by Bella Andre
He didn’t bother to finish his sentence. He’d saved her once, but she’d left him anyway. Maybe she’d only needed him to get away from her mother and out of the trailer park. Maybe not.
Either way, odds were, as soon as they found April, this rush of adrenaline—a rush that felt like desire and love—would dissipate.
And she’d walk away from him again.
“Look, I get why you’re thinking about second chances. You’ve survived two big accidents. But you were right when you said that we’ve changed. We’re in two different worlds now.”
Her eyes were flashing and he knew he was hurting her again with his harsh words, but it was better to sever the thin thread that remained between them now, rather than the mess of trying to untangle themselves later.
Climbing back into the raft, he said, “You ready to get going again? We don’t want to waste any more time.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT WAS only Dianna’s years of learning to keep calm in front of the camera no matter what her guest was doing or saying that enabled her to steadily hold Sam’s gaze after he’d ripped her to shreds.
But on the inside, she was in pieces. Just as she’d been the day she’d left Lake Tahoe.
He was the only man who’d ever made her break her vow to depend only on herself. She couldn’t let herself do it again.
Take their conversation during lunch, for example. He’d gotten her to talk freely about April, about her career, but then when it was his turn to share, he’d clammed up and held her at arm’s length.
It hurt like hell to watch him be so guarded, to know that he didn’t want to trust her with what was in his heart. Yes, she now saw that she’d betrayed his trust all those years ago by leaving. But she’d been young and scared and stupid. Was her behavior as an eighteen-year-old really enough of an excuse for him to keep pushing her away?
She didn’t trust herself to speak as she climbed on to her side of the raft. They paddled for another thirty minutes in silence without any other disasters, but the small comfort zone they’d found during their lunch on the riverbank had been blown to smithereens by the sexual encounter and then their very unsatisfactory post-makeout discussion.
A short while later, Sam steered them back over to the edge of the river.
“This is as far as we go by water.”
She got off the raft, and as it deflated, he methodically laid out an overwhelming array of rock-climbing gear. Looking up at the quartz slab, which had to be several stories high, she was newly shaken.
How could she possibly climb a rock face with no experience … and a borderline fear of heights?
He held a harness out, clearly expecting her to step into it. But although she knew Sam was a man of few words, it didn’t seem the least bit fair that he should unilaterally decide to shut down their dialogue.
Taking a deep breath, she tried to shore up her insides for the roller coaster her words were about to launch.
“You might be done talking about what happened with us, Sam, but I’m not. You got to ask your big question; now it’s my turn.”
He was an impenetrable wall before her, his eyes shuttered, the lines of his body stiff and unyielding. There was no satisfaction in knowing that Sam was cornered, with no place to run.
“Go ahead.”
Working to project a serene confidence she certainly didn’t feel, she said, “If you cared so much about me that you fell apart when I left, then why didn’t you come after me?”
She held her breath as she waited for his response, her heart kicking up so fast she could have been sprinting, rather than standing still.
“I did come after you,” he finally admitted. “A couple of weeks after you left Lake Tahoe.”
Oh God, all this time she’d assumed that he’d been happy to see her go. Was there more to the story? Had she been wrong all these years?
Sam watched confusion, even doubt, run across Dianna’s beautiful face.
“But I never saw you,” she protested, before admitting, “I didn’t exactly make myself easy to find, did I?”
“I found you,” he said, his words harder than they should be.
Her hands moved to her chest, almost as if she felt the need to shield her heart from him.
“Then why didn’t you tell me you were there?”
He dropped the harness to the sand and moved away from her, remembering that unseasonably warm day in foggy San Francisco. He’d parked outside the return address on the letter from Dianna that he’d found in a pile of her mother’s unopened mail in the trailer. Donna hadn’t seemed to know—or care—that her daughter had broken up with her fiancée and skipped town, and Sam couldn’t help but wonder if Dianna was running away from more than just him.
He’d been about to get out of his truck when he saw her, walking out of the apartment building. Her hair was blonder, softer somehow. Her clothes were different. Fit her better than anything he’d ever seen her wear. Even her green eyes seemed brighter.
“You were already different,” he explained.
And then she’d waved at a skinny guy on a bike who came over to say hi and her smile was bigger than Sam could remember seeing. At least since the miscarriage.
“It wasn’t hard to figure out that you already had a new job. New friends. And it looked to me like your new world fit you so well, so much better than being some kid from a trailer park ever did.” He let out a long breath. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to walk away? To accept that you were finally in your right place?”
Dropping her hand from her chest, she reached out to him. “If I’d known you were there, then maybe I—”
“Maybe you would have what? Married me anyway and had a bunch of babies?” He scowled. “I don’t think so.”
“How can you say that?”
“You’re the one who wanted to postpone the wedding. Not me.”
Clearly stung by his accusation, she said, “It sure seemed to me that you were perfectly happy to postpone the wedding, too. I’ll never forget that day I told you I’d taken the pregnancy test. You looked like I was holding a gun to your head, saying, ‘Marry me or else.’ All my life I’d told myself I wasn’t going to repeat my mother’s mistakes, but then there I was having some guy propose to me because he had to. Getting a marriage proposal should have been one of the best days of my life. Instead it was one of the worst. Because I knew how compelled you were to do the right thing. And I knew it would break us eventually.” She paused, shut her eyes tight for a moment before opening them again. “I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.”
After ten years of shoving his feelings as far down as they could go, Sam could barely believe all of this anger and frustration—and love—actually belonged to him.
But more than that, he couldn’t believe the things Dianna was saying. It was time to set her straight.
“You and I both know it wasn’t like that.”
To his amazement, she laughed in his face. Actually laughed. “You honestly expect me to believe that you were looking for a wife and kid at twenty? That you weren’t wanting to go to bars, play the field, live your life like any normal young firefighter?”
What the fuck did she expect him to say to that? Of course that’s how he’d felt.
“Are you saying that’s what you wanted?” he asked, turning the question around to her. “That instead of wearing my engagement ring, you wanted to play the field and mess around with other guys?”
She shook her head, then buried her face in her hands. He couldn’t believe how much he wanted to pull her into his arms. Even though they were standing on opposite poles.
“No,” she finally said, when she lifted her head. “I was in love with you, Sam. I didn’t want anyone else.” Her beautiful lips turned down at the corners. “But that didn’t mean I was ready for a baby. And neither were you.”
There was no point in lying. They were way beyond trying to keep anything from each other.
“You’re right, I
wasn’t ready.” He hoped he could find the words to make her understand. “But that didn’t mean that when it happened I didn’t get excited about it.”
A lone tear streaked down her face and he had to bunch his hands into fists to keep from wiping the wetness away from her smooth skin.
“I felt exactly the same way,” she admitted in a shaky voice. “I couldn’t believe how much I was falling in love with this little person growing inside of me. Because even though I knew we weren’t ready, I still hoped we could figure things out.” Her eyes closed and she whispered, “Instead, a piece of me—of both of us—died that day. And I didn’t just lose the baby, I lost you, too.”
His self-control disappeared and he couldn’t stop himself from gathering her into his arms.
He wasn’t angry anymore. How could he be?
“I’m sorry, Dianna,” he said softly against her hair.
A short while later, she said, “I am, too,” and when she moved out of his embrace, letting her go was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.
Dianna was relieved that they had found this place of mutual understanding. They’d been too young, too naive to have acted out of malice. They’d been confused kids, plain and simple.
There was no way of knowing where she and Sam would go from here, or if they would ever be willing to risk their hearts to each other again, but something told her that whatever choice they ended up making, it would be the right one.
For both of them.
“Thank you for being so honest with me,” she said.
His answering smile took her breath away. “You’re welcome.” He nodded toward the rock. “How about you and me scale that wall?”
She forced a nod, hoping she looked braver than she felt.
“Let’s get this on you,” Sam said, picking up her gear again, and she made herself step into the leg holes of the harness that she assumed was supposed to hold her in the air. Sam’s hands came around her waist, snapping the waist belt shut.
“You’re going to be fine,” he said softly.
If there was any possible way she could avoid climbing up a wall into thin air, she would stop the madness right here, right now. But with a rock wall standing between her and finding April, she had no choice but to climb it.
He leaned in even closer, his mouth brushing against her earlobe. “I’m going to be right behind you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
The memory of another time he’d said those words to her—right after they made love for the first time—smashed into her. She lost her balance and had to reach out for the rock to steady herself and refocus.
“If you start to fall, here’s what you do.”
She watched him twist the ropes around his arms and waist as if her life depended on it. It did.
“You’re going to lead the climb. I’ll bring up the rear.”
For the umpteenth time, she tried to project a confidence she definitely didn’t feel. That first year she hosted West Coast Update, she’d done the very same thing. No one had known that her knees were knocking together beneath her dress. And Sam didn’t need to know that she was practically having a coronary just gazing up at the rock face.
Yet again, he was an excellent, extremely patient teacher, as he directed her on how to screw the metal bolts into the rock face, then how to clip her carabiners into them.
The first few feet weren’t so bad, and she was able to tell herself that if she fell, she’d possibly break something, but she’d walk away pretty much unscathed. Still, with each new hand- and foothold, her breathing grew increasingly labored. Sam told her where to put her hands and feet and she did exactly what he said.
Until she made the mistake of looking down.
Her stomach roiled and she froze in place. Minutes felt like hours as she clung to the rock. All of the weight was on the tips of her toes, and her muscles started spasming.
“Dianna? Talk to me.”
“I can’t get my legs to stop shaking,” she admitted through dry lips.
Sam moved closer to her on the rock and unclipped her backpack so that he could transfer it to his own shoulders.
“Lean into me for a second.”
She didn’t hesitate to take him up on the offer.
“Everyone gets sewing machine leg on their first climb.”
The fact that he was talking to her as if they were sitting in a coffee shop rather than clinging to cold rock a hundred feet in the air helped snap her out of her panic. She needed to follow his lead, keep the conversation going, pretend she was shooting a live show.
“There’s a name for what my legs are doing?”
“You bet. It’s perfectly normal.”
He didn’t offer to help her down off the rock and she appreciated how well he knew her. Even though she was scared spitless, she couldn’t turn away from helping April.
“I want you to trust me, Dianna. Tell me why you’re afraid of heights.”
She was so surprised by what he was asking that for a moment, she forgot she was hanging on to the edge of a cliff with her fingertips.
“I just am.”
He laughed softly, the mellow sound running through her veins like a sedative. “Nice try. Now what’s the real reason?”
God, she didn’t know. She’d just always stayed away from ladders and rooftops. But before she could say this to Sam, a picture flashed through her mind and she gasped.
“What is it?” he asked, holding her steady with his body.
Her breath came fast again. “I think I saw a man fall when I was a little girl.”
“Who was it?”
She closed her eyes, tried to place his face. “I don’t know.”
But something told her he was important, especially when she thought about the way her mother had behaved later, crying and raging at Dianna.
“I think it was one of my mother’s boyfriends.”
In a soothing tone, Sam said, “The man fell, Dianna. Not you. It wasn’t your fault. You were just a little girl who saw too much.”
Amazingly, her heartbeat began to slow. Was he right? Could she have developed a phobia because of what she’d seen happen to someone else?
“Do you want to talk about it some more?”
Her heart swelled, knowing that he was no longer angry at her, that at the very least they could get through this as friends helping each other.
“No, I think I’m okay now.”
“Good. Then let’s try doing this a different way. We’re going to climb up together.”
God love him, he made it sound so easy.
“How?”
“Like this, with you cradled against my body. I’m going to strap your harness through mine. Every move you make, I’ll make with you.”
Again, instead of making her feel like an idiot for diving into deeper water than she could possibly swim in, he was putting his own life on the line. Then again, hadn’t he jumped into this rescue mission without a thought for himself from the very beginning?
“I can’t let you do that, Sam. I could kill us both.”
The low rumble of his laughter blew across her earlobe again. “Don’t worry, babe, I won’t let you do that.”
Of all the insane places to be hot for a guy, this one took the cake, stuck on the side of a rock, wrapped up in ropes. It struck her, then, that he’d done the impossible. He’d eased her fear enough for crazy desire to come rushing back in.
Slowly, inch by inch, they climbed up together. She couldn’t see the ground around his large body, which was a very good thing given what had happened the previous time she’d looked down. She focused all of her energy on the peak, and although rock climbing ranked as one of the most difficult things she’d ever done, before she knew it, she was actually making it up the side of a mountain.
“We’ve got it under control,” Sam said.
Safe in the curve of his large body, Dianna almost believed him.
The muscles in her arms and legs and stomach ached as she hugged
the wall. Even the rest periods where they held on to a small ledge so that she could catch her breath were hard work. And then, after what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only twenty minutes or so, she was gripping the edge of the rock and pulling herself up to the top of the cliff.
Standing at the peak brought an unexpected smile to her face. She couldn’t believe how powerful she felt after facing down one of her biggest fears. Her first climb safely behind her, she was able to see what a huge adrenaline rush it had been. It was a new sensation, totally different from the rush of taping a live show for millions of viewers.
She’d assumed she’d be a complete wreck after climbing up the rock, but the reverse was true. She felt invincible, ready for any challenge that came her way, which was good because the challenges were lined up before her, one after the other.
Why, she suddenly wondered, had she been afraid of heights for so long?
And what else was she afraid of that she shouldn’t be?
They donned their heavy packs, and when they hit the hiking trail Sam said, “You set the pace. If my coordinates are right, we should be there in about thirty minutes.”
She led the way up the narrow deer trail, moving steadily, and she was actually grateful for the hard physical labor, for anything to focus on besides her worries about her sister, which only increased as they hiked closer to the commune.
Constantly looking at her watch, the minutes ticked down. Twenty-five, then twenty, then fifteen as they traversed a steep switchback, until suddenly, Sam grabbed her arm.
“We’re here.”
She looked around and saw nothing but tree stumps and bushes, but she knew the GPS on Sam’s watch was accurate. He motioned for her to give him her pack and when she did he slid both of their bags into the bushes. “Are you ready to do this?”
Dianna’s heart jumped into her throat, but she said, “I’m ready.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I’M GOING to take the lead now,” he told her quietly. “If anything looks dangerous, if it looks like we’re in any kind of danger, I want you to get the hell out of here.”
