Giving Off Sparks

by Sami Lee

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Giving off Sparks

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Preview the Next Book

  Note from Sami

  eBooks by Sami Lee

  Sami recommends … Michelle Hoppe

  Excerpt

  “My new place will be ready to move into on Monday. I’ve taken that day off so I can start shifting my stuff out of storage.”

  A lump formed in Rob’s throat. Sierra was leaving on Monday, only two days away. He’d thought he had until Thursday to convince her to keep seeing him after they weren’t neighbors anymore. There had been an unspoken understanding that the fling they were indulging in would end when Sierra moved out.

  Not that Rob wanted that, but he sensed it was what Sierra expected. It was pretty hard to misinterpret the fact she still had not given him her new address. Panic started to claw at Rob’s chest. What if two days wasn’t enough time to change her mind?

  “I’d offer to help you move, but I’m covering for a colleague on Monday. I have to go back to work.” Was that him talking about mundane details when his heart was hammering fit to burst out of his chest?

  “You don’t have to do that. A couple of guys from work have already agreed to help out.”

  Guys from work? What guys from work? Rob felt himself scowling. “I guess you don’t need me then.”

  Sierra’s own brow furrowed as she took off her rubber gloves and stood. “Are you okay? You look tired.”

  He was fucking exhausted. He’d finished his last night shift for the week a couple of hours ago and would normally be asleep by now. But no, he’d been too wired, to excited at the prospect of a whole day with Sierra to contemplate going to bed. Alone anyway.

  Now she was cleaning the bathroom and telling him she was leaving early like that wouldn’t matter to him. Giving him some vague shit about guys from work. Jealousy rose like a vicious creature inside him.

  He’d never been jealous before. Not even when he’d had a thing for Pam Spencer and she’d chosen his mate Steve over him. From the first moment they’d all gone to bed together, it had been pretty obvious to Rob that Steve and Pam were made for each other, so he’d been philosophical about the whole thing. Now he realized that wasn’t a product of his easygoing nature but of the fact that Pam hadn’t been the one.

  Giving off Sparks

  Ashton Heights Fire, Book 2

  Sami Lee

  Published 2016 by Book Boutiques.

  ISBN: 978-1-944003-86-9

  Copyright © 2016, Sami Lee.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Book Boutiques.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.

  Manufactured in the USA.

  Email support@bookboutiques.com with questions, or inquiries about Book Boutiques.

  Blurb

  Firefighter Rob McConnell doesn’t believe in love at first sight, until he meets Sierra Lawson and his common sense goes up in flames. The woman sets his heart alight and he could swear the feeling is mutual. But Sierra has one rule that makes a relationship between them unworkable—she doesn’t date firefighters. Still, Rob thinks the spark between them deserves a chance to grow and he’ll use every seductive talent he has to convince Sierra to take a chance on love.

  Sierra doesn’t believe in taking chances. Her late fiancé took them on the job as a cop and wound up dead. Knowing she can’t go through that kind of heartache again, Sierra vows never to date another man in a dangerous profession. But when hunky firefighter Rob bursts into her life, her list of rules looks set to burn up like dry kindling. The man is temptation personified, and an affair seems inevitable.

  Guarding her heart? Impossible.

  Previously Published

  (2014) Sami Lee

  Chapter 1

  Two things woke Rob McConnell at 3:46 in the morning. The sound of a woman screaming and the acrid smell of smoke.

  He shot out of bed, his firefighter instincts on full alert. Yesterday, he’d spent the better part of a ten-hour shift working with his crew and several others to dampen a factory fire before it spread to the surrounding industrial area. They’d managed to douse the flames without any loss of life, but they weren’t always so lucky. Screaming and smoke tended to make Rob spring right into action.

  He was yanking on a pair of jeans in two seconds, bolting out of his bedroom in three. He stopped in the darkened hall, listening for the roar of flames. It took him a moment to realize there was no roar, and that the woman’s screams weren’t the come-and-save-me-I’m-burning-to-death kind. They were more of the Oh-God-baby-yes-I’m coming-I’m-coming variety.

  Rob groaned and rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. His housemates were at it again. Blair Bowman and Leo Chatfield—otherwise known at the fire station as Blue and Chats—were working their way through all the women in Ashton Heights and a few surrounding suburbs who were willing to take both of them on at the same time. Unfortunately, there were a lot of women to choose from.

  Ordinarily, Rob wouldn’t care what his two workmates did in the bedroom. He wasn’t a complete stranger to the delights of three-way action himself. But the walls in the old Queenslander the three of them shared were paper thin. The noise was affecting his sleep.

  Pushing out a sigh, Rob walked into the kitchen to grab the milk from the fridge. Just as he was about to lift the carton to his lips, he detected that scent of smoke again. The screams might have been nothing to worry about, but that persistent smell was a concern. He followed it to the open kitchen window, which faced the kitchen window of the neighboring house. Through the glass, he saw a telltale orange glow emanating from inside.

  “Shit!”

  Rob dropped the milk carton, spilling the contents all over the linoleum floor. Ignoring the mess, he yanked the fire extinguisher off its wall bracket and bolted toward the sliding glass door that led to the back patio. He ran down the stairs three at a time, vaulted over the fence between the two properties and leapt up the back stairs of number nineteen. He banged on the glass of the house’s back door, trying to rouse the single mother and three kids who lived inside.

  Through the glass, Rob could see the fire had already consumed the toaster on the bench. As he watched and banged furiously on the door, the flames leapt from the toaster to a nearby tea towel and set it alight.

  Where the hell were their smoke alarms? Fuck it, he thought. He couldn’t wait for Cheryl to wake up. He lifted the fire extinguisher and rammed the base of it into the door. A crack appeared in the glass immediately. With only one more blow, the whole sheet exploded. Glass fell everywhere, leaving shards on the inside and outside of the house.

  A woman screamed, the sound ear-splitting. Rob didn’t even look at her as he leapt over the broken glass and headed for the kitchen. He lifted the fire extinguisher and released the safety switch. Rob gave it a few good long bursts, spraying at the flames until he’d buried the small blaze in white foam.

  When the noise of the extinguisher died down, silence fell. Outside, a dog barked. A few screen doors creaked as they opened. The commotion had obviously gotten the attention of the neighbors. Rob’s heart rate began to calm as the
adrenaline eased out of his system.

  It sped up again at the sound of one shrill question. “Why in the world did you do that?”

  Rob’s head whipped around and he got his first real look at the woman who’d screamed earlier. A woman who was definitely not Cheryl, the forty-something mother of three who lived at number nineteen. This woman was not forty, probably wouldn’t be for at least fifteen years. And if her hips had born any children, they sure didn’t show a sign of it. She was trim and slender with long hair that fell in straight dark strands all the way to her tiny waist. Which wasn’t far because she was short.

  She was short, cute and really ticked off. Which ticked Rob off. Fortunately, his annoyance distracted him from the other things he was feeling. His first glimpse of the woman had knocked the breath from him and he felt like he’d been sucker punched.

  He turned around fully to face her. She’d put on the hall light at some point, and the illumination glanced off the shiny strands of her dark hair, creating a halo effect that was in direct contrast to the thunderous look on her face. Rob shook his head, as though that would help him make sense of her question. “Are you asking why I put out your fire?”

  “No, I can see the logic in you putting out the fire. There were flames. And smoke. I’m glad the flames and the smoke are gone.” She gestured to the shattered glass all over the floor and the gaping hole where the back door used to be. “But why did you have to break the door, for Pete’s sake?”

  “The fire was spreading fast,” Rob explained. “Would you rather I’d let it burn down the kitchen?”

  “I’d rather you’d knocked.”

  “I did knock.” Rob heard the exasperation creeping into his voice. “There was no answer. None of this would have been necessary if you had smoke alarms.”

  “I do have smoke alarms. I mean, Cheryl does. I think. I’m just the house-sitter.” The petite brunette directed her gaze toward the ceiling, her brow furrowed. “What about that?”

  Rob followed the line of her gaze toward the roof. There was an alarm fitted half way between the kitchen and the living room, but it was an old model and the red sensor light wasn’t on. “It obviously doesn’t work.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Working smoke detectors are really important.”

  “So I figure.”

  “A house can go up in a matter of minutes. If you’re asleep when a fire breaks out, the smoke could kill you before you’re even aware of the flames.”

  “Or it could attract the attention of strange men in the area, who might break down your doors in their efforts to be heroic,” she drawled.

  Rob turned back to face her. “I wasn’t trying to be heroic. I was trying to save Cheryl and the kids.”

  “Ah. So if you’d known it was only me here, you wouldn’t have bothered?”

  Stunned, Rob opened his mouth to refute the suggestion. The words died in his throat when he saw the glimmer of amusement in the woman’s eyes. They were hazel, more on the green side than the brown, and there was a playfulness in them that made Rob’s skin—and other parts of his anatomy—tingle.

  That feeling of being sucker punched returned. Oxygen seemed pretty hard to come by all of a sudden. He wanted to answer I’d break down a hundred doors to save you, but he was too winded to speak.

  His sense of being off-kilter only got worse when she smiled, a simple curve of her lips that was as devilish as it was cute. Whoa. Forget sucker punched. I think I’m being waterboarded. Although if he could do things over he wouldn’t alter his actions in the slightest, Rob found himself blurting. “I’m sorry about your door.”

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you about the door,” she countered, her smile turning chagrinned. “I don’t do well when woken suddenly.

  Rob returned her smile, feeling more than a little giddy. “I can understand that.”

  “I was fast asleep, so if you hadn’t come along, things could have been a lot worse. What I should have said first up is thank you.”

  Rob lifted a shoulder, a no-big-deal gesture. His face felt hot. Shit. Was he blushing? “It’s cool. I live next door, by the way. My name’s Rob. Robert, but it’s just Rob. McConnell. Rob McConnell.”

  Oh my freaking God, man, buy a vowel why don’t you?

  That smile spread. “It’s…interesting to meet you, Rob. I’m Sierra Lawson.”

  She stuck out her hand. Rob enveloped it in his and an electric current strong enough to spark another fire passed from her flesh to his. Holy Guacamole. Where had Sierra been all his life?

  Chapter 2

  Sierra’s hand felt singed. As for the rest of her, it wasn’t faring much better. If she hadn’t seen it happen with her own eyes, she might not have believed Rob McConnell had put out her kitchen fire at all.

  Rob. He didn’t look like a plain old Rob. His name ought to be Zeus or Perseus or something like that. He was big, but there was a benevolence to his largeness, as though he was built only to protect, not to intimidate. He stared down at her, his soft brown eyes smiling to match the curve of his lips and the light glancing off his blonde hair in a way that lent him an almost golden glow. She stared back at him, doing her best to keep her eyes trained on his face and not on all the glorious shirtless muscle he was displaying.

  “Sierra.” He repeated her name as though rolling it around on his tongue just for the sheer pleasure of it. “That’s pretty.”

  Sierra blushed and let out a weird sound, something between a giggle and a sigh that she feared sounded like an asthmatic wheeze. Get a grip, Sierra. Trying to take a deep breath and failing, Sierra pulled her hand from within the enveloping warmth of Rob’s. At least at that she succeeded. He let her go easily, which disappointed her even as it comforted. Despite the way he’d come barging in here, he wasn’t a pushy guy, and Sierra couldn’t help but appreciate that. Especially as they were alone in the house at four in the morning, and he was not exactly dressed.

  Again, she had to concentrate on keeping her eyes off his body. She looked down at the floor. “Well, I guess I’d better get this cleaned up.”

  “I’ll help.”

  No, you should probably get out of here before I start drooling on your pectorals. Not that her mouth could really reach his pectorals. Any drool she expelled would probably land on his… “That’s not necessary,” she said hurriedly.

  “Yeah, it is,” Rob insisted. “Where’s your dustpan?”

  “I’ll get it.” Sierra dashed to the hall cupboard where the cleaning supplies were kept, glad of the chance to escape. It was four in the morning and she’d been caught off-guard, that was all. That had to explain her crazy physical reaction to Rob McConnell. Maybe she still had sleep in her eyes. No man could be that gorgeous.

  When she returned to the living room carrying the long-handled broom as well as the dustpan and brush, she was struck speechless once more by the sight of the man standing there. He was looking down at the mess on the floor, so she was treated to a side-on view of his taut abs, which almost glistened in the dim light. His hands rested on his hips, seeming to emphasize the narrowness of them.

  Sierra sucked in a breath. Yep, he’s that gorgeous. Figuring it was a good idea to get the place cleaned up so he could leave, Sierra handed him the dustpan. He bent to his haunches and started gathering the larger shards of glass while Sierra swept the smaller ones into a pile.

  “So where’s Cheryl?”

  “She took the kids to New Zealand for ten days to visit their grandparents. The lease on my old apartment ran out before I could move into my new place, so Cheryl said if I could house-sit while she was away. It worked out perfectly.”

  “You live in Brisbane?”

  “Yep.”

  He glanced up from his low position and smiled at her. “Good.”

  That smile kicked her in the stomach, and Sierra struggled to catch her breath. “Good?”

  “Yeah.” His smile broadened. “Glad you’re not going to disappear out of town any time soon.”

/>   Sierra’s heart did a backflip. Was he flirting with her? The possibility was more exciting than it should have been. Her best friend, Tina, had been telling her she needed to start dating again, that she’d forget how to do it if she didn’t find someone to do it with. She was obviously right if Sierra couldn’t even gauge if a man was flirting with her or not. How would she know how to initiate sex? Would she recognize it if a man was initiating?

  The thought of Rob McConnell initiating anything with her sent her heart rate galloping. She rushed to fill the awkward silence with words. “I work with Cheryl at the Department of Housing. We try and place families who can’t afford rent into government housing. It’s busy. There are a lot of people who can’t make rent and not enough places.”

  Sierra swept up what she hoped were the last stray shards of glass into the central pile she’d made. Rob gathered it into the dustpan. She couldn’t help but notice how the muscles of his shoulders moved as he worked. “Sounds rough.”

  “It has its moments. But it’s a good, steady job.” A safe job. Sierra liked safe. Safety was predictable. “How long have you lived next door?” And why didn’t Cheryl think to mention she was residing next to the biggest hunk of all time?

  “Only a few months. I moved in with a couple of guys I work with to save on rent.” Rob let out a rueful chuckle. “Let’s just say it’s been interesting.”

  “Oh no. They’re slobs, right?”

  “Ah, that’s not it. They’re just…” He shook his head. “Never mind. Blue and Chats are good guys. Easy to live with most of the time.”

  Rob stood with the full dustpan in his hand. When he sent her a questioning look, she indicated the cupboard where the rubbish bin was kept. He crossed to it, opened the cupboard door and dumped the glass into the bin. Sierra tried not to study his ass too closely as he bent over—tried and failed. His glutes were magnificent. That hot tingle spread through her again. Her nipples beaded, pressing against the silk of her pajama top.