Hot as Sin (2 page)

And the amazing fact that she was going to be Mrs. Sam MacKenzie in a week
.

The Chinese restaurant was in a trailer right off Highway 50, and knowing the road was busy year-round with tourists, Dianna carefully backed out into traffic, putting her turn signal on to make a U-turn from the center lane. When the coast looked clear, she hit the gas pedal
.

From out of nowhere, a large white limo careened toward her. She could see it coming, could see the driver’s horrified expression
,
but no matter how hard she pressed on the gas, she couldn’t get out of the way in time
.

She was thrown into the steering wheel, and as her skull hit the glass all she could think about was her baby… and the sudden realization of how desperately she wanted it
.

Going in and out of consciousness as fire engines and ambulances came on the scene, she felt someone move her onto a stretcher. She tried to speak, but she couldn’t get her lips to move
.

Her stomach cramped down on itself just as she heard somebody say, “There’s blood. Between her legs.”

She felt a hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am, can you hear me? Can you tell me if you are pregnant?”

But she couldn’t nod, couldn’t move or talk or do anything to tell him he had to save her baby
.

And then a new voice came, its deep, rich tones so near and dear to her
.

“Yes, she’s pregnant.”

Sam. He’d found her. He’d make everything all right, just like he always did
.

Somehow she managed to open her eyes, but when she looked up she saw Connor MacKenzie, Sam’s younger brother, kneeling over her, speaking into his radio
.

“Tell Sam he needs to get off the mountain now! Dianna was in a car accident on Highway 50.”

More cramps hit her one after the other and she felt thick, warm liquid seep out between her legs
.

She screamed, “Sam!”

But it was too late for him to help her. Their baby was gone
.

———

“Can you hear me, ma’am?”

She opened her eyes and saw that the firefighter’s eyebrows were furrowed with concern.

“Can you tell me if you’re pregnant?”

Dianna blinked at him, belatedly realizing that she’d instinctively moved her hands to her abdomen.

Reality returned as she realized that the hero who had come to her rescue wasn’t Sam. Her failed pregnancy was nothing but a distant memory she usually kept locked away, deep in the recesses of her heart.

Feeling the wet sting of tears in her eyes, she whispered, “No, I’m not pregnant,” and then everything faded to black.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said softly. “Your brother didn’t make it.”

Dark eyes blinked in disbelief. This wasn’t happening. His twin couldn’t be dead. Not when they were together just that afternoon. Sharing a couple of beers in companionable silence until Jacob brought the meth lab up again, saying that they had enough money already, that they should shut the business down before they got caught and ended up in jail. Only hours ago, he’d told Jacob to go to hell, said he was the brains of the business and knew what was best for the both of them.

According to the paramedics, Jacob had been driving down Highway 70 when his tires slipped on some black ice. He’d crashed head-on into another vehicle and the paramedics had rushed Jacob to Vail General Hospital.

For two hours, Jacob had been fighting for his life.

He wasn’t fighting anymore.

The man’s body rejected the news, head to toe, inside and out. Bile rose in his throat and he made it across the blue and green linoleum tiles in time to hurl into a garbage can.

More than just fraternal twins, he and Jacob had been extensions of each other. Losing his brother was like being cleaved in two straight down the middle, through his bones and guts and organs.

He needed air, needed to get out of the ICU waiting room, away from all of the other people who still had hope that their loved ones would recover from heart attacks and blood clots. He pushed open the door to the patio, just in time to see a loud group of reporters harassing anyone wearing scrubs.

“Do you have an update on Dianna Kelley?” one of the reporters asked a passing nurse in a breathless voice.

Another rushed up to a doctor, lights flashing, camera ready. “We’ve been told that Dianna Kelley was in a head-on collision on Highway 70. Could you confirm that for us, Doctor?”

Dianna Kelley?

Was she the other driver? Was she the person whose worthless driving had ended Jacob’s life?

He’d only seen her cable TV show a handful of times over the years, but her face was on the cover of enough newspapers and magazines for him to know what she looked like.

Blond. Pampered. Rich. Without a care in the world.

“Please,” another reporter begged the doctor, “if you could just tell us how she is, if she’s been badly hurt, or if she’s going to be all right?”

None of the reporters had even acknowledged that there was another person involved in the crash. All they cared about was Dianna, Dianna, Dianna.

Knowing that no one gave a shit about Jacob was a big enough blow to send him completely over the edge.

“Would you like to come back and say good-bye?”

The doctor who had delivered the bad news was still waiting for him just inside the door. Her voice was kind and yet he knew his brother was just one more stranger who’d died on her shift.

Before he could respond, a tall blond girl ran past him and into the waiting room. For a minute he couldn’t believe his eyes.

If Dianna Kelley had been in the crash with his brother, how was she running by him now?

It took him a few moments to realize that this girl in her dirt-streaked jeans and oversized raincoat was barely out of her teens. Although she bore a striking resemblance to the famous face he’d seen dozens of times, there was no way she could be the “important” woman the reporters were climbing over themselves to get a scoop on.

“I’m Dianna Kelley’s sister,” the girl said to the doctor in a breathless voice, her cheeks streaked with tears. “I saw on TV that Dianna was in a crash.” She grabbed the doctor’s arm. “I need to see her!”

The doctor looked between the two of them, and even in his fog of pain, he could see that she was torn between the guy with the dead brother and the girl with the hurt sister. But they both knew the famous sister would win.

“Excuse me, Jeannie, could you come help me?”

A moment later, a young nurse came around the corner and the doctor explained, “This is Dianna Kelley’s sister.”

“Come with me,” the nurse said to the girl, whose raincoat was dripping a puddle on the carpet. “I’ll need to see your ID first.”

“She’s not going to die, is she?” Dianna’s sister asked in a shaking voice.

“I don’t know, honey,” the nurse said in a soothing voice. “You’ll have to ask her doctor.”

“I’m so sorry about all of this,” the doctor said to him as she ran her badge in front of the locked ICU door. “I know how hard this is for you.”

He wanted to use the doctor as a punching bag, to scream that she didn’t know a damn thing about him, about the hole in his chest that was growing bigger by the second. Instead, he silently followed her down the hall into the busy ICU.

The overhead lights had been dimmed in his brother’s small room and a white sheet had been placed over his body. The doctor peeled back the cloth to reveal his brother’s lifeless face, and before he could brace himself, pain unlike anything he’d ever felt before ripped through him. He felt dizzy and light-headed. As if he could drop to the floor at any second.

Moving closer and gently touching his brother’s un-moving face, so similar to his own, he felt warm tears streak down his face.

“Would you like me to leave you for a few minutes?”

It was abundantly clear how much the doctor wanted to get away from him and his soul-sucking grief.

He nodded, taking his brother’s stiff hand in his own. All their lives he’d looked out for Jacob, who had been the reckless one, the one who could never hold down a job, the twin who could never keep his fists in his pockets. Jacob was the reason he’d gotten into the drug trade. Manufacturing and selling methamphetamines had seemed like an easy way to support them both.

If only they hadn’t fought that afternoon, then maybe Jacob would have hung out a little longer, would have realized the roads were too icy to drive and spent the night.

If only Dianna Kelley had swerved out of the way, or better yet, never got on the road at all.

It was all
her
fault.

“I’ll make her pay for what she did to you, I swear it,” he promised his brother.

Bending over, he pressed a kiss to Jacob’s forehead. Wiping his tears away with the back of his hand, he let go of Jacob’s hand and was slowly walking out of the ICU when he saw her.

In a room a dozen feet from the exit, Dianna Kelley was lying in a bed behind a glass wall, hooked up to an IV, her blond hair fanning out behind her on the pillow. A nurse was busy dealing with a phone call just outside the room and she didn’t pay him any notice as he stood there and stared.

Seeing the bitch still alive, breathing and blinking, the blood still pumping through her veins—while his brother was dead—only confirmed that she was to blame.

No jury would ever convict her of wrongdoing. She was too famous, too pretty for anyone to think she could have possibly done anything wrong. She’d killed his brother and she was going to get away with it.

Continuing to stare at her, rage and grief built up and up inside of him until there was no room left for anything else. The nurse finally noticed him and when she gave him a strange look, he turned to leave.

Just then, Dianna’s sister burst in through the ICU doors, her shoulder knocking into his in her haste.

And that was when he realized that he already had the perfect weapon.

Dianna Kelley had killed his brother.

He would kill her sister.

———

Everything hurt like crazy, especially her head, Dianna thought as she slowly woke up. What was wrong with her? Why was she having such trouble moving her arms and legs?

She struggled to open her eyes. They felt dry, almost like they were filled with soot, and she blinked hard to try to clear them. She quickly realized she was in a hospital bed, but how could that be? The last thing she remembered, she was driving to the airport, heading back to San Francisco after arguing with her sister in the café.

She had the strange feeling that someone was standing nearby, watching her, but her vision was still too fuzzy for her to see the person’s features. The only thing she could tell for sure was that it was a man, tall with broad shoulders and short-cropped hair.

Her fatigued brain instantly plopped Sam’s face on the man’s head. She’d spent ten years trying to forget him, but tonight she was too damn weary, too sore and achy to make much headway in dislodging her memories of a gorgeous firefighter, six foot two with midnight-black hair and sizzling blue eyes.

Was it really Sam? Had he come to see her? Or was this just another hallucination? Another vision she was manufacturing out of desperation?

Her heart rate soared, as did the faint beeping of the machines behind her.

With every breath she took, her discomfort grew. She’d never allowed herself to take more than a couple of Advil—given her mother’s history of addiction—but right now, she needed more of whatever they’d put in the IV in her left arm.

Soon, a nurse moved beside her, murmuring something about another dose of Vicodin. Before Dianna could find out if Sam was really there, or merely a hallucination of her deepest desires, a cool rush of liquid settled into her veins and she fell back into painless oblivion.

CHAPTER TWO

SAM MACKENZIE stood on a peak in the Sierra Nevadas and surveyed the rolling mountains for smoke and flames. He was covered head to toe in a thick layer of ash and dirt from digging fire lines and knocking his chain saw through endless mounds of dry brush for the past twenty-four hours.

Being a hotshot meant little to no sleep for days on end, a hundred and fifty pounds on your back while you ran miles to reach the fires nothing else could. It meant shoving nasty-tasting, high-calorie food that a dog would refuse into your mouth at regular intervals. And it meant the unpredictability of fire herself, capable of grinding up and destroying even the toughest men.

But saving lives and homes and old-growth forests made it all worth it. Not to mention the undeniable rush he got from kicking a wildfire’s ass.

He’d never wanted to be anything but a hotshot. He still didn’t.

His radio crackled and Logan Cain, his squad boss, checked in. “You up for a helicopter ride? Looks like we’ve got a handle on this fire, but I need you to scan it from the air to make sure.”

“Give me thirty to get out into the open for pickup,” he said, giving Logan his coordinates before signing off.

Quickly packing up his tools, he threw his heavy bag over his shoulders and headed back up the deer trail he and his four-man crew had taken down the mountain a day earlier.

“You did good work, boys,” he told them as they finished up their breakfast.

After a series of wildfires this week, he figured they were all looking forward to a six-pack of beer and a day of lazy fishing on the lake to recharge their batteries before the next call.

“You all can head on back to the anchor point. I’m going up with Joe in the chopper for a quick scan. Once we’ve got the all clear you can take showers at the station and get some rest.”

The rookie of the bunch smiled at him, his white teeth breaking apart the black mask of ash and soot covering his face.

“Dude, you forgot what comes between the shower and rest.” Zach looked around at the other guys, his eyebrows moving up and down omically. “Getting some ass.”

Sam laughed. Zach was right. Used to be, he couldn’t wait to get off the mountain and go home to the warm, soft body waiting for him in bed. A lifetime ago, when he was a rookie just like Zach, and was young and stupid enough to think he’d found “the one.”