“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 f**ked-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.