Fortune's Valentine Bride. Marie Ferrarella

you should be,” he said firmly. “Trust me, those doctors don’t want to see your ugly face here any more than you want to be here. But this is the place where they can help you, where they can work with you.”

      “There’s nothing to work with,” Javier retorted coldly, staring down at the two stiff limbs beneath the blanket. The limbs that refused to move. “Look, if I’ve got to stay here, okay, I’ll stay here. Doesn’t really matter anyway. But I want you to tell everyone to stop coming.”

      “Why?” Marcos asked, stunned at this new curve his brother had just thrown him.

      “Because I don’t want them to see me like this, that’s why,” he said through gritted teeth.

      Ordinarily, because Javier was his big brother and Marcos had grown up looking up to Javier, Marcos would have backed away and not pressed the subject. But this situation didn’t come anywhere near close to fitting the description of being “ordinary.”

      “Like what?” he wanted to know.

      “Like half a man,” Javier shouted. “There, I said it. You happy now? Like half a man.”

      “This is just temporary,” Marcos insisted.

      “How do you know that?” Javier challenged. “You saw some written guarantee? How do you know that?” he shouted again.

      “Because I do, that’s why,” Marcos shouted back, then caught himself and lowered his voice. “Once the swelling on your spinal cord goes down, you’ll fully regain the use of your legs—and even if you didn’t,” he insisted, “who you are isn’t trapped in any of your limbs. You’re not you because of your legs or your arms or any other damn body part. You’re Javier Mendoza because of what’s inside of you. What’s here,” he said, jabbing his forefinger into the middle of Javier’s chest. “You understand me? So stop your complaining and start focusing all that energy on getting better.”

      “You’ve got some mouth on you, you know that?” Javier retorted, but his voice was a little softer now. “Marriage do that to you?” It really wasn’t a serious question, seeing as how, even though Wendy was expecting their first child at apparently any moment, Marcos and she had only been married for a little more than a month. A month that he had completely missed, Javier thought in rueful frustration.

      “No, the tornado did,” Marcos replied quite seriously. “Now, I mean it. Stop complaining and just be grateful that you’re still alive and that you have the opportunity to mend. Not everyone was as lucky as you,” he concluded more quietly, grimly recalling that several people he knew had lost their lives in the disaster.

      Feeling just the slightest prick of guilt, Javier shrugged defensively as he stared out the window. “Easy for you to say.”

      “Easy?” Marcos echoed in disbelief. It felt as if he hadn’t slept more than five hours in the past five weeks. “Ever since that tornado hit and they dug you out, I’ve been trying to find a way to split myself in two, being there for Wendy and here for you,” he elaborated.

      “I was in a coma,” Javier pointed out. “There was no need—”

      “There was a need,” Marcos interrupted with conviction. “We all took turns reading to you. And there was music playing constantly. Wendy thought it might help. Just because you were in a coma didn’t mean you couldn’t hear,” Marcos insisted. “And besides running back and forth between home and San Antonio, I still had to put in time at the restaurant,” he reminded his brother, referring to Red, the restaurant that he managed for his aunt and uncle.