Hot as Sin by Bella Andre Read Free Book Online

fault, but he hadn’t exactly played the aftermath well.
    And that was when it hit him: She was going to have a baby.
    He was going to be a father.
    Sam looked at her again, for the first time seeing her as more than the hot woman he was falling for.
    She was going to be the mother of his child.
    In an instant, everything shifted. He knew exactly what he had to do. There was only one option.
    “We’re going to get married.”
    She took a step away from him, dropping her head so that her blond hair covered her face. But before she could hide her expression from him, he saw pain move across her striking features.
    Shit. He was screwing everything up. Again.
    Instead of showing her that he wasn’t going to leave her in a lurch, that he was going to support her and the baby from here on out, he’d just proposed to her in the worst possible way. Like some sort of half-brained caveman.
    Wanting to do it right, he dropped onto one knee on the gravel lot and reached for her hand.
    She shook her head in dismay. “No, Sam, don’t.”
    “Dianna, I want to marry you. I want to take care of you and our baby. Please let me be there for you.”
    She closed her eyes, tried to pull her hand away. “You don’t need to do this. I can take care of—”
    “No!”
    The word boomed from his chest before she could finish her sentence. He wasn’t going to let her bring up a baby alone in a trailer park, or, God forbid, have an abortion.
    “Listen to me, Dianna. I know this is happening sooner than either of us planned, but,” he had to stop and clear his throat, “will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
    “We can’t get married just because I’m pregnant. It won’t work out. It never does.”
    He knew she was thinking about her mother, who had gotten pregnant with her at eighteen. Obviously, her father hadn’t stuck around. April’s dad hadn’t, either.
    “You are not your mother,” he told her in a firm voice, hating to see her look so defeated. “The first time I met you, I thought you were like any other beautiful woman. But when I saw how you were hell-bent on getting April back, that was when I knew that you were special. You’re tougher than anyone would guess. Dianna, I don’t even think you realize how strong you are, how smart you are.”
    Her cheeks had gone pink at his praise, but she refused to believe him so easily. “If I’m so smart, then tell me why the stick I peed on today turned blue? All my life I swore this was the one thing that was not going to happen to me.” She gestured to the hotshot station with one hand. “Turns out all it took was one hot firefighter to knock me up.”
    She laughed, but there was no joy behind it, rather a self-derision that Sam refused to let stick.
    “Okay, so you’re pregnant. We can’t change that. But we can try and make it work.”
    Honestly, he didn’t know much about good marriages or about happy families, but he’d faced down enough deadly wildfires to know that he was as stubborn as Dianna.
    “We’re going to make it work.”
    “You mean like your parents made it work?” Dianna countered, still not ready to give in.
    Until Dianna, Sam had never told anyone that his parents had gotten married when his mother got pregnant with him her freshman year at college—and that twenty years later, his mom and dad could barely stand to be in the same room with each other. But he’d known that Dianna wouldn’t judge him.
    It was one of the things he loved about her.
    I love her , he suddenly realized, knowing in his heart that it had been true since the start.
    “We are not my parents,” he told her in a firm voice, even though the raw data—a surprise baby and shotgun wedding—sure looked a hell of a lot the same. “And you have to know how much I care for you.”
    Her eyes bore into his and he could feel the four-letter word hanging on the tip of his tongue. It was time to bite the bullet and say it already.
    “I love you, Dianna.”
    A single tear