Midnight Hour Read Online Free Page B

meant that hints wouldn’t work on the man either. That much was obvious, if the noises in her kitchen could be believed. She hadn’t known Nick Devereaux an hour yet, and he was poking around under her sink, making himself right at home.
    Steeling herself for another round with the Bayou Bomber, Mercy entered her kitchen warily and told herself that Nick and Sister Agatha probably had something more than matchmaking in mind, or he wouldn’t have driven an hour to see her. All his charm and the Mr. Helpful routine were most likely part of his plan to soften her up. She sighed, knowing the plan was working.
    Just as she’d left them earlier, all the cleaning supplies normally stored under the cabinet covered the top of the oak table by the picture window, and the huge, orange plastic bowl was still under the pipe. Nick was hunkered down in front of the open cabinet, shining a flashlight in a thoroughly competent way. Unhappily, she acknowledged the fact that Mr. Helpful looked pretty good to her right now.
    “The first thing we gotta do is shut off the water,” he told her as he inched closer, reaching inside to run his hand over an old copper pipe.
    “But I already did that,” she told him. “I shut off those valves under there before I called the plumber. Obviously, they don’t work.”
    “For this, they aren’t supposed to. Your leaky pipe is a supply line.” He waved her over, pointing at the two valves separating the incoming pipes from thecopper tubing leading to the fixtures. “When you turned those, all you did was cut off the supply to the faucet. Water still comes right up to the valves from the main line. First, we shut off the water at the street. Then we fix your pipe.”
    “We can do that? You really know what you’re doing?” Mercy asked, amazed that Nick hadn’t been overwhelmed at the thought of wielding a wrench. Her father always had been. His motto had been that doctors, by reason of higher education, were above manual labor. Pretty funny considering both her parents were surgeons and, technically, performed manual labor all day.
    Flicking off the flashlight, Nick looked up and enjoyed the view of long shapely thighs disappearing into a fringe of frayed denim. “Give me a little time,
chère
. I’ll get the job done. All I need is the key.”
    Mercy straightened and scooted away, aware that his voice made promises that had nothing to do with her plumbing. Nervously, she brushed her long hair back from her face with her fingers and fought back another urge to tug on her shorts. Instead, she cleared her throat and tucked her hands in her back pockets, coincidentally shoving the material down to cover more of her thighs. “I don’t think I have one. When I bought this place, all they gave me was the house key.”
    “Not that kind of key,” Nick explained as he stood up and placed the light carefully on the spotless counter.
Mon Dieu
, Mercy jumped like he was a ’gator trying to snap a bite out of her. Nick reined in his disappointed libido and turned his attention to the plumbing problem. “The key we need is a long,heavy, metal gadget that looks like the letter
T
. You got one of those around here?”
    With a short laugh, Mercy rolled her eyes and held up fingers as she counted off her meager tool supply. “I’ve got a hammer, a screwdriver, a wrench, some sandpaper, which has seen better days, and a big yellow book full of phone numbers for electricians, painters, plumbers, and roofers. Get the picture?”
    Scanning the outdated kitchen with its limited counter space like a contractor calculating profit, Nick said, “You’re gonna need more reliable phone numbers or some better tools if you plan to drag this kitchen into the twentieth century.”
    “Who the hell are you?” Mercy asked with some irritation. “A spy for
Better Homes and Gardens
? You’ve insulted my newel post, my chairs, and now my kitchen. Why on earth did you come here?”
    Nick rubbed the back of his neck