by Bella Andre
Maybe he'd been right and she should have let him go alone?
She squashed the thought as quickly as it came. It was only fear speaking. She'd been afraid before and she'd survived. Thrived, in fact. She'd do any and everything she had to do to find her sister and bring her home.
After saying his good-byes, Will was clearly reluctant to leave them, and as he slowly turned the truck around and headed down the road, Dianna also wished he would stay a little longer.
Anything to avoid being alone again with Sam.
Her mouth went dry as he held out her loaded backpack. Turning her back to him, she slipped her arms through the straps and braced herself for the heavy weight. But instead of pulling her off balance, it was surprisingly light.
She'd seen how much gear there was to carry the night before, and as he strapped on his own pack, she saw that he was loaded down with most of her things.
"You don't have to take everything for me," she said. "I want to do my fair share."
He barely looked at her. "I'm used to the weight. You're not."
Case clearly closed. No discussion. No room for debate. She knew his word was law out here. The question was, would she ever get used to taking orders from a man? From Sam?
Seconds later, he was disappearing into the woods and she had no other choice but to hurry and catch up with him.
The day wasn't going well so far, Sam thought as he led them down the trail to the river's edge.
He'd woken up with the best of intentions, planning to smooth over the rough edges they'd pulled up the night before. But then she'd gone and insisted that she would pay him back for the hiking gear and his pride had gotten twisted up all over again.
He'd never been intimidated by anyone's money before. He still wasn't. But he couldn't ignore the dichotomy between her salary and his. His parents hadn't been happy about his career choice. They'd wanted him to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. But he'd never been comfortable with walls around him. Becoming a hotshot had been a perfect fit.
And then, when she'd met Will, it had seriously grated watching her charm the pants off his friend. The eighteen-year-old Dianna he'd known had never been particularly comfortable with male attention. She'd hidden her curves behind baggy shirts and pants. But now, instead of deflecting a guy's admiration, or simply ignoring it, she seemed to bask in its glow.
He'd wanted to think it was all an act, a performance she'd honed over the years to get high ratings, but the truth was, she'd always been charismatic, simply lacking in confidence.
Worse still, his instincts were screaming at him to get Dianna out of here. Away from the mountains, from the river and the trails, from the quick-changing weather, from the bears and cougars lurking in the bushes.
The problem wasn't that she was a woman. He was all for women firefighters. They were easily as tough as the men on the crew, often tougher. Hell, women made it through the agonies of childbirth, then usually went and did it again.
But he couldn't stand the thought of seeing Dianna hurt. Regardless of what had gone down between them, Sam wanted to know that she was safe and sound, back in a TV studio, her only concern how pretty she looked.
He'd spent plenty of time in the Rockies, both fighting wildfires and vacationing during his off-seasons. Fact was, Dianna wasn't trained for swimming through level-five white water back to an overturned raft. When Sam was ten years old, he'd cut his teeth on the class-five rapids on the American River in California. He'd been thrown out of the raft a dozen times that day and had knocked his head into enough rocks to have a healthy respect for the immense power of white water.
In a few minutes he was going to take a complete novice on similar waters in a lightweight inflatable raft that was prone to overturning in heavy water.
Was he out of his fucking mind?
She didn't have the skills to scale a rock face or hike deer trails through thick brambles and dead brush that would rip up her skin. And she'd never been big on heights, he remembered that much.
Shit, who was he kidding? He remembered all of it. Every last thing about her. From the way her nose scrunched up when she laughed to the little sounds she used to make before she exploded beneath him in bed.
Fuck. He couldn't go there. Not with her a few feet behind him, close enough that he could stop, turn, and kiss her before she knew what hit her.
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 fucked 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.
Now that she was about to paddle down a dangerous river on a quest to rescue her kidnapped sister, those childhood dreams felt like they belonged to someone else.
"Getting your balance is the hardest thing," Sam said as he eased them into the water with his paddle. "Once you figure that out, you'll be fine."
His matter-of-fact tone was soothing, almost as if what he was really saying was, "Don't worry. Everything's going to be all right."
After torturing herself all night over what a bitch she'd been, it was a huge relief to know that he wasn't holding a grudge against her. Even better, she felt as if they'd made some headway.
Was it too much to hope that they'd cleared away the worst of the tension that had been crackling between them? All she wanted was some breathing room to push forward together to find April.
At the same time, as she watched the muscles of his arms and legs flex next to her on the raft and rivulets of water ran down his chiseled jaw, she had to face facts: Yes, they'd overcome their anger, but the sexual tension hadn't disappeared.
If anything, the new understanding she had for what he'd done only made her want him more, damn it.
Turning her focus back to the river, working hard to stay upright on the edge of the raft, her thighs immediately started to burn from the strain, and her shoulders and neck stiffened until they were rigid.
She wished she'd gotten more sleep the night before, but her dreams had been so dark and intense, it had almost been a relief when Sam woke her up. She'd had similar dreams in the first few weeks after losing the baby where she felt as if she were trying to reach the light at the end of the tunnel against the force of the quicksand pulling her deeper.
Sam's warm voice broke into her thoughts. "Try to keep your limbs loose and your grip on the paddle relaxed."
He was a good teacher, knew exactly how to tell her she was doing it all wrong without getting her back up. How could she have forgotten that about him, that he was so strong and yet so gentle at the same time? Instead of making her feel like a fish out of water, rather than highlighting the fact that she was the queen of TV instead of outdoor wonder girl, he saw how hard she was trying and was being incredibly supportive.
So even though her brain was telling her not to loosen her grip on the paddle or she'd die, she followed his directions to relax and quickly found that he was right on the money. As soon as she stopped trying to control the water, she expended a great deal less energy.
"You've got it," he said encouragingly.
His patience meant a great deal to her. Not only did she want to prove to herself that she had what it took to ride the rapids, but foolishly she wanted to impress Sam, too.
Unfortunately, just as she was starting to feel at ease, the water turned white and frothy. They bumped and banged over the water and it splashed into her face again and again, quickly soaking her from head to toe.
She guessed she looked like a drowned rat, with freezing cold water streaming off her nose and chin. And it bothered her, even though only Sam could see her--and he'd seen her look much worse.
"Our first drop is coming, about a hundred yards ahead. You ready for it?"
"You bet," she fibbed, wondering what the heck a "drop" was, but knowing that saying no wasn't an option.
The water started churning faster, harder, and it took every ounce of her concentration just to stay seated on the raft.
"You're doing good, Dianna. Keep paddling, just like that."
And then, suddenly, they hit a wall of white water and she felt like they were in an elevator whose lines had been cut, falling down, then hitting bottom so hard, she choked on her own saliva and nearly bit her tongue.
Dianna did everything she could to stay on the raft, but the water was tougher than she was, and the next thing she knew she was flipping over the edge of the raft. Holding her breath, she tried not to panic as she bobbed up toward the surface, the strong rapids continuing to push her downstream, over the rocks that were scratching up her legs and arms something fierce.
When she was finally able to come up for air, she saw Sam leaning over the edge of the raft, reaching for her hands.
"You okay?" he asked, his expression clearly concerned as he gripped her upper arms with both hands and pulled her into the middle of the raft.
Concentrating on getting back into the raft, she kept her gaze averted so he couldn't see how clumsy and stupid she felt.
Trying to make light of the situation, she said, "You didn't say anything about a drop being a waterfall." Her upper arms tingled from where he'd wrapped his big hands around them.
"I didn't think you knowing that's what a drop actually meant would help any," he said, his light words softening all the places she'd been trying to keep cold and hard.
"Besides," he continued, "it's always good to get your first flip of the day over right off the bat. Makes it easier to stay on board for the really big ones."
There were bigger drops ahead?
She pushed the hair dangling in her eyes back up under her helmet. No amount of hair spray could save her now. If her staff could see her now they'd die.
But ultimately, she knew her looks didn't matter. Neither did the fact that Sam was an even bigger puzzle than he had been ten years ago. All that mattered was finding April and bringing her home.
The sun rose higher in the sky as they paddled downriver, worries about April closing in on her again, heavy and bleak like her dre
ams from the night before.
Where was she? Was anyone hurting her? And would her baby sister even be okay when they finally found her?
It struck her, yet again, how lost she'd be without Sam's support. And it scared her to know how much she was depending on him.
Just like she had so many years before.
Sam wasn't sure he liked what was happening. It was too easy to admire how well Dianna was doing on the river, especially given that she was instinctively better at rafting than most of the guys he went rafting with during his off months.
And it was too damn difficult not to notice how beautiful she was.
Even with a life jacket covering her curves and a helmet over her plastered-down hair, he was mesmerized by the slight bounce of her breasts, and her tongue coming out to lick a drop of water off her lips.
Forcing his gaze back up to her face, it was unsettling to read a whole host of worries in her expression.
At first, her face had been a picture of concentration and he'd been glad that the river was giving her a reason to think about something other than April for at least a few minutes. But now, it wasn't hard to guess that she was running through worst-case scenarios.
He sympathized. If they were looking for Connor, he would have been a wreck, too. But doing search and rescue had taught him that once you gave up hope, you were screwed. He couldn't allow fear to paralyze her, especially not when paddling through the white water should be taking every ounce of her attention.
It was time for a break and some food. Maybe even a pep talk, if he could figure out how to pull that off when he was still wading through a thick, unending bog of desire and deteriorating self-control.
He steered them over to a small beach in the curve of the cliffs.
"Why are we stopping?" Dianna asked.
"Food. We're quickly burning through our reserves and we need to keep our energy high."
She opened her mouth, probably to argue with him, and he cut her off at the pass with, "And you need to give your body a rest. Rafting is hard enough, but doing it after an accident like yours is borderline crazy."
He'd noticed that she was favoring her left shoulder. Paddling was tough work. Just one day after her crash she had to be stiff and sore all over.
Given their wet clothes and the brisk breeze whipping down the shady river, Sam decided to pull out a camp stove and some bags of dehydrated food to help warm them up before they got back on, and likely flipped back into, the ice-cold river.