Dead Calm Read online

  “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 je
rked 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.