Fire Born (Firehouse 343) (6 page)

Not t
hat she was making light
of
the fact that a man had died, someone that both Chris and Robert Dresden had clearly respected and admired a great deal. Chris, in fact, had referred to Calvin Maynard more than once by Calvin or Cal—the latter being a short name only a friend would use. His captain had been more than his boss, and the pain he felt at his loss had been clear in the stiffness of his back, the set of his broad shoulders, his pinched expression. She’d had to fight the almost impossible to resist urge to reach across the table and caress his face, to trace his lips with her fingers so that he would forget for just a little while how much he was hurting.

And that’s what had really thrown her—that she had found herself wanting to comfort him when she should have been grilling him for answers. Instead she had simply let him tell his story and had asked only a handful of questions. That wasn’t her usual mode of operation. She was tougher than that. It was how she got things done—asking the hard questions, pushing when others might back away, forcing witnesses to see things from every angle and suspects to confess just to get her to leave them alone.

Of course, her usual hard-nosed tactics hadn’t worked on Trevor
Breckon
so far…but she’d get him.

And she’d have to talk to Chris again, a thought that made her happier than it should. As she pulled out of the hospital parking lot, she wondered if she’d get to see him again before either one of them left town, and whether or not it was wrong for her to be hopeful that she would. It wasn’t as if she wouldn’t see him in Gracechurch when she went there to interview his crewmates. She didn’t need to talk to him again until she talked to the rest of his unit.

But whether or not she would—or could—wait that long was a question that plagued her the rest of the morning. Back in her office, she found herself listening to the sound of his voice on the recorder and fantasizing
about him using that deep baritone to talk her out of her clothes instead of typing up the interview like she was supposed to be doing.

Prendi
una
presa
, Martine!
she
chastised herself. Chris Paytah was a material witness in her investigation, and a man who was grieving the loss of a dear friend. Her focus should be on finding the person responsible for the
Breckon
Apartments fire, not the
man who with his voice alone had made her nipples harden and her toes curl.

No
, she thought with a determined shake of her head.
Definitely need to stop thinking about that
.

“Thank you, Chris, for staying with us all day,” Irene said as she walked him to the door.

“You don’t need to thank me, Irene,” Chris replied. Stepping over the threshold of the hotel room’s door, he turned to face her again. “Kara and Tonja needed me, and so did you. Think nothing of it.”

“Are you sure you won’t let me pay for your room as well? I think it’s the least I could do,” she asked.

He shook his head. “No, that won’t be necessary. Just get some rest. You have a long drive ahead of you tomorrow.”

With a sigh, Irene nodded. “Alright then—I’ll see you before I go, I hope?”

Nodding, he offered her a weak smile. “I’m sure you will. I still have to rent a car to drive Kara back to Gracechurch.”

“I wish I could just stay with her, but I need to make arrangements for my absence at work. And unfortunately, I can’t do it over the phone.”

“I understand, and I’m sure Kara does too,” he consoled her.

After several hours at the hospital, Chris and Dr. Hoffman (who’d appeared in the cafeteria to speak with Martie and deliver the records she’d asked for) had convinced Tonja and
Karalyn
to leave. They were reluctant
to go, not wanting
to leave Calvin behind in the hospital morgue. Hoffman assured them both that he would arrange for Calvin’s body to be transported to the funeral home in Gracechurch first thing the next morning.

Because they were all exhausted, Irene had called and reserved rooms for them at the local Holiday Inn. She was sharing a room with her daughter and Tonja would be right next door. Chris had insisted on paying for his own room over Irene’s protests.
Tonja
had spoken briefly to her sister Helen, who
was coming from Glasgow to collect her
later that night
, but they’d still gotten a room for her to rest in
. Irene had to return to Bozeman in order t
o rearrange her work schedule before
she could join
Karalyn
in Gracechurch to arrange Calvin’s funeral, so Chris had said he wo
uld rent a car and drive Kara
home himself.

Irene sighed again. “Try to get some rest yourself, will you?” she said wearily.

The fact that he hadn’t slept in nearly 36 hours was not lost on him. Chris
feared that, tired though he was, rest would be long in coming. He didn’t mention this to Irene, of course; he merely nodded his acquiescence and, after kissing her cheek, shooed her inside her room and headed for his own. Once there i
t took only one look at the queen
-size bed to confirm that his mind just wasn’t ready to shut down. He walked
past the bed and opened the gauzy curtains of the floor-to-ceiling windows
, staring out at the city beyond
.

God, how he missed Calvi
n
already.
Though there were only thirteen
years between them, the older man had been something of a father-figure to Chris
,
even though his own was
still
a part of his life. Cal had taught him everything there was to
know about being a firefighter, had shown him all around his hometown of Gracechurch and helped him fall in love with it nearly as much as his own hometown of Wolf Point. He had
leaned on their friendship throughout his divorce from Irene and had spoken to Chris before anyone else after meeting Tonja, whom he claimed to have fallen in love with at first sight. Cal had asked him to be his best man at their wedding.

The wedding would no longer take place. Kara, the little sister he never knew he wanted (being the middle of three boys himself), would not walk her father down the aisle.
Tonja’s
mother would not give her hand to Calvin in marriage. The men from B Platoon would not get to throw him the bachelor party to end all bachelor parties.

He wouldn’t be able to go to Cal for advice anymore. Not on how to deal with the men when they were being difficult, nor on how to handle the women he met. He felt a sad smile come to his lips as he thought of just how much he would have liked to tell Cal about Martie, had he met her under different circumstances. His friend would have encouraged him to go for it, to take a taste of the spicy Italian while he had the chance. Women that beautiful, as Cal would say,
didn’t come along very often.

Frustrated and wanting to fight off the tears pricking the backs of his eyes, Chr
is stepped away from the window
, shoving his hands into his pockets as he did so. He frowned when his left hand encountered a foreign object, and pulling it out he saw that the crumpled piece of cardstock was the business card Martie had given him before she left the hospital. On the front was her name, Martine
Liotta
, in bold letters. Underneath were two lines, the first reading
Lieutenant – Engine Company 23 – Billings, Montana
and the other reading
Arson Investigator, Montana Bureau of Fire Safety
. Last on the front of the card was her business number and extension.

He turned the card over, smoothing it out as he did so, remembering that she had jotted her cell phone number on the back with the instruction that he was to call her anytime if he thought of anything else he felt was relevant. He was suddenly consumed with the desire to hear her voice again
, to hear that husky, sensual sound wash over him and…

And what?
If he called her, she would expect him to have new information to impart. He could hardly tell her that he had called to hear her talk because her voice turned him on—he didn’t think that would go over too well. He supposed he could tell her he was having trouble unwinding and that he just needed someone to talk to. But for that he could call any one of the guys in his unit.
So what would he tell her when she asked why he’d called?

Chris still hadn’t figured out what he was going to say even as he tapped the keys of his cell phone to dial her number. He just prayed he wasn’t about to make a complete fool of himself.

The phone rang.
And rang.
And rang again.
He was about to hang up—having no desire to speak to her voicemail—when she picked up and answered with a breathless, “
Salve?
”

In spite of himself he chuckled. “I’m afraid I don’t know what that means,” he told her.

Martie laughed. “
It’s one of several words in the Italian language with which to greet someone. It means ‘hello.’ Sorry it took me a bit to pick up—I just got home, and I
never answer my phone when I’m driving.”

“A wise decision,” C
hris said, moving around the bed and the short dividing wall to sit on the couch
. “Talking or texting while driving is very dangerous.”

“Indeed it is. So what can I do for you, Chris?”

The question he had dreaded, for which he still had no clever answer. Chris decided on giving her an amended version of the truth. “I’m sorry if I’m bothering you. I just… Have you ever been so damn tired your body screams for sleep, but you just can’t shut your mind off long enough to fall into it?”

“Yeah, I’ve been there. I was a firefighter for six years myself—still am, technically,” Martie replied.

“You ever work
a s
hift
anymore?”

“Yup.
Every Monday I ride with
A Platoon at
my old company, and I fill in whenever they need an extra pair of hands if I’m able,” she said.
“My brother
Tony’s
the
lead for Company 23’s D Platoon, and my father’s the captain of Ladder Company 30.
”

Chris smiled.
“A firefighting family.
Must be nice.”

She laughed again, a sound he already liked a lot and wanted to hear more of. “Not w
hen your big brother’s the boss. Tony was the lead on
A-Shift
my last full year.
”

He laughed as well. “No, I suppose not,” he conceded.

“Are you
back
in Gracechurch?” Martie asked then.

“No, still in Billings
, at the Holiday Inn on Midland Road
,” he replied. “Tonja and
Karalyn
—Calvin’s fiancée and his daughter—they were too wiped to make the trip this morning.
Tonja’s
sister is supposed to be here around nine tonight to pick her up, and I’ll be renting a car to take Kara home tomorrow, since her mother has to return to Bozeman for
a day or so to arrange time off.
”

“Actually, I could take you.”

Chris’s brow drew together. “What do you mean?” He didn’t think she was offering just to be nice.

“Chris, I have to go to Gracechurch myself tomorrow. Would have done it today if I hadn’t gotten swamped with paperwork and an unexpected deposition this afternoon,” Martie explained. “I need to talk with the other men from your platoon, residents of the building,
and I need
to survey the scene itself
.
”

“Oh, of course,” he mused.
“Should have known you weren’t just fishing for an excuse to see me again.”

Now where the hell had that come from? What was this, high school?

Martie chuckled, and he was inordinately pleased to realize she sounded nervous. “I, uh… I would like to see you again,” she said at last.

“And I’d like to see you again,” he confessed. “Really wish it didn’t have to be for business.”

“Tomorrow’s about business, but, um, what about tonight?”

Chris was so stunned by the question that he couldn’t think for a moment. Martie must have taken his silence as a negative reaction, for she hurriedly said, “I’m sorry, that’s probably a really stupid idea. Forget it. I’ll just see you tomorrow.”

“Tonight is good,” he finally managed to say. “If a room service meal doesn’t sound
too unappetizing, I wouldn’t mind having some company for dinner.”

“That sounds just fine to me, Chris.”

He hadn’t expected her to agree, even though getting together tonight had been her idea. But he also wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth—a beautiful woman he was undeniably attracted to would be coming to his hotel room to have dinner with him. Even as he was giving Martie his hotel room number so that she didn’t have to stop at the front desk, he was warning his low brain not to get too
excited. It was just dinner. He
barely knew her.
This unexpected turn of events was the first bright light to shine into his life in the last 24 hours, and he wasn’t about to screw it up by thinking with his dick instead of his brain. Chris knew he’d only end up getting screwed, and not in a good way.