In his head she had always been the same Dianna, the pretty girl who’d changed his world with a smile. But this woman was blonder, slicker, a thousand times more sophisticated-looking than the girl he used to know. People in hospitals never looked good. And yet, somehow, she did.
Dianna was in the middle of saying something to a thin woman with a severe black haircut who was sitting on a chair beside the bed when she looked up and saw him. Breaking off in the middle of her sentence, she sucked in a deep breath, her face flushing beneath his scrutiny.
And yet, even as he mentally dissected all the ways she’d changed, all the reasons they were more different than ever, his body was telling him to get over there, to pull her tight against him and kiss her until they were both gasping for air.
What the hell was he thinking?
Her friend moved first, standing up and holding out her hand. “Hello, I’m Ellen Ligurski, Dianna’s best friend. Her producer, too.”
One of the woman’s eyebrows was raised in question. She had to be wondering who the hell he was.
“Sam MacKenzie,” he said. “Dianna’s ex-fiancée.”
Ellen’s eyes went round like saucers, and she mouthed, “Oh my,” at the same time that Dianna gasped.
Well, that confirmed what he’d suspected all along; Dianna had completely buried her past when she’d moved to San Francisco. Especially the part about him.
But before latent anger could get the best of him, he told himself to get over it. They’d both started fresh. They’d both come out of the relationship just fine. He still had his wildfires. And she had the whole world at her feet. Neither of them had a damn thing to complain about—apart from her car accident, of course.
“I saw you on the airplane,” her friend said. “If I’d known that you were coming to see Dianna, I would have given you a ride.”
She turned to Dianna and whispered, “This is the guy I was telling you about,” loud enough for him to overhear.
Dianna and her friend had been talking about him? Interesting.
He let one side of his mouth quirk into a charming half smile. Ellen responded as expected, her eyes and mouth growing soft, an answering smile on her lips.
She was clearly still trying and failing to cover her shock at hearing that he and Dianna had once been an item. Practically husband and wife, with a white picket fence and everything.
“I heard Dianna was in a car accident,” he said to the woman. “And I wanted to see for myself that she was all right.”
“I’m fine,” Dianna said, her warm, slightly husky voice washing over him, making a beeline for his groin.
Her colorless face and tightly pinched lips belied her relaxed words and he was selfishly glad to know that he wasn’t the only one having a hard time with their impromptu reunion.
“I’m glad to see that,” he said, even though the truth was, he hadn’t expected to come all this way to find her sitting on the edge of the hospital bed in designer clothes that probably cost more than he made in a week.
What an idiot he was for actually thinking she needed him.
At the same time, he wanted to drop to his knees to give thanks that she’d survived the head-on, that she wasn’t wrapped head to toe in bandages, that there weren’t doctors hovering over her, pumping blood into her, stitching up her organs while they tried to keep her alive.
The air in the room was strained and heavy. Ellen’s eyes jumped between the two of them, back and forth several times, as if they were playing a tennis match.
Finally she offered, “I’ve got some phone calls to make for this week’s lineup. I’ll give you two some privacy.”
Dianna nodded, her lips still pursed tightly, two pink spots of color emerging beneath her cheekbones.
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“Call my cell when you want me to come back,” Ellen told Dianna before she squeezed past him out the door.
Closing it behind her, Sam finally moved toward the bed.
Dianna’s scent used to be fresh soap. The green Irish Spring bar. Now, she smelled expensive. Foreign. Out of his reach.
He didn’t like it.
As much as he didn’t like the inch of makeup she’d applied to her face with a spatula. She’d never needed anything to “fix” her beautiful, golden skin. Maybe all that makeup worked on TV, but it looked all wrong to Sam.
Those months they were together a decade ago, he’d thought he knew her. But when she left, he’d questioned everything. Seeing her now only confirmed those doubts. The old Dianna would have been simply glad to be alive after the car crash. The new one was clearly concerned with looking pretty.
Moving his gaze back to her face, he could see her mind racing behind her clear, apparently calm green eyes. She was trying to figure out how best to deal with him.
Hell, he was working out the same thing.
“What are you doing here, Sam?”
He didn’t know how he’d expected her to react to his showing up unannounced, but given the sparkling jewels on her fingers and ears he’d have bet on cold and distant, that he was merely one of the many peons coming to worship at her feet.
He was surprised by the heat beneath her words, the unspoken accusation that he shouldn’t have come—and that she didn’t want him here.
Didn’t she realize he hadn’t had any other choice but to get on the next plane to Colorado? That hearing about her accident had sent him into a tailspin, into his own head-on collision with the past?
He’d never been one for telling lies. He wasn’t going to start now.
“I needed to make sure you were okay.”
He wasn’t saying anything she couldn’t have figured out for herself and he didn’t feel as if he was giving away a deep dark secret. But when her eyes suddenly softened and she unclamped her jaw, he found himself adding, “Connor told me about your accident and I was worried about you. I couldn’t sit at home without knowing how you were doing, without seeing you for myself. Considering how bad they said the crash was, you look good.”
He desperately wanted to reach out to her, to touch her skin, to see if it was still silky soft.
“You don’t just look good, Dianna. You look amazing. Simply amazing.”
Dianna was stunned not only by his presence, but by everything he was saying.
She didn’t know what to think. What to say. Where to look.