by Bella Andre
And he'd never had to work so hard to keep his shit together and stay on task.
Not planning to admit a damn thing to his friend, he simply said, "I did what I had to do."
Joe took a few quick puffs on his cigarette, then dropped it onto the cement and lit another. "Doesn't mean it wasn't nerve-racking as all hell knowing you were out there in the middle of a firestorm." His mouth moved into a half grin. "Would have sucked if you died on my watch."
"Yeah," Sam agreed, trying to shake off the lingering tension still weighing down his shoulders. "You would have never lived it down if you flew back to the station minus one."
After confirming via radio that they'd caught the last of the fires, Joe flew Sam back to the Tahoe Pines station. Flying over Lake Tahoe, Sam stared down into the bright blue water and reflected on the fact that coming to Lake Tahoe had changed his whole life.
He'd been a fenced-in suburban kid with a tagalong little brother, a mom who tried too hard to act like her marriage didn't suck, and a dad who was never around if he could help it. By the time Sam hit his teens, his mother's veneer had finally cracked wide open and the fights began. Endless, self-obsessed screaming matches between his mother and father that he tried to block out by turning his stereo speakers up as loud as they would go.
Sam didn't know what to do with his growing anger, his frustration, the fact that the adults clearly didn't have any answers. So he drank. He partied. He cut class. And then he got busted for driving with a six-pack of beer.
Thank God his football coach had stepped into his father's empty shoes and dragged his ass up into the Sierras for community service. Coach Rusmore had pretty much saved his life by showing him another way to let out his aggressions, how to consistently hit the level of adrenaline he needed to survive.
Very quickly, Sam had become a capable outdoors-man. All year long, the huge lake was cold and wild. When Sam wasn't deep in the mountains--for work or pleasure--he was on the water. Fishing, boating, kayaking, river rafting, kiteboarding. Despite the huge surge of tourists every winter and summer, and the more unsavory aspects of the casinos, Sam still couldn't believe he'd considered leaving Lake Tahoe behind ten years ago.
For a woman.
Chalk another one up to being young and stupid.
"Looks like Connor's here," Joe said as they flew over the station's parking lot and saw Connor's truck near the helipad.
Sam was glad his brother had dropped by the station. He didn't come by nearly often enough. Of course, it wasn't hard to guess why he was keeping his distance.
After a series of painful skin grafts and ongoing physical therapy to regain the full use of his hands and fingers, Connor was well on his way to recovery, but the big question remained: Would he ever fight fire again?
Because no matter how hard Connor worked, regardless of how much he wanted to get back out there on the mountain, his future as a hotshot wasn't entirely up to him. The Forest Service had the final say. And the last thing they wanted was a crippled firefighter out in the middle of a wildfire.
Joe shook Connor's hand in greeting, then headed back for the showers, but when Sam caught his brother's troubled expression, he instantly knew something was wrong.
"Hit me with it."
Connor put a hand on his arm in warning. "Sit down, Sam."
Hell no, he wasn't going to sit down. He'd seen Connor look this way only once before: When Dianna's car had been hit on Highway 50 ten years ago.
When she'd lost the baby.
"It's Dianna, isn't it?"
When he didn't get an answer quickly enough, Sam got in his brother's face and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. Connor mirrored Sam in weight and height--both of them broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, and muscular--but Sam had fear on his side.
If his little brother didn't start talking fast he was going to start beating the information out of him.
"Tell me what the hell has happened to her."
"She was in another car accident. Last night, in Colorado. Vail. I just saw it on the news. I didn't want to hit you with it over the radio. I needed to tell you in person."
Sam dropped Connor's shirt, stumbling back against a row of metal storage cabinets. "Is she ..."
He swallowed the word "dead." His brain wouldn't let him think it. His mouth wouldn't let him say it.
"The reporter didn't say how she was doing, just that the cars were totaled."
Sam would have given anything not to care about Dianna, to be able to hear what Connor had said about her and just get on with his day--with the rest of his goddamned life--as if it were business as usual. But the image of Dianna lying helpless in a hospital bed was like a stake shoved straight into his gut.
He couldn't erase it, couldn't stuff it down, couldn't walk away from it and pretend she didn't mean anything to him anymore.
"I've got to get to Colorado."
Connor shook his head. "That's why I'm here telling you in person. To make sure you don't do something stupid."
Every last instinct told Sam to go to Dianna. To be there to hold her. To help her.
"I don't need your advice," he growled.
"Fine, how about I jog your memory instead? Remember what happened to you after she left you?"
Ignoring his brother, Sam headed to his locker and stripped out of his turnouts. Connor followed behind him, like a dog intent on annoying its owner. As Sam changed into a clean pair of cargo pants and a T-shirt, Connor kept at it.
"When she dumped your ass and moved to San Francisco you fell apart. I never thought I'd see the day you'd skip out on your job. The job you used to love. But there you were, glued to the bar stool when you should have been out fighting fires."
The days and weeks after Dianna left were as fresh in Sam's mind as if they had happened yesterday. He didn't need Connor to remind him of the black hole he'd fallen into. How dark it had been. How deep. His high school problems had been rebellion. But the darkness he sought after Dianna left had nothing to do with mutiny, with revolt.
Instead, it had been despair. Bone deep and, he'd thought at the time, incurable.
"I know you thought she was the one," Connor insisted, "but the truth is, she was bad for you, man. You were royally fucked-up after she left. I don't want to see you like that again."
Sam couldn't refute any of his brother's statements. They were all true.
And yet, not going to her was unthinkable.
Moving to the phone, information connected him through to Vail General Hospital.
"I'm a," he paused, searching for the right word, "friend of Dianna Kelley's. Could you give me some information on her condition?"
"I'm sorry, sir," a woman replied politely. "I'm afraid we can't discuss patients with anyone except their family."
He hung up just as Logan stepped into the kitchen.
"Dianna's hurt," he told his closest friend, her name rasping out of his throat.
He cleared it, worked to get a grip. Jesus, he hadn't seen her for ten years, so why was he losing it now?
Connor quickly filled Logan in on the details of Dianna's accident. Of the twenty men currently on the Tahoe Pines crew, only Logan and Connor had been around ten years ago when Dianna was still in the picture. None of the other seventeen hotshots knew a damn thing about her, other than the fact that she was a gorgeous woman they sometimes drooled over when they were flipping through the channels.
"Tell him, Logan," Connor urged. "Tell him he can't go running after her."
Logan was newly married to an arson investigator who'd come to Tahoe last year to nail him to the wall as her prime arson suspect. Instead, Maya and Logan had caught the real arsonist and fallen in love.
Sam didn't need Logan's approval. He was going anyway.
"I'll buzz you when I know my time line," he told his squad boss.
Logan nodded. "You've been building up too much vacation on the books, anyway. It's a good time for you to take a few days." Logan grabbed a Coke out of the fridge, then clapped
him on the shoulder. "Give Dianna my best."
Connor shoved his car keys into his jeans. "I can't let you do something this stupid alone. I'm coming with you."
"No thanks," Sam said as he headed to his car.
Making a fool of himself by going to see the woman who'd dumped his ass cold and walked out of his life was a big enough pill to swallow. He wasn't going to have the big reunion in front of his brother.
His foot was lead on the gas pedal of his truck as he headed to the nearest airport, four hours away in San Francisco. For ten years, he'd pushed thoughts of Dianna out of his head, but now he could no longer stop the floodgates from opening.
CHAPTER THREE
Ten years ago ...
IT WAS an early fire season and he'd been sent out to check on a trailer park that bordered state land. An evacuation order had been given, but for one reason or another, people didn't always leave. Sometimes they foolishly thought they'd be better off guarding their things. Sometimes they were just plain stupid and lazy.
Sam quickly confirmed that twenty-nine of the thirty beaten-up trailers were empty. Only one was left, a ratty hunk of metal that barely looked habitable.
The fire was blowing closer, a plume of fresh smoke spiraling up into the sky to the west. He needed to finish evacuations and get back to the station with the sure knowledge that no lives would be at stake if the fire rolled down the hill.
He parked his truck in front of the trailer and got out, immediately disliking what he saw. Very few vehicles were left in front of the other trailers, but there was an old convertible parked outside this one.
On his way to the door, he heard a woman's voice. He couldn't make out what she was saying, but he could tell she was pleading with someone. He knocked hard.
"Fire service. I need you to open up."
The door didn't open. He looked into the mountains, knew the flames were moving closer by the minute. He didn't have the luxury of reasoning with the trailer's resident. It was go or die.
"Move away from the door," he commanded, kicking it hard once, then twice with a heavy steel-toed boot. Using one shoulder for leverage, he leaned his weight into the door until the lock broke open.
Moments later, he was inside the trailer and saw that the voice he'd heard belonged to a young girl who was trying to drag her mother's limp body out of a back room and down the dark, narrow hallway to the door.
Thank God he'd muscled his way inside. The kid needed his help.
And then she looked up at him, clearly startled by his intrusion, and the air was knocked straight out of his guts.
She wasn't a kid at all. Instead, she was the prettiest woman he'd ever seen. Tall and fair, he couldn't tell much about her body beneath the baggy jeans and T-shirt she had on. But her eyes held him captive, big and green with flecks of gold and purple. He stood and stared at her, the wildfire almost forgotten.
"I'm sorry we're not out yet," she apologized. "As soon as I heard about the mandatory evacuation, I tried to wake her up. But when she's like this, it's impossible."
She blushed, clearly embarrassed, her high cheekbones highlighted in pink against her pale skin.
The carpet was ratty, the furniture even worse, but everything was reasonably clean. He suspected the girl, not her mother, was responsible for that.
He crossed the length of the trailer in a handful of strides. "Let me take over from here. Let me help."
In the back room of the trailer with the girl, the smell of body odor and beer was overpowering.
"It's horrible in here. You shouldn't come in."
Shit, he hadn't meant to let his reaction to the rank smell show on his face.
"I'm not going to judge you. I promise. I just want to help."
Moving past her, he bent over and easily shifted her mother's dead weight over his left shoulder.
Her beautiful eyes grew wide. "Thank you."
He'd been complimented plenty of times during his two years as a hotshot, but somehow praise from this pretty green-eyed woman made him feel like he was walking on water.
"She doesn't weigh much," he replied modestly as he laid her mother in the extended cab of his Forest Service truck, then strapped her lifeless body in with the seat belt as securely as he could.
"They've set up an evacuation station at the high school. Do you know where that is?"
Her face flamed. "I do, but I can't take her there." At his silent question, she said, "I just can't."
Knowing firsthand how rough it was to have difficult parents, he made a split-second decision. "Follow me in your car to the station. She can sleep it off in my bunk."
He'd have to burn the sheets, but it was worth it to help out a beautiful damsel in distress.
And her appreciative expression was worth any price.
The rest of the hotshot crew was already out on the mountain fighting the fire by the time they arrived at the Tahoe Pines station thirty minutes later. He carried her mother to the sleeping quarters, and when he came back into the kitchen, the beautiful daughter was standing there, looking awkward and unsure of herself.
"You don't have to let her stay here," she said. "I can find another place for her to sleep it off and get both of us out of your hair."
"It's no problem. I don't want you to worry about it."
Her lips turned up slightly at the edges, a shy little smile that made his breath come faster, and he realized he wanted to see her again. Soon.
"I'm Sam," he said, holding out his hand to shake hers.
Her grip was cool and strong, and in that moment, he knew how good it would be between them, that he'd never find anyone like her in a bar on a Saturday night.
"What's your name?"
"Dianna," she said. "With two n's."
"I've got to go out to the fire right now, Dianna-with-two-n's," he said, glad to see her smile again, "but I'm hoping you'll consider giving me your phone number."
She hesitated. "Why?"
Her simple question threw him for a loop. For the first time since early adolescence, Sam felt off his game. Hadn't she felt the sparks between them? He'd been with girls who were more put together than Dianna, but none of them made his blood rush hard and fast like this with only a smile. What, he wondered, had happened to her to make her so suspicious of men?
"I'd like to take you out. On a date."
Her green eyes connected with his, and as he held her gaze, he silently asked her to trust him.
I'm not going to hurt you. I promise.
At last, she nodded. Pulling a small notebook from her purse, she wrote down her telephone number in neat handwriting, then ripped out the page and handed it to him.
He put the note in his pocket, but he couldn't head out into the fire without doing one more thing: He had to kiss her.
Their kiss was nothing fancy, just lips pressing together for the first time, but Sam felt like someone had launched a series of rockets straight through his veins.
When he pulled back, her eyes were wide with surprise--but there was pleasure there, too. He forced himself to step away, even though all he wanted was to taste her with his tongue, to pull her hard against him and explore the curves she was hiding beneath all those clothes.
"I'll call you. Soon."
Walking out of the station, knowing all that heat and sexy-as-hell innocence was going to be waiting for him at the wildfire's end, made him more ready to kick ass than ever before.
Four days later, when the wildfire was finally put to rest, he took her to a drive-in. She seemed nervous sitting in the passenger seat of his Jeep, not touching the extra-large box of popcorn he'd bought.
As the opening credits started running, Sam reached across the gearshift for her hand. She was slow to respond, wide-eyed and silent for a long moment before she curled her cold fingers into his.
It wasn't hard to guess that she hadn't been out with many guys. He needed to go slow with her, ease her in to how much he wanted her, but now that she was sitting close enough for him to
smell the faint scent of vanilla coming off her shiny blond hair and see the pulse point moving fast in the hollow of her neck, it was all he could do not to drag her onto his lap.
Reaching into the container of popcorn with his free hand, he picked up a piece and held it up to her lips. He watched her think about taking it from him, biting her lip in indecision, before she opened her mouth and let him feed her.
Sam had lost his virginity at fifteen to a hot senior cheerleader. In the past five years, he'd slept with plenty of girls, even dated a few of them for a month or two before breaking it off when things got too serious. But simply feeding Dianna--feeling her lips move softly around his fingers, watching her throat as she swallowed--was by far the most erotic experience of his life.
No longer able to control himself, he shoved the full container of popcorn into the backseat and took her face in his hands, kissing her with all of the desire he'd been holding back since the moment he met her. She met his kiss with just as much passion, her tongue swirling with his, a low moan of pleasure emerging from her throat.
He didn't know much more about Dianna than her name, her phone number, and where she lived, but based on how much he wanted her--and how hot this kiss was--he knew he was going to lay his claim to her that night in the most elemental of ways.
Abruptly, he broke their kiss, turned the key in the ignition, and burned rubber getting the heck out of the crowded outdoor theater.
They didn't speak as he pulled off the freeway onto a bumpy dirt road and drove through the woods. When the casino lights had fallen away and the moon shone bright through the tall pines, he shut down his engine and held out his hand.
"Come here, Dianna."
He was amazed when she didn't hesitate and crawled onto his lap to boldly straddle him. And then her mouth was on his and she was kissing his lips, his cheeks, his neck, pulling at his shirt and nipping at his chest. He wanted to tell her to slow down, that they had all night to explore each other's bodies, but he was already too far gone to get the words out.
A red light blinked in the back of his mind, a warning that she was too innocent, that she didn't know what she was asking him for, but instead of stopping and making sure he was doing the right thing, he reached for the snap on her jeans and yanked down the zipper.
Her eyes flew open as he slid in a finger. Oh shit, she was so wet.