Forget Me Not
Golden Falls Fire #4
Scarlett Andrews
Contents
Never Miss A New Release!
Meet Sean and Annabelle
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Note To Reader
Also By The Author
About the Author & Contact
FORGET ME NOT
Copyright © 2018 Scarlett Andrews
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
CLOVER CREATIVES
For more information about this book or the author,
please visit www.scarlettandrews.com.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Edition ISBNs:
Trade Paperback 978-1-947750-08-1
Digital 978-1-947750-07-4
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Forget Me Not is the fourth book in the Golden Fall Fire series of contemporary romances. While it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone novel, there are plenty more love stories for the Golden Falls Firefighters, so make sure to sign up for Scarlett’s newsletter so you don’t miss any of her new releases!
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Introducing
SEAN & ANNABELLE
Sean Kelly has always dated the cheerleader type. Back in high school, he never noticed Annabelle Keith, the frizzy-haired nerd who sat next to him in science class. But Annabelle sure noticed him.
When Sean, now a firefighter, saves the life of a beautiful scientist on the treacherous slopes of Denali, something about her seems familiar . . . and everything about her seems sexy. Brought together again, Sean and Annabelle reignite what starts as a friendship, but quickly turns into a blazing physical passion that goes deeper than anything either have experienced before. But a saboteur is at work who will stop at nothing to destroy both Annabelle’s research and the couple’s newfound love.
1
Light snow swirled against the windows and the early afternoon sky darkened to an ominous steely gray. A mid-March storm was coming into Golden Falls, Alaska, and Sean Kelly was kicked back on his sofa, having just opened his first beer.
A hockey game was on television, the puck about to drop. Sean’s cell phone was beside him, but he’d given up hope of anyone calling in time to meet up and watch the game together. Typically, he would have watched with Cody Bradford, his best friend and fellow firefighter, but Cody had gone and gotten himself engaged, which cut down on their sports-watching guy time. Sean didn’t begrudge his friend for falling in love, but he had to admit it heightened his loneliness.
There was no winter as lonely as an Alaska winter. With the Iditarod concluded the previous week, winter’s last fun activity was over and now there was nothing to do but wait for the miserable weather to end and for spring to arrive.
Sean enjoyed having a girlfriend to snuggle up with during the long dark days (and nights)—or at the very least, having his buddies around. If the weather was better, he might have headed down to the Sled Dog Brewing Company for some craft beer. Or maybe he would have gone over to Jack Barnes’s place, his fire captain who often had get-togethers on their days off. But now even Jack was attached—as was Jack’s brother, Josh.
Cody and Cassie. Josh and Hayley. Jack and Elizabeth.
Three guys, down for the count.
At the age of thirty, Sean was starting to get the uncomfortable sense of being nearly the only single guy left.
Not that he minded being single. He’d had girlfriends—plenty of them—and he enjoyed being in a relationship, even though he always had the sense there was something new waiting for him over the next hill, in the next bar, or at the next party. A serial monogamist, his dating philosophy was simple: have fun, be faithful, enjoy each other’s company, and move on when the relationship started to get boring, as he did most recently with Melissa Kristoff, a teacher who liked to hit the bars after a long week at school. But while she was a lot of fun on the dance floor and downright dirty in the bedroom, eventually it had grown tiresome. Melissa’s high sex drive and blow job expertise could mask her shallow personality for only so long.
But on days like today, when the hockey game was on and the couch was empty beside him, Sean had to admit he felt pangs of envy toward his friends who each had their special steady someone.
“At least I’ve got you, right, Samwise?” he said to his black cat.
Samwise mewled as he stared out the window.
“Come watch the game with me, buddy,” Sean said. “The Detroit Red Wings are playing the Chicago Blackhawks.”
Samwise remained steadfast at the window and wouldn’t deign to even look at Sean.
“Fine, weirdo. There might have been some catnip in it for you, but never mind.” Sean took a sip of beer, the Sled Dog’s IPA, and looked at his cat with affection. “I don’t blame you. I’ve got cabin fever, too.”
Samwise yearned for great adventures outdoors, but despite his constant protests, he was an indoor cat. Sean’s log house was on an acre along the Nanook River in a nice neighborhood of Golden Falls, Alaska, but there was still the occasional bear who rambled through and would find Samwise to be quite the tasty treat. Sean figured a complaining cat was better than a dead one.
Game time.
Sean leaned forward as the players faced off, keeping an especially close eye on the center forwards, which was his position. The one he would have—should have—been playing professionally at that very moment.
“Damn knee,” Sean muttered, rubbing it. Just thinking about the injury made it ache all over again.
In his freshman year of college at Alaska State University, which had turned out to be his last, three NHL teams had scouted him, including both Detroit and Chicago. They’d told him he was the most promising young player they’d seen in a long time. He’d signed with a hotshot sports agent from New York, who was holding salary discussions on his behalf.
One wrong move, one flash of excruciating pain, and Sean’s hockey career was over. He’d been aggressive about going for an opening to a goal and got slammed against the wall by another player. His knee caught at just the wrong angle, and he’d not only broken his tibia in three places, but he’d also suffered a complete tear of his anterior cross ligament.
Two surgeries, four pins, and six months of re
hab later, Sean had known it was no good. He’d dropped out of the university, enrolled in community college instead, and then, following the advice of a firefighter uncle, went to paramedic school and then joined the Golden Falls Fire and Rescue Department. He now got his hockey fix by coaching the city’s boys league and watching games on TV while being ignored by his cat.
It was not quite the glamorous life he’d imagined for himself back in high school in Anchorage, where he was the school’s star athlete and told by all that he was sure to hit the big time.
But it was a good life. He’d made some great friends in Golden Falls, was proud he’d been able to buy a decent home in a good neighborhood, and found his job rewarding. In a way, the fire service was all the things he loved about hockey: the camaraderie, the physical activity, the adrenaline, and most of all, the sense of being a part of something. And it was more of a tight-knit brotherhood than a hockey team could ever be since they quite literally trusted each other with their lives.
The Red Wings were already up by a goal. Sean thought maybe he would turn off the game. He didn’t often get lost in memories, and he knew that sitting there alone, drinking and listening to his yowling cat in the dreary March weather wasn’t good for him.
He stood, walked into the kitchen, dumped the rest of the beer, and then his phone rang.
He glanced at the number, not inclined to pick it up, but then saw it was the Nanook Valley Borough Sheriff’s Department. As a volunteer member of the Wilderness Search and Rescue team that operated out of Golden Falls, whenever he was off duty from the fire department, he was on call for S&R.
Sean answered the call.
The dispatcher asked him to report to the incident command center at Golden Falls International Airport for a briefing on a technical rescue high on Denali. The tallest mountain in North America, Denali was Alaska’s pride, joy, and most significant tourist attraction. The small, bustling city of Golden Falls was a popular stopover on visitors’ journeys to the mountain.
A rescue helicopter would be taking off in an hour, weather permitting—which was doubtful.
Sean glanced out the vaulted windows of his living room. All he saw were thick clouds low in the sky, gusty winds, and a snowfall turning nastier by the minute. It was no day for mountain climbing.
Hang on, people, he thought. Help is on the way.
He stopped on the way out to say goodbye to his cat, who begrudgingly allowed Sean to scratch him under his chin.
“See you later, Samwise,” he said. “Guard the house for me, will you?”
Samwise gave Sean a long, somber, yellow-eyed stare—Sean imagined he was wondering why the human got to have all the fun—and then resumed looking out the window.
2
It was an ill-fated day from the start.
Thirty-year-old Annabelle Keith had overslept her alarm and woke up with just fifteen minutes to get ready for the research expedition. No time for a shower, no time for coffee, no time for a hot breakfast. Already it was the kind of day she wished she could do over.
She never overslept. The idea of it went against her very nature. Prompt, precise, and organized, the only unruly thing about Annabelle was her shoulder-length red hair, which wasn’t for lack of trying. Her stubborn curls just had a mind of their own.
The previous night, she’d laid out her clothing on her bedroom chair: thermal base layers, wool socks, fleece mid-layers, snow pants, expedition parka and shell. Still groggy, her fingers fumbled with the snaps and zippers, and it seemed to take five whole minutes just to lace up her La Sportiva mountaineering boots.
Come on, Annabelle, she urged herself. Get with it.
The Kahiltna Glacier on the great mountain of Denali was waiting, and so was Dr. Peter Eubanks, her PhD advisor and the chair of the Department of Glaciology and Climatology at Alaska State University. She knew Peter would be forgiving if she arrived at the tarmac a few minutes late, as would her closest friend and fellow graduate student, Lottie Smith—but then there was Derrick.
Derrick McDonald, her sort-of boyfriend of about a year. Being the professionally competitive person he was, she expected he’d take her lateness as a personal victory and secretly be glad even as he chastised her for it.
She sighed.
Gotta love Derrick—not.
Truth be told, some days she barely even liked him. It was just that the relationship—both of them glaciology students, same friends, same schedule, same research interests—was too convenient to bother ending for good. Derrick was twenty-eight years old, two years younger than she was, although with his slightly receding hairline, he looked older. Tall and lanky, the hunch of his shoulders showed hints of the bad posture he’d likely have as he grew older. While he wasn’t weak, exactly, Annabelle always thought he’d benefit from weightlifting, which would strengthen his core and help with his alignment. But Derrick wasn’t the weightlifting type.
Annabelle stuffed a wool cap over her messy hair and was out the door. As she drove to the municipal airport from her off-campus apartment, she hoped their bush plane, scheduled to leave at three-thirty in the morning, would be able to take off as planned.
Dr. Eubanks had chosen their climbing time carefully. Alaskan spring was notorious for its ferocious mood swings, and the surface of the Kahiltna Glacier could go from sunny and pleasant to blizzard conditions in just minutes. The earlier in the morning they got started, the better, which was why they were leaving at such an ungodly hour. As she drove, Annabelle was glad to see that while there was snow on the ground, there was none on the roads. The overnight weather had been decent, and the day looked like it would be clear.
Once she arrived at the small Nanook Valley Regional Airport, she parked and rushed onto the tarmac to join her waiting group of colleagues.
“Sorry I’m late!”
She saw she was indeed the last of the day’s foursome to arrive. She also saw the gloating smirk on Derrick’s long, mildly asymmetrical face.
“Nice of you to show up,” he said.
“Nice of you to bring coffee for the rest of us,” she said in retort, noting the steaming cup of convenience-store coffee he held, knowing a more thoughtful sort-of boyfriend not only would have brought her coffee but would have called to make sure she was awake for the early outing.
“Yeah, Derrick, nice of you.” Peter’s amused look indicated he held neither her lateness nor Derrick’s lack of coffee-bringing against either of them. “Good morning, Annabelle. Everybody, grab a box and let’s go.”
Each of the four grabbed a box with their computers, sonar equipment, ice core driller, and cameras, and loaded them onto the bush plane. The pilot told them the winds were light and the conditions clear for takeoff. The flight would take them from Golden Falls to the colloquially-named Kahiltna International Airport, a rough landing strip on the glacier adjacent to Denali Base Camp.
This was the fourth spring Annabelle had come out to take measurements of the glacier’s movement, thickness, and to take core samples, and she always felt a thrill of adventure. She was a scientist, which meant she was an explorer, searching for hidden truths about the universe. It never got old.
By order of how they entered the small plane, Annabelle found herself sitting behind Dr. Eubanks and Lottie, and next to Derrick.
He took off his parka and leaned his dishwater-blond head against hers. “Are you mad at me?” he asked as the low-tech whir of the prop engine started up. He was all knees and elbows, and even through their thick winter clothing, it felt like he was poking her.
“No,” she said, a bit annoyed by the very question, which twisted things and put the onus on her not to be mad versus on him not to be a jerk. “Why would I be?”
“Because I didn’t bring you coffee.”
Trapped next to him like she was, the hour-long flight could pass either pleasantly quickly or agonizingly slowly, and she had no desire for their data-gathering trip to the glacier to turn into a day of bickering.
And so she sm
iled at him. “I’m not mad at you, Derrick.”
They’d been sort-of dating for about a year, or “seeing each other,” as Derrick called it. Nothing official, he always hurried to add. I mean, why label things?
There was no talk of a future. No talk of meeting the parents. No exchanging of house keys. Annabelle had never spent the night at his apartment, although he stayed at hers on occasion. The sex was plain vanilla and as by-the-numbers as sex could be. Derrick gave the vibe that sex was a necessary evil or a weakness rather than something to be celebrated or cherished in a relationship.
A secret part of her yearned to be a vixen in the bedroom, but Derrick almost seemed to resent it when she aroused him. The one and only time she’d tried to entice Derrick to share his fantasies so they could act on them, he not only shut down but tried to make her feel like a slutty nymphomaniac. As such, her ravish-me, take-me-now fantasies remained decidedly unfulfilled, and she’d been half on the lookout for a more testosterone-laden replacement. She still found their relationship interesting on an intellectual level, sometimes quite interesting, but ultimately Derrick was a placeholder boyfriend, and she was sure she filled the same role for him.
Forget Me Not (Golden Falls Fire Book 4) Page 1
