Texas! Chase #2 (28 page)

Sassafras Street. He followed Chase through the vacant rooms. "I'll call an ambulance."

"Screw that. I'll make it faster driving myself."

"Like hell you will. And kill yourself, or innocent people? Forget it. If you won't wait for an ambulance, put her in the patrol car.

I'll drive you."

So he had held Marcie on his lap in the backseat of the patrol car behind the wire mesh that separated them from Pat. He turned on all the emergency lights and the siren. At intervals he spoke into his police radio transmitter, informing the emergency room staff that they were on their way. Windshield wipers clacked in vain against the torrential rain.

The ride to the hospital had taken on a sur

real quality to Chase, as though he were watching it from outside his own body.

Because he hadn't wasted time on getting an umbrella, rain had left Marcie's hair damp.

There were drops of it beaded on her face and throat. Pat must have retrieved her blouse because Chase didn't remember picking it up.

He wrapped her torso in it but didn't bother with working her arms into the sleeves or fastening the buttons. He kept touching her hair, her pale cheek, her throat. She continued staring up at him with tearful and wary eyes. They said nothing to each other.

At the entrance to the emergency room she was whisked away on a gurney. "Who's her o.b.?" the resident on duty asked. Everyone looked at Chase expectantly.

"I… I don't know."

Admitting her to the hospital was a seemingly endless procedure of questions and forms to be filled out.

Once it was done, he returned to the emergency room. There he was informed that Marcie had been transferred upstairs to the maternity ward and that her doctor was on his way.

Before the gyn even examined Marcie, he asked Chase pertinent questions relating to the attack. "To your knowledge was she raped?"

Feeling bereft, numb, he shook his head no.

"Did he even attempt penetration?"

"I don't think so," he said, barely able to get the words out.

The doctor patted his arm reassuringly. "I'm sure she'll be all right, Mr. Tyler."

"What about the baby?"

I'll let you know."

But he hadn't. And that had been almost two hours ago. Pat had had time to go to the courthouse and deal with Harrison and come back, and still there had been no word on the conditions of Marcie and the baby.

What the hell was taking so long?

Had they had trouble stopping the bleeding?

Was there hemorrhaging? Had she been rushed into surgery? Was her life in danger as well as the child's?

"No." Chase didn't realize he had moaned the word out loud until he heard the sound of his own voice, pleading with fate, pleading with God.

Marcie couldn't die. She couldn't. She had become too important to him. He couldn't lose her now that he had just come to realize how important she was to him.

He remembered something that Lucky had asked him earlier that afternoon. That afternoon?

It seemed eons ago. Lucky had asked,

"What's the single worst thing that could happen to you. Chase? The worst possible thing?"

Perhaps he had known the answer to that question then. Devon's phone call had prevented him from having to deal with it at the time, but now he repeated the question to himself.

The answer was full-blown and well-defined in his mind. After losing Tanya, after losing their child, the worst possible thing that could happen to him was to love again.

Almost anything else he could have han

died. A drinking problem. Getting seriously hurt by bull riding, perhaps permanently injured, perhaps killed. Professional and personal bankruptcy.

Whatever misfortune fate might have hurled at him, he could take because he had reasoned that he didn't deserve anything better.

Partially blaming himself for Tanya's death, he had pursued self-punishment. He had cultivated calamity like a twisted gardener who preferred weeds to flowers. Nothing that could happen to him could be worse than losing his family—nothing except loving another one.

That he couldn't deal with.

He couldn't handle caring about another woman again. He couldn't handle another woman's loving him.

He couldn't handle making another baby.

He banged his fist against the cool, tile hospital wall and pressed his forehead against it.

Eyes closed, teeth clenched, he battled acknowledging what he knew to be the truth.

He had fallen in love with Marcie. And he couldn't forgive himself for it.

Acting a fool, he had rejected her when she needed him most. He had turned his back on her when she was pregnant and frightened.

And why? Pride. No man liked to feel that he'd been manipulated, but the business about the house now seemed more an act of love than manipulation. He'd just been too mule-headed to accept what was so plain and simple.

Marcie loved him. He loved her.

If that was his worst crime, was it so terrible?

He examined the sin from all angles, even from Tanya's viewpoint. She wouldn't have wanted it any differently. Her capacity to love had been so enormous that she would have been the first one to encourage him to love again if she had seen what their fate was to be.

Why was he fighting it? What had he done that was so despicable? Why was he continuing to punish himself? He had fallen in love with a wonderful woman who, miraculously, loved him. What was so bad about that?

Nothing.

He raised his head and turned. At the end of the corridor the obstetrician was coming out of Marcie's room. Chase moved toward him, his long strides eating up the distance between them, gaining speed and momentum as he went.

"Listen, you," he said harshly before the doctor had a chance to speak, "save her life.

Hear me?" He backed the startled physician into the wall. "I don't care if it costs ten million dollars, do whatever is necessary to make her live. You got that, Doc? Even if it means…" He stopped, swallowed with an effort, then continued in a rougher voice, "Even if it means destroying the baby, save my wife."

"That won't be necessary, Mr. Tyler. Your wife is going to be fine."

Chase stared at him, unwilling to believe it.

The fortunate twist of fate took him totally by surprise. "She is?"

"And so is the baby. When she fell over the

sawhorse, a vaginal blood vessel burst. It was weakened and under unusual pressure due to her pregnancy. There wasn't much bleeding, but enough to alarm Mrs. Tyler. Rightfully so.

"We've cauterized it. I did a sonogram just to make certain that everything was okay, and it is. The fetus wasn't affected in any way." He hitched his thumb over his shoulder toward the room from which he'd just emerged. "She insisted on taking a shower. A

nurse is helping her with that now. When she's done, you can go in and see her. I recommend a few days of bed rest. After that, she should experience a perfectly normal pregnancy."

Chase mumbled his thanks for the information.

The doctor moved to the nurses' station and left instructions, then departed. Chase's family surrounded him. Laurie was weeping copiously. Sage was doing her share of sniveling.

Pat was wiping nervous perspiration off his forehead with a handkerchief and mercilessly chewing a matchstick.

Lucky slapped Chase soundly on the back.

"Didn't I tell you? Huh? When are you gonna start trusting me?"

Chase fielded their expressions of relief with what he hoped were the correct responses, but his eyes were trained on the hospital room door. As soon as the nurse came out, he excused himself and rushed inside.

The single, faint night-light behind the bed shone through Marcie's hair, making it the only spot of vibrancy in the shadowed room.

Its magnetism drew him across the floor until he stood at her bedside.

"History repeats itself," she said. "I remember another time when you came to see me in the hospital."

"You look better now than you did then."

"Not much."

"Much."

"Thank you."

She averted her eyes and blinked several times, but it did no good. Twin tears, one as fat as the other, slipped over her lower lids and rolled down her cheeks.

"Are you in pain, Marcie?" Chase asked, bending closer. "Did that bastard hurt you?"

"No," she gulped. "You got there just in time."

"He's behind bars." He thought it best not to inform her of Gladys Harrison's murder.

"Don't waste your tears on him."

"That's not why I'm crying." Her lower lip began to tremble. She clamped her teeth over it in an attempt to prevent that.

After a moment or two she said, "I know how you feel about having another baby, Chase. I didn't mean to trick you. I swear I

didn't. It's true, I should have been more honest about the house, but I didn't lie to you about contraceptives.

"I started taking birth control pills as soon as we agreed to get married, but I guess they hadn't had time to take effect. It had only been a couple of days. It happened on our wedding night."

"But I used something, too."

"It must have broken."

"Oh."

"That happens sometimes. Or so I've been told."

"Yeah, I've heard that too."

"Has it ever happened to you before?"

"No."

"Do you think I'm lying about it?"

"No. I, uh, I was pretty potent that night when I, you know…"

She swung her eyes up to his. "It must have happened then."

"Hmm."

"I'm sorry, Chase." Her lip began to tremble again.

"It wasn't your fault."

"No, I mean about the baby. About making you feel trapped. I know that's how you feel.

You think I bound you to me first with money, now with a baby you said you never wanted."

She licked the collecting tears from the corners of her mouth.

"You should have told me you were pregnant,

Marcie."

"I couldn't."

"You've never lacked the courage to tell me anything else."

"I've never felt so vulnerable before. I found out while you were in Houston. That's why I had no appetite and lost so much weight.

That's why I wouldn't take the pill you tried to give me. I knew then and should have told you, but you were so angry about the house.

And then that mess with Harrison came up."

She clutched the border of the sheet. "I

want you to know that I won't bind you. You're free to go, Chase. I won't hold you to any bargains if you want out of the marriage."

"Are you trying to get rid of me?"

"Of course not."

"Then be quiet. I want to tell you how much

I love you." He smiled at her blank, incredulous expression, then lowered his face to hers and sipped the tears off her cheeks. "I love you, Marcie. Swear to God, I do. He blessed me with you."

"I thought you didn't believe in Him anymore."

"I always believed. I was just mad at Him."

"Chase," she sighed. "You mean this?"

"From the bottom of my heart."

Her fingers roamed over his face, his hair, his lips. "I have loved you since I can remember.

Since we were kids."

"I know," he said softly. "I realize that now.

I'm not as smart as you. It takes me a while to grasp these things. For instance, I still haven't figured out why you didn't tell me about the baby. I could have helped you through this nightmare."

"Could you?"

"Couldn't I?"

"Remember that night I took you home to your apartment, then came back and you were eating chili?

We got into an argument when I

told you to snap out of your bereavement, that it was self-destructive. You said, 'When you've lost the person you love, when you've

lost a child, then you'll be at liberty to talk to me about falling apart.'

"I didn't realize until I was at risk of losing you how immobilizing heartache can be, how one does fall apart. I internalized my agony just as you had done then, Chase. I fully understand now how you must have felt following

Tanya's death. It's almost self-preservation, isn't it, the way we draw into ourselves when we think no one cares?"

"We won't have that problem anymore."

A radiant smile broke through her tears.

"No. We won't."

He kissed her, deeply but tenderly, and wondered why, until now, he'd never recognized the special taste of her kiss as being love. He knew he'd never get enough of it.

"Maybe you were wise not to tell me about the baby, Marcie," he whispered. "I don't think I was prepared to hear about it until today."

"But now that you know, it's all right?"

"All right?" His splayed hand was large enough to cover the entire area between her pelvic bones. "I love the idea of us making a baby. Hurry up and get well so the three of us can go home."

"Home?"

"Home."

"All this fecundity is positively nauseating," Sage commented drolly.

"What the hell's 'fecundity'?"

Lucky wanted to know.

"Oh, that's rich," his sister remarked.

"Especially coming from you."

All the Tylers had gathered at the ranch house to celebrate little Lauren's three-week birthday. Everyone else had gorged on German chocolate cake. The baby was greedily sucking her mother's breast behind the screen of a receiving blanket. The proud papa looked on, ready to assist at a moment's notice.

"Know what I can't wait for?"

"Careful, Sage." Chase, who'd been twirling a strand of Marcie's hair around his finger while whispering bawdy things into her ear, paused in those pleasurable pursuits to caution his sister. "You never learned when to quit."

Ignoring Chase, she continued goading her other brother. "I can't wait till some guy makes a pass at Lauren. I want to be there. I want to rub your nose in it, Lucky."

Lucky took the infant from Devon so she could close her blouse. He glowered at his sister. "I'll kill any's.o.b. who even thinks of laying a hand on my daughter. I'll kill anyone who even looks like he's thinking of laying a hand on her."

"How're you going to explain the origin of your nickname to Lauren?" Chase asked, joining in.