“Do I even want to know what that one condition is?”
“It’s simple: You just have to accept the fact that if you ever break her heart, you and I are gonna rumble.”
“Martie’s heart,” Chris said solemnly, “is safe with me, Tony. I just hope she’s still willing to let me have it.”
Fifteen
She had dreamed about him. That he had sat by her side, holding her hand and talking to Tony.
Or had that really happened?
Maybe, if she could just open her eyes, she’d find out. With a soft sigh, Martie lifted eyelids that felt like lead, hoping against hope that it hadn’t been a dream, and that Chris really had kept vigil by her bedside. She was disappointed to see only her brother keeping her company.
Well, not entirely. She was glad that he was here—she’d just hoped that Chris was too.
Tony leaned forward. “Hey, stranger,” he said softly. “How you feeling?”
Carefully she lifted the hand without the I.V. in it to gingerly touch her face, feeling it still swollen and tender on both sides. “Probably better than I look,” she said after a moment.
Her eyes drifted around the sterile white room again, and her brother chuckled. “Loverboy left an hour ago.”
She looked at him. “So I wasn’t dreaming,” she said with a smile.
Tony shook his head. “Nope, no dream. The big lump sat here all night, until I forced him to go home and get some sleep.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?” Martie asked.
Her brother snorted. “Because he’s not my boyfriend, smart ass.”
Despite having just been told that Chris had sat by her side all night, Martie felt her heart drop a little. “He’s not mine either,” she said sadly.
“Please, sorellina,” Tony chided. “I highly doubt any guy’s gonna sit for hours on end beside a woman in a hospital bed that doesn’t care about her. Besides that, I happen to know he loves you.”
Martie scoffed. “Oh really? And how do you know that?”
“Because he told me so himself.”
She blinked rapidly as she looked at her brother, whose expression was free of the guile she often expected from him. Slowly, a smile spread from ear to ear, hope and love blooming in her breast.
“By the way, I’m supposed to give you a message,” Tony said then, and she raised an eyebrow in curiosity when he reached into a back pocket, a moment later holding up a very familiar object: one of her digital recorders.
And if she wasn’t mistaken, it was the very same one she’d left with Chris in that hotel room in Billings.
“He recorded…whatever’s on here…while I was in the cafeteria a few hours ago,” her brother said as he handed her the device. “So I’ve no idea what he said—though I admit it’s taken no small amount of willpower not to listen to it.”
Martie held the recorder close to her heart. “It’s none of your business, nosy,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him.
Tony laughed. “Good to see you getting back to your old self already,” he said, then stood with a groan. “I’m gonna head out and grab something to eat—real food, not the slop they claim is food in this hospital. You want anything?”
Gratitude swelled within her as she looked up at her big brother, who had obviously known that the moment he gave her the recorder she’d want to listen to Chris’s message. This was his way of giving her a chance to do so in private.
“Sure. Whatever you’re gonna get is fine,” she replied.
Tony nodded and then headed for the door. He turned back as he stepped across the threshold, saying, “I’ll let ‘em know at the nurses’ station that you’re awake. And do me a favor—call Mom and Dad first. They’ve been nagging me like, every half hour. I could do without my cell buzzing my ass every thirty minutes.”
Martie nodded and he pulled the door shut as he went. Looking to her left, she noted that there was a phone on the bedside table, and she rolled to reach for it. After dragging the entire handset over to sit on the bed with her, she picked up the receiver and put it to her ear as she dialed her parents’ number in Billings.
“Liotta residence, Carmen speaking,” her mother answered after the second ring.
Tears sprang unbidden to Martie’s eyes, and she sobbed as she was suddenly struck with the realization that she had come very close to never hearing the sound of her mother’s voice again.
“Mamá? Sono io, Martine,” she said softly.
“Oh! Grazie, Signore Gesù!” Carmen Liotta yelled in her ear, and Martie could tell she was crying as well.
For the next several minutes she spoke to her mother in Italian—Carmen always switched languages when she was upset. Hating having been the cause of the distress, Martie did her best to reassure her mother that she was going to be fine. No, she had not spoken to the doctor yet, as she’d just woken up a few minutes ago. Tony had told her that she should call home first, so they could stop worrying.
“Come se tuo padre e io possa mai smettere di preoccuparsi per i nostri figli,” her mother scolded her lightly.
It was an old argument, and for once the familiarity of the words didn’t annoy her. Instead, Martie only felt the love behind them. She sighed, saying in English, “I know, I know. You and Dad will always worry about us.”
“Where is Antonio?” her mother asked then.
“Tony went to get something to eat,” she said. “He’ll be back soon. Should I have him call you?”
“No, that’s not necessary. I’m sure your brother is tired of hearing from me,” Carmen said. “But I was so worried when we got the call you’d been injured.”
Martie frowned. “Who called you, anyway?” she asked.
“It was a very nice young man named Christopher Paytah. He said he was a captain with the fire department there and that he regretted having to call with such news, but that you’d been injured. Oh my goodness, Martine—I swear my heart stopped when he said those words.”
Her chest squeezed tight, and Martie closed her eyes against a second welling of tears. “I’m so sorry, mamá,” she said, swallowing heavily. “I had no idea…”
Graham. He was behind the Breckon Apartments fire, even if he hadn’t been the one to start it. He was responsible for more than thirty people being homeless, tens of thousands of dollars in property damage, and he was ultimately responsible for the death of Chris’s best friend and mentor. He had known before he even sent her to Gracechurch that first day that Ronnie and Jessica not only lived there, but that they had lived when they were meant to die.
He had lied to her, had purposely misled her investigation so that she would believe Trevor Breckon had been responsible—he had wanted her to think the worst of Victor Stillman, too. She knew now that he had suggested she take a closer look at Chris not out of concern for her, but because he wanted her for himself, and despite the love he had claimed to have for her, he had tried to kill her.
Martie shuddered at the memory of his tongue in her mouth, his hands on her breasts, his flesh against hers as he squeezed them around his member. Bile rose in her throat and her stomach heaved, and knowing that a wretching fit was coming, she told her mother as calmly as she could that she needed to go, hanging up just in time to lean over the side of the bed and vomit on the floor.
After what little liquid in her stomach had been forced out, Martie dropped back onto the pillow, tears flowing freely as the memory of being at Graham’s mercy came back to haunt her. She didn’t want to remember the disappointment, the disgust, the fear… Now more than ever she wished Chris was here, to hold her and soothe her as she had done for him. To brush her hair back and whisper that everything was going to be okay.
Maybe then she wouldn’t have to remember.
Sighing and wiping furiously at her face, she searched the blankets for the call button, signaling her need for a nurse. To her surprise, someone she recognized responded—one of the nurses from the children’s floor she’d spoken to yesterday.
&n
bsp; “Are you feeling alright, Lieutenant?” she asked as she came near.
“I’m not feeling sick or anything, per se,” Martie replied shakily. “I just… Bad memories, is all.”
The nurse, the older of the two she’d met the day before, smiled sympathetically as she took Martie’s wrist in hand, felt for her pulse, and then looked at her watch to count the beats. “Nice and steady,” she told her as she laid her hand back down. “A little elevated, but I think that’s to be expected after everything you went through. Did your brother tell you anything?”
Martie shook her head. “Only that Chris Paytah had been here most of the night,” she said.
The nurse grinned. “I think Chris has taken quite a shine to you, Lieutenant,” she said then. “From what I heard tell, he refused to leave you even when they were treating you in the ER—said he wasn’t letting you out of his sight.”
Feeling a goofy grin come to her lips, Martie told her, “I think it’s alright if you call me Martie. If you’d like, that is.”
“And I’m Jackie—no ‘Nurse Jackie’ jokes, please. I get enough of those from my co-workers, thank you very much.”
Martie chuckled. “I don’t even watch the show, so you’ve no worries there,” she said, then sighed. “So what’s the damage?”
Jackie’s expression was frank. “You’ve got a couple of nasty shiners and a hairline fracture in your right cheekbone. Three stitches at your throat from a laceration and two on your forehead—I heard you were pistol-whipped—and a big bruise at your midriff, like you were kicked.”
“I was,” she muttered darkly.
Jackie sighed. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, hon, but you’re gonna be just fine, don’t you worry. Gracechurch ain’t Billings, but we got some wonderful doctors here.”
“Speaking of being fine, how’s Ronnie? Please tell me she’s alright,” Martie asked then.
When Jackie’s expression fell, she thought the worst—that Ronnie had died, leaving Jessica all alone.
“She lost a lot of blood from the stab wounds, and that rat bastard that hurt both of you broke her nose, too. She’s bruised up from that, and she unfortunately got burned from the fire,” the nurse told her softly.
“Oh, mio Dio!” Martie gasped. “How badly was she burned?”
“It’s not too bad—at least that’s what the doctor said,” Jackie said. “But her right shoulder and cheek are gonna scar permanent.”
Martie crossed herself and said a silent prayer for a speedy recovery. “Do you think I could go see her? Not right this moment, but in a little while?”
Jackie raised an assessing eyebrow, then nodded. “I’ll go get a wheelchair—no arguing. You go in the chair or not at all.”
Nodding, Martie replied, “Of course. Whatever you say.”
“I’ll have an orderly come clean up the spill,” the other woman said as she started for the door.
Martie chuckled. “’Spill’ is a really nice way of saying ‘puke’,” she said.
Jackie laughed. “We aim to please,” she said, stepping into the hall.
When she had gone, Martie resettled herself as comfortably as she could in the confines of the hospital bed, preparing herself to listen to whatever Chris had to say. She knew her heart was already full of love and hope for a future with the man, but just hearing Tony tell her he’d said he loved her wasn’t enough. She wanted—needed—to hear it from Chris: in his own voice, in his own words. She hoped he said them in his message, and greater still was the hope that she would get to hear him say he loved her in person very soon.
She certainly wanted to say it to him.
As she was about to press play, there was a light knock at the door. Jackie pushed a wheelchair inside when she bade the visitor enter, followed by an orderly pushing a maintenance cart. Martie felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment that the poor woman had to clean up her vomit, and apologized for the mess.
The woman chuckled lightly as she worked. “It ain’t nothin’ I haven’t seen before, hon,” she said. “Hell, I’ve seen worse.”
Jackie patted the back of the wheelchair. “Just press your call button when you’re ready to travel, okay? I spoke with the on-call doctor, and he wants you to drink some of that water on your table. If you keep it down, I’ll remove your I.V. before we go.”
Martie nodded. “Okay. Thank you, Jackie,” she said, and after just a few minutes’ time, she was alone again. With a sigh, she lifted the recorder and pressed play.
“Hello, wótheȟila,” Chris began, his use of the Lakota equivalent of ‘sweetheart’ warming her all over and bringing a smile to her face. “I want so much to stay here with you, but your brother and my crew—not to mention the hospital staff—have strongly encouraged me to go home and get some sleep. Which means they nagged until I caved, though personally, I’d rather climb in that bed right next to you, wrap my arms around you, and fall asleep to the sound of your steady breathing.
“Martie, I have never—in all my life—been as scared as I was yesterday, when I realized that the car I’d just doused was yours. That not only was Ronnie missing, but you had been taken with her. Not knowing where you were or what was happening to you made me sick. I felt so lost and alone, and afraid I was never going to see you again. And that made me realize just how much I’m in love with you. It no longer mattered to me what you’d done to hurt me—I just wanted you back, and safe in my arms where you belong.”
He sighed then, and there were a few seconds of silence before he continued. “I’m sitting here looking at you as you sleep, under the influence of the sedatives the doctor gave you, and I’m finding it difficult to breathe. My chest literally hurts each time my eyes take in your battered face, because you should never have been made to suffer as you did. I think about what that bastard did to you that I can clearly see, and I’m doing my damnedest not to think about what he did that isn’t so obvious as a bruise. Because every time I do, I imagine all manner of things that make me want to puke. It makes me wish he’d survived the fire, because I’d be more than willing to end his life for what he did to you, just so the pain and memories of that hell would go away.”
She hit the stop button, needing a moment to collect her thoughts. Chris had said that he was in love with her. That seeing her battered and bruised at the hands of another made him physically ill. He even admitted that he’d have killed Graham himself if it would take away the memories. Though she certainly wouldn’t have wanted him to commit murder on her behalf, the sentiment behind that declaration meant a great deal to her.
Martie wasn’t really sure how she felt about hearing that Graham was dead. Right now, her feelings for her former boss ranged from anger to disgust to pity, to wondering what the hell had flipped his switch. But for the most part, for right now at least, she didn’t want to think about him at all. Thinking about Graham meant remembering what he’d done to her, when she’d been virtually unable to stop him. Her stomach started to churn again, and so she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed all thoughts of Graham Henderson to a dark corner in the back of her mind, to be dealt with when she was a lot stronger emotionally.
After reaching for the water pitcher she poured some into the plastic cup beside it, sitting straight again and taking a tentative sip. Encouraged by the fact that her stomach didn’t immediately revolt, she drank more and pressed the play button again, eager to replace the darkness with the light created just by the sound of Chris’s voice.
“I won’t ask you any questions about what happened. I know that you’ll tell me whenever you’re ready. Just know that I am here for you whenever you want me to be. Actually, I’d very much like to be here for you, to be with you, every day for the rest of my life—but given what you know about me, I’ll understand if your feelings for me have changed. And even if they have, I still love you. I always will.”
Tears of a different nature fell silently from her eyes as the message ended. Martie hugged the recorder to her chest, wishing
it were Chris she was holding instead so that she could assure him she still wanted him. So that she could tell him she loved him too.
Later, she told herself. Chris was coming back to see her, that much she knew, and she suddenly wished she could get a shower before he did. Her legs and everything else below her neck felt fine—it was her head that hurt, she thought, noting that she had a dull headache. Dull, she mused wryly, was a blessing compared to how it had felt to be hit with the butt of Larry’s gun or Graham’s fist, so she wasn’t going to complain until such time as the ache became intolerable.
Reaching for the call button again, she rang for Jackie.
***
The nurse at the desk—Jackie, he thought her name was—shook her head and tsked softly when Chris walked by the nurses’ station on Martie’s floor. Okay, so he’d only been gone about four hours, so what? He couldn’t sleep. He needed to see Martie, to look into those beautiful golden browns and know that she was all right.
He needed her to tell him, once and for all, whether or not there was a chance at a future together.
As he approached the door to her room, Tony was coming out of it. The elder Liotta merely shook his head when he saw him. “I had a feeling I’d see you again before too long,” he observed as he approached. “Nice flowers.”
Chris raised an eyebrow and adjusted his grip on the vase of red roses he’d purchased at the Gracechurch Greenhouse before coming over. “I should think you’d be happy. My being here means I find it difficult to stay away from her. It’s a sign of devotion.”
“Or that you’re a stalker,” Tony quipped lightly.
At his frown, the other man reached up and scratched the back of his head. “I’m sorry—poor choice of words. The snark is has no filter when it comes to men who are interested in my sister.”
Against his desire to appear annoyed, Chris smiled. “Which, in its own twisted way, is also a sign of devotion.”
“Well, you know what the song says… ‘When a man loves a woman, can’t keep his mind on nothin’ else’,” Tony countered.
Fire Born (Firehouse 343) Page 22
