Buch lesen: «Hot Attraction»

1

“NO!” THE SHARP denial hung in the air even after the door slammed, leaving Avery Kincaid standing in the foyer, her mouth open with shock.

Laughter rang out behind her. “First time a guy ever turned you down for a kiss?”

“Two guys,” Avery pointed out to her amused sister. “They both told me no.” She watched through the window as her nephews ran down the driveway to jump through the side door of the van that had pulled up. They had wriggled away from her before she could give them good-bye kisses.

“Well, they’re twelve,” Kim said, her deadpan delivery cracking Avery up. “Not that that ever prevented you from getting kisses before.”

“When I was twelve, too,” Avery said. “Maybe eleven.” She turned back to her sister.

Kim looked older than five years her senior now—older than thirty-two. She had lines around her mouth and eyes, a tension in her that Avery had never seen before. She kept glancing out the window even though the van—with the boys inside it—was gone. They’d just gotten a ride with a friend’s mom to soccer practice.

“Are you okay?” Avery asked. “They’re only going to be gone a little while.” She wasn’t certain exactly how long soccer practice lasted. She usually wasn’t around to catch their games much less their practices.

Kim’s eyes, the same turquoise blue of Avery’s, filled with tears. “I didn’t think they’d make it to become teenagers.” Her voice cracked. “I didn’t think I would ever see them again—hold them again...”

Avery closed her arms around her sister and held her trembling body. “It’s okay. They’re fine.”

Avery trembled a little, too, as she remembered her sister’s desperate call two months ago. She’d been getting ready to board a plane in Chicago and head home to Northern Lakes, Michigan. Then she’d been just a reporter preparing to cover the story of a wildfire consuming acres of national forest. After Kim’s call, she’d been an aunt desperate for news about her nephews lost in the middle of that national forest. They and their Boy Scout troop had been camping in the forest when the wildfire struck with no warning and not enough time for them to escape.

“It’s just so hard,” Kim said. “So hard to let them leave again...”

It probably wouldn’t matter how many weeks passed. A mother would never forget how close she had come to losing her children.

Avery squeezed her sister a little more tightly before releasing her. “They’re fine.”

Thanks to the special team of firefighters who’d rescued them from the blaze. She walked over to the coffee table where the boys had left their photo of the Huron Hotshots. Hotshots were a special team of the US Forest Service fire department—the firefighters who battled blazes on the front line.

Avery had included that in the short special feature she’d done about the fire. To write the copy for the feature, she’d researched Hotshots. But she hadn’t learned enough. Her story had been about Hotshots in general, not the specific men who’d battled the Huron National Forest blaze—not the Huron Hotshots. Because they had refused all interviews...

There was more to the story—about the firefighters and about the fire. The tight nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that; she had that feeling to thank for her career—for moving her from a small-town television station to larger networks, first out of Detroit and now Chicago. While the Chicago station was a national network, Avery wasn’t on very much. She had to fight for airtime. And she suspected this story would make that fight much easier.

She wanted to dig deeper, cover the Huron Hotshots in more detail. Most importantly she wanted to find out what had really caused the Huron National Forest fire...

And maybe she could start by getting closer to one particular Hotshot. Maybe then he would grant her an interview.

She picked up the photo of the twenty team members. It was a press release photo—the only thing the US Forest Service had released to the media. The Hotshots hadn’t released any information about the fire or the rescue. Of course they had been busy battling some more blazes. Fortunately those bigger fires had been in other areas. Northern Lakes hadn’t recovered yet from the fire that had nearly taken the lives of so many children. And every once in a while another hot spot flared back up...

She shuddered as the nightmare returned to her, the knowledge of what could have happened had it not been for these men. She could have lost her nephews and even the town and everyone in it. Maybe that was why she kept coming back every few weeks—if only to stay a day or two—since the fire. Because nearly losing it had reminded her of how much she missed home.

But that was only part of the reason she’d taken a week off from the television station in Chicago. It wasn’t to vacation, as she’d told her boss, but to cover what her instincts told her would be the most important story of her career.

The story was there—in that photo. In the one soot-streaked face that had caught her attention even before the boys had pointed him out. The grime did nothing to disguise his chiseled features—the square jaw with the slight dimple in the chin, the high cheekbones, the line of his supple lips...

She would like to kiss those lips.

The other guys were all grinning. But he looked serious—focused—his eyes the only lightness in his face. Were they blue? Gray? Silver?

She couldn’t tell—no matter how closely she studied his picture.

“I should bring something by the station again,” Kim murmured as she peered over Avery’s shoulder at the photo.

“What?”

“I know it’s not enough,” Kim said. “That there’s really no way to thank them for saving my kids. But I’ve been taking cookies and brownies to them when the Huron Hotshots are here in Northern Lakes.”

Avery smiled. Kim was so like their mother, who’d headed up every church and school bake sale in Northern Lakes. Their parents had moved downstate when Dad traded his high school teaching job for a college position. Apparently Kim had taken over for Mom. “You’re thanking them with baked goods?”

“You have a better idea?”

Avery stared at that face—and the heavily muscled body that went with it. His arms bulged, his chest pushed against the thin material of his damp soot-stained yellow T-shirt. He was in the front row, so he was hunched down, his thighs straining against the pants that matched his T-shirt. Oh, she had some ideas how she’d like to thank him...

Kim had known her too long and too well. She smacked Avery’s shoulder. “Hey! You shouldn’t be thinking like that.”

“I’m not married,” Avery said. “I can think like that all I want.”

Kim sighed. She’d been married since she was twenty—when she’d gotten pregnant during her sophomore year of college. Rick had dropped out and started driving a truck to support his new family. He was gone a lot. Fortunately Kim still missed him when he was away.

Avery had never missed any of her past boyfriends much after they’d broken up. But then she’d always been so focused on her career—and chasing down the next big story—that she hadn’t had any serious relationships. She couldn’t imagine being as settled as Kim was, in the same small town where they’d grown up. Or at least Kim had been settled before she’d nearly lost her children.

Her sister giggled. “They might appreciate your thank-you more than my cookies...”

Avery narrowed her eyes and studied the photo. “I don’t want to thank all of them, just the one who really rescued them.”

Dawson...

He’d only told the boys his first name. Kim had shared that they sometimes whimpered it in their sleep, when they had nightmares about the fire.

“The Hotshots worked together to rescue them,” Kim said. “They’re a team.”

The media hadn’t focused on the team, though. They had focused on Wyatt Andrews. He was the Hotshot who’d disobeyed their superintendent’s order to leave the fire. Wyatt Andrews had found the campers first, but he wouldn’t have been able to save them on his own.

It was Dawson the boys had pointed out who had brought enough extra shelters for all the campers. It was this man who’d enclosed the boys in one of those special shelters with him. Dawson was the one who’d calmed their fears when they’d been terrified that the fire was going to consume them.

He deserved more than cookies in appreciation for risking his life to save theirs. He deserved credit for being a hero. And, if he was single, maybe a kiss as thank-you, too.

* * *

“THANKS,” DAWSON HESS said as Wyatt Andrews set a pitcher of beer on the table in front of him, Cody Mallehan and Braden Zimmer. They had commandeered their usual back booth in the Filling Station, the bar around the corner from the firehouse in Northern Lakes. It was the home base for the four of them—when they weren’t out fighting wildfires in other states with the rest of their twenty-member team.

Wyatt flipped him off.

“Hey, you know the rule,” Dawson reminded his teammate. Whatever member of the team got interviewed or singled out in a press photo had to buy for the rest of them.

Wyatt slid into the booth next to him. “Is that why you dodge the press?”

Dawson had his reasons, and they had nothing to do with buying rounds of beer. But he pushed the past aside and just laughed.

“He doesn’t have to dodge them,” Cody said. “You’re so busy hogging the limelight nobody’s interested in the rest of us schmucks.”

“Jealous,” Wyatt teased. He and the younger firefighter had a friendly rivalry. It used to be over women—until Wyatt had fallen in love with a little redheaded insurance agent. Now it was over the job.

“It’s bullshit,” Cody said. But amusement instead of jealousy flashed through the blond firefighter’s green eyes. He enjoyed needling Wyatt. “You and those kids would have roasted in that fire if Dawson and I hadn’t come back and saved your asses.”

Wyatt shrugged. “Hey, I offered to set the record straight but the boss told me to refuse all interviews.”

Which Dawson suspected his teammate had gladly done. Like Dawson, Wyatt had probably had enough of reporters when he’d been a kid, too. The media preyed on tragedy. Now that they were adults, and had a job to do, reporters were a different kind of nuisance, putting themselves in danger to get the best shot. Dawson had had to rescue too many from nearly getting burned alive.

Cody turned toward their boss—Superintendent Braden Zimmer.

Braden pushed his hand through, or rather over, his brush-cut-short brown hair. “We want this story to die down,” he reminded them. “And you all know why.”

Wyatt cursed, and pitching his voice low, murmured, “The arsonist...”

So many of these fire bugs started blazes for the attention. They needed to starve him of attention, just like the Hotshots starved the fire of fuel when they cut down trees and tore out vegetation for the breaks. They had been successful in putting out the fires, but they hadn’t caught the arsonist yet. And Dawson was pretty sure the guy hadn’t stopped setting fires.

He didn’t have the notorious instincts of their superintendent, who had predicted the big fire that had nearly destroyed their town. But he was smart enough to figure out that those hot spots weren’t starting back up on their own. The ground had been too scorched and their breaks too thorough for that to be the case.

“It’s not working.” Cody confirmed what they’d all been thinking.

Braden shook his head. “We don’t have confirmation that the others fires were deliberately set.”

The superintendent wasn’t talking about the hot spots, but the other serious blazes they and other Hotshot teams had had to battle. Maybe they hadn’t been deliberately set.

Lightning could have struck a tree. Or a campfire hadn’t been completely extinguished...

The Hotshots only knew for certain that the Northern Lakes fire had been intentional. That was where accelerant had been found at the origin—gasoline poured over dried vegetation, maybe hay bales. There hadn’t been much left—just enough to prove that the fire had been no act of nature.

Anger filled Dawson at the thought of someone deliberately setting that fire and endangering all those innocent people. Those kids...

He remembered how scared they’d been. Hell, how scared he’d been.

He knew—too well—those shelters weren’t always enough protection.

A low whistle drew him from his maudlin thoughts. Cody had tuned out of their conversation, his focus on a woman who’d walked into the bar. She was all long legs and tanned skin and pale blond hair. She was gorgeous and vaguely familiar.

Every man in the place was checking her out. And she seemed to return their interest. Her gaze traveled from one man to the next and the next. She was looking, but she wasn’t finding what or who she was looking for...until those greenish-blue eyes focused on him.

Her gaze holding his, she walked toward their booth. Those long legs closed the distance quickly, her heels clicking against the wood floor, through the peanuts strewn across it. She didn’t belong in a place like the Filling Station—not with her snug blue dress and high heels. She looked as if she belonged on television—which made him abruptly realize why she seemed familiar.

Even worse was the way she was looking at him—as if he was familiar. Then she stopped at their booth and addressed him directly. “Dawson Hess.”

It wasn’t a question. She knew who he was.

Dawson felt as if he was facing the fire all over again. And this time he wasn’t sure he’d survive...