Hot as Sin (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #2)(26)
Author: Bella Andre

That is, if he hadn’t acted like such a bull in her china shop.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she said, “Because we’re stuck together in this motel room for tonight, I think we should lay everything out on the table and be done with it already.”

Maybe, she suddenly thought, if she got her grievances off her chest, she’d be able to get him out of her system once and for all.

Before she could think better of what she was doing, she continued with, “In the hospital you asked me why I left. Well, I’m ready to tell you my reasons, Sam. Because frankly, I’m sick and tired of carrying them around with me all the time.”

“Forget I asked,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. We should be focusing on April right now.”

No way, she wasn’t letting him backpedal to try to shut her down.

“Of course I’m upset about April,” she said as calmly as she could. “Of course I’m freaking out about what could be happening to her, but if we don’t find some common ground, we’re going to have a very hard time working as a team.”

But he was still shaking his head, his expression completely closed. “I don’t want to fight with you, Dianna.”

“Don’t you see, Sam?” she asked, exasperation breaking through again. “That’s part of the problem. You never wanted to fight. You never wanted to have any kind of conflict between us. I know your parents had a shitty relationship, I know they never stopped fighting, but that doesn’t mean people can’t disagree with each other sometimes.”

“Stop right now, Dianna,” he said, each word a warning, “and we can still do this. We can still go forward and find April.”

But the train she was on was moving too fast for her to just hop off. Even though she was heading straight for a brick wall.

“You haven’t changed a bit, have you?” she said, any pretense of calm now blown to smithereens. “You always thought you knew what was best for both of us.”

“I wouldn’t make accusations you can’t back up,” he said in a hard voice.

She took a step closer, too swept up in her fury to remember to keep her distance from all of his mouth-wateringly hard heat.

“Oh, you want backup? Let’s see, how about the first time we had sex and you didn’t bother to tell me that the condom broke? Or what about when you’d come back from a fire where people had lost their homes, or even their lives, and I’d ask, ‘How are you?’ all you’d ever say was, ‘I’m okay.’ And when I pushed you on it, when I said there was no way anyone could be okay with the things you’d seen, you wouldn’t tell me a damn thing about how you were feeling. All I wanted was to be a part of your life, Sam. For you to let me in. But you refused to give me anything, to open up at all.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that there was no way Sam—or anyone else, for that matter—could possibly respond to her laundry list of grievances. And yet, when he didn’t even try to defend himself, she couldn’t stop herself from taking it a step further.

“Honestly, I could have forgiven you for all of that. In fact, I did forgive you. Until you went and broke my heart completely.”

His jaw jumped and the sinews on his crossed forearms were taut.

“No need to keep me in suspense any longer, Dianna. I’m a big boy. I can take the blame, so feel free to dish it out.”

Oh God, she hadn’t felt this close to breaking down, to completely falling apart in years. Not since that night she’d left Lake Tahoe.

“After I miscarried, I knew I’d spent too long crying, too long feeling sorry for myself,” she admitted. “So one night I got out of bed, took a shower, actually put on clothes instead of my nightgown.”

She closed her eyes and the details came back to her, one after the other as if it had all happened a week ago, instead of a decade ago. She remembered taking the time to shave her legs and blow-dry her hair, even putting on makeup when she noticed how pale she was, how much weight she’d lost. She was planning to go for a walk or to the grocery store. Something, anything, to get out of the apartment and try to start living again.

“You’d been gone on that Reno fire for three weeks and I missed you so much. None of my friends from school understood how hard it was to lose a baby and I knew my mother would probably be too drunk to even know what I was telling her. Or maybe she’d tell me I was lucky to have narrowly escaped becoming a mother.”

She opened her eyes and forced herself to look at him, even though she didn’t know what she’d see on his face.

“I was so lonely, Sam. All I wanted was for you to come back home and hold me. So when I saw on the news that the fire you’d been fighting was out, I was so happy. I couldn’t wait to see you and tell you I was ready to make a fresh start.”

At the time, she’d thought there’d be other babies, a whole crew of boys with his naughty grin, girls with his dark, silky hair. How stupid she’d been. How pathetically hopeful. Pitifully naive.

“But you weren’t at the station, and when I asked Bev where you were, she was beyond embarrassed to have to tell me that you’d gotten back from the fire hours ago.”

She’d hated knowing how sorry the hotshot station administrator had felt for her. Even though Dianna knew there were no secrets on a hotshot crew, it didn’t make it any easier for everyone to know your business. Especially when her business had been falling apart.

“It wasn’t hard to find you guys. You were at—”

“The Bar & Grill,” he said, finishing her sentence in a gruff voice.

She nodded. “I walked into the bar and it was like another world in there. Laughter. Pool sticks hitting balls. Pinball machines beeping.” Her voice cracked. “That was when I saw you, sitting at the bar. I could see you smiling, flirting with the bartender.”

“I wasn’t flirting, Dianna.”

She felt her mouth open in amazement. Was he kidding? Did he think she had amnesia? He hadn’t been home for weeks. And when he was free to come home, he’d chosen to stay away.

“Maybe you weren’t,” she forced herself to concede, “but I couldn’t remember the last time you’d smiled at me like that or leaned in close to me and laughed at something I’d said.”

She angrily wiped away with her knuckles the sudden tears that were blurring her vision.

“You were the first man I ever trusted. When you said ‘I love you,’ I didn’t think you were saying it just to get me into bed.”