the woman waited for an empty hospital bed upstairs. Sophie had done what she could. Nothing more she could do now.
From the first, the plaintive wails in an unknown language had pierced Sophie. Horrible to be unable to ease the pain. Worse to be powerless to answer the woman’s anguished cries.
Sophie balled her hands into fists inside her pockets. Not in her hands any more. In someone else’s.
Maybe the start of the holiday season would be a good omen for the woman. Maybe she’d get a miracle.
Probably not.
Over the doors to the waiting room behind Billy Ray, Christmas lights mingled with leftover paper pumpkins.
Peace on earth, goodwill toward men? Right. Well, she could damned sure use a little goodwill toward women.
“I hope she’s gonna be okay. She gonna be okay?” Not meeting Sophie’s eyes, Billy Ray continued to work the strings of his two-foot-wide mop back and forth.
“It’s anybody’s guess, Billy Ray. We’ll find out. Who’s checking on her?”
“Ms. Cammie.”
“That’s good.” Sophie sighed and risked a glance back at the entrance to the emergency room, to the doors that led away from here, away from this mingled tragedy and comedy.
Outside the glass panels, red and green bulbs glittered along the swaying fronds of palm trees, reflected in the dark puddles underneath. Then the doors slid open and sweet-scented night air floated to her with a promise of escape, of air free of disinfectant and alcohol and despair.
That air teased her with the hope of fleeing this place where laughter was coming harder and harder these days, and when it did, it had an edge of desperation that crept insidiously into her spirit, stealing energy and joy with it. Silly socks weren’t much of a Band-Aid.
The curtain at the far end of the hall billowed, flattened.
Jerked back into the moment, Sophie shrugged and strode off, her muscles tight across her shoulders, the cuffs of her wet socks clammy against her ankles. “Gotta go.”
Another wail shivered through the hall.
Billy Ray plopped his mop on the cart and scurried down the hall. His raspy voice trailed behind him. “I’m keeping an eye on things.”
The desperate keening of the beating victim still ringing in her ears, Sophie shoved open the far curtain and glared at the newest patient.
In front of her, Santa sagged on the examining-room table. Blood dripped from his shoulder onto his seen-better-days polyester fur trim. His belly drooped over a cracked plastic black belt, and he clutched his fine acrylic beard with a lean, callused hand. A nurse had already cut him out of part of his suit, and a saline drip snaked down over his smooth tanned shoulder.
For a second Sophie paused, puzzled by a faint sense of familiarity. Something about the tilt of Santa’s head.
The reek of liquor filled the room.
He snugged the beard closer to his face, his long fingers disappearing into the crisp curls. Chilly blue eyes met hers impatiently. Warily.
Santa with an edge.
Not dying.
Just drunk and damaged.
Sophie shook her head and picked up the chart. Three wise men with frankincense, gold and myrrh would come waltzing through the door next. And they’d probably be two-stepping with the Easter bunny.
“Hey there, Mr. C. Rushing the season a little, aren’t you?” She flipped open Santa’s chart and scanned the nurse’s notes.
“Look, sugar, I don’t have all night.”
Sophie snapped the examining-room curtain shut. The rings rattled and skittered along the dividing rod. “Incidentally, that’s Dr. Sugar to you, Claus.”
Santa tugged at his beard, adjusting it around his face. Shifted one black-booted foot irritably. “I’ve got things to do, places to be.”
“Of course you do. And all before midnight, I’ll bet.” She smiled sweetly, acid etching her words. No sidewalk Santa reeking of gin was going to give her grief. Not tonight.
“Nah,” he grunted as she brushed by him and reached for the blood-pressure cuff. “No midnight curfew until the end of the month. Just working the elves overtime tonight.”
“Working’s what they call it these days, huh?” She pumped up the blood-pressure cuff and watched the numbers. One-thirty over eighty. He was in better shape than he looked.
From behind the beard and the cloud of white hair, his unfriendly eyes met hers.
Eyes that were almost sober. Their hostility caught her off guard.
Once more that sense of the familiar teased her brain.
Snapping on gloves, she inspected the jagged red line that began at the edge of his neck and disappeared under the ratty faux velvet of his suit. “Knife?”
Santa nodded, grunted a second time as he shifted uncomfortably on the table.
She touched the wound. A long, shallow cut. “Nasty bunch of elves you hang with, Claus.”
“Yeah, they can get testy. Like a lot of people.” His gaze held hers, and some emotion she couldn’t name stirred in the pissed-off blue depths.
With a flick of her hand, she stuck a digital thermometer in his mouth.
As her hand fell away, his gaze still held hers, and he tightened his mouth around the thermometer. It rose slowly, toward the ceiling.
A snotty challenge in the tilt of that whisker-hidden chin.
And that fast, triggered by his take-no-prisoners arrogance, by the heavy smell of alcohol on him, by too many cases gone wrong today, her exhaustion slid over into irritation.
She wanted to smack him.
Zipping down her veins like a skater on speed, her pulse skittered and jumped. This two-bit Santa with an attitude was getting under her skin, pushing buttons, making her jumpy. Damn him. This was her turf.
“Okay, Claus, let’s get the rest of your vitals.” Sophie picked up his wrist, counted his wrist and peripheral pulses, did her ABCs. Airway, breathing, circulation. Looking him over, assessing him, she focused on her job instead of the lick of anger that crisped along her skin whenever his eyes caught hers.
His heart beat steadily under her fingers, his skin hot to her touch even through her gloves. On his index finger the oximeter glowed cheerily. His fingernails were pinked up, not cyanotic blue.
An image of the Asian woman’s bruised face flashed through her mind, and she wanted to tell this Santa off the street that he was wasting her time, that she had really sick people needing her out there in the waiting room. She wanted to tell him to go home, stick a bandage on his wound, and sleep it off.
The strength of her reaction startled her.
She inhaled deeply and moved to his back, lifted his jacket. “Easy, will you? I’d like to salvage this damned outfit, if you don’t have any objections?” he snarled around the thermometer.
She managed not to grind her teeth. “Certainly. Whatever you say. I’ll give it my best shot.”
Slotting the thermometer to the side of his mouth, he sent her a quick look. “Best shot? You working the comedy clubs in between stitch jobs?”
“Be still. Please.” She eased the jacket away from his ribs where blood had caked it to his skin. This rag-tag Santa shouldn’t have been allowed away from whatever place passed for his North Pole. The tatty fabric brushed against her arm, and once again the smell of liquor rose pungently, gagging her.
Eau d’ER, they called it. Poinciana County Hospital’s Friday-night, any-night cologne.
“Don’t want to lecture you—” she began.
“But you’re going to anyway, aren’t you?”
Her teeth clicked audibly as she shut her mouth.
She was seriously tempted to slap the cold stethoscope up against his broad back. But, earning her pay, she warmed the disk and ordered, “Breathe in, Claus. Hold it.” Checking for temperature and dehydration, she pressed her finger to his skin. Oddly, the sleek skin and ridged muscles of his back didn’t fit his air of dissipation. Her eyes narrowing, she tapped his back with her hand, checking his lungs, moving around him to check the bronchial breath sounds under his armpits, around to his chest. “Exhale.”
And her busy brain went on autopilot, thinking, observing.
His chest moved easily with his long sigh. With the thermometer still in his mouth, he was finally, blessedly, silent as she quickly finished the basics.
Tapping his belly, she listened for fluid accumulation, not expecting to find any, but still checking. His stomach was flat, the muscles taut and elegantly shaped. The trace of a scar curled around one rib.
Caught by surprise, she hesitated as she stared at his lean, sharply defined abs. Santa’s smooth, hard belly was a six-pack, a world away from what he’d been drinking. The tiny hip-hop of her pulse embarrassed her. A sudden flush of heat in her face kept her silent, her face turned away from him.
Damn. She was a well-trained, thirty-four-year-old physician, not some fifteen-year-old star-struck by the school jock. All speechless and hormonal.
Swallowing, she cleared her throat. “Looks like you’ll live. Pulse rate’s good. Blood pressure’s terrific. The stitches will leave a scar, but not too bad. However,” she paused and jotted a note on his chart before continuing, “you might want to find a better way of spending your evenings, Claus.”
One fuzzy white eyebrow winged upward. “Figured you couldn’t resist the lecture.” The thermometer wobbled with his mumbled words.
She tapped her pen on the chart. “I have to call in a police report. But I’m sure you know that.”
Annoyance steamed off him.
“Too bad, Claus, but them’s the rules. You pays your money and you takes your choices.” She tried, she really tried not to relish his annoyance. A chat with Poinciana’s cops would do him good.
She snapped the thermometer out of his mouth and chucked the cover away.
“Sure you had time to get a good temp reading?” His scowl would have terrified small children and rabid dogs.
“What?” She scowled right back at him.
The fabric of his pants shushed along the examining table as he turned toward her, white beard twisting over his good shoulder. “God knows I don’t want to rush you.”
“Oh, I took all the time I needed.” She slammed a lid on the gremlins of temper wriggling free.
“Yeah, I noticed. Weren’t in any hurry, were you?”
“Of course not.” Under the beat of temper, her voice stayed cool, a tiny edge of malice icing it. “We pride ourselves here in the ER on our excellent, painstaking care. You’ll live to slide down another chimney, big guy.”
She took out the basin and grabbed towels and gauze pads to clean the area around his neck. Cammie, the best ER nurse around, had already laid out the Neosporin and irrigation syringes.
“I’m going to clean out the wound before I stitch it. This will take a few minutes.”
“Hell.”
His beard fluttered with his breath, the strands wisping against her cheek as she leaned toward him. Inside her damp sneakers her toes curled, another tiny, unnerving response.
She took a step back. “Gee, hate to inconvenience you. You think you can spare us that much time?”
“Just get on with it, will you?” Not a question. An order.
“My pleasure.” She pinched her lips. “Gotta tell you, Santa, you really need to work on your people skills.”
“You think?”
“Unless you’re a whole lot different around happy little children, yeah, that’s what I think. You’re mighty short on charm, Claus. Didn’t anybody spell out the job requirements?”
“I do just fine, thank you, Doc.”
“Not in denial at all, are you? Got a real clear picture of yourself, do you?”
His mouth twisted in the thicket of acrylic beard.
She grabbed the 60cc high-pressure syringe and the bottle of sterile water from the Mayo stand beside the examining table. Holding the towel under his shoulder, she began irrigating the wound, tidying up and moving the 4x4 sterile gauzes quickly over the area.
The tight muscle along the top of his shoulder twitched once and then was still.
“So what happened, Santa? On your way to a party, had too much to drink and you took a walk on the wild side?”
“Anybody ever tell you you talk too much?”
“Doing my job, Santa, that’s all.” She flung the stained gauze into the container and bent closer to his shoulder, angling the high-intensity lamp directly onto his neck.
Under the stink of liquor, his skin smelled clean, confusing her. He smelled way too good for her peace of mind. Too clean and fresh for a sloppy drunk. Sophie touched the edges of the wound, checking the depth. “Your drinking buddies roll you?”
“I was careless.”
Probing gently now, she cleaned the last of the blood away. “Stupid, more likely.”
“Yeah. Probably that, too.” His hard-edged eyes flashed her way. “But mostly careless.”
“Too bad. Carelessness causes a lot of trouble.”
“I’ll make sure I write that down so that I don’t forget. Next time.”
She looked up at him. “Hey, Claus, do the ER a favor and make sure there isn’t a next time? Save us all a lot of time?”
Even masked by the scruff of beard, his mouth was tight with resentment.
But his eyes followed her every movement. “Filled with sympathy and compassion, aren’t you?”
“For those who need it? You betcha.” She glared back at him for a long second before returning to her work. The sharp edge of contempt in his eyes bothered her, but she wasn’t sure why. What she did know was that he was ticking her off. And once more that disturbing sense that she was missing something here peeked out of the shadows. “You want to know if I have compassion, buster? Sympathy? Up to here.” Head down, she motioned to her chin. “But you? You’re a waste of my time, you and all the other bozos who make messes because you’re careless or just looking for a good time. I have to do the clean-up after you’ve had your fun. And sometimes, Claus,” she poked him in the chest, “sometimes I get damned tired of deliberate self-destruction. I don’t have the patience for it. There are people out there,” she gestured vaguely toward the world beyond the curtain, “people with real problems, problems they haven’t caused, and you’ve just created a paper-producing, time-consuming mess that I’m not in the mood to deal with.” She slapped the irrigation needle and bottle down on the tray. “Not tonight.”
“Long speech. It’s a wonder you didn’t pop a gasket holding all those words in this long.”
“No speech. Telling it like it is.” Finished with the irrigation, she yanked the edge of the beard around his jaw. “Beard’s got to go, Claus. I can’t stitch the wound with this mess dangling in the way.”
He turned. His face was suddenly too close, his warm, coffee-scented breath mingling with hers, the strands of his beard tangling with her hair. He reached up, those long fingers separating the commingled strands, and his palm brushed against her cheek, lightly, accidentally.
Then, as if he weren’t aware of his movement, as if his fingers moved with an unwanted will of their own, he tucked her hair behind her ear, a curiously personal touch that rippled all the way down her body to her toes, curling them in her damp green socks.
She blinked.
He frowned, dropped his hand.
Sophie spun to her feet. The stool wobbled and rolled away, careened into the wall. Like a crazed horse, her blood leapt and bolted through her veins.
Behind her, Santa cleared his throat.
Snapping open the supply cabinet, she pulled out cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol. As if it had a memory of its own, her ear still tingled where he’d touched. She stared blindly at the objects in her hands.
Coffee-fragrant? No smell of liquor on his breath? Alcohol stink only on his clothes?
She glanced back over her shoulder. His eyes were tired, bloodshot. Drifting shut, but focused.
That didn’t fit either.
Caught up in her irritation, she’d missed that sharpness.
And there was that damned, niggling sense that she should know him.
Not wanting to look at him, not wanting to be stranded in the unsettling ocean of his gaze, she pivoted and began pulling at the sticky edges of his beard, lifting it from his neck. She rubbed the alcohol-dampened swabs along his jawline, working swiftly, loosening the glued-on beard until it fell free.
And all the while her hands skimmed along his jaw and chin, she thought about the contradictions and that warm, intimate scent of him.
Tossing the blood-soaked mass of beard and swabs into the waste container, she turned and saw his face, fully, for the first time.
“Nice bedside manner, Dr. Brennan.” Santa was motionless.
“Oh, hell.”
His face was one of those southern Florida faces she’d come to recognize, long, all bones and angles. His blue eyes watched her carefully now, eyes she really, really should have recognized staring at her from a face that had given her sleepless nights for months.
“Swell to see you haven’t lost your gentle touch,” he said.
Not a drunken bum after all.
“Why didn’t you say something as soon as I walked in?” Her throat was tight, squeezing shut.
“My name’s on the chart. You should have seen it. I wondered if you knew who I was.”
“I didn’t look at the name. Detective Finnegan.” A sigh, the name slipped out as she stared at him.
“Yeah. Me. In the flesh. Alive and well. Disappointed, Sophie?” A flame that burned cold, challenge flickered in his chilly eyes.
After that first appalled glance, she couldn’t look at him. Still, she was proud of herself. Her hand didn’t tremble. She hadn’t flinched. But Finnegan would have heard a thousand things in the sound of his name. Even during their short time together a year ago, his ability to analyze every little bit of body language and nuance of voice had astonished her. Even then, even under the awful circumstances that came later.
On that disastrous Christmas Eve that changed everything between them.
Oh, yes, even then Detective Finnegan had been good at reading between the lines.
Both hands bracing him on the table, he leaned closer, so close that it was all she could do not to lean back as he murmured, “I didn’t know you were on duty, Doctor.”
She wouldn’t move an inch. Not for Finnegan, she wouldn’t. Not for anything he threw her way. “Why? You would have gone to a different hospital?”
“Hell, yeah. I don’t care if this is the only hospital in the county. If I’d known you were working ER tonight, I would have driven myself one-handed down to Sarasota instead of coming here. But here I am. And here you are. Fate’s a bitch sometimes, isn’t she?” His thin mouth tightened. “So, Dr. Brennan’s on duty the day after Thanksgiving.”
“Where else would I be?” She made the mistake of looking up.
“At Home Depot? Picking out a tree?” The tubing lifted with his shrug. “And if I’d had the least bit of luck tonight, another town? Another state?”
With jerky movements, she lifted the suture tray from the counter and placed it near the stretcher. Damn Judah Finnegan. Taking a deep, steadying breath she faced him, her smile as false as the tatty fur on his Santa suit. “I’m needed here.” In spite of herself, that year-old pain spilled out. “Besides, you look as though you’ve done enough celebrating tonight for both of us.”
“Appearances to the contrary, I don’t do trees, Christmas, or jolly.” Aggression radiated from every line of his long torso. “I’m not really a holiday kind of guy.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t be. Not under the circumstances.” She tightened her mouth and stared down at the suddenly foreign needles and antiseptic, a fine tremble now vibrating from her to the plastic tray.
“No, not under the circumstances.”
“But time passes. Things change. People change. Life goes on.”
“Not for all of us.” Gripping her chin with one hand, he forced her to look at him. Too thin with all those severe angles and hollows, his face was still compelling in its strength, a strength even she had to acknowledge. “And how tacky of me to bring up Christmas, huh, Sophie?” His fingers were cold against her flushed skin. “But I had to know. I would have bet a thousand dollars you’d forgotten. After all, hey, it’s been a year.”
“Really? You think you know me that well, Finnegan? How nervy can you get?” She jerked her head free.
“Pretty damn nervy when the occasion calls for it,” he said, tapping her with controlled ferocity on the chin. “But hell, yeah, sugar. You bet I’ve got your number. I think you put that episode with my partner out of your mind the minute you left the hospital last Christmas Eve. I wouldn’t have expected anything else, not from you. Not after the run-ins you and George had already had. You had it in for him from the get-go—”
“Never—”
“Sure you did. You and George were oil and water. Yeah, he was loud and crude. A jerk sometimes. But that night, hell. That night the patient was more than just another drunk who’d screwed up on Christmas Eve.” He leaned forward until his face was all she could see. “That night you couldn’t wait to run the blood test. Because it was George. Because he bugged you. Because he was mouthy and vulgar. You prissed up like a prune every time he came within five feet of you. It was George. It was personal.”
“No!”
“Shoot, sugar, your little butt was just quivering with righteousness. I thought you were going to cheer when the test proved Roberts was DUI.”
“He wrecked his cop car. He hit a light pole with the squad car, for God’s sake. He was lucky—” She stopped, appalled, wishing she could take the words back.
“You think he was lucky?” Finnegan smiled, a smile as bitter as any she’d ever seen. “Yeah, Roberts was lucky that the suits would probably let him ride the desk for the last three months before his retirement. Sure, he was going to be disgraced, demoted. His pension cut. Hell, you’re right. He was lucky.” He paused, and then, as smoothly as a surgeon’s scalpel, he added, “Personally, I never could figure out what the big deal was. Sure didn’t seem to me like he had any reason to go home that night and eat his gun.”
Instruments clattered on the tray she held.
“Or didn’t you know what happened to Sgt. George Roberts?”
“I read about his suicide in the Herald the next day.”
“And what did you think, when you read that bit of news? Anything? Feel bad about how you’d handled things? Wished you’d done anything different?”
“What I felt or didn’t feel isn’t any of your business. I did what had to be done.”
“Did you?” Soft, soft the accusation.
“You bet I did.” She’d walk across glass before she’d let him inside her soul to know how she felt about that night. Any doubts or second thoughts were hers and hers alone.
“Now get out of the rest of your suit, Detective. I can’t stitch you up like this.”
“Oh? I thought you could do anything. I thought you knew everything. You sure seemed damned certain you knew best last year. No doubts. No hesitation. Just a ‘gotcha’ for George.”
In the face of his bitterness, Sophie fell like a drowning woman on the raft of professional competence. She motioned to the green suture kit. “I’m going to numb the area before I sew you up.”
“Why bother?” With his free hand, he jerked apart the Velcro tabs along the front of his Santa suit. “Just more needle sticks.” Shark-like, his teeth flashed as he shrugged off the padded belly and jacket, letting them fall in a blood-red pile on the floor. “Besides, you might enjoy it too much.”
“I might.” She saw the rest of the old scar that curved down over his ribs and flat stomach to the tight semi-circle of his navel. “But I’m the doctor and you’re the patient. Guess you’ll have to trust me, won’t you?” She smiled in return, a smile as controlled and taunting as his had been. But her stomach twisted in knots.
“Trust you, Sophie? Lord, that prospect makes me shake in my boots. But stitch away. If you can stand it, I can.” He winced as she dabbed cold antiseptic along the line of the wound. “But hurry up. I have to get back to a stakeout.”
“Right,” she said, her grim face reflected back to her from the shine of the table. “Right. Whatever you want, Detective.”
She bent forward, and as she did, he whispered into the curve of her ear, his warm breath sliding around the rim and curling deep inside her. “In case you were wondering, Dr. Sugar, I’ve already filled out the police report. This was a job-related injury.” Contempt lifted the corners of his mouth. “You don’t have to worry that I’m getting away with anything.”
For a moment she paused. There were things she could say, should say. She wouldn’t. He was her patient. She’d give him the same care she gave everyone. The same care she’d given his partner last Christmas Eve. She could do that. And then he’d be gone.
She stitched. Silently. She didn’t trust her unruly tongue.
And the entire time she felt the burn of his eyes on the back of her neck as she bent to her task. Doggedly she moved the curved needle through his skin and wondered why in the name of all things good, Judah Finnegan had landed in her ER tonight.
She dressed the wound. Silently.
But even as her brain registered the animosity that rose like shimmers of heat from him, she was aware, too, at a tactile level, of his sleek skin and the supple muscles beneath it. Aware of the heavy stillness between them, a stillness and silence that would take only a movement, a word to turn into something…reckless.
She smoothed down the last piece of tape and took a deep breath. Almost home free.
As if she’d spoken aloud, Finnegan moved suddenly, his thigh brushing her hip.
She stepped back, a shade too quickly, but he remained seated.
“Done.” She handed him the list of instructions. “I need to go over these with you. One of the nurses will explain—”
The curtain flew open behind Sophie. She turned, relieved. “Oh, good, here’s—”
“Dr. Brennan!” Cammie stood there, the chubby shine of her face flattened with tension.
Just over Cammie’s shoulder Sophie glimpsed Billy Ray’s ponytail swinging against the back of his shirt as he hovered in the hall.
“Room 4. Code Blue.”
The beating victim.
There would be no miracles tonight.
Sophie dropped the instructions on the examining table, shoved her pen into her pocket, and pointed a finger at Finnegan. “You. Sit. Stay!” Her coat billowed around her as she ran to catch up with Cammie, who’d already disappeared.
The muttered “woof” behind her didn’t even slow her steps.
Finnegan eased off the table. He watched her race down the hall, her shoes jingling.
Sophie’s curly hair bounced wildly against her white medical jacket. Dark brown with the glow of fire. Not red exactly but not brown either. There was a word for it. Russet. Yeah. That was it. The gray material of her skirt bunched and pulled against the length of her thighs as she darted between oncoming techs, hands out, warning them out of her way.
Long, smooth-muscled thighs.
His fingers curled around the curtain. When she’d leaned in close to him, she’d smelled of cinnamon and pumpkin.
And antiseptic.
In a full-out run behind her, a tech followed with a crash cart.
Electricity buzzed along his skin. Whatever was happening was bad. He understood that sudden crackle in the air—like ozone before a storm. He’d smelled it on stakeouts gone sour.
It was always bad.
He watched as Sophie and her colleagues entered a room at the end of the hall and shut the door. For a second everything down the long corridor slowed down, became too quiet, one of those moments between a breath, a moment between life and death. Irrevocable what the next tick of the clock would bring.
He knew that too.
And then, as if everyone had inhaled, exhaled, movement and noise resumed. Only an occasional furtive glance at the closed door revealed the enormity of the moment.
Finnegan glanced at the examining table in back of him. Nothing there that he needed. Nothing more he needed or wanted in this place. Shrugging, he pulled the curtain silently shut behind him and walked toward the exit, stepped out into the night and took a deep breath of his own, sucking the damp air deep into his lungs.
Life and death. A thin line, nothing more than a second or a wrong turn, a wrong word, separated the two.
An hour later, heartsick and exhausted to her bones, sweat beading her forehead, Sophie returned to the examining room and shoved the curtain aside.
A pile of red velvet and bloodied white acrylic lay puddled on the floor of the empty room.
Chapter 2
In a cold, driving rain at two in the morning, they found the baby lying in the manger of the Second Baptist Church, directly across the street from Beth Israel, the only synagogue in the tri-county area.
“What the hell,” Finnegan muttered as rain spat into his eyes and seeped down the neck of his yellow slicker.
“Lord have mercy.” Tyree Jones squatted and reached under the rough wood roof of the manger. His broad dark hand touched the cradle, hesitated. Rain dripped from the edges of the straw spilling over the edges of the cradle. “Shoot, man, it’s a baby, that’s what.”
The spotlight in the shelter shone down on the baby. Chocolate-brown eyes stared back at them.
“I can see it’s a baby, Tyree, an Asian baby, in fact. The punk knifed my shoulder. Not my eyes. What’s a baby doing here?”
“All right, I’ll play.” Tyree’s forefinger brushed against the baby’s cheek. “What?”
“Damn it to hell, Tyree. Get the kid out of there. It’s got to be freezing.” Finnegan rolled his shoulders, easing the ache of the stitches, and stooped down beside Tyree.
“She’s not an it, Judah. She’s an itty-bitty baby girl, that’s what she is.” Tyree said as Finnegan bent over him and scooped her up with one hand, tucking the pink Winnie-the-Pooh sheet around her. “What a pretty girl you are, too, honey,” Tyree cooed. “Now why’d somebody go off and leave you here all by your lonesome, huh?” Tyree poked his face close to the silent baby.
Coming at them sideways now, the rain sliced against Finnegan’s face and drizzled under his slicker. “Go back to the car and get the blanket. She needs to be kept warm—”
“Judah,” Tyree said patiently as he rose to his full six feet three, “I have babies of my own. I know what to do.”
“Yeah, reckon you do, all right.” Holding the baby in a football grip, Finnegan shot him a wicked grin.
“Well, shoot, that too.” Tyree grinned back and loped toward their unit parked on the sidewalk. “Making babies is part of the re-ward, you know?”
“Kids? A reward? I don’t know. All those late nights and early mornings. Diapers and all that—”
“Be the same if I still worked patrol. I’d still have late nights, early mornings. More fun my way,” Tyree called back as he dashed toward their unmarked car.
Finnegan hunched forward, keeping the baby under the manger roof and near the warmth of the spotlight. “Got a story to tell, don’t you?” he said to her before looking off into the shadows at the sides of the church.
Rain glistened against the stained-glass windows. The branches of the huge banyan tree on the right side of the church lifted with the wind. Rain drummed the wide leaves and streamed to the ground. “You sure didn’t walk here by yourself.”
Considering him carefully, the baby’s eyes followed his face.
“Not very talkative? Can’t say I blame you.” Judah looked toward the unit, turning carefully so he wouldn’t slop water from his slicker onto the baby. “Not a fit night for dogs to be out. Much less you.” He looked away from the solemn face. Sheesh. Somebody dumping a baby on a night like this. On any night. What a world. First the undercover Santa lookout earlier in the evening, now this. No wonder a cop’s job was never done.
In the blaze of the car’s dome light, he could see Tyree speaking into the mike, shaking his head.
Huffing back, Tyree pulled the cotton blanket out from under his slicker and tossed it to Finnegan. “Nobody’s reported a lost baby tonight. Nothing but an anonymous call into dispatch saying we should check out the prowlers at the Second Baptist.”
“Prowlers?” Judah looked off into the darkness of the wind-whipped trees and back down at the unprotesting lump in his arms. “Funny kind of call, don’t you think? No prowler left this package.”
“Nope. Probably the mom. Not wanting to leave our little darlin’ completely alone.”
“You’re figuring it was the mom, then?”
“Most likely. Some kind of twisted maternal instinct.”
“Could be. I don’t know.” Judah stared back at Tyree’s face gleaming with rain and shadowy reflections. “Prowler? That’s an odd word choice, isn’t it? I think a mother abandoning her kid would refer to the kid as ‘my baby.’ ‘My child.’ Something, anyway, that would give a heads-up about an infant. But not prowler. It would be interesting to find out who made the call.”
“Going to worry it like a dawg with a bone, aren’t you? I swear, you think too much sometimes, Judah.” Tyree swiped rain out of his eyes. “Anyway, my man, whatever, whoever, our orders are to have li’l missy here checked out at our fine medical facility. Guess we’ll be making another run to your favorite establishment.” He sent Finnegan a sly, sideways look. “Some nights just don’t get any better, do they? This one’s been a world-beater. Got to play Santa, saved a baby, and now you get to revisit your favorite doc.”
“We haven’t been riding together long enough for you to go there, Tyree. Back off.”
White teeth sparkled as the big man gave him a huge grin. “So? I got my opinions. You gonna beat me up because I say what I see, Judah? You with that baby slung under your arm like you’re ready to gallop into some end zone? Huh? You think you can take me?” His grin glinted again as he did a little two-step in the rain, his arms moving in a smooth rhythm. He tapped Judah lightly on the chest, the shoulder. “Bring it on, then.”
“Oh, go to hell, Tyree.” Hunching over and draping his slicker across the baby, Finnegan stomped off toward the car.
“It’s a wonder Yvonna hasn’t whomped you upside the head, you know that?”
“Hey, I’m Yvonna’s sweet-talking man.” He slid under the steering wheel, fired up the engine, and slammed the door.
The baby jerked in Finnegan’s arms. He laid his hand lightly across her forehead. Too warm.
“Sorry ’bout that, baby girl. Didn’t mean to spook you.” The low velvet of Tyree’s words moved through the darkness, easing the sudden tension. Not looking at Judah, Tyree added quietly, “We got to talk about George sometime. You know we do.”
“No. We do not.”
“Fine. Be a jackass. But I’ll still be your partner.”
Finnegan clipped his seat belt in place and settled the still-silent child into his arm. “That can be changed, too, Tyree.”
“Partners share, Judah. That’s all I’m saying. We’ve partnered for four months now. And you don’t share. Ever. Hard enough being a black cop in this town without wondering if my partner’s gonna be at my back.”
For a long moment there was only the hiss of the heavy tires and the sound of the rain beating against the windows. Finnegan ran the back of his forefinger over the baby’s cheek and stared out at the neon lights sliding past in the darkness. The slap-slap of the windshield wipers punctuated the silence.
He sighed. “I’ve got your back, Tyree.”
“Okay, then.” Tyree let out a sigh of his own. “Didn’t mean to push so hard.”
“Yeah, you did.” Finnegan scooched down farther into his seat, adjusting the quiet infant against him. “You realize you’re plumb irritatin’, don’t you?”
“Hell, yes.” Tyree’s smile was quick and open. “Part of my charm.”
“Whoever said that was a damned fool.”
“Hey, man, don’t you go insulting my Yvonna, hear?” They slid to a stop under the protected entrance of Poinciana’s ER. Water spurted onto the side windows. “Not if you want any more of her potato salad.”
“Well, there you go then. Obviously Yvonna, a woman of brilliance and charm of her own, has adopted you as her very own charity case, Tyree. That’s the only explanation.” Yanking the hood of his slicker up with one hand, Finnegan hoisted the blanket over the baby, tucked her under his rain gear and slid out of the car. As he did, he added, “But in spite of her unfortunate taste in husbands, I sure do admire that woman’s potato salad.”
At his sudden movements, the baby waved its tiny fist under the blanket, gave a burp of movement and then lay still again as Judah shouldered his way through the ER doors.
He saw her, of course.
It had been that kind of night from the start. One screw-up after another. Why should he expect anything else at the end of a lousy day?
A flicker of movement caught his gaze, nothing more than her arm rising to her forehead, but he slowed. He wanted to look away, felt the urge so strongly that he almost believed for a second that he was walking toward the desk and the crowd of people in front of it.
But something about her gesture checked him, rooting him to the floor.
Unable to look away from the figure at the end of the hall, he watched her.
And resented her because he couldn’t look away. Resented the power she had to compel his attention.
Resented her most of all because he didn’t want to look away.
They were standing close together, Sophie and another doctor, the man stooping down to her. Her head was bowed. She’d jammed her hands into her pockets. From time to time she nodded as the man jabbed his finger in the air. With each nod, her dark hair bounced, swung forward, hid her expression.
It was the slump in her shoulders that held Finnegan’s attention.
Exhaustion.
Defeat.
He understood defeat, its nasty-ass gut-punch. That’s what his eyes read in the sag of her shoulders, in the brace of her sneaker against the wall behind her.
He just hadn’t figured cocksure, bold-as-brass Sophie Brennan for someone who’d ever look this defeated.
This diminished.
All the sparking, combative energy had drained away, leaving her small and helpless, the bells on her goofy socks silent.
Suddenly, as if he’d whispered in her ear, Sophie’s head jerked upright. She looked straight at him for a long moment.
Judah held her gaze, willing her to blink.
She didn’t.
The infinitesimal lift of her chin was the only sign that she saw him.
No, he thought. Not helpless at all. Not Sophie.
“Hola, tall, dark and battered. Back so soon? It’s only been three hours. Got something else you want sutured?”
“No thanks. And it’s been four hours.” He glared down at the woman tapping him impatiently on the arm. The picture ID clipped to the pocket of her blue scrubs gave him her name. Cammie Esposito. The same short, round-faced nurse who’d rushed Sophie out of the examining room earlier.
“What in the world do you have there? Not somebody’s pet poodle, I hope? We don’t do pets. Even for good-looking hombres like you, amigo.”
He pushed his parcel toward her. Once more a miniature fist pushed free of the blanket and banged his hand, a soft graze of skin against skin.
She lifted the edge of the blanket. “Oh, my.” All teasing gone, She took the baby from him and turned abruptly toward Sophie and the man still with her. “Dr. Brennan, you’ll want to see this.”
Sophie’s clear voice rode lightly over the relative quiet of the ER. “Sure, Cammie. Be right there. What’s the problem?”
“A baby.”
“A baby?”
He watched as Sophie pushed off from the wall, watched as she straightened her shoulders, and he recognized the effort. Like the last embers flaring in a gust of wind before dying out, she suddenly glowed. Even her hair gleamed now with that touch of firelight he’d noticed before sparking in the dark curls.
Her hands were still jammed in her pockets, though.
He noticed that, too, and wondered about that bit of body language and what it might mean.
Details.
His preacher daddy had been a humorless man with meanness bred bone deep. All his passion had been spent in an adoration of God that left no room for love of humankind. But he’d said one good thing to Judah. Judah didn’t believe in anything else his daddy had said, but he’d never forgotten the old man’s beautiful voice, sonorous, one of those hypnotic magic voices that could fill the pews of their small church, pronouncing, “God is in the details, Judah,” he pronounced. “Don’t you be forgetting that. You pay attention, hear?”
Then the preacher man had slapped him twice, once on each side of his face. Hard enough to leave a bruise. “Hear me?”
Judah heard.
And he’d remembered.
In his experience he’d concluded it was more likely the devil he discovered in the details. Still, he’d found that bit of instruction to be one of the few useful bits of his father’s legacy.
If Tyree knew it was Judah’s pa who’d taught him the basic rule of being a detective, Jonas suspected Tyree would hoot about that, too.
George had known.
With a quick tap on his arm, the nurse interrupted the melancholy flow of his memories. “What a doll. Girl?”
He nodded.
“Oye, muy bonita. Pobrecita. What’s the story?”
“It’s…she’s…” he corrected himself, “she’s been outside a while. Don’t know how long, though.” He rubbed his hands along the side of his slicker and water sluiced off, dripping to the floor and splashing against his jeans. “It’s a rough night. Don’t know anything about babies, but she seems okay. A bit warm, maybe. Quiet.”
“Sí, this baby’s come to the right place.”
Judah shifted as Sophie reached him.
“Detective.” Her expression dismissed him.
The hairs along his arms rose lightly as her scent reached him. “Doctor,” he replied politely.
Her gray-blue eyes glittered momentarily, then flickered to the bundle. “What brings you back this evening?” Her tone was cool and crisp.
“Morning, actually,” he said, matching her coolness.
“So it is. Do you need our attention again? Or have you managed to keep yourself out of harm’s way for a few hours?”
“I’m not your patient this time.” He pointed to the nurse’s blanket.
Sophie leaned toward the bundle, peered inside the blanket, and that scent that wasn’t perfume, wasn’t exactly soap, wasn’t anything except her filled his nostrils.
Funny, he thought, amused by his body’s awareness of her. An awareness he didn’t want, but there it was. That old devil sex could rear up and trip a man when he least wanted it.
Or expected it.
He’d thought this past year had made him immune to the very particular appeal of Dr. Brennan.
On edge, he gestured toward the baby. “Well. She’s all yours. I’m out of here.”
Sophie’s warm hands brushed against him as she lifted the baby out of the nurse’s arms and cradled her. Sophie’s face went soft, as soft as the curves of her breasts where the baby lay, and he thought he saw sadness in her eyes as she touched the baby gently and said, “Ah, you’re a little love, aren’t you? Let’s go see how you’re doing, sweetie-pie.” Her hands moved lightly over the baby, automatically evaluating, examining.
Finnegan turned around, ready to make tracks for the outside as fast as his size elevens would take him.
“Not so fast this time, Finnegan. We need some information first.”
Damn. “Whatever you say, doctor.” He gritted his teeth and swung back to her.
“What can you tell me about this baby?”
“Diddly squat. We found her at the Second Baptist Church, in the manger, under its roof. Nobody else was there. She doesn’t look abused, she doesn’t look like a newborn, but of course I’m not the doctor—” he let the word take a bit of ice “—and that’s all the information I have.”
Sophie’s gaze flickered from the baby to the nurse. “You know what I’m thinking?”
“Makes sense,” the nurse responded as she stared at the baby and then down the hall. “Might explain what the woman kept crying out, I guess.”
“Awful big coincidence otherwise.”
“Still, it could be coincidence. It’s not as though she’s the first Asian patient here in Poinciana.”
“And not the first beating victim, either. We’re getting a lot of them lately.” Anger rippled over her face. “And not just our Asian population. Boy, this is lousy. What in heaven’s name is happening to Poinciana?” Her eyes were huge, dominating the soft roundness of her face.
Judah shook his head, fighting for clarity. He was finally free of the baby, but something she’d said had struck him as important. He shook his head again. Got it. “Coincidence? What coincidence?”
Sophie’s mouth tightened as she glanced from the baby to him. “A patient we had earlier.”
He forced his brain to focus. “A patient?”
“A woman. Beaten.”
“What happened?”
“She died.”
“I see.” He scratched the bristles on his chin. “You think this is her baby?”
“I don’t know, Finnegan.” Her sigh echoed his own fatigue. Her gaze returned to the baby. “It’s all such craziness.”
“You’ll get no argument from me on that score.”
“Really? How remarkable.” Her quick glance mocked him. Taking the warmed blanket from the nurse, she passed him the one in which he and Tyree had cocooned the baby.
“This little girl looks all right. We’ll give her a thorough work-up and then—” She frowned. “Children and Families will take over. You know how the system works. It’s the way it is.”
“Yeah. I reckon.” Every inch of his skin twitched with the need to go home, collapse on his bed and sleep for a day. Or a week. How many hours had he been on duty? When was the last time he’d slept? Last night? The day before?
Every cell in his battered body craved relief from the fizzing running through him when he was around Sophie. He didn’t know which he wanted more—sleep, or just a release from the tension she created in him.
Every instinct he owned urged him toward her.
It had been like that from the first moment he’d seen her, jogging down Palmetto Avenue, her hair clumped together by a green clip on top of her head, beads of sweat pooling in the small triangle at the bottom of her throat. Beneath fire-engine-red frayed shorts, her thighs and calf muscles pumped and thrust.
And heat had licked through him like a flash fire.
He hadn’t even thought about what he was doing. He’d simply nudged the squad car over to the curb, letting it roll forward with her for a few minutes until she finally glanced his way.
She’d sent him a smart-alecky grin, saluted with a quick hand to her forehead, and shot off, her legs like slim pistons flickering in the late August heat as she disappeared into the path that curved along Poinciana River.
That was how it had started.
Dangerous, being this tired and this pissed off. Remembering. Remembering never led anywhere good.
A faint stirring of adrenaline roughened his voice. “Do I have permission to leave now, Doctor?”
Even as he spoke, she was already walking away toward one of the examining rooms, her head bent to the baby.
The nurse, Cammie, he made himself remember, sent him a quick smile and a thumbs-up.
And once more he found himself treated to the fine sight of Sophie Brennan’s butt, its curves shaping the jacket to her, the jacket moving with each hip sway. He swallowed. His mouth was dust-dry, the night’s fatigue vanished momentarily in a rush of blood.
“Look, but don’t touch, right?” Tyree’s smooth amusement snapped his head around. “Caught you, didn’t I?”
“What?”
“My, my, aren’t we grouchy? Guess doing without will make a man…irritable.”
“I was thinking, Tyree.”
“Sure you were, Judah. And I’ll bet you a nice, green hundred-dollar bill I know exactly what you were thinking.” His grin widened, crinkling his whole face. “Looks like it wasn’t the first time, too.”
Judah scowled at him. “Button it, Tyree.”
“Can’t blame you. The doc sure is one fine-looking woman.” He laughed. “But don’t tell Yvonna I said that, or I won’t be getting so much as a sweet kiss for a month.”
“Serve you right.”
“Nah, you don’t know Yvonna. She can be one tough lady when she puts her mind to it. She can make my life real…interesting when she wants to.”
“Yeah?” Judah listened with one ear, his attention still on Sophie.
“Anyway, c’mon. Another call came in while you were in here.”
“Right.” Judah’s gaze stayed on Sophie as she hovered over the baby, her every movement visible through the still-open curtain.
He couldn’t get over her—foggy-headed, he couldn’t find the word he wanted. Protectiveness. Yeah. He rubbed his head again. That was the word. She seemed so protective of the tiny scrap of life he’d brought to her.
Not cold at all.
Not at all the way she’d been with George.
And none of the prickliness she showed him.
One more puzzle piece.
But he couldn’t make sense of any of it until he’d had a couple of hours of sleep.
“Hey, Judah. Heads up. We’re needed over on 15th and Oak.” Tyree tugged at him, and with one last glance, Judah left, the glass doors snicking shut behind him.
“Detective Hunkster has left the house.” Cammie poked Sophie in the ribs.
“What?” Sophie lifted her stethoscope and patted the baby, her palm lingering and warming the tiny chest.
Cammie pointed to the exit. “The detective with the hormones and the ’tude.”
“Oh.” Lifting the baby, Sophie curled her over one shoulder, close to her neck. She looked toward the exit. The baby mewed softly and nuzzled closer. “What a sweetheart you are.” Reflexively she cupped the baby’s bottom, swaying slowly from side to side, rocking the infant.
She could barely make out the faces of Finnegan and his partner. A gust of wind puffed out Finnegan’s yellow slicker. Rain striped down his faded jeans, and he yanked the slicker closer to him, rolled his shoulder and vanished into the darkness.
His shoulder had to be hurting him. Anybody with any sense would have stayed and taken the pain scripts. But the stubborn idiot had chosen to assert himself and leave her ER instead of doing the sensible thing.
For all she cared, he could fall down in a heap if that’s what he wanted.
Absently she crooned to the warm baby.
Still, Judah had looked like the burnt end of a match when she’d walked up to him and Cammie. Stubble shadowed his cheeks, and black circles pouched the skin under his eyes. He’d looked like a hundred miles of bad road, as she’d heard one of the local doctors say.
Faded jeans, a look of weary dissipation, and that attitude. Attitude to burn.
But sexy.
It was in the eyes, she decided. He had that look about him that women talked about in hushed tones. The kind of man who would be hell on wheels in bed. The kind of man who could leave a woman smiling in the morning. Oh, no question. She knew exactly what Cammie meant about hormones. Judah Finnegan fairly reeked of pheromones and sex.
Dirty, lowdown, wonderful sex.
She’d felt the flutter of her pulse every time she’d thought of him during this past year.
He was exactly the wrong kind of man for a woman like her.
Even without their history.
Sergeant George Roberts might be dead, but even a year later his presence was a powerful ghost.
The night Roberts had killed himself he’d also killed the tenuous something building between her and Detective Finnegan.
Maybe if they’d had more time together first…
Maybe if they’d slept together…
No, she didn’t think so.
If they’d slept together? Impossible.
She’d known from the beginning that Judah was a man who kept his emotions under tight control. That had been part of the attraction. He was so different from her that it was tempting to see what it would take to make him lose that reserve. A buzz-cut, reined-in kind of guy, he wasn’t a man easily given to showing his emotions. Or handing out forgiveness.
Except with Roberts.
Cammie tapped her arm. “Want me to call the Department of Children and Family Services?”
“Yes, please.” Sophie looked away from the empty glass doors. “Until we find out where our little angel belongs, that’s our only choice. I hope the woman who died wasn’t her mother. I hope that somewhere out there is someone who’s looking for this beautiful baby.” Near her breast the tiny mouth moved damply, tugging at something deep inside her. “This little girl doesn’t deserve to be thrown into the system. Be passed around from foster home to foster home.” Sophie found her arms curling possessively around the infant. “She needs parents, Cammie. A mother.”
“All the babies do. It’s not our decision, though.” Cammie looked away. “If her parents or relatives can’t be located…you know how it is, Dr. Brennan. Like you told your cop. That’s where she’ll wind up.”
“I do. It’s a hard world sometimes, Cammie.”
“It is. Nothing we can do about it. It is what it is.”
Sophie shifted the baby to her other shoulder, settling her in snugly. “How long have you worked at Poinciana? Have things changed so much?”
Cammie shrugged.
“Because in the two years I’ve been here, it seems as though we’re seeing a lot more gunshots and beatings. Abused babies and kids. Or is it my imagination? I haven’t checked the hospital statistics.” Sophie tried to smile past the ache in her heart. “I know what you said earlier, but tell me it’s my imagination and the result of too many long hours, Cammie. Please. I need to believe that.”
“Poinciana’s a good town. People are good here. Most of them are. But, sí, things have changed. There’s a different feel to the town these days. All this graffiti springing up everywhere, overnight, it seems. Kids hijacking the Santa kettles. And these fires at places of worship, for heaven’s sake. Sometimes, I am afraid. It doesn’t feel like my town anymore. Not the Poinciana I knew.”
From the corner of her eye Sophie glimpsed stringy hair. She turned, snuggling the baby closer. “What is it, Billy Ray?”
“I wanted to see the baby. They said the baby was here.” He edged around the curtain into the examining room. “Is the baby all right?”
“Yes.”
His face scrunched up in something that she thought might be relief. “Okay, then. I was wondering, that’s all. What’s going to happen to her?”
“She’ll stay here for a day or two for observation. We’ll see if anyone can identify her.” Even saying the words felt so wrong to Sophie that she stumbled over them. “If she’s healthy and we haven’t found her family, then Social Services will come and take her to an out-placement home.”
Billy Ray twisted a strand of his hair. “That’s okay. I guess. She’s safe, isn’t she?”
“Sure she is.” Sophie held up the baby girl so Billy Ray could see her.
Sleepy brown eyes peered over the edge of the light blanket as Billy Ray leaned farther into the room. He chewed his lip. “She looks okay then. Okay. I gotta go finish my shift.”
And as abruptly as he’d appeared, he vanished.
Sophie watched him lurch away. “Did Billy Ray seem more Billy Rayish than usual? Or is that my imagination, too?”
Cammie laughed and reached for the baby. “He’s been Billy Rayish all night long. There’s a full moon. I’ll take the baby up to pediatrics and then alert Social Services. I see Dr. Bornes is finally here. You can head for home now, can’t you?”
An inexplicable reluctance kept Sophie’s arms around the fragile bundle. She stared down at the silky eyebrows and wide-open eyes watching her. “Oh, you decided to wake up and join the party, did you, sweetheart?”
From the safety of her blanket, Baby Doe reached up and caught a curl of Sophie’s hair and gripped for all she was worth, holding on as if she’d never let go, holding on as if she had understood every word Sophie and Cammie said.
Holding on to Sophie as if she were a lifeline.
“Cammie, I’ll take her up to Peds. And hold off on the call to Children and Families, okay?” she said abruptly and headed out the door.
With every step Sophie took down the long hall, she felt that tiny grip grow more powerful.
Felt those tiny fingers close around her heart.
Chapter 3
Hours later, as night melted into gray pre-dawn, Finnegan found himself at the beach off the island.
He hadn’t slept.
Earlier, Tyree had dropped him off at the station. Judah had waved him off, fired up his bike and taken off into a world filled with drumming rain. Blending with the roar of rain and wind, the Harley six-cylinder engine throbbed beneath him.
They were off-duty. It was time to go home.
He meant to go home.
He really, really meant to go home.
But he’d thought about the baby. Laying there in the manger for over an hour before they’d taken it to the hospital. He shook his head and slewed rain drops off his helmet. Not it. Her. Taken her to the ER.
To Sophie, who’d cradled that baby to her as if the tiny mite was her own.
Sophie, whose pale skin and big eyes had swallowed her face and whose scent lingered treacherously in his nostrils. A Judas of the senses, that perfume that was only Sophie.
Streaking down back roads and over bayou bridges, he’d lifted his face to the rain, let it wash over him, and he still smelled her, the scent of woman underneath the cinnamon and antiseptic.
Even with the sensory memories flooding him, the memory that sent a shiver of foreboding down him was the one of Sophie holding the baby.
An hour before dawn, with rain blinding him and Sophie’s scent filling him, he’d braked hard, tires screaming against slippery pavement, and headed west over one more bridge.
To the island.
To her house.
To Sophie.
He told himself he could interview her there just as well as at the hospital or the station house. No problem. He was cool. She didn’t have any power over him. He was immune. The interview would be official, nothing more.
A less honest man would have believed it, too.
Even so, even knowing he was being a damn bonehead, he crouched over the Harley and rode its rumbling engine into the storm wind. To Sophie.
The thought of her name brought her face in front of him, mixed the remembered scent of her with the clean rain smell and sent his blood skipping and slipping through his veins.
He didn’t pretend that the pulsing in his groin had anything at all to do with the throbbing of the bike beneath him. He didn’t want to see her again.
He wanted to…
And so he’d whipped the bike around and damned himself for a fool as he flew onto the bridge, coming down with a hard bounce that jolted him to the top of his aching shoulder.
Now, a surly gray sky shrouded gray surf thundering onto the beach. Storm-driven salt spray stung his face, clung to a two-day stubble and dripped down his jacket. Gritty with sand and sleeplessness, his eyes burned as he peered through rain and mist at the surf.
She was out there.
Far out on the horizon where the Gulf of Mexico blurred into the sky, he could see the narrow stripe of black against gray that was Sophie.
She hadn’t slept either.
Hunkered down, nothing more than a shadow in shadows on the beach, he watched as she rose from bended knees. She crouched over the board, riding the power, waiting. Her small hands gripped the side of the board. Then, balanced, steady, she stood upright, arms flung out parallel to the board.
He inhaled.
Breathtaking, that small shape out there in all that darkness, facing nature’s might. He clasped his hands tightly against his knees.
Watched.
And waited with her. Forever, it seemed, in those moments as he watched powerless.
Behind her the wave hung for a long time. Dark at the base, black in this light, its crest all white foam and shivering green glass.
He thought she hesitated as the wave came up under her. She was in the backwash. She bent her knees again, curved forward, and the wave took her, enveloped her like a careless lover. Threw her forward, sent her board spiraling up into the sky and covered her with boiling white water that splashed high into the sky.
Lunging to his feet, Finnegan scanned the distance and couldn’t see her, couldn’t find that sleek head bobbing in the water. He covered the three yards to the water without realizing he’d moved.
Surf roiled around his knees, clawed at his chest.
Far beyond him her board floated on the surge of a small wave and vanished into a trough.
He couldn’t see her anywhere in the pounding waves.
He yanked his shoes off and hurled them toward the shore behind him, struck out toward the deep. There, right between two waves, he could see her board again, could see now the wet white of her face as she crawled onto the board and slumped. Strands of heavy wet hair hid her face.
Unseen, treading water, he rose and fell on the waves, their bodies joined in the great rhythm of the gulf.
She struggled to hold onto the board, her arms trembling with effort.
Or he imagined the effort. He wasn’t sure.
Finally she brought her knees under her.
And waited again.
His eyes never leaving her, Finnegan sank beneath the water and moved slowly toward the shore behind him until his feet scraped against cold sand.
He hauled himself up the incline of the shore. Turning back, he saw her stand.
Behind her, bigger than the wave that had taken her under, a wall of water raced toward him. His throat tightened and in the roar of the waves that filled him, everything went silent. He wondered if her heart was thumping as hard as his. He yelled at her to let the damned wave pass, to wait for a smaller one, not to try this freakish thing leaping out of the Gulf.
The wind caught his shout, shredded it into nonsense.
Half crouched, arms balancing her, Sophie caught the edge of the monster and hung there, for hours it seemed, in the pre-dawn sky. Against the cold sand, his toes buzzed with the power of the wave. He could sense the thrust of the wave as it grew, its glassy green stretching, stretching, filling the horizon with shivering power.
Then, in one perfect moment, it crested, spitting white against the gray sky.
Puny against the glassy green, she rode its momentum all the way to the collapsing crash of soapy foam.
Over the surf noise, her laugh rang with triumph, a bright, bell-like sound, as she trudged to the sand with her board.
Arousal ripped through him. His skin rippled with it. He could smell it in the air, coming off him like bands of storm waves. He couldn’t even hear the surf over the roaring in his ears. His wet jeans flapped against his legs as he strode toward her. Even his fingertips thrummed with the need to—what?
Mid stride, he stopped, took a deep breath. A second one.
He forced himself to stroll toward her and was appalled at the struggle it took.
He’d been stupid.
Was being even more stupid. If he had an ounce of sense, he’d turn and run for the hills before she saw him.
But he didn’t.
Instead, water slopping at his heels, he approached her. Blowing off the Gulf, wind plastered his wet clothes to him. He should have been cold to the bone.
He wasn’t.
How could he be cold when his blood was pumping so damned hot through him? He half-expected to see steam rising from his every footstep. A pressure cooker of intensity, looking for an escape valve.
Burning even the roots of his wet hair.
He wouldn’t have been shocked if he’d swung around and seen a string of black, scorched footprints following him in the sand.
Flopped on the wet sand and facing the storm surge, she didn’t see him approaching her.
It gave him that extra second he needed.
It gave him the element of surprise he wanted.
Relief washed over him and left him feeling like a yellow-bellied coward as he pitched his voice lower than the booming waves. “Sophie.”
She leapt to her feet. The board bounced to the sand, kicked up a shell. “Finnegan? Finnegan?” She was breathing hard, her breasts lifting with her questions. “What—where did you come from? And why?” Strands of wet hair clung flatly to her head, lay against her cheek as she stared at him. “Judah. Here?”
“Yeah. Me. Here.” He stooped and picked up her board, handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she said automatically, her face crumpled with confusion. She held the board close to her, and that pulse in her throat was going ninety miles an hour. “You—”
“Scared you?” He’d like to scare her, just a little, just enough to make her drop that brittle mask she wore around him. He wanted to see her without all that clever self-possession, just once.
“Scared? No, no, you startled me. That’s all. I thought no one was here.” She lifted the board, tamped it onto the sand.
“How’s your shoulder?”
He shrugged. He hadn’t thought about his stitches once since he’d arrived at the beach. “It’s okay.”
“Good. Do you need any pain meds?”
He must have made a sound.
“No, tough guy, I guess you wouldn’t. Need anything, that is.” She bounced the board hard against the sand, shifted.
“So, Finnegan, exactly how long have you been here?”
“Long enough to see you eat pie on that wave.”
She glanced toward the Gulf, gave a small, delighted smile. “Big waves for the Gulf. I hadn’t expected anything like this.” From the east behind her, light was beginning to stain the sand, tint the water a softer shade of gray. “That beast stripped my rash guard off, right over my head and arms. Gone.” She paused before turning her attention back to him. “I hit the backwash. It popped me right off. I couldn’t hold it.”
“Too bad.”
“That’s surfing for you.” She looked out at the Gulf. “You play in God’s ballpark, you pay the price.” Absently she rubbed her elbow, calm as all get-out.
Except for that pulse going like a bat out of hell.
Hair flattened against her head, she was a sleek, otter-like silhouette against the lightening gray in her shiny black neoprene. He wanted to sluice the water dripping from her hair with his hands, he wanted to slide those same hands, wet with salt water, down the smooth, shiny curves of her, he wanted to taste that tiny pulse beating like a trapped butterfly under her skin—
She glanced back at him, frowned, the little pulse beat going lickety-split. “So. You’ve been here a while.”
“I have.”
He knew the second she regained control. It was caused by a tone in his voice. Or the look on his face. But the confusion softening her face disappeared, the restless shifting back and forth ceased as she registered his comment. She narrowed her eyes. With a quick assessment, she considered his wet clothes, sopping hair, and the seaweed still clinging to his worn jeans. “Looks like you ate pie yourself.”
“Not me. You couldn’t pay me enough to go out there at this time of day. I sure do admire a shark’s efficiency, but I’m not right fond of having breakfast with them. Or being their breakfast. Didn’t you know this was feeding time, Yankee Girl?”
“Not much of a risk on this coast. Different if we were down in the Keys.”
“There’s always a risk.”
“Hey, Finnegan, life’s full of risks. Don’t you know that?” Her laugh was a ripple of sound that furred along his nerve endings and made him catch his breath.
“Remember a couple of years ago? That huge migration of sharks in the Gulf off Tampa? Hundreds of them?”
She shrugged. “Surfing’s a controllable risk. I like surfing these fat storm waves. They’re as close as I can get to Hawaii. I like dawn patrol. And I like taking risks.” She ran her hands over her hair, spraying water onto his bare feet.
“Do you now?” The drops burned against his skin. An errant scent drifted to him and it took him a second to realize that it was the scent of her skin flavored by Gulf and an unknown tension.
“I’m an adrenaline junkie. Otherwise, I’d have chosen some other profession.”
“And here I’ve been thinking it was pure compassion that put you in your doctor whities.”
The wind carried the light sound of her laugh behind them, to the east and the still-shrouded sun. “Oh, come on, Finnegan. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Cops feed off that rush. Isn’t that fine testosterone rush why most of them go into the job? Isn’t it why you became a fine boyo in blue? And don’t try to play the innocent,” she mocked as he hesitated. “Because I know better.”
“I never thought about it.”
“You should…think about it.”
“Are we still talking about cops and robbers? Because all my fine detecting skills pick up something else here,” he drawled.
“Really? How perceptive of you.” She wrung water out of her hair, sent it spattering again onto his feet. “By the way, where are your shoes, Finnegan? Or are you the original barefoot boy with cheek of tan?” Her eyelashes sparkled with drops of water. Giving off a heat of their own, her eyes glittered.
“I’m a Florida cracker. Of course I’m barefoot.” He gave in, yielded to temptation and that siren heat. Reaching out, making himself move slowly, he brushed his forefinger along the edge of her lashes, let it skate slowly down her cheek until his finger rested in the hollow of her neck, just above the zipper of her neoprene vest.
The leap of her vein against his finger sent a painful pulse straight south. He stepped closer, stepped into the heat rising from her.
“Where did the seaweed come from, Finnegan?” Her breath puffed against his chin as he dipped to her face.
“Same place you did, Dr. Sugar.”
She stepped closer. Against him, through his clothes, through his jacket, she was a cold, supple shape moving in his arms.
And then, with a breath, hot skin everywhere his fingers slid. Cold neoprene and hot skin.
Unbelievable, the heat radiating from her.
From her cheeks, from the lobes of her ears.
All that silky skin should have been cold, blue-tinged.
Yet it blistered the palms of his hands as he cupped her face and tasted the salt lingering on her eyelashes. Dimly he wondered, why?
But the clean, salty smell of her skin spun him away from his memories of the night and its ugliness, sent him spiraling into a place where there was light and peace. “Delicious,” he murmured, absorbed in the scent and taste of Sophie.
He thought she would hesitate, expected her to step back, figured she would push him away. He hoped she would. But her eyes darkened, the pupils huge as she curled one black-clad arm around his neck and pulled him to her.
“Share, Finnegan,” she murmured into his mouth, her lips soft and pliant, as soft and pliant as the woman standing on tiptoes and stretching herself against him, one thigh slipping between his legs. “Nice,” she said. “I’d forgotten how nice touching you could be. I didn’t remember.”
He spread his legs and made room for her, let her come as close as wetsuit and soggy jeans would allow, and as he did, she reached up with her other hand and slid her fingers through his hair, holding his face still as she sipped at the corner of his mouth and sighed.
He wanted to believe it was a sigh of pleasure.
But deep in the sigh, he heard the sadness.
He hesitated, his fingers fumbling with the broad tab of her zippered vest. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“I don’t know about you, Finnegan, but this is the best idea I’ve had in weeks.”
He brushed her cheek with his thumb, trying to get his thoughts in some kind of order. “But—”
“If you stop now, Judah, I swear I’ll hunt you down and kill you. And no jury on earth would convict me.” Her voice was low and breathy as she slipped her hand between their bodies, closed it over his, tugged down, the slippery material opening as he slid his hand inside and found softness and heat, found the hard bump of her nipple.
And lingered, tugging, entranced by the contrast of cold suit and flushed skin.
Touching her, he remembered again how it had been for him the first time he’d seen her, the rush of wanting, the physical ache of needing to touch her.
Touching her, he could forget the past, could escape the prison of his soul by losing himself in her.
That was what he wanted most on this dismal, storm-wrecked morning, escape was what he’d craved and hadn’t known he needed.
Here, with her smacked up against him, he didn’t have to think about the creeps spraying graffiti around town, didn’t have to think about the jackasses stealing from the Christmas charity kettles. He didn’t have to think about the baby left in the manger, didn’t have to think about George. Didn’t have to think.
That was the blessing. It had been a lifetime since he’d felt anything, not anger, not joy. Nothing. But with Sophie in his arms, he could just feel.
This, he thought as he moved his mouth along the long line of her neck, this salvation in Sophie’s scent, touch, in the very texture of her skin under his seeking fingers, this was the light in the darkness. “Closer,” he muttered against the slope of her breast. His chin scraped against the metal zipper teeth as he nudged the vest opening wider. “You’re not close enough. I want you closer.” He cupped her butt with one hand and pulled her tightly to him.
From that first moment, he’d known it would be like this.
In this moment, only Sophie. Beginning and end of thought, of regret, of anger.
Right now. Alpha and omega.
Now.
Sophie.
She tasted the hunger in his lips and fed on it, felt his seeking fingers at her waistband.
“Two-piece?”
“Yes,” she exhaled into his ear. “Easier to get into.” She wiggled her fanny, and felt him shudder against her. “And out of.”
“Excellent.” He flattened his palm into the curve of her back.
She twisted upward. “Good hands, Finnegan. Ah, but you have good hands.” Her brain turned to mush as he edged a forefinger between the tight fabric and her spine.
The adrenaline rampaging through her had a focus now, and she leaned into it, just the way she would lean into a wave. Judah’s lean form. Judah’s hands on her. The movement of his hard body against her took all the energy the surfing hadn’t touched and channeled it, a straight line from him to her. She should have grabbed Finnegan instead of her surf board, she thought muzzily as his thumbs met in her belly button and pressed, circled lower.
How long had it been since she’d been touched like this? She couldn’t remember, oh, he was taking her breath away, she couldn’t breathe….
Her knees buckled, and he went with her, their knees bouncing on the packed sand, but she couldn’t turn him loose. Her fingertips hummed with the sensation of his hot skin against them.
His hands were on either side of her face, framing it and holding her still. “Inside. We need to go inside.”
“Too far,” she gasped.
“I can run.” He pulled her to her feet and lifted her off the sand, snugging one arm under her behind and staggering to his feet.
“If you think so.” She locked her legs behind his waist and buried her face in the crook of his neck, breathed and went dizzy with the feel of his skin against her cheek. “Go for it, tiger.”
He lurched with her up the slope of sand and sea oats toward the shadowy house. The rise and fall of his chest matched her own. “Damn. How much farther?”
“Two hundred yards. More or less.” She nipped at his ear and ran her hand down from his belt as far as she could.
“Not much farther, big guy.” His arousal surged against the heel of her hand, and she moved coaxingly against it.
He stumbled. She slid down his body. The soggy fabric of his jeans rubbed against her, sent sparks shooting through her.
“We’re not going to make it,” he muttered, frustration in every syllable.
Laughing, she let all the night’s misery drift away in the wind. “You don’t have to look so grim.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” He still held her snagged against him as he marched her backwards toward her house.
“Really?” she whispered slyly. “How…impressive.”
Stomping onward, he glowered at her. “What? What?”
“Nothing.” She stroked her hand down the hard front of his jeans, felt him throb into her curving palm.
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed.” She laughed again. She could never have hoped for this kind of ending to the horrible night. In Finnegan’s arms, all the destruction of the ER melted away.
Here was life. Here was pleasure. She moved her flat palm against him again. Here was power. His.
Hers.
Laughter kept bubbling up from deep inside. Her body fizzed and sparkled, everything inside her coiling and tumbling. And still he marched her relentlessly backwards, bumping against her, struggling with the waistband of her suit bottom as he kept moving. Trapped by his arms, the sides of her open vest bent back under her arms.
The wind blew against her bare breasts, tickling her with sand and cold. Her nipples brushed against his wet shirt, hardened.
“This is crazy, Sophie.” But he didn’t stop. Didn’t stop touching, didn’t stop moving her back to the house, his bare feet tangling with hers at every step, his pants legs flapping against her bare calves and knees.
Sensation everywhere. She was drowning in touch and smell. Drowning in Judah.
Careening backward, she tripped on the root of one of the pine trees and fell, a dizzying swoon of gray sky and his blue eyes.
Landing on the cushion of pine needles with Judah coming right after her, his arms still wrapped around her, she couldn’t stop laughing at the silliness of it all. Oh, she’d needed this, this laughter, this touching, this. How could she not have known how much she needed his touch? She slid her palms under his wet jacket, let them slip down wet skin, traced the contours of muscles, felt their response to her touch. Some rawness in her soul eased under the balm of touching and being touched and laughing.
And in some distant place in her brain she pictured them tangled together on the beach, a mess of sloppy wet clothes and sandy bodies and she laughed again.
“What’s so funny, Sophie?” His tongue traced the curve of her mouth, gently, dampening her lips, and the wind touched them, too, and everything in her shivered with delight.
She just wished Judah didn’t look so grim.
So lost.
She didn’t want him lost. She didn’t want emotion now, not his, not hers, only this physical exhilaration that blanked out memories and thought and everything except this.
“Easy,” she murmured. She smoothed the frown between his ocean-blue eyes. “It’s not the end of the world.”
Not answering, not meeting her gaze, he lowered himself over her, fitting his pelvis against hers, sliding his arms under her. “Any chance of getting this damn bottom off?”
“Finnegan, if I’ve learned one thing in this life, it’s that there’s always a chance.” She squirmed encouragingly, every nerve ending in her thighs and belly quivering with pleasure, with life. “If there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Tomorrow would come soon enough.
And in the meantime, here was Judah, filling her world with taste, with touch, with himself.
Easy, for the moment, so easy to let herself forget the ugliness. So tempting, this surrender to feeling, to the physical anodyne of what they were doing. Surrender to the power, to the wave of pleasure.
There were worse ways to end a day.
Chapter 4
He should have gone home.
Even as Judah slicked back the tangled hair hiding her ear and tasted her, he knew he should get up from the heat of her body, the salty tang of her skin, and leave.
He knew it. Like fingernails scraping down a chalkboard, his brain screeched warnings. Yet he lingered in the illusive comfort of her arms.
Stayed.
And hated himself.
Weakness, this craving to touch and taste. He despised himself for the need, for the loss of will. He hated this weakness that mewed stay when he knew he should flee as if the hounds of hell were on his heels.
Weakness.
And yet…
He stroked the slight swell of her flattened breast and lost himself in the warming whiteness of it, spellbound by the rose flush that crept upward from his touch.
A murmur. A sharp inhalation. Hers. The subtle accommodation of her hips to him fascinated him, whispered to the maleness in him, sang a silent siren song of movement and scent and urgency.
“This doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“You’re wrong. At the moment it makes all the sense in the world.”
“You? Me? No.” His brain kept jabbering and screeching, a discordancy of mind and logic against the need for touch and taste. “This is stupid.” He braced himself on his forearms, his hands framing her face and made himself look at her, forced himself to breathe the cool air and not her scent, made himself look at the woman who’d caused George’s death.
Dark streaks against white sand and green pine, her hair fanned out from her round face. She looked back at him, knowledge and sadness and sympathy blurring the blue-gray of her eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that, Sophie.”
“How am I looking at you, Judah?” Quiet as sunlight moving across a wood floor, her voice feathered over him.
“I’m only—”
“Don’t,” he said again.
“Don’t what, Judah?”
“Just…don’t.”
“Ah, Judah.” There was something like regret in that barely heard exhalation, something too much like pity.
From the corner of his eye, he saw her palm lift toward him. Before she could touch him, he fanned his hand across her face, stroked the skin at the corner of her eyes and drew her eyelids closed.
He hated her for the way she made him feel. Hated her for the sympathy in her eyes. Hated her most of all for the understanding glimmering there, an understanding so close to pity he couldn’t bear it. She had no right to see straight down to whatever passed for a soul in the darkness of his heart.
And yet he wanted her. Wanted her. Hated her. And despised himself. A sickness of body and mind he didn’t want to escape.
In that moment when the wind ceased, when all he heard was the pounding of his blood in his head, he learned a truth.
Despite logic, despite loyalty, despite everything, he was going to have Sophie Brennan.
He didn’t want to think about how he was going to live with that choice. Not with her soft and yielding beneath him.
With a quick, fierce movement, he pulled open the fastener of her pants. Her hands were right there on top of his, urging the skintight material down. Caught in the immediacy, he gritted his teeth and struggled with his jeans. Their hands bumped, tangled. She pushed his bumbling fingers aside. He pushed right back, hands and fingers melding in a dance of their own.
“Wait.” She lifted her pelvis and shoved the fabric past her belly.
“No.” Cool, damp, that skin suddenly under his palm. He dipped his mouth to her navel and blew softly against her.
Her belly fluttered beneath his mouth. “Ah,” she said, a tight, sharp sound of surprise.
He flattened his hand against her and pressed, his fingers stroking, testing her inner heat. “Here?”
“Oh, yes. There is good. There is perfect. There…ah.” One of her hands tightened in his hair, the other slid between them, seeking him as he continued pressing and stroking.
“Oh, yes,” and she surged upward, riding the rhythm of his touch as she’d melded with the storm waves. Urgency swamped finesse and he was clumsy, pushing and probing, the blind eye of need driving him into her. Awkward in his haste, no grace in the hurrying, no skill in his movements.
A sixteen-year-old would have had more control.
But she was in the moment with him, just as urgent, just as needy. The impatient sounds of her breathing merged with his, spoke to him in the silence.
He felt the wet denim of his jeans snick open, felt her warm hand, exploring, moving against his belly. Not shy, not delicate, her hands were those of a woman used to touching and examining, accustomed to the feel of the human body. Knowing. Confident. Incredibly seductive, that confidence. Behind his eyes a red haze burned. Then she freed him into the small curl of her hand and he bucked, thrust against her.
Need. Ugly.
Hunger roared through him, primal, finally blanking the monkey chatter in his brain. “Now,” he ground out through teeth clenched against the pleasure racing through him. “Now.”
He lifted her hips higher, positioned her, but she was ahead of him, already moving into him, her body welcoming and warm.
“Don’t—” She shifted, her body opening and taking him deeper, toward the limits of his shaky control.
“You want me to stop?” The muscles in his arms trembled. But he stopped. He would have sworn he couldn’t have. But he did. Head lowered, teeth clenched against a suddenly dry mouth, his whole body shuddering, he said again, “Stop? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No. Not that. Heaven help me, not that.” Her laugh was rueful, a coil of tension deep inside her that vibrated unbearably through him. Rising upward, she framed his face with her hands. “Don’t stop. That’s what I was trying to say.” Her head dipped into his shoulder, and she felt her breath against his skin as she murmured, “Don’t be careful with me. I don’t want politeness.”
“Believe me, manners are the last thing on my mind.” His thighs quivered with the effort needed to stay unmoving.
“What…do you want?” He heard himself and was stunned. He couldn’t say her name. Drowning in her, he couldn’t say her name. Didn’t want to. “Tell me.”
“The storm wave. Wildness. The deep blue sea. Can you give me that? I need—” She nipped at his skin, the scrape of her teeth a tiny command that slammed him over the edge.
Nothing but sensation in this moment, nothing but the blessed relief of skin against skin, touch and taste. Her body milking his, his palms sliding over the hot skin of her thigh, his touch sending shudders through her, through him.
Sex.
Simple. Something clear in his life for a change. Sex.
He surrendered to it, to her, letting the reins of control whip through his hands, letting himself sink into the whirlpool of sensation that was this woman.
And he didn’t care in that moment of release as his body pumped into hers in pure sensation, didn’t give a damn as he collapsed against her, that he couldn’t look in her eyes.
That he wouldn’t let himself say her name.
His cheek resting on the damp hair at her temple, he breathed in the light scent of her sweat, the salty air of the Gulf.
Overhead he sensed the movement of clouds, heard the angry squawk of seagulls.
For the first time in months, everything in his body and brain had stopped. He felt like a shell shimmering on the sand, abandoned by the tide.
Empty, washed clean.
And he wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, to slide into that darkness and stay there, unmoving.
The wind came off the Gulf and raised goose bumps everywhere Judah wasn’t. Sophie shivered, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t. She needed a minute to think. She couldn’t believe what she’d done. She’d just taken, dived headlong into the moment with no thought of consequences. She’d come off the waves with her anger and confusion not eased by the wild surf, and there was Judah. Frowning, hostile, but he was there, draped in seaweed and sending off waves of energy that bounced against her own unsettled emotions, his energy smashing against her own. Wind against current, the ninth wave of surfing, the big wave, the one surfers waited for.
Unthinking, not caring why he’d shown up, not wanting to think about the reasons for his anger, she’d simply reached out and clambered aboard the wave of their energy, ridden it to the end. It had been worth it, too, every second of that intensity.
Stupid?
Sure. Of course it was. No protection. All the questions about their relationship. The torturous mix of emotions. And in the aftermath, this loneliness and emptiness. But for those few minutes… She turned her head slightly and stared at the sand. Did she regret what she’d done?
Yes. No. Maybe.
She groaned.
At the sound, Judah shifted against her, moved away. Minus the blanket of his body, she was cold. Her teeth clicked together. Wrapping her arms around herself, she sat up. Her scalp itched with sand and dried salt. At least there weren’t any mirrors close at hand. Fine. She’d made her bed. She’d lie in it. So to speak. She pulled her top closed.
Beside her, she glimpsed Judah’s movements as he struggled to ease himself back into salt-stiffened jeans.
“So.” She stood up, caught the quick, sideways glance he threw her way. He was embarrassed. And now she was, too. Hideously embarrassed. And defensive. What had she done? And why?
Well, she could answer that question. She shoved her hair out of her face and took a deep breath. Could the aftermath of her craziness get any more humiliating?
“You must be wondering—” He cleared his throat.
“What must I be wondering, Judah? Tell me?”
“Why I’m here. What’s up.”
“I think that question’s been pretty well answered.”
He frowned, looked away. Then, taking a deep breath, he continued doggedly. “Why I’m here. You know what I mean.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/lindsay-longford/dead-calm/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Lindsay Longford
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: Detective Judah Finnegan didn′t believe in happy endings – too many years fighting crime had left him cynical. But when the discovery of an abandoned baby brought him back into the arms of his lost love, he realized he would have to find a new way of looking at the world or risk losing the woman of his dreams. Dr. Sophie Brennan had always been able to see through Judah′s bitterness into the loner′s heart, but she could never convince him that he was worthy of love.As they worked to save the baby, they tried to stay out of each other′s arms, but their old passion was too powerful to resist. Could their love survive a second chance?