She wasn’t a kid at all. Instead, she was the prettiest woman he’d ever seen. Tall and fair, he couldn’t tell much about her body beneath the baggy jeans and T-shirt she had on. But her eyes held him captive, big and green with flecks of gold and purple. He stood and stared at her, the wildfire almost forgotten.
“I’m sorry we’re not out yet,” she apologized. “As soon as I heard about the mandatory evacuation, I tried to wake her up. But when she’s like this, it’s impossible.”
She blushed, clearly embarrassed, her high cheekbones highlighted in pink against her pale skin.
The carpet was ratty, the furniture even worse, but everything was reasonably clean. He suspected the girl, not her mother, was responsible for that.
He crossed the length of the trailer in a handful of strides. “Let me take over from here. Let me help.”
In the back room of the trailer with the girl, the smell of body odor and beer was overpowering.
“It’s horrible in here. You shouldn’t come in.”
Shit, he hadn’t meant to let his reaction to the rank smell show on his face.
“I’m not going to judge you. I promise. I just want to help.”
Moving past her, he bent over and easily shifted her mother’s dead weight over his left shoulder.
Her beautiful eyes grew wide. “Thank you.”
He’d been complimented plenty of times during his two years as a hotshot, but somehow praise from this pretty green-eyed woman made him feel like he was walking on water.
“She doesn’t weigh much,” he replied modestly as he laid her mother in the extended cab of his Forest Service truck, then strapped her lifeless body in with the seat belt as securely as he could.
“They’ve set up an evacuation station at the high school. Do you know where that is?”
Her face flamed. “I do, but I can’t take her there.” At his silent question, she said, “I just can’t.”
Knowing firsthand how rough it was to have difficult parents, he made a split-second decision. “Follow me in your car to the station. She can sleep it off in my bunk.”
He’d have to burn the sheets, but it was worth it to help out a beautiful damsel in distress.
And her appreciative expression was worth any price.
The rest of the hotshot crew was already out on the mountain fighting the fire by the time they arrived at the Tahoe Pines station thirty minutes later. He carried her mother to the sleeping quarters, and when he came back into the kitchen, the beautiful daughter was standing there, looking awkward and unsure of herself.
“You don’t have to let her stay here,” she said. “I can find another place for her to sleep it off and get both of us out of your hair.”
“It’s no problem. I don’t want you to worry about it.”
Her lips turned up slightly at the edges, a shy little smile that made his breath come faster, and he realized he wanted to see her again. Soon.
“I’m Sam,” he said, holding out his hand to shake hers.
Her grip was cool and strong, and in that moment, he knew how good it would be between them, that he’d never find anyone like her in a bar on a Saturday night.
“What’s your name?”
“Dianna,” she said. “With two n’s.”
“I’ve got to go out to the fire right now, Dianna-with-two-n’s,” he said, glad to see her smile again, “but I’m hoping you’ll consider giving me your phone number.”
She hesitated. “Why?”
Her simple question threw him for a loop. For the first time since early adolescence, Sam felt off his game. Hadn’t she felt the sparks between them? He’d been with girls who were more put together than Dianna, but none of them made his blood rush hard and fast like this with only a smile. What, he wondered, had happened to her to make her so suspicious of men?
“I’d like to take you out. On a date.”
Her green eyes connected with his, and as he held her gaze, he silently asked her to trust him.
I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.
At last, she nodded. Pulling a small notebook from her purse, she wrote down her telephone number in neat handwriting, then ripped out the page and handed it to him.
He put the note in his pocket, but he couldn’t head out into the fire without doing one more thing: He had to kiss her.
Their kiss was nothing fancy, just lips pressing together for the first time, but Sam felt like someone had launched a series of rockets straight through his veins.
When he pulled back, her eyes were wide with surprise—but there was pleasure there, too. He forced himself to step away, even though all he wanted was to taste her with his tongue, to pull her hard against him and explore the curves she was hiding beneath all those clothes.
“I’ll call you. Soon.”
Walking out of the station, knowing all that heat and sexy-as-hell innocence was going to be waiting for him at the wildfire’s end, made him more ready to kick ass than ever before.
Four days later, when the wildfire was finally put to rest, he took her to a drive-in. She seemed nervous sitting in the passenger seat of his Jeep, not touching the extra-large box of popcorn he’d bought.
As the opening credits started running, Sam reached across the gearshift for her hand. She was slow to respond, wide-eyed and silent for a long moment before she curled her cold fingers into his.
It wasn’t hard to guess that she hadn’t been out with many guys. He needed to go slow with her, ease her in to how much he wanted her, but now that she was sitting close enough for him to smell the faint scent of vanilla coming off her shiny blond hair and see the pulse point moving fast in the hollow of her neck, it was all he could do not to drag her onto his lap.
Reaching into the container of popcorn with his free hand, he picked up a piece and held it up to her lips. He watched her think about taking it from him, biting her lip in indecision, before she opened her mouth and let him feed her.
Sam had lost his virginity at fifteen to a hot senior cheerleader. In the past five years, he’d slept with plenty of girls, even dated a few of them for a month or two before breaking it off when things got too serious. But simply feeding Dianna—feeling her lips move softly around his fingers, watching her throat as she swallowed—was by far the most erotic experience of his life.
No longer able to control himself, he shoved the full container of popcorn into the backseat and took her face in his hands, kissing her with all of the desire he’d been holding back since the moment he met her. She met his kiss with just as much passion, her tongue swirling with his, a low moan of pleasure emerging from her throat.