Dead Calm Read online

  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

  Books by Lindsay Longford

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Cade Boudreau’s Revenge #390

  Sullivan’s Miracle #526

  Renegade’s Redemption #769

  No Surrender #947

  Dead Calm #1245

  Silhouette Romance

  Jake’s Child #696

  Pete’s Dragon #854

  Annie and the Wise Men #977

  The Cowboy, the Baby and the Runaway Bride #1073

  The Cowboy and the Princess #1115

  Undercover Daddy #1168

  Daddy by Decision #1204

  A Kiss, a Kid and a Mistletoe Bride #1336

  Baby, You’re Mine #1396

  Silhouette Shadows

  Lover in the Shadows #29

  Dark Moon #53

  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, trigg
ered 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.