Hot as Sin (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #2)(27)
Author: Bella Andre

“Goddammit, Dianna, you know that’s not why I said it.”

But she wasn’t done yet, wasn’t ready to listen to any of his excuses. “You said you weren’t marrying me because I was pregnant. You promised you’d be there for me forever. You’d convinced me that I was important to you. That’s what made it hurt even more.”

All her life she’d vowed not to let her hopes and dreams get wrapped up in a man. From that moment forward, after leaving the bar, throwing her clothes into the backseat of her car, and driving away from their apartment for the very last time, she hadn’t ever again made the mistake of trusting another man with her heart.

“You let me down, Sam.” She held his gaze. “That’s why I left.”

A knock sounded at the door and it took Sam several seconds to figure out where it was coming from when all he could hear were Dianna’s words spinning around and around inside his head.

The sound came again, accompanied by a voice this time.

“Pizza delivery. Do I have the right room?”

Feeling as if he were sleepwalking, he made his way to the door, gave the kid some money, and took the pizza.

Dropping the steaming box on the scratched-up dresser, he knew he needed to get a grip before he turned around and blasted back at her. But even though some of the things she’d said made sense, even though it didn’t take a genius to see that he hadn’t exactly behaved like a hero when he was a clueless twenty-year-old kid, he wasn’t ready to concede a damn thing.

Not when she thought he’d only wanted to marry her because she was pregnant.

Not when she’d accused him of “doing the right thing,” instead of truly loving her.

If she couldn’t see that he loved her with everything he had back then, he sure as hell wasn’t going to waste his time convincing her now.

“Do you have any idea what it was like to come home to an empty apartment?”

He’d never been able to erase the picture of her thin gold engagement ring lying on the Formica kitchen counter.

She didn’t say anything, just clasped her hands tightly in front of her chest like a shield over her heart.

“You didn’t even leave me a note. You just packed up your things and left. It was like being kicked straight in the gut.”

He’d never believed in love. Not after watching his parents tear each other to shreds his whole life. But he’d believed in her. Until she’d betrayed him by walking out of his life without a word.

“You let me down too, Dianna. So I guess that means we’re even.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when he noticed her shoulders rounding as if the fight had gone out of her. In the dim light of the lone lamp by the bed, her eyes looked haunted, with dark circles beneath them.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, her eyelids at half-mast, and he felt like the world’s biggest bastard for temporarily forgetting what she’d been through in the past twenty-four hours.

First the crash. Then her sister’s Mayday call. Now him railing at her for something that happened long enough ago that he should have been over it already.

“You’re tired,” he said, abruptly changing the subject.

It would be better for both of them if he got out of the small motel room. No question that he needed to walk away, regroup.

“Eat some pizza and get some sleep. You’re going to need the food and rest for our adventure tomorrow. I’ll be back in a bit.”

She didn’t say anything as he walked out of the room, didn’t call his name or ask him to stay. Why the hell would she, he asked himself as he made the short walk down the street to the closest bar.

The grizzly bartender slid him a pint of Guinness and he chugged half before he set the glass back down. Midway through his second pint, after her claims had time to settle, he suddenly found that he couldn’t refute them. All these years he’d been so busy blaming her for leaving. But now he saw that he’d taken the easy way out. He hadn’t wanted to take a frank look in the mirror and ask himself what he’d done wrong or how he’d f**ked things up.

In that instant, he realized why he’d lost it after she left: Way down deep in his subconscious, he’d known that he’d driven her away.

Staring bleakly at the dried condensation rings on the bar top, he realized that although he’d defined his entire life by saving people, in the end, he was helpless with the people he cared for the most. Dianna and her miscarriage. Connor and his burns.

He hadn’t meant to leave her to cope all by herself. Those first couple weeks after the miscarriage, he’d tried to be there for her, but it was so hard to know what to say, to know what not to say. Most of all, he didn’t want to talk about anything that would make her cry any more than she already was. When she finally told him to go back to work, it was such a relief to stop feeling like the clumsy giant tiptoeing around the apartment that he’d grabbed the chance with both hands.

Stupid kid that he was, he’d thought that maybe after both of them had some space to come to grips with what had happened, things would return to how they were before the baby. He’d wanted everything to go back to normal, for the hardest choice to be what kind of pizza to order. At twenty, it had just been easier to go fight fires. To tell himself he was needed on the mountain.

Leaving his unfinished beer on the counter, he headed for the door.

He’d bailed on Dianna once. He wouldn’t bail on her again, even though sticking around was by far the hardest thing to do.

CHAPTER TEN

DIANNA TOSSED and turned in the hard, lumpy motel bed. Not only was she terribly worried about April, but she felt horrible about the way she’d behaved with Sam.

After he’d left the motel, she’d barely had the strength left to strip out of her clothes and crawl beneath the covers. She didn’t remember anything after that, not until two a.m., when she woke up. She was disoriented at first, having slept in two strange beds during the past twenty-four hours.

But quickly, she realized she wasn’t alone.

Sam was only a couple of feet away, which meant she’d never be able to get back to sleep, not when she could hear him shift on the sofa and breathe in his delicious scent.

He aroused her senses like no other man ever had.

As anxious as she was about April, it was still hell on her system being so close to him, knowing that if she wanted to, she could crawl out of bed and wrap her arms around his neck, curl up on his lap, and bury her face against his chest.