by Pamela Clare
Chasing Fire
An I-Team/Colorado High Country Crossover Novel
Pamela Clare
www.pamelaclare.com
Contents
Chasing Fire
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Also by Pamela Clare
About the Author
Chasing Fire
An I-Team/Colorado High Country Crossover Novel
Published by Pamela Clare, 2018
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Cover Design by © Jaycee DeLorenzo/Sweet ‘N Spicy Designs
Image: Period Images
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Copyright © 2018 by Pamela Clare
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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All rights reserved.
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No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic format without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials by violating the author’s rights. No one should be expected to work for free. If you support the arts and enjoy literature, do not participate in illegal file-sharing.
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ISBN-10: 0-9987491-9-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-9987491-9-8
Created with Vellum
This book is dedicated to our courageous wildland firefighters and their families, who sacrifice so much to keep us all safe.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Russ Shumway for his insights on wildland firefighting. You helped me visualize a scenario I have (thankfully) never faced.
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Thanks as always to Michelle White, Benjamin Alexander, Jackie Turner, Shell Ryan, and Pat Egan Fordyce for their support during the writing of this book.
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To fans of the I-Team and Scarlet Springs series for their unwavering support. This book is for you.
Introduction
On July 9, 2016, two transients left an illegal campfire untended on private property in the mountains above Nederland, Colo., where they had trespassed. Embers from their campfire started a wildfire that threatened 1,000 mountain homes and the entire town of Nederland. More than 1,900 people were evacuated, and eight houses were burned before the fire was contained four days later. Nederland, which has burned to the ground before, was spared this time.
I just happened to be listening to Boulder County’s police and fire channel, as I often do while writing, and I heard the nightmare unfold. I was struck by the selflessness of firefighters and law enforcement officers as they did their best to protect lives. One deputy said over his radio, “We tried to evacuate the houses on this street but the entire street is engulfed!”
I couldn’t imagine standing where he was standing at that moment.
Colorado had recently purchased a 747 Supertanker, and the images of the jet flying over the town to drop flame retardant on burning mountainsides were stunning. Just as amazing to me personally was the news that the fire had burned to within 36 inches of my brother’s former in-laws’ home before being stopped by a direct hit from a slurry bomber.
Thankfully, no lives were lost in the Cold Springs Fire. At the end of the day, Colorado isn’t California. Fires here aren’t as severe as fires there.
In the aftermath of the Cold Springs Fire, the idea for this story was born. I wondered what it would be like to bring my two contemporary series together—the straight contemporary Colorado High Country series and my romantic suspense I-Team series. I had other writing priorities at the time, so this had to sit on the back burner.
Since then, catastrophic fires have devastated California, causing horrendous and unprecedented loss of life. The images from those fires and the stories of survivors are both chilling and heartbreaking. Who could imagine such a thing?
It is painfully clear that big fires have become a regular occurrence. Fighting them becomes more dangerous and challenging as more people move into the wildland-urban interface (WUI), building homes in areas that used to be far outside our cities. As local governments are unlikely to halt the expansion of towns and neighborhoods into the WUI, it becomes increasingly important that individual property owners work with firefighters to minimize the risks to their property—and to lives.
If you live in the WUI—in the mountains, in the chaparral, or in heavily wooded areas—contact your local fire department to find out what they think you should do to create defensible space around your home. Fire mitigation saves property, and it saves lives.
Above Nederland, one homeowner worked hard with the local fire department to mitigate fire risk on his land. He took the necessary steps, sacrificed some trees, made some alterations to his house—and I’m certain he’s glad he did. The eight houses that burned surrounded his, but his house still stands, an island untouched by the fire.
The best time to prepare for a catastrophic wildfire is long before it’s headed your way. Here in Colorado and much of the arid west, it’s not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when.
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Pamela Clare
Dec. 13, 2018
Chapter 1
A thunk woke Eric Hawke.
Beside him, Vicki moaned and stretched, the sheet slipping below her bare breasts. “He’s awake already?”
As much as Eric would have loved to start his day with a little sex, the toddler was loose in the house again. And that was the irony. The sex act produced children, which, in turn, made it hard to find time to have sex.
Eric glanced at his alarm clock, saw that it was just before six in the morning. “Go back to sleep. I need to get up anyway.”
He didn’t mind being the first one out of bed. He’d worked in search-and-rescue all his adult life and had been fire chief for the past seven years. He was used to odd hours and early mornings, and he loved this time of day. Besides, given how often he was away from home, he enjoyed the time with his son, and Vicki deserved a break.
He kissed her cheek, climbed out of bed, and pulled on a pair of boxer briefs and shorts.
Another thunk sent him hurrying down the hall to Caden’s room, which he found empty, a wet diaper sitting in the middle of the wooden floor together with a pair of pajama bottoms. It figured. At twenty-three months, Caden was a world-class escape artist and, apparently, a budding nudist, as well.
Eric hurried downstairs past the living room with its big fireplace and cathedral ceiling toward the kitchen, his heart skipping a beat the moment he saw. “Jesus!”
Caden had pushed a chair over to the kitchen counter and now sat on top of the refrigerator, naked from the waist down, a box of graham crackers in his hands. “Tookie.”
“Hey, little man, what are you doing up there?”
No wonder people got gray hair after having kids.
&nbs
p; “Tookie,” Caden said again.
“No cookies before breakfast.” Hawke took away the box of graham crackers, lifted his son into his arms, and headed back upstairs. “We need to get you dressed.”
While Caden chattered about Thomas the Tank Engine, Eric dressed him in a pair of dry training pants, shorts, and a little T-shirt that read, “I’m proof my mommy can’t resist firefighters.”
Eric wouldn’t lie. He liked that T-shirt.
“You’re all set.” He tousled his son’s dark hair. “Try to keep your britches on, okay?”
Back in the kitchen, he settled Caden in his high chair with some loose Cheerios and got busy scrambling eggs, making toast and coffee, and washing fruit. He enjoyed this morning routine, his life richer now than he’d imagined it could be. Vicki had entered his world, and everything had changed.
“Want some blueberries?” He put a few berries on Caden’s tray and couldn’t help but smile at the look of concentration on his son’s face as he picked up each berry to put it into his mouth. “You like those, don’t you?”
“He loves them.”
Eric glanced over his shoulder to find Vicki leaning against the door jam in her white bathrobe, her shoulder-length dark hair tangled, a smile on her sweet face. “Do you know where I found him?”
“On the table?”
Eric shook his head. “On top of the refrigerator.”
Vicki’s eyes went wide. “Good grief! We have to do something. He can’t have the run of the house when we’re asleep. If he had fallen…”
Eric had been a paramedic for as long as he’d been a firefighter. He knew what even a short fall could do to a small child. They lived in a huge, two-million-dollar multi-level house—a wedding present from Vicki’s gazillionaire father—and there were so many ways for an unsupervised toddler to hurt himself. They’d tried a dozen different kinds of baby gates, but Caden had climbed them all. They had a baby monitor, of course, but the little stinker was quiet when he got up to things he knew he shouldn’t be doing.
“I’m not sure what to do. Put iron bars over his door? Install a motion detector?”
Why did children gain mobility before they acquired sense?
Vicki’s eyes narrowed. “He takes after you, you know. Robin says you used to climb out of your crib, too. She says you climbed everything.”
Eric’s mother lived in a cabin on their property and watched Caden when he and Vicki were both at work. It was a convenient arrangement for everyone, but his mother talked too much. He opened his mouth to defend himself, but what she’d said was true. “Hey, it’s all good. I turned it into a career, didn’t I?”
His love of climbing had become serious when he was a teenager, landing him a coveted spot on the Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team straight out of high school. Rescue work had led him to wildland firefighting and then the Scarlet Springs Fire Department. Eventually, he’d become the youngest fire chief in the history of Scarlet Springs.
He got breakfast on the table and went back for the coffee, pouring half-and-half in Vicki’s and leaving his black. When he turned toward the table again, he found a small gift bag sitting beside his plate. “What’s that?”
Shit.
Had he forgotten an anniversary or something?
Vicki smiled, an excited sparkle in her eyes. “Open it and see.”
He handed Vicki her coffee, took a sip of his own, and sat. “Is it a new cam?”
Vicki laughed as if he’d said something stupid. “No. You don’t trust me to buy you climbing gear, remember?”
“Oh. Right.” He took the bag, reached inside, and searched through the tissue paper, his hand closing around something small and oblong that was made of hard plastic.
He drew it out—and stared.
Heart thudding, he met Vicki’s gaze, saw the joy in her eyes. “This is… Are you?”
She nodded. “I’m pregnant.”
A pang of tenderness filled his chest. She’d had such a rough time with Caden, twenty-six hours of labor ending with an emergency C-section. Eric wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d refused even to consider having another baby and demanded he get a vasectomy.
“But … how?”
She laughed. “You know how. You were there.”
That’s not what he’d meant. “It took so long with Caden, and you only went off the pill last month. I thought it would take six months, maybe a year.”
“I guess we’ve gotten better at making babies because we nailed it on the first try.”
“Well, that takes some of the fun out of it.” Eric meant that as a joke, but the moment his words were out, he saw that Vicki hadn’t taken it that way.
Good job, dumb shit. Any other stupid things you’d like to say?
“That was just a stupid joke.” He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “How are you feeling?”
She’d had terrible morning sickness with Caden.
“Fine so far.” Her smile returned, but there was a hint of vulnerability in those brown eyes now. “Are you happy?”
“God, yes! I’m elated, stunned. I’m so excited that I’m acting like an idiot.” Eric got out of his chair and knelt before her, taking her hands in his, and kissing them. “I love you, Vicki. Because of you, I’m the happiest man on earth. Never doubt that.”
Behind him on the counter, his pager went off.
He got to his feet, crossed the room, scrolled through the message, not liking what he read, but not surprised either.
“What is it?” Vicki asked.
“Another red flag warning.” They’d had red flag warnings every day for the past ten days thanks to this endless dry, hot, windy weather.
The mountains that surrounded Scarlet were in prime condition to burn.
Marc Hunter toweled his hair dry, wrapped the towel around his waist, and stepped out of the bathroom into the bedroom. He headed to the walk-in closet he shared with Sophie and tossed a navy-blue Denver Police Department polo and a pair of dark green tactical cargo pants onto the nearby chair.
Today, he and Julian Darcangelo were heading up to Scarlet Springs, a weird little mountain town known for its good beer, to take part in a joint training exercise with the US Marshals Service and other law enforcement agencies. The exercise was intended to foster interagency cooperation or some shit, but Marc had signed on as a way to escape the heat and spend a day in the mountains with friends.
He and Darcangelo had known each other for eight years now, both of them employed by the DPD—Darcangelo as head of vice and Marc as SWAT captain. Okay, so that’s not how they’d met. Marc had been an escaped convict at the time, and Darcangelo had hunted his ass down and brought him in.
It had been the start of a beautiful friendship.
The bedroom door opened and Sophie stepped in, still wearing that lavender silk robe he loved so much, her strawberry-blond hair damp. She closed the door behind her and locked it, her lips curving in a sexy smile.
She walked over to him with slow, seductive steps, took hold of his towel, and yanked it from his body, letting it fall to the floor. “The kids are still asleep.”
He liked the way her mind worked. “We shouldn’t let that go to waste.”
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God, he loved her—her mind, her body, her big heart. She was a wonderful mother to their two kids, Chase and Addy, and no man could ask for a better partner. She’d stood by him when the rest of the world had condemned and forsaken him, risking her career and her life to save his. Without her, he’d have rotted in prison—or died with a shank in his back.
What a damned lucky thing it was that he’d given her a ride home from that stupid high school graduation party all those years ago. He’d wanted to protect her from a group of asshole guys who’d been hopped up on meth, but in the end, it was she who had saved him.
He’d given up worrying about whether he was worthy of her and focused instead on being the man she thought he was. He’d made it his life’s work to please her, both in an
d out of bed. He knew her moods, her fears, her dreams. He knew how to make her laugh, how to comfort her. He knew what made her scream, how to make her come fast, how to hold her on the edge until her nails dug into his back and her every exhale was a plea for release.
He watched as Sophie took his cock in hand and stroked him to readiness, desire naked on her beautiful face.
His gaze locked with hers, Marc grasped her wrist, drew her hand from his aching cock to his lips, and kissed her palm. Then he gave her a little shove, toppling her backward onto their queen-sized bed.
She gasped as she hit the mattress, her robe falling open to reveal paradise.
Without breaking eye contact, he dropped to his knees, forced her thighs wide apart, and stroked her just where she needed it most. “Mmm. You’re wet.”
“Get inside me already!”
Her impatience made him chuckle. “What’s the rush?”
He lavished attention on her clit, watching with satisfaction as she raised one clenched hand above her head, her eyes drifting shut.
“Oh, yes.”
He kept up the rhythm until his fingers were drenched and she was writhing on the bed. Then he lowered his head, drew her swollen clit into his mouth, and suckled.