Total pages in book: 31
Estimated words: 32231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 107(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 107(@300wpm)
When free-spirited ceramic artist Ember Quinn watches her mountain studio go up in flames, she loses more than clay and kilns—she loses the life she built with her bare, paint-streaked hands. Enter Clay Walker: stoic, broad-shouldered firefighter with a past he won’t discuss and a glare that says not on my watch. He drags her out of the blaze, wraps her in his jacket…and into the town’s favorite love story when a paperwork mix-up lists him as her fiancé.
One headline in the Devil’s Peak Gazette and Copper Mountain is obsessed with their “romance born from the ashes.” To protect Ember from gossip—and keep a nosy insurance investigator from tanking her claim—Clay agrees to fake it: hand-holding at town events, couple’s trivia, matching smiles for the cameras. No touching. No kissing. No catching feelings.
But rules melt faster than wax at a bonfire. Soon the illusion starts to feel dangerously real—and when Ember learns what Clay’s been burning to forget, she must decide if this mountain man is worth the fight.
Perfect for fans of grumpy/sunshine, protector heroes, forced proximity, found family, and small-town slow burn with scorch
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
Ember
Smoke tastes like pennies and heartbreak.
It curls over the roof of my studio in thick gray waves, eating the night sky, swallowing the little string of lanterns I hung an hour ago to make the place look “festive artisan mountain witch.” Now it looks like a Viking funeral.
“My kiln!” I choke, boots sliding on gravel as I sprint toward the porch. “My molds—my sketchbooks—”
A wall of heat slams me in the face, shocking me backward.
The porch light pops.
Somewhere metal screams.
No.
No. No. No.
I lunge for the door anyway, hand outstretched, brain doing that bad thing where it shuts off and leaves the survival part to vibes and adrenaline.
A band of steel wraps around my waist and yanks me off my feet.
I yelp, wind knocked out of me, and I’m suddenly airborne, spun, pinned to a chest as solid and hot as the burning building.
“Let me go!” I thrash, hair in my eyes, tears blurring everything. “My books are in there—my pieces—stop, let me—”
“Not a chance.” His voice is gravel, smoke, and command. “You’re not dying over clay, firecracker.”
He hauls me farther away from the building, boots planted wide, his turnout gear brushing against my jacket. My heels dig into gravel.
“Stop!” I claw at his arm, but it’s like trying to peel a boulder. “Please, my portfolio is in there, I have commissions—”
“Ember.” He says my name like he’s throwing a rope. “Look.”
He tips my chin toward the studio.
Through the front window, flames roll across the ceiling in a hungry orange wave. The glass cracks. The roof pops again. My little pottery wheel? Gone. My display shelves? Gone. All the hand-painted holiday mugs with stupid little pine trees on them?
My throat closes.
I sag in his hold.
“Yeah,” he mutters, lowering us both until I’m on my knees in the dirt and he’s still braced behind me like a shield. “That’s what I thought.”
I let out a sound I don’t recognize. Half-cough, half-sob, half-wounded animal. Three halves. I don’t care. I press my palms to my eyes.
“This was everything,” I whisper. “I saved for two years. I moved out of the city. I—”
A gloved hand comes into my line of sight, offering something dark. His coat. Heavy, warm, smelling like smoke and cedar and man.
“I don’t need—” I start.
He ignores me and drops it over my shoulders anyway. The weight of it nearly folds me.
“You’re shaking,” he says flatly.
“I’m not—”
“You are.” He plants one big palm between my shoulder blades, steadying me like I might tip over. “Breathe.”
Easy for him to say. He looks like the fire made him more alive.
Two other firefighters hustle past us toward the building, hose line snaking behind them. Another guy is yelling, “Back side’s clear! Kill the power!”
Someone else is pulling out tools.
I just kneel there in the gravel like an idiot while my whole life burns down twenty feet away.
“I could’ve stopped it,” I croak, staring. “I unplugged the kiln, I swear I did—”
“Electrical panels are old in these historic buildings,” he says, eyes on the flames. “We’ll know more after. But this isn’t on you.”
My head snaps toward him. “You don’t know that.”
“Yeah,” he says, turning his face toward mine. His jaw is dusted with ash. There’s a smear of soot along his cheekbone. He is infuriatingly handsome in that kind of weathered, stoic, my-hands-could-build-a-cabin kind of way. “I do.”
“You’re just saying that because—”
“Because I’ve seen actual negligence,” he cuts in, voice low. “This isn’t it. You did what you could. Sometimes shit fails.”
My vision wobbles again. I hate it. I hate crying in front of people, especially hot people, especially hot people who just carried me like I weigh nothing.
I suck in a shaky breath. The coat slips. I shove it off.
“I don’t need saving,” I snap, wiping my face with the back of my hand. “I needed to get my work.”
His brows pull together. “You needed to stay alive.”
“I would’ve been in and out in two seconds—”
He barks out a humorless laugh. “You’d be dead in five.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Ember.” He leans in, eyes sharp. “Flashovers don’t care about your timeline.”
I bristle. “Don’t firefighter-explain at me–and how do you know my name?”
“Because it’s a small town. And I will explain until my last breath if you keep trying to run into burning buildings.”
“I was not—”
“You were.”
We glare at each other, the world around us chaos—lights spinning, radios crackling, the sharp hiss of water hitting flame—but it all fades into static compared to the weight of his stare pinning me to the earth.
“You’re bossy,” I mutter finally.
“You’re reckless,” he fires back.
“Maybe I like risk.”
“Maybe I don’t like scraping artists off the floor.”
My mouth pops open. “Artists?”
His gaze flicks over me. I realize I still have paint on my forearms—from earlier, when I was glazing that stupid snowman platter for Mrs. Hollis.
He notices everything. “Should I call you something else?”