Hot as Sin (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #2)(18)
Author: Bella Andre

What he couldn’t stand was not knowing why.

It was finally time to find out.

“I’m going to head out in a minute,” he told her, more than a little surprised by the answering flicker of disappointment in her eyes. “But before I do, I’ve got a question for you. It’s something I’ve been wondering for a very long time.”

For a split second, her eyes widened with alarm. Remorse for the pile of bones he was about to unearth hit him square in the chest. If she were injured at all, he wouldn’t have gone here, he told himself, as if it was some kind of absolution.

She straightened her spine, moving away slightly from the pillows, and lifted her chin. “Go ahead.”

Shit, Sam thought. He should have taken the high road. Instead, he’d started down a road with no exits.

And now he couldn’t leave without hearing the truth.

“Why did you leave?”

Her mouth opened. Then closed. She shook her head, disbelief clouding her beautiful green eyes.

“You honestly don’t know?”

He was at least as surprised by her response as she seemed to be by his question.

He bit back a quick retort, knowing he’d regret it. And then her cell phone rang and she seemed glad to turn away from him and pull it out of her bag.

She quickly flipped it open. “April?”

And then suddenly, Dianna’s face lost all of its color and she kicked the blankets off of her legs to stand up too quickly.

Forgetting the need to keep his distance, Sam reached for her before she could fall and held her steady against his chest. He could feel her heart beating rapidly, and instinctively knew it had nothing to do with their close physical proximity.

Something was wrong.

“Where are you?” She held her breath as she listened to April’s reply, then urged, “You need to tell me more than that. You need to tell me exactly where you are so that I can find you.”

A few seconds later, Dianna pulled the phone away from her ear and began frantically pressing buttons before the phone dropped to the floor. When she looked up at him, he saw eyes as bleak as the ones that had stared back at him after her miscarriage.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as carefully as he would a fire victim who’d just seen her house and all of her possessions go up in flames.

“My sister’s in trouble. She needs my help.”

CHAPTER SIX

APRIL KELLEY hated how scared she was.

Her jaw was throbbing and there was tape around her mouth, hands, and ankles. Blinking hard to clear her foggy vision, when she looked up she realized she was sitting on the floor of a coat closet.

She’d never been a big fan of small, enclosed spaces, not after one of her foster families had made her sleep in a windowless room about the size of a closet for a couple of weeks when she was seven. The long hanging jackets brushing against the top of her head and shoulders made her feel even more claustrophobic, and she shivered, her teeth somehow managing to clank together behind the tape.

She wasn’t asthmatic, but the various pediatricians she’d had over the years claimed she hovered right on the brink of the disease. Feeling her lungs start to seize up, she forced herself to take long, slow breaths in and out of her nose. Dianna had been really into meditation for a while and even though she’d thought it was really lame at the time, April was suddenly grateful for the knowledge.

When she’d gotten hold of her breathing and felt confident that she wasn’t going to start freaking out again, she tried to work out what had happened.

After April woke up in an uncomfortable ball on one of the ICU waiting room chairs, one of the nurses told her that Dianna had been transferred to a regular room on the fourth floor. Relieved that her sister was doing so much better, she’d bummed a cigarette from one of the janitors to smoke before going up to see Dianna. She hadn’t smoked since moving to the Farm three months earlier, but her nerves were shot and she couldn’t think of a better way to check out for a few minutes.

She’d barely stepped outside and lit up when all of a sudden there was a hand over her mouth and nose and a gun in her side.

“Don’t make a sound,” the guy had whispered.

The hand on her face felt shockingly strong. Finely honed instincts from childhood told her that if she didn’t obey his order he’d pull the trigger, which was why she let him push her away from the building and shove her into the passenger seat of his car.

April’s experience as an ex—foster kid came to the fore as she sat quietly in the guy’s passenger seat. The best thing to do in any new, scary situation, she knew, was to keep her mouth shut and wait to see the lay of the land before making any sudden moves.

As he drove, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding the gun still trained on her, she tried to figure out why he’d grabbed her.

She’d heard stories about girls being nabbed off busy streets and sold to creepy rich guys in foreign countries, but she couldn’t believe anyone would want her to be a sex slave. Not right now, anyway, with her jeans soaked and muddy from the thighs down and her hair practically in dreads for want of a good hot shower and some of that expensive conditioner Dianna always put in the bathroom.

Then again, maybe this guy—and any rich clients he might have—had strange tastes.

What else did she have to offer him but her body, she wondered helplessly. She wasn’t rich, didn’t have any jewelry on that he could steal and sell off. And then it hit her. Dianna had all of those things. Her sister wasn’t a big shopper, but the money was definitely there. April couldn’t believe the number she’d seen on her sister’s latest contract when she’d been snooping around her home office last year.

“My sister’s rich,” she blurted, praying that money might be a good trade for sex with her. When he didn’t reply, she added, “She’s a big star. I swear I can get the money from her. And I know she won’t want to tell the cops or anyone about this, not if it means getting her name in the papers.”

Stopping at a light, the man turned to her, his gray eyes frighteningly cold. “I don’t need your sister’s money.”

He pointed the gun square in the middle of her face. She imagined him pulling the trigger, blowing a hole right through.

Gulping hard, she scooted as far away from him as she could, pressing herself against the passenger door. Bile rose in her throat and she barely managed to swallow it down.

“Now shut up or I’ll make you shut up.”