Secrets and Seduction: 5 Romance Novels (17 page)

She heard Brian Nash’s voice. “What happened, Nick?”

“It can’t be an accident this time.” Nick’s voice was fierce but low, his grip around her tight. “The odds of this fire being natural would be astronomical. If I hadn’t been here … ”

“I’ll tell the fire chief to look for signs of arson.”

Marisa shook harder. Arson meant attempted murder.

“Wentworth had better have an airtight alibi,” Nick said. “Or I want him in jail.”

“I’ll interview him myself.”

“I don’t like it that bad things are happening in this town. I want Marisa to be safe.”

She turned in Nick’s arms in time to see Sheriff Kehr push his way into their group. “Did I hear you accuse Scott Wentworth of this? He wouldn’t burn down an apartment building.”

Marisa was tired of the buffoon, but Nick spoke first. “You don’t know what he’d do, Sheriff. You don’t know anything about Wentworth since you’ve never investigated him. And if you block any investigation into his whereabouts, I’ll call the FBI to begin an investigation into your obstruction of justice. You’re a lawman, not Wentworth’s lackey. A woman’s life is in danger. Do your job and find out who wants her out of the way.”

The sheriff’s face turned brick red, but he signaled Brian away and the two talked urgently where Marisa couldn’t hear. She watched the firemen fight the fire, but the 100-year-old wood was no match for the flames. Tears misted her eyes. She hadn’t lived here long, but it had been her first home since she became an adult. She’d loved the smoking porch and the spaciousness of her rooms, the old-fashioned graciousness of the Victorian.

Now she’d have to start over from scratch. Another part of her life was over. Her teeth chattered.

Nick glanced at the paramedics who were busy working on the Loboschefskis. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“I don’t need a hospital.” Her voice shook like her body.

“Yeah, you do. That burn needs treatment.”

She’d forgotten about the burn. The mention of it woke the heat in her skin.

“C’mon.” Nick turned her toward the apartment’s parking lot.

“I don’t have my purse.” Marisa had no identification and no insurance card, no money or credit cards. Or anything else she owned. And the only clothes she had were the ones she was wearing.

“I managed to grab your purse as we went through the house. It’s in the grass by the back door.”

“Oh.” He’d been thinking about her needs even then. How like him.

Nick snatched up her purse and towed her toward his car, which was parked away from the house.

“What about my rental car?” She didn’t want to be responsible for that.

“I’ll ask one of your neighbors to move it. Go ahead and get in the car.”

She handed him the keys and climbed in. He was back in a jiffy and maneuvered his car around the emergency vehicles out front and turned onto the street. Marisa saw they were loading Mr. Loboschefski into the ambulance.

She looked back as they drove away. Flames licked at the dark sky. Grief choked her. Could she survive losing anything else this week?

• • •

Nick paced the hospital corridor while the medical staff treated Marisa’s burns. He’d tried to sit down, but his nervous energy needed an outlet. He could have lost Marisa today.

He jerked in the other direction and paced back. That stupid, brave, caring woman had risked her life to save a dog. His fists clenched. He probably would have done the same if she’d asked him to, but she hadn’t. She’d faced the gauntlet of fire alone. He was supposed to be the hero. It was his job to risk life and limb, not hers.

His chest felt tight. He didn’t want to think about the repercussions if she’d died in that burning apartment.

He wanted to smash Wentworth’s face. No one else could be responsible. As he pivoted in the other direction, he nearly careened into Marisa’s doctor. The doctor held out his hands to stop the collision.

“I’m giving her IV antibiotics and I want her to stay here for a few hours to make sure she doesn’t go into shock, but she should be fine,” Dr. Consear said. “There was one small third-degree burn. The rest were only second degree. Eventually she can have plastic surgery to remove the scar.”

Some of Nick’s tension bled away. “Thanks, doctor.”

“I put her on oxygen just while she’s here because she breathed in a lot of smoke. She’s very lucky.” He patted Nick on the shoulder and headed for the nurses’ station.

Nick braced himself to face Marisa. As he entered the small exam room, he saw her arm was tucked into one half of her hospital gown. The staff had covered her breast on the exposed side, the side where white bandages spotted her forearm and bicep. He knew there was another bandage on her shoulder blade where falling debris had burned her. His stomach tightened at the thought. He bent down and kissed her. She reeked of smoke. So did he.

“The doctor says I have to stay for a few hours, but the burns aren’t as bad as you thought.” He thought Marisa was trying to be positive.

He took hold of her hand, smoothing his thumb over her knuckles. “He told me. But they could have been worse, much worse. Don’t you know how dangerous it is to enter a burning building?”

“You went in after the Loboschefskis.”

“I work for the fire department.”

“As an EMT.”

Nick flinched. The reminder hit him on the raw. “You could have been killed. People die in fires, even firefighters.”

She glared at him, but then she frowned. “Someone you knew died in a fire?”

It shouldn’t surprise him that she’d figure it out; after all, she seemed to understand him. He nodded. “My dad was a fireman. He was killed in a three alarm two years ago.”

Now she caressed his hand with both of hers. “Did you work with him?”

“No. The department doesn’t want family members to work together. My brother also works for the NYFD, but he works out of a station in Queens.”

“Is he a fireman or an EMT like you?”

“A fireman. I come from a long line of firefighters. I’m the black sheep. My dad couldn’t understand that I wanted to work the medical end of the fire department. He always thought he’d gone wrong with me somehow.”

Marisa squeezed his hand. “He didn’t go wrong. Tell me how he died.”

Somehow, the words came out. He’d told the department shrink, but he hadn’t spoken about it to anyone else. “It was a bad blaze, an old structure that burned like a supernova. The floor above him caved in, and he and his partner were crushed under the burning debris. The rest of his station couldn’t get to them because of the flames. I was treating the injured, so I couldn’t leave them.”

Her eyes were sympathetic. “You were there when he died?”

Nick nodded. “My station got called out last. His was first on the scene. I heard what happened over the radio. I wanted to help find him. I knew I could save him if they’d just let me go in. But in New York City the EMTs don’t help fight the fires.”

The scene replayed in his mind for the millionth time — his captain holding him back, two firefighters bringing in a third on a stretcher, the man screaming with the pain of his burns. Nick’s duty was to the injured man, his captain had reminded him.

“I’m sorry about your dad. You save a lot of people as an EMT.”

Some of what he’d been feeling these past months escaped his tight hold and found its way into words. “Not nearly as many as I used to. It seems like there have been a lot of suicides the past six months, a lot of senseless violence. I’ve had to pronounce a lot of people lately. I try and I try, but I just can’t seem to make a difference.”

“Nick, the kind of job you have in a place like New York City, you’re bound to see more bad things than other people. It’s not because you don’t make a difference. You do.”

He couldn’t accept what she said as the truth. Not anymore. “Maybe I should have been a fireman like my dad wanted. I didn’t have any problem going in after the Loboschefskis. I’d be able to save more people that way.”

She threaded her fingers with his, as though she could hold him back from running right out to become a fireman. “We’re both pretty rocky right now. It’s not the time to make life-altering decisions.”

The door opened behind him. Nick turned to see the DNA doctor, Ziad Smail, with a wide smile on his face.

“When they told me you were here, Miss Avalos, I couldn’t believe it. I have good news. You’re Andrew Easterling’s daughter.”

“Andrew Easterling was my father?” In a week where Marisa’s known world had crumbled like buildings in a strong earthquake, it rocked once more. This conversation was déjà vu like the one she’d had with her fiancé days ago and she was just as disbelieving now as then. “Are you certain?”

Dr. Smail’s smile was blinding in contrast to his swarthy complexion. “Let’s just say that enough alleles matched with Carolyn Wentworth to make it a ninety-six percent certainty that she was your blood relative.” He bounced on the heels of his feet.

Marisa swallowed the emotion clogging her throat. Carolyn had been her sister. She managed a polite, “Thank you, Dr. Smail.”

“I’ll call Watkins Glen immediately and let them know.”

“Wait!” She swallowed again. “I need to talk to my mother first. I’ll call Mr. Jantzen as soon as I’m done.”

He nodded. “I understand. You’re in shock right now. Congratulations!” He left, beaming.

No sooner had the door shut, than the dam holding back Marisa’s emotions burst. She covered her face and wept. This was one loss too many, this loss of truth and of self.

Nick sat on the gurney and gathered her to him. She didn’t want to burden him more than she already had, so she tried to push him away.

“You can cry on me.”

Still she balked, wanting, yet not wanting comfort. “My mother lied to me, for twenty-six years. My father lived right next door. He was at my house nearly every day. He played with me, he taught me things, and he helped me choose a college. And all that time, they kept their secret!” Bitterness was a sour taste in her mouth.

“Maybe he didn’t know.”

She stared at him, her eyes widening in horror. “You think my mother slept with so many men she didn’t know who my father was?” It was worse than thinking her mother had lied. Had her mother been the town tramp all those years ago? Scott’s scathing remarks echoed in her head.

A sob worked its way out of Marisa’s throat, then another. “Oh my God. I was better off not knowing.”

Nick hugged her tighter. “I meant maybe she never told him.”

Which meant her mother was either a slut or a liar. Another part of the foundation of her life crumbled. All these years she thought she’d been a by-product of love. Instead, she might have been a one-night-stand. She felt her heart breaking.

As Marisa wept, Nick held her and rubbed her unburned shoulder. “Carolyn was my sister. All those years I felt as close as one, and all that time I was. They took that from us.” She cried harder.

“Would you have loved her more if you’d known?” Nick asked in a low voice against her temple.

“Yes. No, I guess not. But I would have kept in better touch with her.” Carolyn wouldn’t have had to keep her miscarriage to herself. Guilt burned in Marisa’s gut.

“My brother and I have barely spoken since my dad died.” Nick’s voice sounded strained. “I think he blames me for not saving my dad, but I don’t know for sure. I can’t bring myself to ask him. So you see, blood doesn’t make a difference.”

The pain in Nick’s statement stopped her tears. He’d known his father all his life, yet his father hadn’t been able to accept his choices. Marisa didn’t know if Andrew Easterling had known she was his daughter, but he had accepted her without reservation. He’d been a loving father to her in so many ways. He’d treated her exactly as he’d treated Carolyn.

“I need to talk to my mother.” Marisa wiped her face and reached to pull out the IV, but Nick stopped her.

“I won’t let you risk your life just so you can talk about something that happened twenty-six years ago. It’s waited this long. It can wait a little longer.”

Her rage found an outlet. “What right have you got to tell me what to do?”

“I’m the man who would have died trying to save you if you hadn’t made it out of that apartment.”

Her breath caught, amazed by his words and the intensity with which he spoke them, but then she realized what he’d meant. Nick was a rescuer. He saved people, or tried to. He’d worked himself into burnout trying to save people after his father died. He’d been playing her hero since they met. It was in his DNA.

But the blunt businessman was in her DNA. She knew now why she was good with numbers — because her father had been. “I don’t need to be rescued, Nick. All I need is the truth. And I need it before I face the townspeople standing next to my sister’s casket.”

He sighed. “All right. I’ll drive you home.”

• • •

They picked up Marisa’s mother at her shop and Nick drove them in silence to the little cottage on the Easterling estate. There was a potential it might be hers now. The lawyers would have to fight over that, but that fight was for later.

Nick gave her a lingering look, but didn’t try to kiss her in front of her mother, for which Marisa was grateful. He turned and walked down the driveway as she and her mother entered the little cottage.

Anjelita hadn’t said anything from the moment she’d looked at Marisa’s face in the shop. Now she pressed, “Are you really all right,
mi hija
?” Marisa had called her from the hospital when they arrived at the ER.

“Yes, Mamá. I’ll have a scar, but no other injuries.” The pleasantries took more effort than they should.

“You could have been killed.” Despite what her mother might sense in Marisa, she worried over her child’s health before anything else.

“I know. Mamá, please sit down.” Marisa couldn’t wait any longer for the truth.

Anjelita studied her face, and then seemed to wilt into her favorite chair.

“I got the DNA test results while I was at the hospital. Andrew Easterling was my father.”

Anjelita nodded. “And now you know.”

“Did you know, Mamá?” Marisa spoke as her mother’s child, but what she asked wasn’t childish.