Dead Calm. Lindsay Longford

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