Hotshot Sam McKinnon was always leaving town, chasing another fire until his own hometown became vulnerable during the fire season after a devastating winter flood left debris and destruction in its path. He didn't expect out of town dispatcher, Summer Bigelow, to catch his eye or his heart.
It hadn't been Summer's idea to move from Providence to South Dakota, but when a serial murderer suddenly turns his attention on Summer, her boss insists she leave town...at least until the heat dies down. She's dealt with high tension, life or death situations many times in her job. It isn’t until she meets Sam McKinnon and falls for the sexy Hotshot that she really begins to know fear. The fear of losing someone she loves.
Genre: contemporary romance
ISBN: 978-1-940512-02-0
ASIN: B00H2W66H0
Word Count: 23,000 words
Cover Artist: Purple Girl Design
Amazon / BN / Smashwords
Excerpt from Dakota Heat:
The girl was
new. Sam walked around the Interagency
Fire Crew basecamp with familiarity. He
saw faces he recognized from working in different locations over the past few
years. But the girl… Yeah, she was new. He doubted he would forget the soft blond
color of her hair or the slight tilt of her head as she read through paperwork,
pretending she didn’t notice the people around her.
He grabbed two
water bottles from the bucket full of ice in the back of the Quonset hut and
walked toward her. She didn’t look up
until he held the water bottle in front of her.
Blue eyes met
his with a mixture of irritation and surprise.
“You’re dropping
ice pieces on my paperwork,” she said.
He noticed the
smooth as silk sound of her voice before the water splatter on the top page of
her paperwork. He immediately pulled the
water bottle back a few inches.
“Sorry. I thought you might like something to drink.”
Her face
softened as quickly as it had shown irritation.
She reached her hand out and took the water bottle, and then placed it
on the bench next to her before shaking her hand of the residual moisture the
bottle left behind. “Thank you.”
“You’re new
here,” he said as he sat down next to her.
Not looking up,
she said, “So are you.”
She smelled like
soap and lavender. After breathing in
smoke and dirt for so long, it was refreshing to breathe in the sweet scents of
a woman.
“Not
exactly. I grew up in Rudolph.”
That earned him
a lingering second glance. One that
afforded him a few seconds to really look into her eyes, at her face.
“Really?”
“My whole life.”
She glanced
around quickly. “When I got in last
night I was told the basecamp here was new this year. I didn’t realize South Dakota had a dedicated
fire basecamp.”
Sam had never
worked fire duty in his home state before.
And he’d never come to a new location and been so familiar with faces as
well as the location. His reason for
wanting to come back to South Dakota this year was personal.
A lot of his
friends who worked with the Interagency Fire Crew were still reeling after the
deaths of nineteen Hotshot firemen in Arizona last summer. Some had quit fighting fires altogether at
the urging of their family. Sam’s own
mother had tried her best to do the same during many phone calls since the tragedy,
but Kate McKinnon settled for having him come home to Rudolph to work.
“This was just
constructed this year. The Black Hills
are a hot spot this year because of all the flood and ice damage that occurred
over the winter. When I found out they
were setting up a base here to do fire control for the season, I put in a
request to work here.”
She nodded. “Must be nice to be home. At least for the season.”
She glanced down
at her paperwork again.
He chuckled at
how quickly she fell into her reading again.
“You’re looking at that like you’re cramming for a final exam.”
She
shrugged. “I feel I am. This is my first season working fire dispatch
anywhere.”
“Ah, then that
explains it.”
“Must feel good
to be home after—”
“Summer?”
Both Sam and the
girl looked up to see the chief calling out from across the tent. The girl quickly collected her paperwork and
stuffed it in a folder.
“Be right
there,” she called out. She turned to
Sam, lifting the bottled water in her hand.
“Thanks for the water.”
“No problem.”
But she was
already trotting over to the superintendent’s office. He hadn’t even had a chance to get her
name. But he would before the day was
done. This was one woman he had a
feeling he wanted to get to know.
