Flash Storm Read online

  “I’m fine.” She pushed up on her hands and knees and sent him a rueful smile. “Really.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, but if I’d known that’s all it’d take to slow you down, I’d have fallen sooner.”

  He tried not to notice her smile as she stood up and brushed herself off, the way she flashed a small dimple on her left side and how her eyes were warm—the warmest, most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen.

  She looked upward as the rain started to hit them with a new intensity. “Uh-oh.” She shoved her hair out of her face, leaving a streak of dirt across one jaw. She had another across her chest, and a hole over one knee.

  She no longer looked quite as perfect and untouchable. She was looking more like the Sara he’d once known, warm and approachable and sweet—and something inside his chest tightened.

  Not. Good.

  He went to turn away but she put her hands flat on his chest. With dirt on her jaw and hair having fallen over her eyes she looked earnestly into his face. “Sam, please. We really do need to talk—I need to talk. To you.”

  The skies opened up and dumped on them.

  CHAPTER 6

  The rain actually felt like it was slicing her skin, and tipping her head up, Sara realized why. It was freezing rain. Even as she thought it, Sam grabbed her hand.

  “We’ve got to go back,” he yelled over the next shuddering boom of thunder that nearly had her leaping out of her skin now that he was no longer touching her, kissing her as if his life depended on it. “Come on!”

  “The ranger station is closer!”

  “Sara—”

  “Please.” She gripped his shirt, feeling the heat of his body radiating from beneath, the hard play of his muscles. They were already drenched, and his shirt clung to him like a second skin.

  Her blouse did the same to her. It was cold and getting shockingly colder, and she instinctively took a step to close the gap between them, unconsciously wanting to hug up to some of his body heat. But she nearly collapsed to the ground at the unexpected pain that shot through her ankle when she put weight on it.

  He caught her and stared down into her face accusatorily. “Bloody hell, you are hurt.”

  “No, I—”

  “Sit.” Urging her down to a rock, he once again crouched at her side and ran his hand down her leg and when he got to her ankle, she sucked in a breath.

  He lifted his head, water running in rivulets down his face. “Dammit.” In spite of the gruff tone, his hands were very gentle as he pulled up her pants leg to take a look.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “Liar.” His jaw tightened at the already mottling skin. He let her pants leg drop and sat back on his heels, shaking water out of his face. “Goddammit.”

  “Really. I’m fine.”

  “Really?" he repeated a bit roughly. “You’re fine? You can walk all the way back to the trailhead?”

  She was shivering. Shaking with cold, but also so much more. She looked into his beautiful, taut face, and at those intense eyes. She was hurting him, and she’d done enough of that for a lifetime. But she needed to get through to him, and not just with her body. She needed to make her past right if there was ever going to be a future for them.

  Lightning flashed again, followed immediately by a crack of thunder that came so loud, the ground shook beneath them, rumbling like an earthquake.

  She shrank back, nearly falling off the rock.

  “Okay, you win,” he said grimly, watching her not just with anger, but also concern. “We have to get out of this storm.” He turned his back and for a minute she thought he was walking away, but then he said, “Hop up.”

  He was going to give her a piggyback ride. She wrapped herself around him, taking in the wonderful feeling of his broad, sleek back plastered up against her torso.

  “Let’s hope the storm is over soon,” he said tightly.

  It was selfish of her but she hoped for the opposite, knowing the longer it lasted, the more time she had with him. He hadn’t walked away… She set her head on his shoulder, knowing she should have realized he’d never walk away from her. He wasn’t the type of man to walk away from anyone. “I was afraid you’d never forgive me.”

  “I’ve forgiven you,” he said wearily, heading farther into the woods. “I just haven’t forgotten.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “Sam? Are you sure the station is this way?" Sara whispered in his ear. “None of this looks familiar.”

  “I’m sure.” He tried not to think about the brush of her lips on his earlobe, or how it made his heart race.

  At the firehouse, he was known for his calm, easy cool, his ability to stay unruffled in any circumstance. Give him a fire and people in danger, and he was the man to get to them. Give him any damn emergency, and he could handle it.

  But give him Sara, a willowy little thing, just a woman, and he lost his cool.

  He’d lost it the moment he’d set eyes on her again.

  She clung to his back as he walked, her legs wrapped around him, tucked into his arms, which were supporting her. He felt as if he could feel her breasts boring into his back, feel her belly rising and falling with each breath. And then there was the way her legs were spread around his hips…

  “Hey, the rain is slowing,” she said in relief as she shivered.

  It seemed incredible to him that not too long ago he’d been blessedly asleep. And warm. And now, crazy as it was, they were actually in danger. “Because it’s going to change to snow.”

  Even as he said it, it happened. A rarity here, but snowflakes were floating down now, much lighter and easier than the rain before had been, but a bigger problem because they were already as wet as could be. They needed to get out of this. Correction, he needed to get them out of this.

  “I can walk,” she said, reading his mind.

  “Uh-huh. But I can walk faster.” He’d get her to the station, where they’d wait out the storm, and then he’d be done with her.

  “At least the thunder and lightning are gone,” she whispered, then paused. “You remembered.”

  “Remembered what?”

  “That I was afraid of the lightning.”

  He said nothing to that. Truth was, he remembered everything.

  “I remember things about you, too. What we meant to each other. How you asked me to marry you.”

  “You left me the next day,” he said before he could stop himself.

  She went quiet so long he didn’t think she’d respond. “I was afraid of what you made me feel.” She sighed in his ear. “Of how much I loved you.”

  Ah, hell. He didn’t want to go there, he really didn’t. “We need to conserve our energy. By not talking.”

  But she didn’t listen. “I had no experience with it. No reference point. And those are just excuses, I know that now.”

  Not just excuses. She’d grown up in foster care, had been abused several times before being unceremoniously ousted from the childcare system at age eighteen and sent out on her own. She’d not had a single successful relationship in her life except for him and he knew it, and remembering that had his heart turning over and exposing its underbelly. “I know, Sara.”

  “I panicked.”

  And then ran. He got it. He even understood. But it didn’t change anything.

  She sighed and adjusted her grip around his neck, her soft breath against his jaw. “I really think the station’s that way…”

  If they went that way, they’d get lost. And that was not on his agenda for the day.

  But then again, she hadn’t been, either.

  CHAPTER 8

  “I know where the station is,” Sam said cooly.

  Sara listened to his even, unruffled voice as he trod through the snow, now coming down heavily enough to crust over the both of them.

  She was wrapped around his back like a pretzel as he carried her piggyback style up the mountain. He had his hands on her legs in a way that was required for this type of hold.