Hot as Sin (14 page)

She’d sensed his disapproval at her transformation when he’d walked into her hospital room and saw her in cashmere with diamond studs in her ears. She wasn’t going to apologize to him for who she’d become. She’d built a good life for herself and April through plenty of hard work. No one had handed anything to her on a silver platter.

Nonetheless, she enjoyed the rare chance to wear minimal makeup. Although she hadn’t let anyone in public see her without her game face on for a decade, she much preferred bare skin. It was how she’d grown up and she felt younger, softer somehow.

Ten minutes later she emerged dressed in her new clothes, a lightweight long-sleeve shirt, khaki cargo pants, and shiny brown leather boots that squeaked a little as she walked. The only purchases she’d left in the plastic bag were the sports bra and cotton panties. She’d never been a cotton girl and she was wearing her regular silk and lace undergarments.

Sam’s eyes widened when he saw her, and she pushed back her shoulders and lifted her chin. She’d thought the outfit was pretty cute, but she’d been wearing different versions of the same thing for so long, it felt strange to put on something completely different. Almost as if she’d shed a layer of skin and stepped into a new, unfamiliar one.

“Everything fit okay?”

She would have expected him to have forgotten what size she wore by now, but he’d remembered exactly, all the way down to her size nine boots. A rogue butterfly flew loose in her belly at the thought of their intimate past, and the realization that he hadn’t forgotten about her any more than she had him.

“Perfectly,” she said, and then, “I haven’t thanked you yet for buying everything for me. Thank you.”

She was usually the queen of thank-you cards, of hostess gifts. But Sam made her flustered. Awkward.

“I want you to know I’m going to pay you back for everything.”

Dianna wasn’t comfortable with letting a man buy her things. For the past ten years, she’d always paid her own way—and oftentimes her dates’ as well.

“I don’t think I have enough cash in my purse, but—”

He grabbed their packs and headed to the door in the middle of her sentence.

“I can cover it,” he said, his voice suddenly hard.

Well, that was about as clear as it got. She assumed he was still angry from the night before and she knew she needed to apologize for her mudslinging right away. But he was already halfway across the parking lot and she had to jog to catch up with him.

“Sam, I—” she began when she got her breath back, but when she looked up, his hotshot friend was waiting for them outside the back entrance of the hospital, leaning against the bumper of his truck. There was no way she could explain things in front of his friend, Will.

She wasn’t at all surprised by the local firefighter’s tall, rugged good looks. Hotshots were a shockingly good-looking bunch who attracted women like bees to nectar. Dianna knew firsthand how difficult—scratch that, impossible—it was to resist a wildland firefighter.

“Nice to meet you, Dianna. Sam tells me you’re looking for your sister?”

“Her name’s April. And I’m afraid she doesn’t have a clue what she’s mixed up with.”

Will handed a map to Sam as they got into the truck. He held the front seat passenger door open for her and her stupid heart actually went pitter-patter at his chivalry.

“I’ve highlighted the route I think you should take to the commune,” Will said. “Any questions?”

Sam studied the map in the extended cab as they exited the hospital’s parking lot. Dianna pulled her hat down tighter over her hair and averted her face as they passed a TV news van.

“Looks pretty clear,” Sam told his friend.

“There’s no cell coverage anywhere in the area,” Will said, looking concerned. “So don’t get hurt, okay? Could take a little while to find you if you do.”

Dianna shivered at his warning. She’d lived in the city for so long she’d forgotten that there were places cell phones couldn’t reach, that you couldn’t always call for help the minute you needed it.

They quickly left town and started climbing into the mountains, the pavement turning to gravel, then dirt. Will switched into four-wheel drive as the road became increasingly primitive and rutted. The three of them remained silent as they drove between tall pines and towering redwoods. Thirty minutes later, he stopped the truck in front of a huge tree trunk that was lying across the road.

“I’m afraid this is as far as I can take you.”

With Will’s engine off, she could hear birds singing, the river gurgling, even the way the breeze was turning the leaves into mild-mannered wind chimes.

Out here, amid mountains and streams, was Sam’s world. This was where he belonged, whereas she was utterly out of her element.

Maybe he’d been right and she should have let him go alone?

She squashed the thought as quickly as it came. It was only fear speaking. She’d been afraid before and she’d survived. Thrived, in fact. She’d do any and everything she had to do to find her sister and bring her home.

After saying his good-byes, Will was clearly reluctant to leave them, and as he slowly turned the truck around and headed down the road, Dianna also wished he would stay a little longer.

Anything to avoid being alone again with Sam.

Her mouth went dry as he held out her loaded backpack. Turning her back to him, she slipped her arms through the straps and braced herself for the heavy weight. But instead of pulling her off balance, it was surprisingly light.

She’d seen how much gear there was to carry the night before, and as he strapped on his own pack, she saw that he was loaded down with most of her things.

“You don’t have to take everything for me,” she said. “I want to do my fair share.”

He barely looked at her. “I’m used to the weight. You’re not.”

Case clearly closed. No discussion. No room for debate. She knew his word was law out here. The question was, would she ever get used to taking orders from a man? From Sam?

Seconds later, he was disappearing into the woods and she had no other choice but to hurry and catch up with him.

The day wasn’t going well so far, Sam thought as he led them down the trail to the river’s edge.

He’d woken up with the best of intentions, planning to smooth over the rough edges they’d pulled up the night before. But then she’d gone and insisted that she would pay him back for the hiking gear and his pride had gotten twisted up all over again.

He’d never been intimidated by anyone’s money before. He still wasn’t. But he couldn’t ignore the dichotomy between her salary and his. His parents hadn’t been happy about his career choice. They’d wanted him to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. But he’d never been comfortable with walls around him. Becoming a hotshot had been a perfect fit.

And then, when she’d met Will, it had seriously grated watching her charm the pants off his friend. The eighteen-year-old Dianna he’d known had never been particularly comfortable with male attention. She’d hidden her curves behind baggy shirts and pants. But now, instead of deflecting a guy’s admiration, or simply ignoring it, she seemed to bask in its glow.

He’d wanted to think it was all an act, a performance she’d honed over the years to get high ratings, but the truth was, she’d always been charismatic, simply lacking in confidence.

Worse still, his instincts were screaming at him to get Dianna out of here. Away from the mountains, from the river and the trails, from the quick-changing weather, from the bears and cougars lurking in the bushes.

The problem wasn’t that she was a woman. He was all for women firefighters. They were easily as tough as the men on the crew, often tougher. Hell, women made it through the agonies of childbirth, then usually went and did it again.

But he couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Dianna hurt. Regardless of what had gone down between them, Sam wanted to know that she was safe and sound, back in a TV studio, her only concern how pretty she looked.

He’d spent plenty of time in the Rockies, both fighting wildfires and vacationing during his off-seasons. Fact was, Dianna wasn’t trained for swimming through level-five white water back to an overturned raft. When Sam was ten years old, he’d cut his teeth on the class-five rapids on the American River in California. He’d been thrown out of the raft a dozen times that day and had knocked his head into enough rocks to have a healthy respect for the immense power of white water.

In a few minutes he was going to take a complete novice on similar waters in a lightweight inflatable raft that was prone to overturning in heavy water.

Was he out of his fucking mind?

She didn’t have the skills to scale a rock face or hike deer trails through thick brambles and dead brush that would rip up her skin. And she’d never been big on heights, he remembered that much.

Shit, who was he kidding? He remembered all of it. Every last thing about her. From the way her nose scrunched up when she laughed to the little sounds she used to make before she exploded beneath him in bed.

Fuck. He couldn’t go there. Not with her a few feet behind him, close enough that he could stop, turn, and kiss her before she knew what hit her.

A handful of minutes later, they were standing on the banks of the river. Staring at the swiftly moving water, Dianna didn’t look scared, exactly, more concerned. But even in the khaki cargos and hiking boots, she was still a pampered princess who didn’t belong within a hundred miles of a fast-moving river or rocky footpath.

Needing to look away from her incredible beauty, he pulled the two-person raft out of his pack and began the hard work of inflating it.

Abruptly, she said, “Last night, when you said we needed to work together to find April, you were right.”

Wanting to avoid another blowup, he didn’t look up from the raft. “I’m good if you are.”

Hoping like hell that she’d take him at his word, he was surprised when she knelt down beside him and put a hand on his arm. Unable to keep from turning his head in her direction, her green eyes sucked him in before he could put up an invisible barricade.

“I owe you an apology for the way I behaved last night. I’m ashamed of my behavior.”

Jesus, she sure knew how to turn a guy speechless. Sure, her presentation had sucked in the motel, but even he couldn’t deny that she’d spoken the truth.

When he didn’t say anything right away, she continued with, “I had some time to think last night after you left. Time to take a hard look at myself in the mirror. Frankly, I’m not proud of what I saw.”

She paused, licked her lips nervously. “Those first couple of weeks after the miscarriage, you were great. I didn’t give you any credit for that last night and I’m sorry I didn’t. It’s just that I was so racked with guilt after losing the baby I think it was easier to blame you than to have to look at myself.”

Guilt? He wasn’t following. “What did you possibly have to feel guilty about?”

“I’d been so scared about having a baby. I felt so unprepared. After the crash I couldn’t get away from the voice in my head that told me that I’d caused our baby’s death, that I made it happen through sheer force of will.”

Her revelation blew him away. “Jesus, Dianna. You weren’t responsible for the miscarriage. You were hit by a car. It’s crazy to think anything else.”

But even as he negated her statement, it occurred to him that he’d felt the same responsibility for not protecting her better. If they’d known how similar their thoughts and reactions were back then, was there a chance they could have held it together as a couple and moved forward?

She laughed but there was no joy in it. “Crazy. That’s exactly how I felt. And it was almost a relief when you finally mentioned going back to work. That way I could grieve alone, without having to keep up any kind of appearances for you.” Her green eyes were full of remorse. “The truth is that I pushed you away, Sam. You didn’t leave on your own.”

Totally disarmed, he found that he wanted her to know that she wasn’t the only one who’d screwed up the night before and said all the wrong things.

“I owe you an apology, too, Dianna.”

“You don’t have to, Sam. I’m the one who behaved badly.”

“I shouldn’t have left you alone in the motel room last night, knowing how upset you were about April.”

She made a motion to wave away his concern, but he wasn’t nearly done.

“And I had some time to think, too. You’re right. I did let you down.”

He had hid out in the wildfires. Fighting fire should have been more dangerous than staying home, but strangely, it had been the far safer route.

“I’m not proud of the way I behaved. I’d like to say it was because I was a confused twenty-year-old, or that I was trying to cause you less pain by not talking about the miscarriage, but that’s no excuse. I want you to know, if I had it to do over, I hope I would make different choices. Better choices.”

She moved toward him, coming close enough that he could pick up the soft, floral scent the breeze blew off her hair.

“You were trying to protect me,” she said slowly. “I can’t believe I needed you to spell it out. Especially when shielding people from pain is what you do, is what you’ve always done, whether it’s keeping your brother out of your parents’ cross fire or saving strangers’ lives as a hotshot.”

She was gravity and he was falling. But just because they were starting to break down some of the walls between them, he couldn’t make the mistake of falling back in love with her. Not when it had fucked him over so royally the first time around.

“It’s good we’ve talked this through,” he finally said, “but I think we should get out on the raft and concentrate on the river.”

She quickly nodded, her relief evident that their discussion was over. “How far will we go by water?”

He smoothed the map down over a large rock. “We’re here,” he said, pointing to a spot on the map, “and we need to head here. We’ll be on the river for about ten miles.”

“And then we’ll hike the rest of the way?”

“That’s the plan.” He left out the rock-climbing part of the equation for the time being.

She looked up into the mountains. “Fun.”