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 f**king 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.”