by Bella Andre
But instead of smiling back, Sam turned the questions around on her.
“What about April? I’ve always wondered if you were able to pull her out of the foster system.”
Regardless of how things had gone wrong between them, Dianna had never forgotten Sam’s unwavering support during those first months when she was wading through paperwork and red tape.
“I got her, Sam.”
Finally, he smiled back and she lost her breath.
She fiddled with the blanket as she gathered her composure, knowing it was only fair to tell him as much about April as he’d told her about Connor, even though it wasn’t easy for her to talk about it.
“She’s lived with me for the past six years.”
He whistled softly. “It took you four years to get her back, huh?”
She’d never completely shaken off her frustration from those endless months of battling with the state.
“Every time I thought they were going to say yes, they found another reason to say no.”
“But you got them to change their mind.”
His clear admiration was surprising. She liked it far too much.
How could it still matter what he thought about her after all these years? After all her success?
“She must have been fourteen by the time she came to live with you,” he said, doing the math. “How was it, living with a teenager?”
It was tempting to let everything pour out, to pretend that the past ten years hadn’t happened, that they were sitting together in his apartment talking at the end of a long day.
Thankfully, she still had some sense of self-preservation, a little voice in the back of her head warning her not to say too much or let him in any closer.
“It was hard at first,” she said honestly. “I don’t think adolescence is easy for anyone. It certainly wasn’t for me. I’m sure she’ll find her way eventually.”
He raised an eyebrow as if to say he knew there was far more to the story than she was telling him, but fortunately, he let it go.
“I’m glad it worked out for you. For both of you.”
Despite her warnings to herself, Dianna couldn’t take her eyes off of his beautiful face. She wanted to stare at him for hours just to watch his expression change by degrees and admire the way his muscles flexed beneath his T-shirt.
Her feelings scared her. Really scared her.
All these years, she’d tried to convince herself that she’d fallen in love with a fantasy hero. That they were just kids fooling around. That the miscarriage had been a narrow escape.
She wanted to believe that there had been nothing real between them.
So then, why did it all feel so damn real?
———
Sam couldn’t believe how much he wanted to stay with Dianna. She’d barely touched on April, but he also knew that she was right in keeping the details to herself. They were treading dangerous waters. Instead of keeping to the surface, they were diving down far deeper than they should.
She’d barely had to push him for details about the Desolation Wilderness incident and he’d crumbled. And yet talking to her about it felt unbearably right, as did her touch, when she’d reached out in empathy and placed her hand on his arm.
He couldn’t believe how hard it had been to keep from reaching out and pulling her against him.
Hadn’t he learned a damn thing ten years ago?
During their conversation, his brain had been working overtime to try to get used to her glossy veneer, to her perfectly white teeth and much blonder hair, to her perfectly manicured nails and soft, expensive-looking clothing. Interestingly, what helped most was watching her pop and crack her knuckles. He was thankful that at least one thing about her had stayed the same.
The bad habit stood out in sharp relief against the backdrop of her perfect, shiny beauty.
For the first time since he’d met her, he felt out of place, like the two of them didn’t belong in the same room. Ten years ago, she’d been a poor, embarrassed girl with a drunk mother. She’d needed him to save her.
Hell, she’d needed him, period.
But this woman sitting in front of him wasn’t the kind of person who needed saving.
He’d rushed all the way to Colorado thinking things were going to be similar to that first day they met at the trailer park. Her needing, him saving.
He couldn’t have been more off the mark.
Of course he was happy for her success. What kind of asshole wouldn’t be? But at the same time, he found himself wondering if this was why she left him; because she wanted to reach for a bigger, brighter life than being a fireman’s wife.
She shifted uncomfortably in the bed and he didn’t know if it was because of her accident—or his being in the room. Either way, he’d overstayed his welcome.
And yet, Sam couldn’t make himself get out of the chair and say good-bye. He just wasn’t ready to leave her. Not yet.
Not when looking at her and talking with her still did funny things to his insides, made him wish things had turned out differently for them.
There was only one solution to his problem, only one way to get his ass moving out the door. He needed to rewind back to that day when he’d walked in the front door of their tiny apartment, into the silence, the emptiness, and realized she was gone. And wasn’t ever coming back.
For ten years, he’d been in the dark about why she’d left him. He could deal with being dumped. People got out of relationships all the time.
What he couldn’t stand was not knowing why.
It was finally time to find out.
“I’m going to head out in a minute,” he told her, more than a little surprised by the answering flicker of disappointment in her eyes. “But before I do, I’ve got a question for you. It’s something I’ve been wondering for a very long time.”
For a split second, her eyes widened with alarm. Remorse for the pile of bones he was about to unearth hit him square in the chest. If she were injured at all, he wouldn’t have gone here, he told himself, as if it was some kind of absolution.
She straightened her spine, moving away slightly from the pillows, and lifted her chin. “Go ahead.”
Shit, Sam thought. He should have taken the high road. Instead, he’d started down a road with no exits.
And now he couldn’t leave without hearing the truth.
“Why did you leave?”
Her mouth opened. Then closed. She shook her head, disbelief clouding her beautiful green eyes.
“You honestly don’t know?”
He was at least as surprised by her response as she seemed to be by his question.
He bit back a quick retort, knowing he’d regret it. And then her cell phone rang and she seemed glad to turn away from him and pull it out of her bag.
She quickly flipped it open. “April?”
And then suddenly, Dianna’s face lost all of its color and she kicked the blankets off of her legs to stand up too quickly.
Forgetting the need to keep his distance, Sam reached for her before she could fall and held her steady against his chest. He could feel her heart beating rapidly, and instinctively knew it had nothing to do with their close physical proximity.
Something was wrong.
“Where are you?” She held her breath as she listened to April’s reply, then urged, “You need to tell me more than that. You need to tell me exactly where you are so that I can find you.”
A few seconds later, Dianna pulled the phone away from her ear and began frantically pressing buttons before the phone dropped to the floor. When she looked up at him, he saw eyes as bleak as the ones that had stared back at him after her miscarriage.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as carefully as he would a fire victim who’d just seen her house and all of her possessions go up in flames.
“My sister’s in trouble. She needs my help.”
CHAPTER SIX
APRIL KELLEY hated how scared she was.
Her jaw was throbbing and t
here was tape around her mouth, hands, and ankles. Blinking hard to clear her foggy vision, when she looked up she realized she was sitting on the floor of a coat closet.
She’d never been a big fan of small, enclosed spaces, not after one of her foster families had made her sleep in a windowless room about the size of a closet for a couple of weeks when she was seven. The long hanging jackets brushing against the top of her head and shoulders made her feel even more claustrophobic, and she shivered, her teeth somehow managing to clank together behind the tape.
She wasn’t asthmatic, but the various pediatricians she’d had over the years claimed she hovered right on the brink of the disease. Feeling her lungs start to seize up, she forced herself to take long, slow breaths in and out of her nose. Dianna had been really into meditation for a while and even though she’d thought it was really lame at the time, April was suddenly grateful for the knowledge.
When she’d gotten hold of her breathing and felt confident that she wasn’t going to start freaking out again, she tried to work out what had happened.
After April woke up in an uncomfortable ball on one of the ICU waiting room chairs, one of the nurses told her that Dianna had been transferred to a regular room on the fourth floor. Relieved that her sister was doing so much better, she’d bummed a cigarette from one of the janitors to smoke before going up to see Dianna. She hadn’t smoked since moving to the Farm three months earlier, but her nerves were shot and she couldn’t think of a better way to check out for a few minutes.
She’d barely stepped outside and lit up when all of a sudden there was a hand over her mouth and nose and a gun in her side.
“Don’t make a sound,” the guy had whispered.
The hand on her face felt shockingly strong. Finely honed instincts from childhood told her that if she didn’t obey his order he’d pull the trigger, which was why she let him push her away from the building and shove her into the passenger seat of his car.
April’s experience as an ex—foster kid came to the fore as she sat quietly in the guy’s passenger seat. The best thing to do in any new, scary situation, she knew, was to keep her mouth shut and wait to see the lay of the land before making any sudden moves.
As he drove, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding the gun still trained on her, she tried to figure out why he’d grabbed her.
She’d heard stories about girls being nabbed off busy streets and sold to creepy rich guys in foreign countries, but she couldn’t believe anyone would want her to be a sex slave. Not right now, anyway, with her jeans soaked and muddy from the thighs down and her hair practically in dreads for want of a good hot shower and some of that expensive conditioner Dianna always put in the bathroom.
Then again, maybe this guy—and any rich clients he might have—had strange tastes.
What else did she have to offer him but her body, she wondered helplessly. She wasn’t rich, didn’t have any jewelry on that he could steal and sell off. And then it hit her. Dianna had all of those things. Her sister wasn’t a big shopper, but the money was definitely there. April couldn’t believe the number she’d seen on her sister’s latest contract when she’d been snooping around her home office last year.
“My sister’s rich,” she blurted, praying that money might be a good trade for sex with her. When he didn’t reply, she added, “She’s a big star. I swear I can get the money from her. And I know she won’t want to tell the cops or anyone about this, not if it means getting her name in the papers.”
Stopping at a light, the man turned to her, his gray eyes frighteningly cold. “I don’t need your sister’s money.”
He pointed the gun square in the middle of her face. She imagined him pulling the trigger, blowing a hole right through.
Gulping hard, she scooted as far away from him as she could, pressing herself against the passenger door. Bile rose in her throat and she barely managed to swallow it down.
“Now shut up or I’ll make you shut up.”
He was pretty average sized, but his grip on her in the parking lot had been surprisingly strong. Considering she was about ten pounds underweight at the moment, April knew she’d be no match for him if he decided to pull over and force himself on her in the car.
Her stomach continued to churn. She wasn’t a virgin, but the number of guys she’d slept with didn’t matter anymore.
She knew she needed to stop being such a cowering baby and get the hell out of his car. But as she waited for her opportunity to escape, the minutes only ticked by faster and faster, bringing her another step closer to ending up his prisoner.
Each minute that clicked by on the digital clock on the dashboard felt like an hour and she prayed that something would happen, that they’d get in an accident or a cop would drive by and see the gun. Of course, none of those things happened.
But just when she thought she was permanently out of luck, the traffic picked up and the rain started falling harder. April shot the man a surreptitious glance. He was focusing more on driving than on keeping his gun trained on her.
This was her chance.
Quickly unlocking the door, she threw herself out of the moving car onto the street. Her kneecaps and elbows and shoulders all hurt like hell as she rolled on the blacktop, but she barely noticed as she got back on her feet and started running. She needed to go somewhere crowded.
He wouldn’t try to grab her again if there were people around, would he?
Sighting a gas station across the street, she ran as fast as she could through the rain on the slippery four-lane road. People were filling up their tanks and didn’t seem to take much notice of her as she slid to a stop in front of the mini-mart.
Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she called Dianna, not remembering until the last second that her sister was in the hospital and might not have access to her cell phone.
Amazingly, Dianna picked up and April’s words all ran together. “Some guy grabbed me. I need help. I got away from him and I’m at a gas station.”
April was frantically scanning the front of the building for any street numbers on it that she could give, when she felt the familiar pressure of a gun shoved into her ribs.
“Stop talking and give me the phone or I’ll kill you right here, right now,” he whispered.
She hesitated for a moment and he cocked his gun.
“Trust me, little girl, I don’t have a damn thing to live for. I’ll shoot you first, then I’ll shoot myself. It’d be just as easy to do it here as it is somewhere else. But if you do what I say, you just might get to live.”
April’s hand shook as she handed him her phone and watched him shut it, then followed his instructions to get back in the car without making a sound or looking like he was forcing her.
“Who did you call?”
“I couldn’t get through,” she lied, but he had already flipped open her phone. DIANNA was at the top of her call list.
He slammed the gun into her jaw and she was stunned by the flash of blinding pain that ran through her.
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing,” she moaned around the blood in her mouth.
He hit her with the gun again, harder this time across the forehead, and the pain was so ferocious she barely heard him say, “You stupid bitch, you better not have ruined everything for me. Does she know where you are?”
She was in too much pain to lie and the “no” escaped her before she could pull it back. Even as she waited for his next blow, the sunlight seemed to dim. The last thing she heard was a muffled, “Fuck,” before she passed out.
Hours later, finding herself bound and gagged in a closet, she couldn’t help but wonder, Why does bad shit always happen to me?
Three months ago, she’d thought leaving San Francisco was the best thing for everyone. Especially after she’d overheard Dianna’s public relations team tell her she’d better “rein April in before she does something to make headlines.” She hadn’t stayed to hear Dianna’s response.
Sure, Ap
ril knew she was a screwup that no one wanted, but it killed her to hear the words come out of someone’s mouth.
Clearly, the whole sister-as-guardian thing was a nice gesture on Dianna’s part, but it hadn’t worked out. So when April’s new boyfriend, Kevin, asked her to come with him to Colorado, she didn’t even have to think about it, she just packed a bag and got on the bus.
The two-day ride gave her plenty of time to think. All her life, she’d been angry with Dianna for getting to stay with their mother while April had been sent off to live with strangers. At the same time, when Dianna finally pulled her out of the system, she hadn’t known how to respond to Dianna’s overwhelming affection, to the way she wanted to hang out all the time and do girl stuff like go to the mall and get makeovers.
Life as a foster kid either made you weak and scared of everything—or it gave you calluses. Everywhere. In the throes of teenage angst, the more her big sister tried to reach her, the more she’d pulled away. Rebellion was what April did and she did it well, but then even that got old. Predictable.
By the end of the bus ride to Vail, April had made the decision that she was ready to stop being Dianna Kelley’s screwed-up little sister. She was ready for something new.
She was ready for a better life.
It was a two-day hike through the Rockies to the Farm and frankly, she was a little freaked out about living in an intentional community.
But, amazingly, she’d found herself fitting in with the band of misfits. And for the first time, she almost felt like she was part of a family.
Her brothers and sisters on the Farm accepted her for who she really was. They didn’t try to change her clothes, her hair, or the music she liked. While Dianna had always coddled her, she was given real responsibilities on the Farm as a cook. She was surprised by how natural it felt to stand over a hot fire, to pound herbs together with a mortar and pestle, to knead bread until it was just the right consistency. Up in the Rockies, she felt more at peace than she ever had.
And then guilt started creeping up on her, slowly but surely, day after day, week after week. When she’d finally asked to use the Farm’s lone phone line and checked her voice mail, she cringed listening to Dianna’s anxious string of messages. It was time to set up a meeting to show her ubersuccessful big sister that she was finally doing something good, that she was finally on the right track with her life and was coming into her own.