Heat (Bearpaw Ridge Firefighters #1)
By Ophelia Sexton
Published by Philtatos Press
Text copyright 2016 by Ophelia Sexton. All rights reserved.
Cover Design by Jacqueline Sweet
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Excerpt
The temptation of having Annabeth standing so close to him, surrounding him with her scent, and smiling up at him as her fingers wrapped around his, proved to be too much.
With a low growl, Dane pulled her to him and bent his head. He buried his face against the soft, warm skin on the side of her neck and inhaled deeply.
"You smell so sweet," he whispered and felt her pulse jump against his lips.
Dane took her into his arms, pressing her soft curves against his chest. She fit perfectly against him. She didn't try to pull away. If anything, she leaned into him.
He wanted her with every bone and sinew in his body and with every inch of his soul.
Dedication
With deep affection and many thanks to Keri and Andy in Salmon, ID for their hospitality and for providing many useful details about ranches and life in a small town. And for not laughing at me for my habit of compulsively locking my car doors while visiting them. It's a tough habit for this urban California girl to break!
Many thanks, also, to KadyG, professional chef extraordinaire, and the ever-imaginative Vinca Minor for helping me brainstorm a Horrible, Awful, No-Good Day for my hapless bakery owner, and to Mike, for sharing his experiences as a volunteer firefighter in a small Idaho town.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Shattered
Chapter 2 – Fated
Chapter 3 – Kissed
Chapter 4 – Convinced
Chapter 5 – Screwed
Chapter 6 – Inspected
Chapter 7 – Saved
Chapter 8 – Supported
Chapter 9 – Seduced
Chapter 10 – Thwarted
Chapter 11 – Loved
Chapter 12 – Secretive
Chapter 13 - Reunited
Chapter 14 – Engaged
Chapter 15 – Enraged
Chapter 16 – Incinerated
Chapter 17 – Exposed
Chapter 18 – Burned
Chapter 19 – Reborn
Epilogue
Also by Ophelia Sexton
Chapter 1 – Shattered
Every single delicate cherry blossom intended for Emmaline Chu's wedding cake had been smashed overnight. The crumbled remains of several hundred handmade gum-paste flowers lay scattered across sheets of parchment paper spread over the bakery's stainless steel counter.
The pretty mermaid, fishes, and molded sea shells for Rowan McKenzie's birthday cake had also been destroyed. The mermaid's head stared dolefully up at Annabeth Jones as she stood frozen in horror at the sight.
Annabeth had spent days making those cake decorations, which required at least a day to dry. It was Friday morning, the cakes were due to be delivered tomorrow afternoon, and she didn't know whether to burst into tears or throw up.
It was a disaster.
She would have to spend all day redoing the decorations and hope to God that they dried quickly enough overnight to use. Only then could she get started on baking and frosting the cakes, which had been her main project today.
But Annabeth didn't care if she had to pull an all-nighter. She was not going to disappoint a couple on their wedding day. Or a little girl on her birthday.
"Annabeth, what are you…? Oh. My God," said Annabeth's boss Maggie Ornelas as she entered the bakery with her usual energetic step despite the hideously early hour.
She came to a halt next to Annabeth, staring down at the destruction. "What the hell?"
Maggie was the owner of Cacao Cakes, a high-end bakery in San Francisco. She had hired Annabeth right out of the culinary institute, and Annabeth had been working for Maggie at Cacao for nearly five years now. Together, Maggie and Annabeth had made Cacao a success, so much so that they were frequently forced to turn away customers who wanted wedding cakes or other special occasion cakes.
"Everything was fine when I left yesterday afternoon," Annabeth said numbly.
She reached out, her hands shaking with shock, and touched the gleaming blue fragment of a shattered fish. She had just finished painting it yesterday with a mixture of lemon extract and pearlescent powdered food coloring.
"And they were fine when I closed at 5:00 p.m.," Maggie said, frowning. "Someone must have done this overnight…let's look at what the security camera caught."
Feeling hollow and shaky, Annabeth followed her boss to the little office in the back of the bakery.
There, she was greeted with her second horrible shock of the morning as they stood in front of Maggie's computer, reviewing the security footage from the previous evening.
"Is that…Roger?" Maggie asked with evident disbelief.
Now Annabeth really did feel like throwing up as she saw her fiancé Roger Pemberton calmly strolling in through the bakery's employee entrance.
As both women watched, dumbstruck, he picked up a rolling pin and methodically began to smash each decoration.
Roger had been so angry that Annabeth wouldn't take the day off work yesterday to go furniture shopping with him. She had known he would make her pay for defying his wishes, but she had never, in her wildest dreams, thought he would do something like this.
"I'm going to call the police and have them arrest that son of a bitch!" Maggie growled.
"No, please, don't!" Annabeth begged. "I'll fix it, I promise I will!"
Maggie would be within her rights to call the cops, of course, but Roger would blame Annabeth for the humiliation of being arrested.
She shuddered to think how he'd make her pay.
Maggie turned to Annabeth. "How did he get in?"
"I—I fell asleep right after dinner last night. I was really tired," Annabeth replied, unable to tear her gaze away from the monitor and Roger's orgy of destruction. "I guess he took my keys."
Roger had known how hard she had worked on crafting those decorations. She had been telling him about her progress all week. And so, he had decided on the perfect punishment for her…sabotage the work that had kept her from accompanying him to that designer outlet yesterday.
He was the handsomest man Annabeth had ever met, and even now, she couldn't believe that he was actually interested in her. That he wanted to marry her.
Her mother had always told her that no man would ever be interested in her until she lost those extra pounds she was carrying.
Roger could be so sweet, so charming. He liked having sex with her, and he often bought her expensive presents. Being with him was good…until she did or said something to make him mad.
And his anger never burned hot. He never hit her or yelled at her. Instead, he would deliberate with icy fury to decide which punishment would hurt her the most, and then he would carry it out.
Last time, it had been her great-grandmother's century-old tea service. Annabeth had forgotten to run an errand for Roger after work. He hadn't said much when she apologized, but after dinner, he had del
iberately smashed the fragile bone china cups one by one on the kitchen floor while she wept and pleaded with him.
Then he had ordered her to clean up the mess and walked out of the kitchen to watch television while she swept up the fragments, trying not to sob too loudly, because the sound would annoy him.
"This—this was my fault. I made him angry, and I'm the one who left my keys where he could find them. It won't happen again, I promise. But please don't call the police, Maggie. Please!"
"You think that this was your fault? Listen to yourself, honey! You need to leave him," Maggie said, shaking her head. "Nothing you do will ever make him happy, and his punishments are going to become more extreme."
"Leave him? But we're getting married in a couple of months!" Annabeth protested automatically.
She knew Maggie was right, but she didn't know what she could do.
Roger would never let her leave him.
"Do you have a safe place to go?" Maggie asked, tapping a key and freezing the security footage on an image of Roger, his expression utterly calm as he raised the rolling pin.
"I could stay in San Leandro with Mom for a few days, but after that, I don't know." Annabeth replied, still feeling numb with shock.
"We'll find a solution," Maggie assured her. "You're my best employee. Without all of your hard work and talent, Cacao wouldn't be half the success it is today."
To Annabeth's astonishment, Maggie hugged her, hard. She knew Maggie was angry at what Roger had done. But she should be blaming Annabeth.
"I'll fix everything," Annabeth promised. "And I'll do it off the clock. I feel so bad about this, but those cakes will be ready tomorrow morning if I have to stay all night."
"Nonsense!" Maggie assured her. "Latoya's been asking for more hours. I'll call her to come in this afternoon to do the baking, filling, and frosting, so that you'll have time to redo the decorations." She paused. "I'll make you a deal, Annabeth. If you promise me that you'll go somewhere safe tonight and think about what I said, I won't call the police."
"Okay, I'll go to Mom's place. And thank you," said Annabeth. And then, suddenly, she was crying, great heaving sobs against Maggie's shoulder. "Oh, Maggie, what am I going to do?"
"Look, this is fucking ridiculous," Roger said, sounding impatient over the phone. "You're acting like I hit you or something. Come home, Bethie. I promise I'll make it up to you."
Annabeth hated being called "Bethie" by anyone except her mother, but Roger had decided that it would be his special pet name for her, and her protests only annoyed him.
She took a deep breath and tried to keep her voice calm. "Roger, how could you do that to me? You knew I had to deliver those cakes this morning! I could have lost my job! And Maggie wanted to have you arrested for breaking and entering. I had to beg her not to do it! "
A long, ominous pause. "Look, I'm really sorry," Roger said at last. "I didn't mean it. Tell Maggie that, okay? But you just made me so fucking angry… Why does your stupid little job always have to come first? Why can't you ever make me a priority?"
And just like that, it was all her fault. Again.
Annabeth concentrated on breathing and not replying. Whatever she said now, it would only make things worse.
Apology and accusations dispensed with, Roger returned to his most pressing concern. "So when are you coming home? You know I don't like eating dinner by myself or sleeping alone."
"I—" Annabeth bit down on her automatic impulse to apologize. "I need a day. Maybe two."
"A day," Roger countered, his tone implacable. "I want you home tomorrow, Bethie."
"I'll think about it," she said, knowing that she was running the risk of making him angry again.
Would she return to their condo in the hip Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco to find something else she loved either destroyed or donated to Goodwill?
And at that thought, she knew Maggie was right. Things had been getting worse lately. She couldn't go back to him. Couldn't marry him.
The thought of breaking up with him, of telling him that they needed to cancel their wedding plans, made her feel queasy with anxiety. All that money he had already paid in deposits…
"All right," he said coolly. A danger sign. "Love you."
"Love you, too," she said, obediently.
That was one of Roger's rules. She always had to end phone calls, texts, or emails with I love you.
"You're not thinking of breaking up with him, are you?" Mom asked anxiously as soon as Annabeth ended the call.
"Yeah, I am. He was really nice when we first started dating, but ever since we moved in together, he's been kind of…abusive," Annabeth said slowly.
"Does he hit you?" Mom demanded, leaning forward to peer at Annabeth's face as if looking for bruises.
"No, but—" Annabeth began.
"People are so quick to use the word abuse these days," Mom interrupted, her tone dismissive. "And Bethie, you have to think realistically. He's so handsome, and he's got such a great career going…and then there's you." She sighed. "If only you would lose some weight, you'd be a really attractive young woman. But looking the way you do, it's a miracle you managed to snag someone like Roger. You can't count on having the same luck twice."
Annabeth glared at her mother. She'd almost forgotten why she'd been so eager to move out of this house and move in with Roger.
A familiar toxic mix of resentment, frustration, and anger churned in her stomach.
Her phone belted out Maggie's ringtone.
"It's my boss. I have to take this," she said to Mom and walked out of the room to answer her call.
"Hey," she said to Maggie. "I'm at my mom's."
"Good," Maggie said. "I’m glad." She paused. "Um, how did Roger take it?"
"A phone call and five text messages, and he's ordered me to come home tomorrow. He also says he's sorry about what he did," Annabeth said glumly. "Oh, God, Maggie, what am I going to do? I just spent two hours looking at places for rent in the Bay Area, and I can't afford anything within commuting distance of the City. Not even with roommates. Not even with a second job."
Not without using the money in my special savings account. Which she absolutely did not want to do unless it was a dire emergency.
Did breaking up with Roger count as an emergency?
Maggie sighed into the phone. "Well, I may have something for you, but I'm not sure you'll like it."
"At this point, I'm willing to consider anything," Annabeth told her.
"Okay, I know I'm shooting myself in the foot telling my best employee this," Maggie said, "but how would you feel about opening your own place, Annabeth? I just finished talking to my big brother Manuel. He's a real estate agent in Bearpaw Ridge in Idaho, and he says that there's a bakery-café in town that needs a new proprietor. I told him that you were a Culinary Institute grad and that you'd worked for me for five years, and you would not believe how excited he was!"
"Leave California?" Annabeth asked in disbelief.
And yet, the thought of leaving behind Roger…and Mom…and starting fresh somewhere far away sounded really good right now.
And hadn't she been saving up for years to start her own business?
"You'll love Bearpaw Ridge! I go there all the time to visit my family," Maggie said enthusiastically. "It's a small town, maybe three thousand permanent residents, but it's a really nice place with really friendly people. The kind of place where people don't bother locking their doors…or their cars."
"I don't know," Annabeth said slowly, though her heart was beating with excitement at the prospect. My own bakery! But she had to be practical… "Only three thousand people? Is that really enough people to keep a business going? I mean, why is that bakery available?"
"The owner retired a couple of months ago and moved to Arizona to be with his grandkids," Maggie said promptly. "He never had any issues making ends meet—there's a lot of tourist traffic, even in the winter, because the town is on the way to that
big new ski resort and Bearpaw Springs National Park."
"Well, then, that sounds great, if, uh, kind of far away." Annabeth tried to catch her breath. This was all happening so fast. She really wanted to do it…but could she really pack up everything she owned and move to a place she'd never been?
"So you're interested?" asked Maggie. "Because if you are, I'll tell Manny that you can be there…in a week?"
"A week?" Annabeth squeaked. She felt like someone who had just jumped into a raging river and was being swept along in the current.
"You'll want to get yourself up and running as quickly as possible, before Chinook salmon fishing season starts in May and the town is crawling with fishermen looking for hot coffee and a Danish."
I can't, thought Annabeth. I can't just decide to move to a place I've never even visited, can I?
"Bethie?" Mom called from the other room. "Roger's on the other line. He wants make sure you're coming home tomorrow. You are going home tomorrow, dear? You're not going to do anything stupid?"
Oh yes, I am, Annabeth thought with sudden determination. I'm about to do something totally stupid and scary.
"Yes," she told Maggie. "Yes, that sounds really great. Will you email me your brother's info? I'll call him in the morning."
"I'm going to hate to lose you, honey," Maggie said, sounding rueful. "But I'm excited for you, too."
"So am I. Excited and scared," Annabeth said and realized she had made her decision. "Thank you so much, Maggie. You'll come visit me in Idaho, right?"
"You got it," Maggie said. "I can't wait to see how you spread your wings, Annabeth."
Annabeth disconnected, feeling giddy.
Yes, she would go home tomorrow, but she would do it while Roger was at work. She would get her belongings, pack up her car, and head for Bearpaw Ridge.
Everything is going to be different from now on, she told herself. And I'm going to prove that Mom and Roger were wrong when they told me I could never make it on my own.
Chapter 2 – Fated
It wasn't even dawn yet, but it had already been a pretty good morning, Dane Swanson thought as he relaxed in the fire engine's cab.
Heat: A Werebear + BBW Paranormal Romance (Bearpaw Ridge Firefighters Book 1) Page 1
