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  “Kiss the first hotshot you see.” Rosalie, the cook on Sarah Jo’s left, waved her spatula for emphasis, her ponytail bouncing with each gesture. “Whoever’s first in line, just lay one on him …”

  The noise of the returning crew drowned out Rosalie’s laughter. Battered pickups bounced over the rutted road, disgorging a load of hotshots and the unmistakable smell of smoke and outdoors and something else indefinably masculine. Although the odd woman worked the ground crew, most of the team was male. Through and through.

  Sarah Jo eyed the approaching horde.

  One kiss. How could it hurt?

  “All right,” she decided. “I’m in.”

  Rosalie tossed her a pot of cherry lip gloss. “Lube it up, honey. Give him something to remember.”

  MORE FROM ANNE MARSH

  His Dark Bond

  Burning Up

  Slow Burn

  In e-book only

  One Hot Cowboy

  Reburn

  Hot Zone

  ANNE MARSH

  eKENSINGTON

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  MORE FROM ANNE MARSH

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  “Kiss the first hotshot you see.” Rosalie, the cook on Sarah Jo’s left, waved her spatula for emphasis, her ponytail bouncing with each gesture. “Whoever’s first in line, just lay one on him.”

  Another cook mimed kissing, hooking a tanned arm around the neck of an imaginary lover. “A hot kiss, mind you. You’re not kissing your grandma. A little lip, a little tongue—that lucky boy won’t know what hit him. Nothing to it. And nothing you haven’t done before, I bet.”

  “A hot kiss for a hotshot,” another whooped, and Sarah Jo shook her head.

  Really, the kissing wasn’t the problem. Unfortunately, she remembered kissing all too well. It was too much kissing that had landed her in the fire camp in the first place. The last guy she’d kissed had been no prize.

  Not that her current job was much consolation. The cafeteria had been a mess hall back in Civilian Conservation Corp days, a period now falling into the category of long, long ago. The building was still utilitarian—but now also dilapidated, all worn linoleum and fuzzed-out screens. The cooks propped the screen door open with a rock. It definitely wasn’t the Ritz, with its wooden picnic tables dotting the surrounding clearing for the overflow crowd.

  And it was certainly no dating Mecca.

  “I can’t just kiss the first guy,” she protested, her mouth on auto-pilot while her libido considered the option. Seriously. The Big Bear Rogues lit fires that had nothing to do with the trees and protecting the wildland interface. Hell, she’d interface with Dade Johnson, the hotshot team’s second-in-command, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Twice on any day.

  Dade Johnson was a bear of a man. When cooking got boring—which was most of the time—she amused herself by imagining him as a frontiersman. All that honed muscle and disciplined focus. Precisely the kind of man who knew his way around the forest. Comfortable with a hunting rifle or a ten-mile hike, he’d probably grown up on a diet of outdoor activities. He moved with an easy confidence that did unspeakable things to her insides.

  Because she had to wonder if he’d know his way around a bed and a woman’s body just as well.

  No, there was no missing the Big Bear Rogues’ second-in-command. He loved what he did, showing up for more fires than even Sam Clayton, the team’s leader. First in, last out, those two were practically joined at the firefighting hip, although rumor had it that Sam was finally settling down—with his former high school sweetheart of all people.

  “She’s thinking about it.” A feminine voice gleefully called her back to earth.

  Hell.

  “You don’t think an uninvited kiss smacks of ”—Sarah Jo waved her own spatula before prying the slightly charred pancake off the griddle she was manning—“sexual harassment? Won’t I be setting myself up for a sure meet and greet with a pink slip?”

  Because she needed to hang on to this job. Paychecks didn’t magically deposit themselves into her checking account. Down to her last few dollars, she’d stopped for gas in Strong, California, and seen the Help Wanted posters pinned to the wall. Old-fashioned kind of cute, she’d thought, tickled that someone still went the 8-x-11 route with a strip of tear-off numbers on the bottom. She’d called, done a phoner, and then come up to camp for the face-to-face interview. Thank God no one had actually asked her if she could cook. She’d also flipped a digit on her Social—close enough to excuse when someone eventually noticed—and gambled no one had time to run a full background check when they were shorthanded.

  Rosalie shook her head. “Those boys like a good joke.”

  “Uh-huh.” Frowning, she examined the pancake. One side was definitely edible. The other? Not so much. With a mental shrug, she carefully positioned the pancake on the stack. Show only the good side. She’d learned that, hadn’t she? Strategic cover-up was the story of her life.

  “The first guy in line. That’s the dare.” Rosalie crossed her arms over her ample chest where large letters declared Firefighters light me up. “I dare you. We all had to do it. You want to be a summer cook and one of us, you kiss the guy.”

  Sarah Jo knew better than to rise to the bait, but she’d never been one to back down from a dare. She was going to do this. All she hoped was that the first man in line was decent looking. Maybe that made her shallow, but if she was having her first kiss in months, she wanted a good one.

  “Hostile work conditions,” she groused, pouring more batter out of the ancient Tupperware container.

  “Honey, you want hostile, you go out there.” Rosalie jerked a thumb southeast where a thick column of oily black smoke punched up over the horizon. Seen from a distance, the fire was little more than a thick, sluggish haze right now. The hotshots had headed out early that morning, to keep the fire small. Early was the perfect time to catch a fire and put it out. Later, when the sun rose and the day heated up, fire became a bear to stop.

  “You really did it?” She had to ask.

  “Kissed the first man I saw? Honey, you bet I did. That hotshot didn’t know what hit him. Took him home with me, too, and kept him.” Rosalie laughed, her amusement shaking her entire frame.

  “This isn’t some kind of weird dating service, is it?” Sarah Jo eyed the cook, because sometimes suspicion could be a lifesaver.

  After all, she’d gone out with a perfectly respectable deputy sheriff, no questions asked, and that ex-boyfriend had burned a house down around her ears. Working at the fire camp was, she figured, a good move because he’d never look for her city-loving self here. Big Bear was her second chance, and sex wasn’t on her to-do list. Although a kiss hardly counted as sex. A quick peck on the lips, a flirty answer to the girls’ dare, and her place here this summer was secured.

  So, fine. The other cooks wondered about her. Fitting in usually wasn’t a problem for her. Sure, she was irreverent and she never quite knew when to shut her mouth, but most people liked a good laugh and she enjoyed the company. Still, she was clearly the ringer here. She curled her lip, eyeing her charred handiwork.

  The noise of the returning crew drowned out Rosalie’s laughter. Battered pickups bounced over the rutted road, disgorging a load of hotshots and the unmistakable smell of smoke and outdoors and something else indefinably masculine. Although the odd wom
an worked the ground crew, most of the team were male. Through and through.

  She eyed the approaching horde.

  One kiss. How could it hurt?

  “All right.” She had decided. “I’m in.”

  Rosalie tossed her a pot of cherry lip gloss. “Lube it up, honey. Give him something to remember.”

  The way Dade Johnson saw it, the last twenty-four hours had sucked from beginning to end. The roads had been crap, a rabbit’s warren of sharp twists and deep ruts. Part fire access, part logging route, the pavement had run out after about twenty yards, leaving them to bump northwest for hours. Then, the pumper truck had hit mud left over from last week’s storm and bogged down. He and the boys had thrown a cable around a handy tree and winched like hell trying to pull the truck out. Eventually, he’d dumped almost two hundred gallons of water to lighten the load.

  Which had worked.

  Until the next colossal mud puddle had done the truck in again.

  The fire hadn’t cooperated, either. Eventually, with the wind picking up and fanning the flames for a steep upslope run, he’d had to admit that fire was now burning out of control. Hand tools wouldn’t get the job done, not now. He’d called for a tanker drop and then started the long drive back to camp. Lining up for pancakes and coffee seemed like a waste of time when there was still fire to fight, but there were fresh guys manning the line now and the Rogues needed the rest. The sooner he got started on the downtime, the sooner he’d be back out there.

  He parked his truck on auto-pilot, replaying the last hours in the field in his head. Take that line ten feet farther south and call in the tanker twenty minutes sooner … That was where the day had gone FUBAR. Fucked up beyond all recognition. A hand slapped him on the back, jolting him out of the full-color replay in his head.

  Sam Clayton fell into step beside him. He didn’t look much happier to be on recall, either. Sam didn’t usually wear his emotions on his face—and, hell, Dade wasn’t looking—but one more hour. That was all they’d needed.

  Sam didn’t bother with pleasantries. After all, there was no need to say hi and bye when they spent the kind of time together that they did. “Not ready to pack it in?”

  Dade snorted. “Not likely. You?”

  “Nope,” Sam replied pleasantly. “And yet here we are. Back in base camp.”

  They exchanged knowing glances. There was more than one way to get back out there sooner rather than later.

  “No worries, though.” Sam nodded a head toward the plume blocking out the daylight. “Plenty of fire out there to go around. She’ll still be there when we finish our R and R.”

  Sam looked like a man who’d just remembered that he had plans for his downtime, all of which undoubtedly involved Olivia Albert. Dade was happy for Sam, he really was. He didn’t have the same draw to go home. If he was being honest, he didn’t have much of a home to go back to. That made a difference. The fire camp was a temporary way station at best. He had his RV and his pillow, but where he hit the hay didn’t matter much. Sure, sleep sounded good right now, as did a real hot shower, but getting his hands on a Pulaski and digging line sounded better. They’d been damned close to licking this latest flare-up when the order had come in to fall back and take a breather. Waving the white flag wasn’t his choice.

  “We were close,” he growled. “Another hour and we’d have had her.”

  Leaving a problem unfixed went against the grain. Fixing what was wrong just made sense. Eight hours of knocking down flames, shoveling dirt wherever the orange popped up. Everything was dry and heated, ready to go up at a moment’s notice, and then the wind had shifted and they were staring defeat in the face. The flames hopped the line they’d scratched out like it was nothing and raced upslope. Fire didn’t offer do-overs. Just overtime.

  “Maybe.” Sam shrugged. “But rules are rules, and coming in for a few hours isn’t hurting us none.”

  “You say that because you’ve got a date with Olivia tonight.” Sam’s engagement with the FBI agent was an unending source of amusement for the team, and the guys missed no chance to give Sam guff about the unexpected rekindling of his romance with his former high school sweetheart. She was a good woman, even though Sam was the last man Dade had imagined looking for happily-ever-after. “You taking her somewhere better this time?”

  “Better than a night in the woods?” Sam eyeballed the menu propped up by the cafeteria door. He didn’t look like he minded one bit that he’d been forced to spend a night camping in the woods with his FBI agent earlier in the summer, a night that had led to some unexpected intimacy and an end to his single status. Of course, Dade had seen Olivia Albert. She was a real pretty woman. Nice, too. Sam was smart, scooping her up like that.

  “We’re first in line.” Hell. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. Usually, the chow line was more stampede than orderly queue.

  Sam Clayton shot a second glance at the cooks, waiting to serve up the day’s breakfast, and shoved Dade forward. “After you.”

  “Not hungry?”

  Sam’s drawl was amused. “Not for what those girls are cooking up.”

  How bad could the food be? There were only so many ways to ruin a pancake, and Dade appreciated the effort the cooks made to feed them all. Cooking for the fire camp was a thankless task. If those gals could dish it up, he figured he could swallow it.

  When he reached the start of the food line, he spotted Sarah Jo right away. Now there was a bright spot in his day. Her blue T-shirt announced Firemen do it hotter, the pink curlicues scrolling across her breasts. He knew she had on a matching hot-pink bra, too, because he could see the lacy strap peeking out. He shouldn’t be looking, but she was wearing that skirt he loved, some kind of clingy fabric that hugged her ass and stopped two feet above her hiking boots. He honestly had no idea where she’d gotten the idea that getup was camp wear, although it suited her.

  She glanced toward the start of the line, and parts of him perked right up.

  Which was bad. Dating anyone in camp was a messy mistake, and he had no reason to think she might be interested anyhow. Plus, it seemed unlikely she’d last out the summer. She couldn’t cook worth a damn, although her enthusiasm more than made up for it as far as he was concerned. Her interest in the team was unfeigned as she handed out Styrofoam cups of coffee and fussed over the cream and sugar. She remembered how he liked his, and she always asked how his day had been.

  Free-spirited, he’d thought, the first time he’d got an eyeful of the woman with multicolored shaggy hair, an impish grin, and more piercings than the Rogues had Harleys. He couldn’t decide what color her hair had been originally. Those chunky strands were a L’Oreal rainbow, browns and blonds mixed up with the occasional streak of red. Like her choice of hair color, every emotion she felt was painted on her face. Watching her talk up the other cooks was like staring at a merry-go-round. She was full of life and color, and damned if she didn’t make him dizzy. The ride would be worth it, though.

  He’d imagined riding her. More than once.

  Which wasn’t nice of him, but the truth was what it was and that T-shirt of hers wasn’t helping any. She looked away, bending over to grab something, and the cotton stretched tight over her breasts, gifting him with another flash of pink and lace. Christ. Her bra was pink and black. He was a goner.

  She looked back, and this time her gaze honed in on him like a bird dog sighting quail and her blue-gray eyes lit up. That he knew what color her eyes were was just one more sign he was in trouble.

  “Dade Johnson,” she announced loudly, nodding her head like she was continuing a conversation with herself. There wasn’t much he could say, so he just let her continue while he grabbed a plastic tray from the closest stack. “That’s just perfect.”

  Whatever.

  She was too young for him. As soon as he’d laid eyes on her, slinging eggs and hash browns, he’d started running numbers in his head, guessing at her age. He’d pegged her for maybe twenty-four, and he’d last
seen that side of thirty more than two years ago. She was part-Goth, part sass—but he was betting that, beneath the hard, polished exterior of all that hair and makeup, she was one hundred percent sweet, hot female. She damned certain deserved better than him, and no way she belonged out here in the woods.

  He didn’t care how she’d gotten hired on despite not being able to cook. Frankly, there weren’t too many people interested in camping for the summer, slinging eggs and burgers twelve hours a day for minimum wage. She looked more Corvette or racing car than RV, but she gave her job her all and he respected that.

  “Morning.” Nodding his head toward her, he grabbed a tray from the stack and eyed the dishes on offer.

  “That’s settled,” she said. He got the distinct impression that he’d just walked into a half-done conversation.

  She stepped around the food-laden table and stalked toward him, a determined look in her eye. He didn’t know what she wanted, but he’d seen fire start up a hill that way, unstoppable and devouring everything in its path. That look spelled trouble. He backed his ass up, doing a little fancy footwork. What. The …

  Heaven.

  Sarah Jo threw her arms around his neck, stretching up on tiptoe. Her enthusiastic embrace pinned the empty tray between them, his fingers curling around the edges. He’d catch hell from the boys for that one later. He felt cheated with that hard plastic pressed against his chest instead of Sarah Jo. Those millimeters separating him from her were a shame.

  She smelled good, too. Pancakes and syrup, with a hint of something floral and feminine. She definitely smelled better than he did.

  She pulled his head down toward her. There was nothing tentative or shy about her, just that happy laughter in her eyes and in her voice. “It’s going to be a real good morning, hotshot.”