Hot as Sin

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 ass**le 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 there 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.