Hot as Sin (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #2)(37)
Author: Bella Andre

How could she possibly climb a rock face with no experience … and a borderline fear of heights?

He held a harness out, clearly expecting her to step into it. But although she knew Sam was a man of few words, it didn’t seem the least bit fair that he should unilaterally decide to shut down their dialogue.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to shore up her insides for the roller coaster her words were about to launch.

“You might be done talking about what happened with us, Sam, but I’m not. You got to ask your big question; now it’s my turn.”

He was an impenetrable wall before her, his eyes shuttered, the lines of his body stiff and unyielding. There was no satisfaction in knowing that Sam was cornered, with no place to run.

“Go ahead.”

Working to project a serene confidence she certainly didn’t feel, she said, “If you cared so much about me that you fell apart when I left, then why didn’t you come after me?”

She held her breath as she waited for his response, her heart kicking up so fast she could have been sprinting, rather than standing still.

“I did come after you,” he finally admitted. “A couple of weeks after you left Lake Tahoe.”

Oh God, all this time she’d assumed that he’d been happy to see her go. Was there more to the story? Had she been wrong all these years?

Sam watched confusion, even doubt, run across Dianna’s beautiful face.

“But I never saw you,” she protested, before admitting, “I didn’t exactly make myself easy to find, did I?”

“I found you,” he said, his words harder than they should be.

Her hands moved to her chest, almost as if she felt the need to shield her heart from him.

“Then why didn’t you tell me you were there?”

He dropped the harness to the sand and moved away from her, remembering that unseasonably warm day in foggy San Francisco. He’d parked outside the return address on the letter from Dianna that he’d found in a pile of her mother’s unopened mail in the trailer. Donna hadn’t seemed to know—or care—that her daughter had broken up with her fiancée and skipped town, and Sam couldn’t help but wonder if Dianna was running away from more than just him.

He’d been about to get out of his truck when he saw her, walking out of the apartment building. Her hair was blonder, softer somehow. Her clothes were different. Fit her better than anything he’d ever seen her wear. Even her green eyes seemed brighter.

“You were already different,” he explained.

And then she’d waved at a skinny guy on a bike who came over to say hi and her smile was bigger than Sam could remember seeing. At least since the miscarriage.

“It wasn’t hard to figure out that you already had a new job. New friends. And it looked to me like your new world fit you so well, so much better than being some kid from a trailer park ever did.” He let out a long breath. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to walk away? To accept that you were finally in your right place?”

Dropping her hand from her chest, she reached out to him. “If I’d known you were there, then maybe I—”

“Maybe you would have what? Married me anyway and had a bunch of babies?” He scowled. “I don’t think so.”

“How can you say that?”

“You’re the one who wanted to postpone the wedding. Not me.”

Clearly stung by his accusation, she said, “It sure seemed to me that you were perfectly happy to postpone the wedding, too. I’ll never forget that day I told you I’d taken the pregnancy test. You looked like I was holding a gun to your head, saying, ‘Marry me or else.’ All my life I’d told myself I wasn’t going to repeat my mother’s mistakes, but then there I was having some guy propose to me because he had to. Getting a marriage proposal should have been one of the best days of my life. Instead it was one of the worst. Because I knew how compelled you were to do the right thing. And I knew it would break us eventually.” She paused, shut her eyes tight for a moment before opening them again. “I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.”

After ten years of shoving his feelings as far down as they could go, Sam could barely believe all of this anger and frustration—and love—actually belonged to him.

But more than that, he couldn’t believe the things Dianna was saying. It was time to set her straight.

“You and I both know it wasn’t like that.”

To his amazement, she laughed in his face. Actually laughed. “You honestly expect me to believe that you were looking for a wife and kid at twenty? That you weren’t wanting to go to bars, play the field, live your life like any normal young firefighter?”

What the f**k did she expect him to say to that? Of course that’s how he’d felt.

“Are you saying that’s what you wanted?” he asked, turning the question around to her. “That instead of wearing my engagement ring, you wanted to play the field and mess around with other guys?”

She shook her head, then buried her face in her hands. He couldn’t believe how much he wanted to pull her into his arms. Even though they were standing on opposite poles.

“No,” she finally said, when she lifted her head. “I was in love with you, Sam. I didn’t want anyone else.” Her beautiful lips turned down at the corners. “But that didn’t mean I was ready for a baby. And neither were you.”

There was no point in lying. They were way beyond trying to keep anything from each other.

“You’re right, I wasn’t ready.” He hoped he could find the words to make her understand. “But that didn’t mean that when it happened I didn’t get excited about it.”

A lone tear streaked down her face and he had to bunch his hands into fists to keep from wiping the wetness away from her smooth skin.

“I felt exactly the same way,” she admitted in a shaky voice. “I couldn’t believe how much I was falling in love with this little person growing inside of me. Because even though I knew we weren’t ready, I still hoped we could figure things out.” Her eyes closed and she whispered, “Instead, a piece of me—of both of us—died that day. And I didn’t just lose the baby, I lost you, too.”

His self-control disappeared and he couldn’t stop himself from gathering her into his arms.

He wasn’t angry anymore. How could he be?

“I’m sorry, Dianna,” he said softly against her hair.