Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 96970 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96970 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
“I wouldn’t mind him making love to me,” Ella said, flashing me a grin. “Man’s a snack.”
I sputtered. “Ella, what the fuck? How can you be attracted to such an uptight, overblown, by-the-book…” I struggled for the right word. “Fire safety fetishist!”
I winced. Once again, it was unnecessary to sexualize the asshole fire chief. The man was already the personification of sex. If you were into that kind of thing.
I’d like him to be into me.
I gritted my teeth against my inner rogue slut. A part of myself that had no business expressing opinions since I, myself, had absolutely zero experience in the sex department.
Not that I didn’t want to have any.
I did.
I wanted very much to have quite a bit of it.
But, contrary to my rogue slut’s desires, my rogue heart was still stupidly and hopelessly devoted to an old flame. And had decided, somewhere along the way, to hold out for romance before giving the cow away. Or whatever.
I was in my Amish virgin era. Against my will and against my better judgment. Unfortunately, I was hung up on a someone from my past, and I worried no one would be able to live up to the comparison.
As steam began clouding over the pot on the stove, I moved to pour in the pasta. “I wish you and the chief well. May your flame of desire ever be doused by his overly generous extinguisher.”
“Ew,” she said, making a face. “Never mind. You made it weird.”
I busied myself with stirring the pot. “He’s good-looking. I mean, that’s just an objective fact. The… the hair with the barest silver at the temples. The laugh lines around his eyes. And that eye color. Are they silver or blue? IDK, but they’re piercing. And of course, he’s built. What firefighter isn’t? They work out all the time in their fancy gym at the station house, so of course he has muscles for days. Not that I noticed because… ew.”
“Ew,” she repeated with a smile in her voice I didn’t need to turn to see. “Right. Ewwwww.”
I nodded. “Exactly. Gross.”
“Disgusting.”
“It’s a good thing his job requires masks sometimes,” I added. “So no one needs to look at all that…”
“Perfection,” Ella added.
“Exactly.”
“Mmhm.” She moved around me to pull a bottle of water out of the fridge. “You wanna fuck him, though, right?”
I let out a whimper. “So, so much.”
“Same.” She sighed.
I turned to face her, putting my hands on my hips. “We can’t, though. No sleeping with the enemy. Agreed?”
She placed a hand on her chest and feigned innocence. “He’s not my enemy!”
“Whatever happened to family loyalty? Marian or die. Huh? What about that?”
She laughed. “Fine. We’ll compromise. I’ll wait until this feud between you ends before putting the flirt on. Fair?”
The timer for the pasta dinged, so I turned back to reach for it, grabbing the pot holders out of the drawer first. “You already flirted with him earlier today.”
“That was before I knew we were at war with the man.”
I nodded. “War. Exactly. We’re at war, Ella. And Chief Kincaid is the enemy.”
Six weeks later, the war escalated without warning. And it was all my fault.
In my defense, it was the Fourth of July. Who doesn’t love lighting sparklers on the Fourth?
Okay, fine. It was the second of July. But I was practicing.
“Do you have any idea how forest fires start?” Chief Kincaid roared out of his open window as his vehicle came to a loud stop, tires crunching over gravel on the side of the road as the headlights swept across me in the dark. “Because of reckless assholes like you!”
I stared at him in shock. “How… why are you even out here? This is private property.”
“Your sister called and said you needed help. That you were trying to light shit on fire. Have you lost your goddamned mind?”
My sister? Ella had ratted me out to the chief? Was she trying to make me look bad so she’d look like an adorable angel in comparison? I was going to murder her. And it was going to be a slow and painful death.
Kincaid pulled an extinguisher from the back of his SUV and strode over, inspecting the remains of a small brush fire a few feet away.
“Okay, now wait a minute,” I began, holding up my hands. “Because this was an accident.”
His eyebrows shot into his hairline. “Oh, really? That’s a shock. You mean it wasn’t malicious arson? Good to know, Alex. Good to know.”
It was the first time I’d heard the sound of my name in his voice, and it made something smooth and hot slither down my back.
“I was trying to record a light painting for Timber’s Instagram,” I snapped, gesturing to the camera set up on a tripod nearby. “You know, the kind where you write a message in the air with sparklers while shooting it with a slow shutter speed—never mind. Anyway, it’s not as easy as it looks because you have to write the words backwards, and then you have to light the next sparkler before this one burns out, and I—”