Heated Read online

  Heated

  L. Nicole

  Copyright © 2020 by L. Nicole

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including but not limited to being stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, groups, businesses, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  WARNING: This book contains sexual situations, violence and other adult themes. Recommended for 18 and above.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Blurb

  Prologue

  1. June

  2. Lee

  3. June

  4. Lee

  5. June

  6. June

  7. Lee

  8. June

  9. Lee

  10. June

  11. Lee

  12. June

  13. Lee

  14. June

  15. June

  16. Lee

  17. June

  18. Lee

  19. Lee

  Epilogue

  Epilogue Two

  Keep In Touch

  Also by L. Nicole

  Lee Scott lived for work. He loved everything about being a fireman, and his work was his life. He was content, if not fully satisfied.

  It wasn’t until his path crossed, with June McCallister that he realized something was missing.

  Lee’s attraction to June raged stronger than any wildfire he had ever fought. The heat between them was so intense that it swept them both up immediately.

  One hot night together held so much promise. But when a large misunderstanding gets between them, it looks like all is lost.

  But some things are just meant to be…

  Lily is back with another hot fireman for you to enjoy to help heat your Summer nights even more. As always the story is spicy, sweet, heated, and safe and wrapped up in a pretty Happily Ever After Bow.

  Enjoy!

  Prologue

  45 Years Ago

  “At least they smell good,” Betty said.

  Sunshine poured over the piles of peaches, its rays permeating their fuzzy skin, the sweet perfume of their ripe fruit mixing with the relentless Tennessee heat.

  “Do you think it’ll ever let up?” Betty’s best friend, Hannah, asked. “It’s the thousandth day this summer without any rain.”

  “Yeah, maybe in October,” Betty replied, rolling her eyes as she watched a pickup roll up to them.

  Standing on the edge of her parent’s fruit farm, she and Hannah were charged with manning the stand on the road out front. About every thirty minutes someone would stop and buy a bunch of fruit from them, and then be on their merry way.

  They sold all kinds of other fruit, but today it was peaches, and all Betty could do was imagine how good the peach cobbler she knew her Mama was baking in the house right now was going to taste.

  Although she’s eighteen already, she’s in no hurry to move out, but she often dreamed about the day she finally would.

  Betty has plans. Big plans.

  In a few years, when her parents don’t need her around so much and the farm is doing better, she’s promised herself she’s moving to San Francisco to pursue her painting career.

  In the meantime, she’s happy to help her parents out. And spending her summers working with Hannah made it all a little more fun.

  Hannah nudged her as the man in the truck emerged from the cab of his pickup. Betty followed her gaze to see what all the fuss was about and stopped short, her breath catching in her throat.

  He was handsome, that was for sure. A little too handsome for her taste. A man like that probably spent more time looking in the mirror than her and Hannah combined. That didn’t mean it wasn’t nice to look at him herself.

  He sauntered up to the stand, his pickup idling behind him.

  “How much for a pound of peaches?” he drawled, his eyes squinting at the two of them under his straw cowboy hat.

  “Two dollars for five pounds for the yellow ones,” Betty replied.

  The man looked her over, his eyes trailing over her curves and then back up to her bright green eyes. He couldn’t help but smile at her beauty.

  “How much for the white ones?”

  “Three dollars for five pounds,” she replied, smiling at him.

  “Why are they more expensive?”

  “They’re sweeter than the yellow ones,” Betty said. She couldn’t stop looking at him — his ocean blue eyes were kind and gentle. “But I’ll sell them to you for two dollars.”

  The man smiled, his face lighting up, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

  “That’s mighty kind of you,” he said, putting a hand out to shake hers. As soon as she pressed her hand into his, his large fingers wrapped around it, enclosing it with his warmth.

  Sparks of electricity flowed between them.

  Undeniable. Intense. Passionate.

  Their eyes widened at the chemistry between them, both taken off guard by the sudden connection.

  “I’ll take them,” he said, releasing her hand.

  “Great,” she demurred.

  “I’m Don,” he said, nodding to her, a slow smile forming on his lips.

  “Hi, Don, I’m Betty,” she said.

  He ran a hand through his short brown hair, smiling sheepishly at her, before asking her the most important question of his life.

  “May I have your phone number, too, Betty?” he asked hopefully.

  Betty was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen and now that he’d had the honor of touching her, he wasn’t about to walk away without trying to see her again.

  Luckily, Betty was having the same reaction.

  “Oh,” she gasped, as Hannah nudged her. “Of course.”

  Hannah bagged up the peaches and handed Don the bag after he’d paid her. Betty grabbed the receipt from Hannah and quickly wrote her number on the back before handing it to him.

  “I’ll be calling tomorrow,” he said, smiling.

  He turned away, sauntering back to his truck with a smile.

  Betty watched him drive away, her eyes full of stars.

  “You’re gonna marry that guy,” Hannah said, standing beside her.

  “I could do worse,” Betty murmured.

  “You could do a lot worse,” Hannah agreed.

  The truck disappeared over the horizon, the scent of peaches hanging heavy in the air as Betty’s heart pounded with excitement, the possibilities spinning in her mind.

  Don sank his teeth into one of the peaches on his way home, the sweetness of the fleshy fruit only surpassed by the memory of Betty’s smile. He pulled into his driveway, tucking the peach pit and the receipt into the front pocket of his jeans, his heart full of hope.

  1

  June

  My dog, Lucy, shudders in my parent’s upstairs bathtub.

  “Shh, baby, it’s okay,” I whisper, petting her and doing my best to console her rattled nerves. Outside, flashes and sparks explode in the darkened sky, making my poor dog think the world is ending.

  But it isn’t. Not yet anyway.

  It’s just the yearly torture that all dogs are forced to endure called Fourth of July in America.

  Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol and consuming large amounts of barbecued meat isn’t a sufficient way to celebrate for most Americans, so they perform the yearly ritual of ‘blowing shit up’ throughout the weekend.

  And my poor pup pays the price.

  I’ve had Lucy for ten years n
ow, and each year, we’ve gone through this nightmare. So, I know by now that nothing is going to help her calm down except hanging out in the bathtub (her idea) and playing loud classical music to drown out the noise (my idea).

  Also, petting. Lots and lots of petting.

  So, here I am, sitting in the dry bathtub, endlessly caressing my shaking dog and trying to figure out exactly what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.

  I’m thirty-three now and at the biggest crossroads of my life. I’ve been in school to be a teacher, and I just received my master’s. Getting a job has proven to be a whole different issue. I was in the middle of trying to figure out where to settle down when my parents died in a car accident a month ago.

  They lived full and amazing lives, and although what happened was a tragic way to go, I’m glad they went together, and it was over fast and painlessly. They are together now, even in death, and that comforted me.

  Now, instead of trying to find a good school district to work in, I’ve come back to the town I grew up in to settle my parent’s estate.

  I highly doubt this small Tennessee town is where I’ll end up.

  Mom and Dad loved it here. They grew up here, they met here, and then they planted their own deep roots in Townsend, after getting married in one of the only churches in town away from the tourist trap chapels in Gatlinburg.

  With a population of only five hundred they knew everyone, and everyone knew them.

  Now, they’re gone, and I get to spend the rest of my life missing them.

  I just arrived a week ago and I’ve been busy going through their things and figuring out what to save and what to donate, before I decide if I’m going to sell the house.

  It’s a gorgeous property and I grew up here, too. So, it holds so much history and so many memories that selling it will be very hard on me. At the same time, living in this teeny tiny town is something I put behind me a long time ago. Once I went away to college in Memphis, I never moved back.

  But I’m back now with a bang, as I’m reminded so violently of by a huge roman candle that explodes outside of the bathroom window. Lucy whimpers and burrows into my arms.

  “Oh, baby, it’ll be over soon enough,” I lie. I know the fireworks will last the entire weekend and most likely, by the end of it, she and I both will be completely on edge. Right now, though, I’m concentrating on making it through the night.

  It’s a small town and apparently that means people here have nothing better to do than to— you guessed it — blow shit up.

  As we spend the new few hours in the tub, I can’t help but reminisce about growing up in this house. It’s a cornflower blue Victorian, with white trim, built in 1898 and surrounded by gorgeous landscaping that my mother painstakingly tended to for decades. Wrap around porches look out onto the surrounding acre behind it, with the front sidewalk winding towards the street.

  When my parents bought this place they’d just come back from spending five years in San Francisco and had decided city life moved too fast for them. They moved back to the place where they met. Still young and eager to be a part of the community they’d been raised in, they jumped in with both feet. They fell in love with this house as soon as they saw it.

  My parent’s house was right on the edge of downtown, surrounded by little storefronts and a few other residences.

  Which only contributed to the number of fireworks exploding around us, unfortunately.

  Mom and Dad took it all in stride, though. They’d get a permit each year and block off the entire block in front of their house, have a band set up and food and drinks for everyone and invite the whole town.

  Not this year, though. No, they were gone, but the town was still having a party outside the windows. I was stuck inside with a trembling Lucy, or I’d be out there myself, even if it was all bittersweet now that they were gone.

  I loved my parents. The short time I’d been back had helped me feel a little bit closer to them. Going through their things felt weird and intrusive, but someone had to do it and I couldn’t decide what to save or keep without looking through every box and trunk that they’d collected over the years.

  Some things were more precious than others. I smiled, remembering the few things I’d found so far. Mom had kept all sorts of things, even a lock hair from my first haircut. Every drawing I’d scribbled as a kid.

  The usual Mom things.

  But it was what I found in my Dad’s belongings that made my heart melt. I’d heard the story a million times of how they met, of course.

  The story goes that Dad bought peaches from Mom and she agreed to give him the white peaches for the same amount as the cheaper yellow peaches. He’d been smitten immediately, and he’d asked for her number before he’d driven away. I’d always thought it was a cute story.

  But until I found an old cigar box the other day tucked away in the back of Dad’s closet, I didn’t realize that he’d kept the peach pit and the receipt with Mom’s phone number scrawled on the back of it all these years.

  I’d spent an hour bawling after I’d found them.

  It was just like him to save something like that. He was that sweet. He and Mom had been perfect for each other, and so fortunate to have found love together. The fact that I had them as an example of what love is supposed to look like made me feel that if I ever found someone to love like that, I’d never let them go.

  That hadn’t happened yet, despite my thinking that maybe a relationship was on the way a few times. Nothing ever really panned out.

  Someday, though, I just might find someone that will put the kind of stars in my eyes that appeared every time my mom looked at my dad.

  At least that’s what I hoped for.

  I’d put the peach pit and the receipt, and all the other sentimental things I’d found so far, in a storage bin in his study and knew I’d be adding to it later.

  Right now, my focus is on getting through these next few months and somehow come out of the other end with a few answers about exactly where I wanted to settle down myself.

  2

  Lee

  For the tenth time, we pulled the hose out of the truck, hauled it over to a brush fire on the side of the road, and sprayed it until all signs of life were gone.

  “Fireworks are illegal in city limits,” the Chief told the teenagers huddled nervously nearby. “You’re lucky this wasn’t worse.”

  “Sorry, Chief,” one of them replied, shuffling his feet and looking down at the pavement. “You gonna call our folks?”

  “Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “Just don’t make us come back out here tonight, alright?”

  “Sure thing, Chief,” he said, perking back up and smiling at his buddies. “Thank you so much!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he replied, going back to the truck, the rest of my company following behind.

  I hate Independence Day.

  I don’t hate what it stands for, but as a firefighter, it is hands down the most annoying day of the year.

  Usually, it was full of fires and accidents. You show up and help people in the midst of what is usually the worst day of their lives. Not on the Fourth of July, nope. You show up and almost always it’s some guy so drunk he’s pissing his pants because a hot firecracker went off in his hand or the vicinity of his junk or something. Usually, you’ve got even drunker friends or relatives trying to take care of him and only making things worse.

  Call after call of bullshit like this in one night would make you hate it, too, no matter how pretty the fireworks are.

  But, we struggle through one call and hurry to the next, until we’re all so tired we can’t even see straight. On nights like these, I sleep more soundly than most, that’s for sure.

  “What time is it?” Rob asks. Rob’s a twenty-year veteran in our company and one of the toughest guys you’ll ever meet. He can run ten miles without stopping and he’s forty years old. He also hates this night as much as I do.

  “Eleven-eleven,” I said, after I looked at my watch. “Mak
e a wish.”

  “I wish that another firecracker doesn’t go off for the rest of the night,” Rob scoffs.

  In answer, a huge bottle rocket exploded in the distance.

  “Oh, come on, dude,” Jimmy said to him. “The night is young!” Jimmy is a younger addition to our company, and a junior firefighter. He’s eighteen and full of piss and vinegar and when he’s not working on the engine with us, he proudly uses his role in the fire department to get laid. He’s trying to rack up more notches on his bed post than Hugh Heffner—and well on his way.

  “Yeah and so are most of these fools setting off explosives, with no regard for what fires they may cause,” Tony said. “Kind of like you.”

  “Hey, I’m putting them out, not starting them,” Jimmy said. “I only start fires in panties.” He gave us an exaggerated wink and we all groaned in unison.

  “Look, kid,” I said, throwing an arm around him. “The first rule of being a man is not talking about the pussy you get, understood?”

  “It’s hard not to talk about it,” Jimmy said.

  “Well, if you want to keep getting it, you’ll learn to shut your mouth,” I said. “Ladies hate it when you run your mouth.”

  “I know,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve already pissed off a few for bragging.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Learn from your mistakes, young man.”

  “I’m not that young,” he said, causing all of us to roar with laughter.

  “You’re so fucking young, you have no idea how young you are,” the Chief said, shaking his head. “Now, shut up and let’s go to the next call.”