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."
"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 fucked 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.
And that was just the problem: She wanted to. Badly. Even when they'd been fighting only hours before, he was still the one she wanted to run to for comfort.
And for pleasure.
She'd never been able to resist him, not for one single second. She'd moved to San Francisco because if she'd stayed in Lake Tahoe, she would have inevitably returned to him, despite how empty, how broken their relationship had become.
Again and again while he breathed evenly beside her, Dianna considered waking him up and apologizing for the things she'd said after leaving the hospital. It wasn't that she didn't mean them, but lying awake in the dark with nothing to do but think, she realized she could have approached the confrontation differently. She hated knowing she hadn't given him so much as an inch of space to respond to her grievances.
She'd been on the attack. Intent on full-on, outright damage.
And yet, amazingly, he'd come back to their room. After the way she'd ripped him to shreds, he hadn't left her to search for April alone. Or taken off altogether.
If she hadn't been able to push him away last night, then was there a chance that nothing she said or did was going to make him run? Did the fact that he was sleeping in the cramped sofa mean he'd changed?
Propping herself up in bed with the pillows, she watched him sleep soundly, his inhalations seemingly peaceful and even. All hotshots were trained to catch rest wherever they could, and it suddenly occurred to her that she didn't know if he'd come straight from a fire to the hospital or even how long it had been since he'd been to bed.
Quite possibly, she realized as her stomach twisted into a tight knot, he hadn't been alone in that bed.
He didn't wear a ring, but that didn't mean he wasn't dating someone. It didn't mean he wasn't getting ready to pop the question to some small, cute brunette who worshipped his every move and made him feel like a million bucks.
She hated to think of anyone else touching him. Kissing him.
Sam was a magical lover, paying special attention to every inch of a woman's body, the curves and peaks, the hollows and sensitive spots. He was a woman's ultimate dream come to life. Six foot two, tanned and hard all over, with blue eyes that grew lighter or darker with the sun or clouds, with the time of day, with what he was feeling. Women wanted big, strong hands like his on their bodies, wanted to run their fingers through his dark, silky hair.
Her breath came faster as she remembered their lovemaking in full detail, warmth creeping up her body, between her legs, to the tips of her breasts.
It would be so easy to fall back into bed with him. Way too easy. But they would both only end up getting hurt again.
And yet, even as she remembered how difficult it had been to get over him, she was touched by his willingness to help her now. She hadn't even had to ask him for help. He'd simply offered it. Even though finding April was potentially dangerous, he hadn't backed off, hadn't rescinded his offer.
She didn't know what to think about Sam sticking with her. Was it simply that he was a hero through and through? Or had he stepped in because she needed him?
These questions ran on repeat through her brain again and again until sleep finally started to settle around her like a blanket.
It was pitch-black outside the thin motel curtains when he woke her up. "Will's waiting for us. We'll leave in fifteen minutes."
She rolled off the bed, took her small medicine bag into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and applied the tiniest bit of makeup. Sam had always taken his good looks for granted, whereas she'd had to uncover hers and cultivate her appearance so that people would treat her in a way that came naturally to the gorgeous firefighter.
She'd sensed his disapproval at her transformation when he'd walked into her hospital room and saw her in cashmere with diamond studs in her ears. She wasn't going to apologize to him for who she'd become. She'd built a good life for herself and April through plenty of hard work. No one had handed anything to her on a silver platter.
Nonetheless, she enjoyed the rare chance to wear minimal makeup. Although she hadn't let anyone in public see her without her game face on for a decade, she much preferred bare skin. It was how she'd grown up and she felt younger, softer somehow.
Ten minutes later she emerged dressed in her new clothes, a lightweight long-sleeve shirt, khaki cargo pants, and shiny brown leather boots that squeaked a little as she walked. The only purchases she'd left in the plastic bag were the sports bra and cotton panties. She'd never been a cotton girl and she was wearing her regular silk and lace undergarments.
Sam's eyes widened when he saw her, and she pushed back her shoulders and lifted her chin. She'd thought the outfit was pretty cute, but she'd been wearing different versions of the same thing for so long, it felt strange to put on something completely different. Almost as if she'd shed a layer of skin and stepped into a new, unfamiliar one.
"Everything fit okay?"
She would have expected him to have forgotten what size she wore by now, but he'd remembered exactly, all the way down to her size nine boots. A rogue butterfly flew loose in her belly at the thought of their intimate past, and the realization that he hadn't forgotten about her any more than she had him.
"Perfectly," she said, and then, "I haven't thanked you yet for buying everything for me. Thank you."
She was usually the queen of thank-you cards, of hostess gifts. But Sam made her flustered. Awkward.
"I want you to know I'm going to pay you back for everything."
Dianna wasn't comfortable with letting a man buy her things. For the past ten years, she'd always paid her own way--and oftentimes her dates' as well.
"I don't think I have enough cash in my purse, but--"
He grabbed their packs and headed to the door in the middle of her sentence.
"I can cover it," he said, his voice suddenly hard.
Well, that was about as clear as it got. She assumed he was still angry from the night before and she knew she needed to apologize for her mudslinging right away. But he was already halfway across the parking lot and she had to jog to catch up with hi
m.
"Sam, I--" she began when she got her breath back, but when she looked up, his hotshot friend was waiting for them outside the back entrance of the hospital, leaning against the bumper of his truck. There was no way she could explain things in front of his friend, Will.
She wasn't at all surprised by the local firefighter's tall, rugged good looks. Hotshots were a shockingly good-looking bunch who attracted women like bees to nectar. Dianna knew firsthand how difficult--scratch that, impossible--it was to resist a wildland firefighter.
"Nice to meet you, Dianna. Sam tells me you're looking for your sister?"
"Her name's April. And I'm afraid she doesn't have a clue what she's mixed up with."
Will handed a map to Sam as they got into the truck. He held the front seat passenger door open for her and her stupid heart actually went pitter-patter at his chivalry.
"I've highlighted the route I think you should take to the commune," Will said. "Any questions?"
Sam studied the map in the extended cab as they exited the hospital's parking lot. Dianna pulled her hat down tighter over her hair and averted her face as they passed a TV news van.
"Looks pretty clear," Sam told his friend.
"There's no cell coverage anywhere in the area," Will said, looking concerned. "So don't get hurt, okay? Could take a little while to find you if you do."
Dianna shivered at his warning. She'd lived in the city for so long she'd forgotten that there were places cell phones couldn't reach, that you couldn't always call for help the minute you needed it.
They quickly left town and started climbing into the mountains, the pavement turning to gravel, then dirt. Will switched into four-wheel drive as the road became increasingly primitive and rutted. The three of them remained silent as they drove between tall pines and towering redwoods. Thirty minutes later, he stopped the truck in front of a huge tree trunk that was lying across the road.
"I'm afraid this is as far as I can take you."
With Will's engine off, she could hear birds singing, the river gurgling, even the way the breeze was turning the leaves into mild-mannered wind chimes.
Out here, amid mountains and streams, was Sam's world. This was where he belonged, whereas she was utterly out of her element.