Hot as Sin (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #2)(30)
Author: Bella Andre

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 f**ked 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.”

That little bit of sarcasm in the face of a difficult task was so much like the girl he’d known that as he headed back over to the raft and got to work inflating it, it took everything he had to keep his focus on finding April, rather than all the reasons there were to fall back in love with her beautiful sister.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SAM HANDED her a life jacket and helmet, donned his, then picked up the front of the raft and pulled it onto the bank of the river. Dianna’s mouth was dry and she had the beginnings of a headache, so she drank some water from a bottle clipped to the waistband of her pants.

Living in Lake Tahoe she’d watched enough tourists suffer from altitude sickness to know the signs. She could feel her heart working harder just standing still, so she drank more water before carefully stepping into the raft. The last thing she needed was to be laid low by a migraine or nausea. After a decade of living at sea level, Dianna knew the risks of being at 8,000 feet again.

When she was a kid and needed to escape—if her mother was on a bender or a really gross guy had moved in to the trailer and they were doing it all the time—Dianna would go out to the woods, hike to a mountain lake, swim in the frigid water, and pretend she was someone else, usually a normal girl with perfect parents and brothers and sisters she could play with.