by Olivia Rush
When it finally was time for lunch, I was nearly a nervous wreck. I gathered the kids up and led them to the back area of the school for an outdoor lunch along with the rest of the students. Once the kids were seated on the grass, happily munching their food, I hurried off toward the garden, eager to see what it was that Ethan wanted.
The school garden was a lovely little area, a nice little nook that allowed in natural light but was still secluded from the rest of the green space. And sure enough, there was Ethan.
His eyes locked onto mine as soon as I arrived.
“Hey!” he said, his eyes lighting up.
“Um, something you wanted to talk about?” I asked.
He looked at me curiously. “You OK?” he asked. “You’re looking a little pale, Miss Parker.”
“It’s just that, um, I guess I don’t handle surprises very well.”
He smiled. “Maybe this will be the exception, then. Come here.”
I stepped up to him, suddenly feeling very small in his commanding presence. Ethan took off his hat and looked away for a moment before turning his eyes back to mine.
“Chloe, I never would’ve guessed that someone like you would enter my life, especially in the way that you did. But I can’t put into words how glad I am that it happened. You’re bossy, you’re stubborn, and you can be a real pain in my ass sometimes. But you’re also strong-willed, independent, and fearless. And most importantly, you’re the woman that I love.”
Then, he reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a small, dark red box. I nearly jumped out of my shoes when I realized what it was.
“I wanted to wait until this weekend to do this, but something about you today…I don’t know. I just can’t wait any longer.”
He popped open the box, revealing a gorgeous diamond ring.
“Chloe Parker, will you—”
Speaking of not being able to wait any longer… “Yes!” I shouted, tears in my eyes as I threw my arms around him.
Then, to my total shock, the sound of cheers broke out behind me. I turned and was confronted with nearly every third grade class, along with their teachers, and Stone. Even Mitch was there to watch.
I turned back to Ethan.
“You saw them, and you didn’t say anything?”
“I couldn’t resist,” he said, flashing me that smile, that loving, warm smile that I knew now I’d be lucky enough to see every day for the rest of my life.
I gave him a playful swat on the chest before kissing him again. He slipped the ring on my finger, and more cheers broke out from the little audience.
“I love you,” said Ethan, pulling me close.
“And I love you, Chief Stokes,” I said.
And then we kissed, the first of thousands more kisses to come in our budding new love.
Extras
I hope you enjoyed the first book of the Hot Boy Series. I am now accepting pre-orders for book two, Scorchin'!
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Scorchin’ Sneak Peek Book 2
New York’s hottest fireman just got hotter.
As a top journalist, I’ll do anything for a story.
The hotter the story, the better.
And hot’s just what I get when Stone Black from the Fire Station 128 came into my life.
Love wasn’t part of the plan, but those gorgeous green eyes and a hose big enough to put out my fire won me over.
I try to keep it physical, my career allowing no time for romance, but I soon learn there’s more than meets the eye with Stone.
He’s not just one of New City’s finest fireman, he’s a loving single father.
Now, he’s ready to tear down my professional boundaries, to take what he wants.
Soon I’m dangerously close to my story, and only Stone can protect me.
And when I find out I’m carrying his baby, it’s clear that if I’m not careful I just might get burned.
Maybe…that’s just what I want.
Chapter 1
CALLIE
“Are you kidding me? You really want me to write an article about a bake sale?”
I sat back in my office chair and shook my head. My fire-red hair fell in loose curls around my electric blue eyes, and a puff of air from the side of my mouth only served to bounce the curls around a bit before they fell right back onto my face.
“It’s not just any bake sale—it’s the fourth annual autumn bake sale,” said Meg, my pretty blonde coworker. “And if that wasn’t enough, it’s for one of the most expensive private schools in the city. Look.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed by that or something? I mean, what’re the odds that these Pilates moms actually made any of that stuff?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘impressed’ is the right word. And you never know about the cooking skills.”
“Am I a bad reporter or something?” I asked. “No, there’s no way that could be it. But why am I having such a hard time finding a damn story?”
“Beats me.”
I stood up from my desk and walked over to the windows of New York Weekly, the magazine where I’d been working as a reporter for the last few years. I spread my arms out like wings in front of the sweeping view of Midtown Manhattan, the view that had never failed to inspire some of my best work.
After I’d gotten my fill of the gorgeous city vista, I turned back to the bustling office space.
“I mean, seriously,” I said. “We live in the center of the universe! How hard can it be to find a story?”
“You tell me,” said Meg. “I’ve got my work lined up for the next month.”
“Yeah, well, you’re doing social calendar stuff,” I said. “There’s never any shortage of rich people having charity balls or whatever.”
Meg raised her eyebrow at me.
“Are you suggesting that covering the lifestyles of the exceedingly rich and painfully famous isn’t heartwarming work?”
I let out a lilting laugh.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t know how I’d be able to write stories about the kind of people who have walk-in closets bigger than my entire apartment.”
“Someone’s jealous,” said Meg, the raised eyebrow staying in place. “Maybe you need to actually get back out there into the dating world and try and land one of these guys.”
Another laugh.
“No way!” I said. “Can you imagine dating one of those guys? They come in two flavors: Agro-Alpha Finance Guy or More-Sophisticated-Than-Thou Rich Kid. All the money in the world couldn’t make me date one of them…again.”
Then I waved my hands in front of my face, my curls bouncing wildly again.
“OK, enough of this,” I said. “You’re getting me distracted. I need to find a new story—something with hooks, something with drama, something that’ll catch the eye of the businessman or woman grabbing their morning coffee at their newsstand.”
“Don’t forget the human touch,” said Meg.
“That too,” I said, raising a slim finger toward Meg. “Gotta have the human angle.”
“So, you basically want to write the best story of all time?” asked Meg.
I snapped my fingers as if she’d just said the most brilliant thing possible.
“That’s right!”
Meg’s green eyes went slightly wide.
“Um, I was kind of joking.”
“Maybe you were,” I said. “But I’m not. I’ve been turning in passable stuff for the last year, like I’ve been coasting on autopilot. But the thing is I haven’t been challenging myself. I need to write something amazing, something that’ll define my career.”
“And you’re sure the bake sale isn’t it?” asked Meg, her mouth twisting up slightly into a smirk.
I reached over and gave her a playful swat on the shoulder before plopping my feet on my small, cluttered desk and flicking on the
little TV in the corner that I occasionally watched for story ideas.
The image on the screen captured my attention instantly. It was a close-up of a fire, the orange flicks of flame darting out into the air like a dragon’s tongue. Smoke billowed from the building, and the clear, blue sky provided a sharp contrast to the chaos of the blaze.
“Holy crap,” I said, crossing my arms on my lap and leaning forward. “What the hell is that?”
“You haven’t heard about th—”
My eyes still locked onto the TV, I held up a finger toward Meg. I pressed the “unmute” button on the remote and listened carefully.
“…footage last Friday of the raging fire in Williamsburg. Luckily, no one was on the floor at the time of the fire, the offices occupied by Waterford Financial Services, a thirty-man holdings company. Firefighters were easily able to take care of the blaze. A local crewman from Brooklyn’s Ladder 128 had this to say about the fire.”
A man appeared on the screen, and I don’t think I would be exaggerating if I said he was the best looking man I’d ever seen in my life. His hair was as black as lacquer, his eyes were a gorgeous, emerald green, and his jaw was so strong and wide it looked like it was carved out of granite. His nose was slim yet masculine, and his red lips had a charming sensuality to them. And though the shot on the TV was only from the neck up, it was easy to see that there was a strong, built body hiding just off camera.
“Terrible stuff,” he said, his voice deep and resonant, almost hypnotizing. “But luckily my boys and I were able to make it to the scene and get the fire under control before anyone was hurt. Some days that’s the best you can hope for.
My eyes shot to the chyron at the bottom of the screen where his name was displayed.
Stone Black.
I mouthed the name, letting the feel of the letters play on my tongue. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me—I felt like a kid developing a googly-eyed crush on the handsome substitute teacher.
“Holy gorgeous fireman,” said Meg, leaning forward next to me. “You think I can get a calendar with him in it?”
Meg’s voice snapped me back to reality.
“I don’t think fireman calendars are a real thing,” I said, my eyes still locked onto the screen despite Mr. Stone Black having long gone away.
“One way to find out,” said Meg. “We could head down to their station later tonight and ask. Worst they can do is say, ‘no.’ Best thing is that they might let you take a ride down that fireman’s pole of theirs.”
“Meg!” I said, letting out another burst of laughter.
“Just sayin’, is all,” she said.
“Seriously though,” I said, raising my voice to speak above the loud clanging of a phone going off in the office next to mine, “that might be it.”
“What?” asked Meg.
“The story that I’m looking for,” I said. “That might be it right there.”
“As thrilling as the exploits of a sexy fireman might be, I’m not sure if that’s really Weekly’s typical fare.”
“No,” I said, pointing back toward the TV. “The fire!”
Meg’s eyes went wide.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “You want to look into the fires around town.”
I was a little taken aback.
“Wait,” I said. “‘Fires,’ as in plural?”
Meg shook her head.
“Sometimes I think you spend too much time at these offices for your own damn good, girl,” said Meg.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, these fires have been breaking out for the last month! I think this is the third one.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” said Meg. “They’re thinking it has to do with some bad software or something causing the servers in these places to overheat. Who knows?”
“But they still haven’t figured out what’s behind them?”
“Not so far. I mean, it could just be a coincidence. Fires do happen, after all, and three in the same month isn’t that beyond the pale.”
I sat back and thought the matter over.
“What if it’s not just a series of coincidences?” I asked. “What if there’s, you know, someone behind it? Or lots of someones?”
“Then that sounds like a matter for the NYPD and FDNY, not for reporters who work for a weekly magazine about fashion and city gossip.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, my dear Meg,” I said. “Because I’m thinking a story like this might be just the thing to give our magazine the prestige and respect it so rightly deserves. Not to mention give my career a little boost.”
“Can’t forget about number one,” said Meg with a smirk.
“Hey, if my stellar reporting ends up putting a little shine on my name, so much the better, you know?”
Then Meg’s expression turned somewhat grim.
“I don’t know, Cal,” she said. “I mean, this isn’t just some gossip. What if you did really dig into the matter and found out that there were, you know, actual criminals behind what’s going on? And what if they found out that you were trying to write a damn front-page story about everything? I doubt they’d be cool with that, to say the least.”
I glanced off to the side, considering the matter.
“Then I’d just talk my way out of it or something.”
“Famous last words,” said Meg. “And that’s all to say nothing of what might happen if the FNDY or NYPD caught you sniffing around. This isn’t some detective mystery. They might arrest you.”
I knew that she was right, that she was telling me all logical stuff that I needed to keep in mind. But that didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for just how much I wanted to do this article.
“You’re gonna need to run this by Danvers, either way,” said Meg. “And he’s probably going to tell you everything that I’ve just said, so get ready for that.”
Joe Danvers was the editor-in-chief of our humble little rag, and something of a mentor and father figure to me. He’d taken me under his wing since day one, and though I’d always been convinced he did this because he recognized my amazing potential, sometimes I found myself wondering if it was because he knew I was the type of reporter he needed to keep a close eye on.
“Shit, you’re right,” I said, realizing that I’d been getting ahead of myself. “Might as well go talk to him now. If he’s gonna put the kibosh on this whole thing it’s probably better that he does it now. But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna do everything I can to change his mind.”
Meg smirked.
“I wouldn’t expect any less of you, Cal.”
I sprang up out of my chair and headed toward Danvers’s office, forming my pitch in my mind as I weaved through tight knots of employees gathered here and there. The offices were even more frenzied than usual, and I wanted nothing more than to have my story out in front of me, ready for me to sink my teeth into.
“Come in!” called out Danvers in his rough, cigar-dried-out voice after I gave the door a quick rap.
I opened the door just a crack and slid in.
However much of a mess my desk was, Danvers’s office made it look like a neatly kept Zen garden. Papers were here and there; not one, not two, but three laptops were open on his desk; and cigar stubs littered the place like little dead cockroaches.
Danvers’s glanced up at me with his small, gray eyes, his jaw working on a piece of chewing gum. He was a heavyset guy of around fifty, his hair long gone, and his body a testament to what ignoring the gym in favor of your career can do.
But despite his less-than-top-notch looks, he was a hell of an editor, and kept this place running like a damn Swiss clock.
“I have a feeling I’m not gonna like whatever this is about,” he said, his little eyes narrowed in skepticism.
“I disagree,” I said, stepping gingerly through the thises and thats on the ground and sliding into one of the free seats across from his desk. “I think that once I tell you what I’ve got on my mind, you�
�re gonna fall in love with me all over again.”
The skeptical look on his face didn’t change one bit.
“OK,” I said, putting my hands out in front of me and just getting right into it. “So, I’ve been thinking about my next big story, and I’ve decided that I want to do something that’ll really put our humble little weekly on the map.”
The same skeptical expression stared back at me.
“So, instead of just covering the town’s gossip or interviewing yet another socialite about her upcoming charity ball, I was thinking that I could cover the fires that have been going on around town.”
The words hung in the air. Finally, after a time, Danvers spoke.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” he asked. “You want to investigate the fires? Are you out of your damn mind? Cal, you’re good at your job, but you’re not a damn detective.”
“I don’t mean that I’ll be trying to solve them or anything,” I said, keeping my voice nice and steady. “I mean that I’ll just be talking to the people who’ve been affected, maybe interviewing some of the firefighters who’ve helped put out some of the fires—that sort of thing.”
The image of Stone Black popped into my head, and it was all I could do to not totally lose focus.
Danvers sat back in his chair and folded his hands on his big belly.
“Like a snapshot sort of piece,” he said. “Kind of like, ‘this is how the city was when this was all going on’ deal.”
“That’s right,” I said, snapping my fingers. “A little slice-of-life of New York City in the year 2018. Something that’ll really be a Polaroid picture of the time we live in now.”
Danvers took a deep breath and thought the matter over.
“Something tells me that if I say ‘no’ you’re just gonna go ahead and work on this thing on your own time,” he said. “I know how you operate, Callie—nothing gets between you and a story. So, part of me’s thinking that I might as well sign off on this just so I can keep tabs on you.”
“Exactly,” I said, excitement taking hold of my voice. “Don’t want me to go too far off the reservation.”