The water had washed off her makeup, and without the fancy clothes and hairdo, she looked more and more like the eighteen-year-old girl he’d fallen in love with.

Finished shaking out the cups, she turned away from the river and caught him staring. Her eyes opened wide, her ni**les peaked with awareness. Sam knew it would be the easiest thing in the world to lower her onto the sand and release their pent-up cravings for each other’s bodies.

Hell, no. He couldn’t go there again.

He quickly packed up the food and stove and they got back on the river, an uneasy silence hovering between them again. Damn it, was there anything they could talk about that wasn’t a minefield?

Guiding the raft around a tight curve after several tense minutes of easy rafting, he suddenly squinted into the distance, unable to believe what he saw.

They were coming up on a strainer.

Formed by trees on the banks, with piles of large rocks in between, a strainer was incredibly technical and dangerous. Water could flow through it, but a boat couldn’t.

Especially not one moving this fast.

If he’d been in the raft by himself, or with Connor, they’d have had a better chance to get through the strainer without too many broken bones or a concussion. But with a total novice beside him, Sam had to think fast.

“Get ready to jump out.”

Dianna whipped her head around to face him. “Are you kidding?”

As they moved closer to the strainer, he barely had time to say, “We’re going to jump together,” before he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her onto his lap.

She was stiff in his arms and he knew he had to make a move before she tried to pull away.

“Take a breath and hold it,” he said, and then they were falling over the swirling, rushing water.

Using his body to cushion her from the fall, he felt her start to panic a moment too late. She slipped out of his grasp and her head went under.

The raft flew over the water into the wall of tree limbs and rocks, and he knew that if he didn’t get to her soon, she’d smash into it as well. Swimming hard across the current, he jammed his knee into a rock and barely flinched.

Where the hell is she?

He couldn’t see her head or hair above the white water and a thousand agonizing images flashed through his brain.

Finally, Dianna’s head rose out of the white foam. Ignoring the burning in his arms and legs and lungs, Sam heaved himself through the water and reached for her. He had almost grabbed her shirt, almost grabbed her arms, when she sank beneath the surface of the water.

CHAPTER TWELVE

DIANNA RELAXED into the wonderful dream.

She was floating and felt warm all over. And then suddenly there were big hands pulling and shoving at her and she was fighting them, trying to get back to that sleepy place. But the hands were stronger and they dragged her up through thick, wet foam.

Cold air slapped against her cheeks and she started coughing and choking.

Oh God, she finally realized, I was drowning.

Sam had saved her life.

He cradled her against his chest on the riverbank, and as she gasped in air, trying to refill her empty lungs with oxygen, he removed her helmet and gently ran his fingers lightly over the goose egg on her forehead.

“You hit your head pretty hard on a rock,” he said, his voice warm and soothing as its low tones swam through her. “It’s probably going to bruise.”

As she got her bearings back in Sam’s arms and the initial shock of being thrown out of the raft receded, it suddenly hit her that there could be far bigger problems ahead than healing from a bruise.

“Did we lose the raft?”

“Fortunately, no. It’s up ahead, jammed between a couple of tree trunks. It’ll stay there until we get it out.”

Relief flooded her that all was not lost and she knew she needed to push past the throbbing in her head and sit up. But even though remaining this close to her biggest temptation was a very bad idea, she couldn’t bring herself to move out of his arms.

For the first time in a very long time she felt safe.

Comforted.

With gentle fingers, he massaged her sore shoulder muscles, grown tight from endless paddling.

Did he know that his touch made her heart race?

That even without touching an erogenous zone, she was getting hopelessly aroused?

“I shouldn’t have let you leave the hospital so soon after your accident.” His voice was husky. “Jesus, Dianna. How the hell did you manage to walk away from the crash?”

His question echoed the same one swimming around in her head since waking up in the hospital with only a smattering of cuts and scrapes: Why had she been saved?

And now, after being spared for the second time in a matter of days, instead of dying when anyone else would have, she couldn’t hide from the fact that she’d been given a second, and now a third, chance to get things right.

But what was she supposed to change this time around?

The big change couldn’t have something to do with Sam, could it? Especially now that they’d cleared the air after their motel room blowout and could actually talk without biting each other’s heads off.

The dangerous bend of her thoughts sent her stumbling out of Sam’s arms to her feet.

She needed some space, some breathing room, needed to get away from his dangerous pull over her so that she could behave rationally, rather than reacting to a base physical urge.

Sam was at her side in a heartbeat, one hand on her elbow, the other on the small of her back. “Easy now.”

“I’m okay,” she told him.

It was a lie. She wasn’t okay, and not just because of her fall.

Being close to him like this, feeling his bare hands on her skin, made her burn up inside, with a fever that only he could quench.

She swayed into him and his words were barely louder than a whisper. “God help me, Dianna, I still want you. More than ever. More than I should.”

Her tongue came out to uncertainly lick her lower lip, and then, suddenly, his hands were in her hair and his mouth was on hers, almost hard enough to hurt.

And yet his rough kiss was exactly what she needed.

Exactly what she craved.

He slid his hands over the wet fabric covering her collarbone, then over her shoulders and down the length of her spine to the small of her back. Grabbing her hips, he pulled her in tight against him.

She was standing on just enough of a rise that the hollow between her thighs fit perfectly around his erection.