The Fireman Who Loved Me (24 page)

Again, his pager beeped.

It had better be important. He pulled it out, and saw the flashing code that meant an emergency. Damn it! Running into the Airstream for his cell phone, he cursed himself every step of the way. The one time he ignored a page, of course it would be an emergency. What was he, some kind of rookie?

Ryan answered his call on the first ring. “Captain, where are you? The McGuires’ house is on fire. Engine 1 and Truck 1 are already headed over there, but I knew you’d want to know . . . and Nelly McGuire said for me to page you, which I would have done anyway, because she said Melissa’s trapped inside the house . . .”

Brody was already out the door, running at top speed for his truck. “My turnout’s at the station, can you get someone to take it to the house?” he yelled toward the phone, which he tossed into the passenger seat as he jerked the key in the ignition.

“It’s already in the rig, Cap.”

“Paramedics?”

“On their way.”

“Hoagie, you’re a champ.”

“Drive safe, Cap.”

As he reached over to end the call, he nearly swerved off the driveway. Idiot. He couldn’t help Melissa if he wound up under a pile of metal on the side of the road.
Just let her live, God, let her live.

The “curse” flittered through his mind. Was this what happened when a San Gabriel firefighter dared to dream of real love?
I won’t ask for anything else. Just let her live.
I’m begging.

A
strange smell woke Melissa up. It had a bitter taste that made her throat tingle. At first it made her think of the nightmare she’d been having, in which City Hall was burning down with Brody inside. But as she came awake and her head cleared, the smell didn’t go away. In fact, it grew stronger.

Smoke. Fire. Had Nelly set something on fire in the kitchen? It was time to get her grandmother to stop messing around with the burners. She jumped out of bed and raced downstairs, hollering as she went.

“Grans! What happened? What’s burning?”

No answer. Her grandmother’s bedroom door was open. She poked her head inside. It was empty. Nelly must be in the kitchen. But no one was in the kitchen, and no burners were on. She spotted an empty bowl in the sink. The oatmeal had been left out on the counter. So Nelly had been in the kitchen. Had there been a small fire, which Nelly had managed to put out? Melissa frowned at the stove. She saw no signs of charring or blackening on any of the burners.

“Grans!” she called again. No answer.

A sound caught her attention. A sound from outside the house—a kind of flickering, flapping sound, like a sail in the hissing wind. She padded through the kitchen to the door that opened onto the back porch. She opened it, screamed, and slammed it shut. A pillar of flame was shooting from the far end of the porch.

And then it sank in. The back porch was on fire. And she had no idea where her grandmother was. “Grans!” she shouted, opening the door again to peer past the flames. On the backyard lawn, she made out the shape of a body, still and limp, wearing her grandmother’s lavender cardigan. A trail of smoldering ashes led from the fallen body to the porch.

“Grans!” she screamed again. “Wake up!” Her stubborn grandmother must have tried to put out the fire by herself. Melissa darted out onto the porch, but a wall of heat stopped her. She ran back into the house. On her way through the house, she looked for the phone, but the cradle was empty. Her cell phone was all the way upstairs. No time to get it. Barefoot, still in her tank top and pajama bottoms, she raced out the front door and around the side of the house.

It seemed to take forever to reach that still body. When she dropped down on the dew-soaked grass next to Nelly, pure fear streaked through her at the look she saw frozen on her grandmother’s face. She looked desperate, or maybe terrified. Her skin was a sickly shade of bluish-white. Melissa felt for a pulse in the loose folds of her neck. “Please, Nelly, please be alive, please be alive.” The heat from the flames on the porch shocked her. It felt like noon on a midsummer day, not the beginning of December.

After an agonizing moment, she felt a faint pulse. “That’s good, Grans, you’re still alive. Now wake up, darling, we have to get you out of here.” She gently shook the frail body and patted Nelly on the cheek. But the unconscious woman showed no reaction. “That’s okay. That’s okay. I can carry you. You probably weigh about as much as a cat.”

Nelly might look fragile, but she still weighed over a hundred and twenty pounds. Melissa gathered her in a hug, and tried to lift her to her feet, only to fall back to the ground under the weight. As the two of them tumbled to the grass, she spotted the cordless phone that had been hidden under Nelly’s body.

“Oh, Grans, were you calling for help? Why didn’t you just yell for me?” She reached for the phone to call 911, but at that moment the flames on the porch gave a terrifying bellow. The fire had reached the roof. If the whole house caught fire, she and Nelly would never be able to get out of the backyard. She had to get Nelly out, now.

Melissa left the phone alone and crouched next to her grandmother. She pulled Nelly onto her back, and tried to wrap her grandmother’s arms around her neck. But Nelly slipped off, almost rolling onto the hot ashes on the lawn. Melissa snatched her away from the ashes just in time.

“Oh Grans, please,” she begged, panting. If this didn’t work, she’d have to drag Nelly across the lawn, and she didn’t know what kind of injuries her grandmother had. How did those firefighters do it? They just picked people up as if they weighed nothing. How did Brody do it?

The thought of Brody gave her a burst of energy.

“Let’s try this one more time, Grans.” This time, finally, blessedly, it worked, and she staggered to her feet with her grandmother draped over her back, cardigan-covered arms dangling over her shoulders. As a burst of heat fanned the backs of her legs, she took one step forward, then another, and then stumbled to her knees. She groaned with frustration and crawled forward on hands and knees across the grass, her grandmother on her back.

The fire roared like an angry lion and the bitter smell felt thick in her throat. Her world shrank to the square of grass in front of her. If she could just get that far, then she could focus on the next square. But the next square of grass seemed so far away, and the voracious heat beat against her body. The world had no more air. Her body had no more strength. Everything shimmered and began to go black.

Then, in the blurry darkness, a powerful figure appeared in silhouette. Manly and dynamic. A hero in action.

It had to be a hallucination, of course. She would have laughed, if she’d had any air in her lungs. The poster from the bachelor auction was coming to her rescue.

Chapter Twenty-four

M
elissa felt her grandmother’s weight being lifted off her. Someone hauled her to her feet. “Come on,” said an urgent voice. “I’ll take her. Are you all right, Melissa?”

Brody
. Worried gray eyes scanned her. She blinked at him. The poster wasn’t a hallucination, or rather, Brody wasn’t a poster. She tried to clear her head. Where had he come from? It was as if he’d parachuted down from heaven.

“Grans,” she croaked.

“I’ve got her.” Brody turned his attention to the limp figure in his arms. He tilted her grandmother’s head back and listened closely to her breathing.

For the first time, it occurred to Melissa there might be something wrong with Nelly, that she hadn’t just fainted from the heat and fear. Brody jogged to the street, carrying her grandmother lightly in his arms. She scrambled after him, wanting to ask what he’d heard, what might be wrong, but sobs choked her and she couldn’t get out a single word.

A battalion of vehicles converged on the house in a circuslike blaze of flashing lights and clashing sirens. She recognized Engine 1, and saw Vader and Two jump out. “It’s the back porch and the roof,” she told Brody, as they reached the paramedic van. He gave one quick gesture to his crew, and they hauled the giant hoses around the side of the house.

Brody seemed more concerned with Nelly. He handed her off to the paramedics, who immediately strapped her to a gurney in the back of the van and attached a battery of electrodes to her.

“What is it? What’s wrong with Grans?” Panic gripped her. Everything was happening in some kind of time warp. It had probably been no more than a few minutes since she’d woken up to the smell of smoke, but it seemed like a lifetime.

Brody put his hands on her shoulders and gently turned her to face him. “I think she may have had a heart attack. She’s alive, and the paramedics are giving her an injection to stop the clotting. But we won’t know the full situation until the doctors examine her.”

Melissa stared at him in sheer bewilderment. “Heart attack?” she whispered. “Grans doesn’t have a bad heart. It’s her stomach.”

“Her stomach?”

“Pain in her stomach. But she says the doctor says it’s no big deal.”

“Who’s her doctor?”

Melissa searched her frazzled memory for the name. Nelly had always insisted on going to see the doctor by herself, and had rarely even mentioned his name. “Daughtry,” she finally said. “Dr. Daughtry. I don’t know his first name.”

Brody relayed this information to the paramedics, then drew her away from the van. “Are you okay? No injuries?”

She shook her head. “No, nothing. It all happened so quickly. She’ll be okay, won’t she? She has to. You saved her, and you never lose anyone.”

Brody didn’t answer directly. “You did really well, Melissa. You kept your head.”

“No, no, I should have thought of a heart attack. I should have called 911. I should have—” She was interrupted by a rough shake from Brody that made her squeak.

“Stop. She had already called the fire station. You did exactly the right thing. If you hadn’t gotten her away from the fire, she might have burned to death.” After one last squeeze, he drew away. “Now come on, hop in. I’ve got a sweater in here somewhere.”

“Hop in?” she said, confused, as he led her by the hand toward his truck.

“We’re going to the hospital. The ambulance is leaving.”

“You’re coming with me?” Why did she feel so stupid, like she was one step behind everything he said?

“Unless you have some objection.”

She shook her head. Did Rebecca know he was here? But that was a stupid question. He was a firefighter. Just doing his job. “Don’t you have to stay and put out the fire?”

“No, they’ve got it under control. It’s not much of a fire,” he said with a slight smile.

She attempted a smile in response, but it felt more like a gruesome twisting of her mouth. “Could have fooled me. Is this what you guys call the growth phase?”

“Very good. Been doing your homework. But don’t worry, it’ll be out before it gets to stage two.” Brody helped her into his truck. Which was a good thing, since her body felt so strange and heavy, as if she were walking through molasses. He draped a man’s crewneck sweater over her shoulders—it smelled like smoke, like everything else in his truck—then slid into the driver’s seat.

“How come I feel so weird, like I can’t move right?” she asked him.

“It’s the aftershock,” he said briskly. “I’ve seen it many times. You’ll feel better in a few minutes. Just rest until we get to the hospital. I have some extra socks in here somewhere too.”

Right. She was still barefoot, and her feet had little bits of wet grass all over them. She leaned her head back against the headrest. A sudden thought jerked her upright again. “Oh! I should call my dad.”

“I already did. He’s meeting us there.”

Brody had taken care of everything. He’d thought of everything. Melissa let her eyes drift shut. It felt like being on a magic carpet. She had absolutely nothing to worry about.

Except Grans.

She spent the rest of the ride praying for her grandmother.

At the hospital, Brody quietly took command. He shepherded her through the reception area, got an update on Nelly’s condition (critical), and settled her into the waiting area with a cup of coffee. Cream, one sugar. How on earth could he remember how she liked her coffee at a moment like this? But she was beyond questioning anything about Brody. If someone had asked her, she would have said he must be a superhero with mystical powers.

After making another call on his cell phone, he eased into the seat next to her with a sigh.

“I just called your father again. He’s about fifteen minutes away.”

“Thanks.” She felt suddenly guilty for taking up so much of his time. “Is this . . . I mean, is there anywhere else you should be?”

“No, nowhere. But . . .” He hesitated before finishing. “Is there anyone else you want me to call?”

She searched her mind. “I can’t think of anyone,” she said with a shake of her head. He gave her a probing look. “Her husband’s long dead, I told you that, right? It’s just me and Haskell. Dad.” This seemed to satisfy him, since he sat back with a little smile. She gave him an offended look. Was he smiling because poor Nelly didn’t have more surviving family members?

Then the light bulb turned on.

Brody had been asking about Everett. He wanted to know if she wanted to call Everett. She nearly laughed out loud. Even when she’d been in love with Everett, she never would have expected him to rush to her side in a crisis. Besides, Nelly hated Everett. “That man is no good for anyone” had been her mantra. Nothing would be more guaranteed to upset her than Everett showing up at her bedside. She could just imagine Nelly bolting upright on her hospital bed, giving Everett a big old roundhouse slap on the cheek, and falling back into unconsciousness while nurses and doctors buzzed around her.

Brody, on the other hand, had earned Nelly’s approval almost right away. Almost. “Remember Nelly’s first words to you?” she asked him.

“Sure. Something along the lines of ‘Who the hell are you, and how come you’re dating my granddaughter and not that handsome blue-eyed hunk I paid for?’ ”

Melissa winced. “I guess that’s about right.”

“We never took her money, you know.”

“What do you mean? What about the widows and orphans?” She eyed him, sitting so comfortably next to her, as if there were no place he’d rather be than in this fluorescent-lit, disinfectant-scented waiting room.

“Don’t worry, they got their donation. I took care of it.”

Melissa’s face flamed with embarrassment. Had Brody refused to take Nelly’s money because they’d slept together? Or had he made the donation out of guilt, after he’d ditched Melissa for his ex? The whole thing was humiliating.

Two white-coated doctors with grim expressions came through the door of the treatment room. Melissa and Brody both jumped to their feet. She grabbed Brody’s hand. As the doctors approached, he hugged an arm around her shoulder.

“You must be Melissa,” said one of the doctors, shaking her free hand. “I’m Dr. Daughtry. I’ve been treating your grandmother for some time now. This is Dr. Swenson, the emergency room doctor.”

“This is Harry Brody, my . . . fire captain.” God, she sounded like an idiot. The two doctors were a blur. She hoped she wouldn’t have to identify them in a lineup later. “Is Grans okay? Is she going to be all right?”

“Your grandmother is awake and wants to see you, but she wanted me to tell you the full extent of her situation first.”

“Situation?” She didn’t like the sound of that.

“How much do you know about your grandmother’s condition?” he asked.

“You mean the heart attack?”

“No, the stomach cancer.”

“Cancer?” The word sent a cold shock through her. Brody’s arm tightened around her.

“Your grandmother has terminal stomach cancer. Her heart attack was the result of pain and extreme stress. She’s known for some time that she’s in her final months, and has refused radical life-saving measures.” The doctor adjusted his glasses and looked down at his clipboard.

“Say it so we can understand,” said Brody, in that commanding voice no one ever disobeyed.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t expect her to survive the night.”

No.
No.
The words sank into Melissa’s numb brain. Feisty, ornery, bossy Nelly, not expected to survive the night?
Life-saving measures.
What had the doctor said about life-saving measures? “Let me talk to her. I’ll convince her. You can do something to save her, right?”

“Honestly, very little, even if she accepted treatment. The cancer is quite advanced. She’s been living in nearly constant pain for the last few weeks.”

“Why didn’t she . . . why didn’t she . . . ?”
Tell me
, she wanted to say, but couldn’t get the words out. The waiting room spun around her, and she heard Brody say quietly, “Give us a moment, please,” and then the doctors left, she buried her head in Brody’s chest, and his arms closed tight around her as shuddering sobs shook her body. She fought to get control of herself, but the grief had a life of its own. She gave herself over to it. After some time, when the sobs had subsided into hiccups, and she lay trembling in Brody’s arms, she came back to herself enough to hear him whispering in her ear.

“Nelly needs you now, Melissa. She wants to see you. Can you do it?”

She nodded, and pulled back to wipe her face. Her hands were shaking too much to have any effect, and Brody gently drew them away to take over the job himself. With the sleeve of his soft flannel shirt, he patted the wetness from her cheeks. “The bathroom’s right over there. Go in and wash your face. It’ll upset Nelly to see you like this.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Melissa took a deep, shaky breath. “She’s probably going to be cracking jokes and bossing me around.”

“This is her time. Let her do as she likes.”

She clung to the calm command in those dark gray eyes, to the strength in the hand that still held her shoulder. “Will you go in there and tell Grans I’m coming? And tell her Dad is on his way too.”

“Of course I will. Don’t take too long though.”

She didn’t have to be told why. Melissa hurried into the bathroom.

Brody followed the doctors into Nelly’s room. Nelly certainly didn’t look like the end was near. She sat bolt upright, a scowl on her face, a rubber electrode clutched in her fist, a nurse flailing helplessly by her bed.

“Oh, it’s you.” She greeted Brody. “What’s this crap they’ve got all over me?”

“The usual. They’re trying to keep you alive for a few more hours.”

“But I told them—”

“They know. This is just for monitoring. Now let the nice nurse put it back on.”

After measuring the calm authority in his face, she grumpily handed the electrode back to the nurse. Brody gave her a surreptitious scan while she lay back and allowed it to be taped to her chest. Her bones looked so frail, her skin nearly transparent, as if her body was halfway to heaven already, with only her fierce, eaglelike gaze left behind. As soon as the nurse left, Nelly turned those eagle eyes on Brody.

“Where’s Melissa? Where’s my son?”

“Haskell is on his way. Melissa’s in the bathroom. She’s had quite a night, what with saving you from your own stupidity. Why’d you set that fire, Nelly?”

She didn’t bother to look guilty. “I should have known you’d figure it out. Does Melissa know?”

“No. She has enough to worry her.”

“You’re a good man, Captain Brody. Are you going to come through?”

“Come through?” He frowned. “This isn’t about me. What were you up to, Nelly? There’s going to be an investigation, and I don’t want Melissa hurt by the findings. I need to know the truth, so maybe I can help you.”

“I’ll tell you. If you tell me something.” When he gave a short nod, she continued. “Who told you about the fire?”

“Ryan. He paged me.”

“And he told you Melissa was trapped?”

Brody nodded.

“And what did you feel?”

That he would have thrown himself into the flames to save her. That if he couldn’t save her, there would be no reason to save himself. That the entire world centered on one house, one bedroom, one irreplaceable woman who needed him.

His face must have given away his emotions, since she gave a satisfied grunt. “That’s why I did it.”

“What?” Brody strode over to her bedside and loomed over her. “Are you telling me you risked Melissa’s life to . . . to . . .”

“Get you to admit you love her. Worked, didn’t it?”

Brody clenched his jaw. “If you weren’t already . . .”

“Dying? But I am dying. If I weren’t, I could have let you two bumbling kids take care of your own business. But you left me no choice. Hand me that water.”

Brody, kicking himself for nearly losing his temper with a woman in her waning hours, poured her some water and carefully brought it to her. She sipped from the glass, and a few drops of water spilled down her face. Brody found a box of tissues on the bedside table, and used one to gently dry her chin. At his touch, she closed her eyes.