Hot Attraction

She’s playing with fire!

Reporter Avery Kincaid always gets what she wants. After an inferno tears through the Huron National Forest and nearly kills a group of campers, Avery’s instincts kick in. There’s definitely more to this story. She’ll need to use every ounce of sex appeal she has to get the scoop from a certain scorching-hot elite firefighter...

Only, Hotshot Dawson Hess wants nothing to do with the press. Especially when they get too close to the flames...or the truth. He’s guarded and closemouthed—except when he’s using that sexy mouth to drive Avery wild. What she doesn’t know is that Dawson needs something from her...and if she can’t take the heat, she’d better stay out of this Hotshot’s bed!

“I won’t leave you here alone...”

Avery snorted. “I’m perfectly safe.”

Not from him. Dawson had spent the day cursing himself for not giving in to his desires. He wouldn’t deny the chemistry between them any longer, no matter how hot it burned.

Now he had to give her a reason to want him to stay—to want him...

He reached out and wrapped his hand around the oar she’d used to defend herself from an imagined intruder. Then he pulled it and her back toward him, as if he was reeling her in.

Her beautiful turquoise eyes widened. Maybe she felt it—the hardness of his body, the tension coiling inside him.

He should walk away now...run, even...from this siren who just wanted a story. But it was too late.

“Dawson...?”

“You’re not safe,” he said. “You’re not safe at all...”

He lowered his mouth to hers, sweeping his tongue over her lower lip as the fire consumed him.

Dear Reader,

Hot Attraction is the second book in my Hotshot Heroes series for Mills & Boon Blaze. In the first book, Red Hot, insurance agent Fiona O’Brien took a risk and fell in love with Hotshot firefighter Wyatt Andrews. But she nearly lost him when he risked his life rescuing campers trapped in a wildfire. Fiona learned to trust Wyatt and their love to survive. The Hotshots learned the fire was deliberately set, and they have an arsonist on the loose.

In Hot Attraction, the Hotshots are still dealing with the arsonist’s fires and trying to discover who he is without alerting the media. Big-city reporter and hometown girl Avery Kincaid knows there’s more to the fire than the US Forest Service has admitted. For one, she knows Wyatt Andrews wasn’t the only firefighter who rescued the campers—her nephews were two of the lost Boy Scouts. But the man they credit for saving them is Dawson Hess. She wants Hotshot Hess to get the credit he deserves. She also senses there’s more to the fire. Dawson has an aversion to reporters but can’t deny his attraction to beautiful Avery. He has his hands full trying to keep the town, Avery and his heart safe.

Happy reading!

Lisa Childs

Ever since LISA CHILDS read her first romance novel (a Mills & Boon story, of course) at age eleven, all she ever wanted was to be a romance writer. With over forty novels published with Mills & Boon, Lisa is living her dream. She is an award-winning, bestselling romance author. Lisa loves to hear from readers, who can contact her on Facebook, through her website, lisachilds.com, or her snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435.

With great appreciation for all the heroic Hotshots and firefighters who risk their lives to protect us!

Thank you for your hard work and sacrifice!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

Extract

Copyright

1

“NO!” THE SHARP denial hung in the air even after the door slammed, leaving Avery Kincaid standing in the foyer, her mouth open with shock.

Laughter rang out behind her. “First time a guy ever turned you down for a kiss?”

“Two guys,” Avery pointed out to her amused sister. “They both told me no.” She watched through the window as her nephews ran down the driveway to jump through the side door of the van that had pulled up. They had wriggled away from her before she could give them good-bye kisses.

“Well, they’re twelve,” Kim said, her deadpan delivery cracking Avery up. “Not that that ever prevented you from getting kisses before.”

“When I was twelve, too,” Avery said. “Maybe eleven.” She turned back to her sister.

Kim looked older than five years her senior now—older than thirty-two. She had lines around her mouth and eyes, a tension in her that Avery had never seen before. She kept glancing out the window even though the van—with the boys inside it—was gone. They’d just gotten a ride with a friend’s mom to soccer practice.

“Are you okay?” Avery asked. “They’re only going to be gone a little while.” She wasn’t certain exactly how long soccer practice lasted. She usually wasn’t around to catch their games much less their practices.

Kim’s eyes, the same turquoise blue of Avery’s, filled with tears. “I didn’t think they’d make it to become teenagers.” Her voice cracked. “I didn’t think I would ever see them again—hold them again...”

Avery closed her arms around her sister and held her trembling body. “It’s okay. They’re fine.”

Avery trembled a little, too, as she remembered her sister’s desperate call two months ago. She’d been getting ready to board a plane in Chicago and head home to Northern Lakes, Michigan. Then she’d been just a reporter preparing to cover the story of a wildfire consuming acres of national forest. After Kim’s call, she’d been an aunt desperate for news about her nephews lost in the middle of that national forest. They and their Boy Scout troop had been camping in the forest when the wildfire struck with no warning and not enough time for them to escape.

“It’s just so hard,” Kim said. “So hard to let them leave again...”

It probably wouldn’t matter how many weeks passed. A mother would never forget how close she had come to losing her children.

Avery squeezed her sister a little more tightly before releasing her. “They’re fine.”

Thanks to the special team of firefighters who’d rescued them from the blaze. She walked over to the coffee table where the boys had left their photo of the Huron Hotshots. Hotshots were a special team of the US Forest Service fire department—the firefighters who battled blazes on the front line.

Avery had included that in the short special feature she’d done about the fire. To write the copy for the feature, she’d researched Hotshots. But she hadn’t learned enough. Her story had been about Hotshots in general, not the specific men who’d battled the Huron National Forest blaze—not the Huron Hotshots. Because they had refused all interviews...

There was more to the story—about the firefighters and about the fire. The tight nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that; she had that feeling to thank for her career—for moving her from a small-town television station to larger networks, first out of Detroit and now Chicago. While the Chicago station was a national network, Avery wasn’t on very much. She had to fight for airtime. And she suspected this story would make that fight much easier.

She wanted to dig deeper, cover the Huron Hotshots in more detail. Most importantly she wanted to find out what had really caused the Huron National Forest fire...

And maybe she could start by getting closer to one particular Hotshot. Maybe then he would grant her an interview.

She picked up the photo of the twenty team members. It was a press release photo—the only thing the US Forest Service had released to the media. The Hotshots hadn’t released any information about the fire or the rescue. Of course they had been busy battling some more blazes. Fortunately those bigger fires had been in other areas. Northern Lakes hadn’t recovered yet from the fire that had nearly taken the lives of so many children. And every once in a while another hot spot flared back up...

She shuddered as the nightmare returned to her, the knowledge of what could have happened had it not been for these men. She could have lost her nephews and even the town and everyone in it. Maybe that was why she kept coming back every few weeks—if only to stay a day or two—since the fire. Because nearly losing it had reminded her of how much she missed home.

But that was only part of the reason she’d taken a week off from the television station in Chicago. It wasn’t to vacation, as she’d told her boss, but to cover what her instincts told her would be the most important story of her career.

The story was there—in that photo. In the one soot-streaked face that had caught her attention even before the boys had pointed him out. The grime did nothing to disguise his chiseled features—the square jaw with the slight dimple in the chin, the high cheekbones, the line of his supple lips...

She would like to kiss those lips.

The other guys were all grinning. But he looked serious—focused—his eyes the only lightness in his face. Were they blue? Gray? Silver?

She couldn’t tell—no matter how closely she studied his picture.

“I should bring something by the station again,” Kim murmured as she peered over Avery’s shoulder at the photo.

“What?”

“I know it’s not enough,” Kim said. “That there’s really no way to thank them for saving my kids. But I’ve been taking cookies and brownies to them when the Huron Hotshots are here in Northern Lakes.”

Avery smiled. Kim was so like their mother, who’d headed up every church and school bake sale in Northern Lakes. Their parents had moved downstate when Dad traded his high school teaching job for a college position. Apparently Kim had taken over for Mom. “You’re thanking them with baked goods?”

“You have a better idea?”

Avery stared at that face—and the heavily muscled body that went with it. His arms bulged, his chest pushed against the thin material of his damp soot-stained yellow T-shirt. He was in the front row, so he was hunched down, his thighs straining against the pants that matched his T-shirt. Oh, she had some ideas how she’d like to thank him...

Kim had known her too long and too well. She smacked Avery’s shoulder. “Hey! You shouldn’t be thinking like that.”

“I’m not married,” Avery said. “I can think like that all I want.”

Kim sighed. She’d been married since she was twenty—when she’d gotten pregnant during her sophomore year of college. Rick had dropped out and started driving a truck to support his new family. He was gone a lot. Fortunately Kim still missed him when he was away.

Avery had never missed any of her past boyfriends much after they’d broken up. But then she’d always been so focused on her career—and chasing down the next big story—that she hadn’t had any serious relationships. She couldn’t imagine being as settled as Kim was, in the same small town where they’d grown up. Or at least Kim had been settled before she’d nearly lost her children.

Her sister giggled. “They might appreciate your thank-you more than my cookies...”

Avery narrowed her eyes and studied the photo. “I don’t want to thank all of them, just the one who really rescued them.”

Dawson...

He’d only told the boys his first name. Kim had shared that they sometimes whimpered it in their sleep, when they had nightmares about the fire.

“The Hotshots worked together to rescue them,” Kim said. “They’re a team.”

The media hadn’t focused on the team, though. They had focused on Wyatt Andrews. He was the Hotshot who’d disobeyed their superintendent’s order to leave the fire. Wyatt Andrews had found the campers first, but he wouldn’t have been able to save them on his own.

It was Dawson the boys had pointed out who had brought enough extra shelters for all the campers. It was this man who’d enclosed the boys in one of those special shelters with him. Dawson was the one who’d calmed their fears when they’d been terrified that the fire was going to consume them.

He deserved more than cookies in appreciation for risking his life to save theirs. He deserved credit for being a hero. And, if he was single, maybe a kiss as thank-you, too.

* * *

“THANKS,” DAWSON HESS said as Wyatt Andrews set a pitcher of beer on the table in front of him, Cody Mallehan and Braden Zimmer. They had commandeered their usual back booth in the Filling Station, the bar around the corner from the firehouse in Northern Lakes. It was the home base for the four of them—when they weren’t out fighting wildfires in other states with the rest of their twenty-member team.

Wyatt flipped him off.

“Hey, you know the rule,” Dawson reminded his teammate. Whatever member of the team got interviewed or singled out in a press photo had to buy for the rest of them.

Wyatt slid into the booth next to him. “Is that why you dodge the press?”

Dawson had his reasons, and they had nothing to do with buying rounds of beer. But he pushed the past aside and just laughed.

“He doesn’t have to dodge them,” Cody said. “You’re so busy hogging the limelight nobody’s interested in the rest of us schmucks.”

“Jealous,” Wyatt teased. He and the younger firefighter had a friendly rivalry. It used to be over women—until Wyatt had fallen in love with a little redheaded insurance agent. Now it was over the job.

“It’s bullshit,” Cody said. But amusement instead of jealousy flashed through the blond firefighter’s green eyes. He enjoyed needling Wyatt. “You and those kids would have roasted in that fire if Dawson and I hadn’t come back and saved your asses.”

Wyatt shrugged. “Hey, I offered to set the record straight but the boss told me to refuse all interviews.”

Which Dawson suspected his teammate had gladly done. Like Dawson, Wyatt had probably had enough of reporters when he’d been a kid, too. The media preyed on tragedy. Now that they were adults, and had a job to do, reporters were a different kind of nuisance, putting themselves in danger to get the best shot. Dawson had had to rescue too many from nearly getting burned alive.

Cody turned toward their boss—Superintendent Braden Zimmer.

Braden pushed his hand through, or rather over, his brush-cut-short brown hair. “We want this story to die down,” he reminded them. “And you all know why.”

Wyatt cursed, and pitching his voice low, murmured, “The arsonist...”

So many of these fire bugs started blazes for the attention. They needed to starve him of attention, just like the Hotshots starved the fire of fuel when they cut down trees and tore out vegetation for the breaks. They had been successful in putting out the fires, but they hadn’t caught the arsonist yet. And Dawson was pretty sure the guy hadn’t stopped setting fires.

He didn’t have the notorious instincts of their superintendent, who had predicted the big fire that had nearly destroyed their town. But he was smart enough to figure out that those hot spots weren’t starting back up on their own. The ground had been too scorched and their breaks too thorough for that to be the case.

“It’s not working.” Cody confirmed what they’d all been thinking.

Braden shook his head. “We don’t have confirmation that the others fires were deliberately set.”

The superintendent wasn’t talking about the hot spots, but the other serious blazes they and other Hotshot teams had had to battle. Maybe they hadn’t been deliberately set.

Lightning could have struck a tree. Or a campfire hadn’t been completely extinguished...

The Hotshots only knew for certain that the Northern Lakes fire had been intentional. That was where accelerant had been found at the origin—gasoline poured over dried vegetation, maybe hay bales. There hadn’t been much left—just enough to prove that the fire had been no act of nature.

Anger filled Dawson at the thought of someone deliberately setting that fire and endangering all those innocent people. Those kids...

He remembered how scared they’d been. Hell, how scared he’d been.

He knew—too well—those shelters weren’t always enough protection.

A low whistle drew him from his maudlin thoughts. Cody had tuned out of their conversation, his focus on a woman who’d walked into the bar. She was all long legs and tanned skin and pale blond hair. She was gorgeous and vaguely familiar.

Every man in the place was checking her out. And she seemed to return their interest. Her gaze traveled from one man to the next and the next. She was looking, but she wasn’t finding what or who she was looking for...until those greenish-blue eyes focused on him.

Her gaze holding his, she walked toward their booth. Those long legs closed the distance quickly, her heels clicking against the wood floor, through the peanuts strewn across it. She didn’t belong in a place like the Filling Station—not with her snug blue dress and high heels. She looked as if she belonged on television—which made him abruptly realize why she seemed familiar.

Even worse was the way she was looking at him—as if he was familiar. Then she stopped at their booth and addressed him directly. “Dawson Hess.”

It wasn’t a question. She knew who he was.

Dawson felt as if he was facing the fire all over again. And this time he wasn’t sure he’d survive...

2

AVERY WAS USED to everyone looking at her when she returned home. Reporting the big news in the big city—despite her limited airtime—had made her big news in the small town where she’d grown up. She was also used to men looking at her—usually with admiration. Not the hostility with which the men in the back booth were regarding her.

Apparently they knew who she was. But she extended her hand anyway—toward Dawson Hess—and said, “I’m Avery—”

“I know who you are,” he interrupted, his voice gruff with irritation. “How do you know who I am?”

“You’re a Huron Hotshot.” She glanced at the other men. They were no more welcoming than Dawson Hess. “You all are.”

“How did you know where to find us?” Superintendent Zimmer asked. His voice was even colder than Dawson’s.

“The curly-haired kid who was washing trucks at the station told me you had all come here,” she said. He’d also told her Dawson’s last name.

“Damn kid,” the superintendent murmured.

“I’ll talk to Stanley,” the blond firefighter said. He slid from the booth, and as he did, his glance traveled from the top of Avery’s head to her toes peeping out of her high heels.

She’d purposely dressed up for her trip into the village of Northern Lakes. But she hadn’t dressed up for him. The man she’d dressed up for had barely glanced at her.

The blond guy shook his head and murmured, “What a shame...a damn shame...”

The superintendent slid out behind the blond firefighter. “As every other reporter has been told, Ms. Kincaid, the US Forest Service is not granting interviews at this time.”

“Why not?” she asked. “This is a great time to bring more attention to the heroic work you and your team do.” And especially to the heroic work that Dawson Hess had done. He had saved her nephews. And he deserved some of the accolades Wyatt Andrews had monopolized.

“I’m not giving any interviews,” Wyatt said. The dark-haired man sat at the end of the booth between her and Dawson Hess. But, until he’d spoken, she hadn’t really noticed him.

“I don’t think she’s interested in talking to you,” the blond firefighter remarked with a deep chuckle.

“None of us are giving interviews,” the superintendent told her. “We don’t need attention. We just need to do our jobs.”

She tilted her head and remarked, “I don’t hear any sirens. There isn’t a fire right now. I wouldn’t be keeping you from your work.”

But she wasn’t keeping them at all. Wyatt Andrews stood up with the other two men, and the three of them walked out together—leaving Dawson Hess alone in the booth. Before he could slide out, too, she perched on the seat next to him. Not that she would be able to physically hold him in the booth if he wanted to leave. His shoulders were so broad that her arm inadvertently bumped his when she sat down. He was so muscular—big arms, big chest—that he could easily move her out of his way if he wanted.

“Please, give me just a few minutes of your time,” she implored him. “I’m sure I’m not keeping you from anything.”

Or anyone? She glanced down at his left hand. He wore no ring, but that didn’t mean anything. She knew a lot of men—in professions less physical than his—who chose not to wear their wedding bands.

“Just because we’re not at a fire doesn’t mean we’re not at work,” he told her.

She glanced at the pitcher of beer in the middle of the table and arched a brow. “Hard at work apparently...”

Those light eyes turned out to be a pale brown—like gold or amber—until they momentarily darkened.

So much for sweet-talking him into granting her an interview or a kiss.

“We’re not on duty right now,” he admitted. “But we were discussing work.”

They had looked intense when she’d walked up.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said. “I was just teasing.”

He shrugged, and his arm rubbed against hers. “You didn’t offend me.”

Heat rushed through her—starting at the contact with his body. Her dress had long sleeves, but they were thin and silky, so she could easily feel him through the light material. His arm was bare, the muscle taut as if he were tense.

All of the men had looked tense. Before the blond guy had noticed her, she’d noticed them—had seen their heads bent together in what had appeared to be an intense exchange. Over a pitcher of beer?

Why had they looked so serious? So preoccupied?

As Dawson had said, just because they weren’t at a fire didn’t mean they hadn’t been working.

Her instincts were as trustworthy as they always were. There was more going on with the Huron Hotshots than a regular wildfire season.

And she intended to find out exactly what.

* * *

SHE HADN’T OFFENDED HIM, but Avery Kincaid had damn sure affected him—so much so that he hadn’t been able to move as fast as his friends. He wasn’t going to hear the end of that back the firehouse. They would tease him mercilessly.

And with good reason.

He wasn’t like Wyatt and Cody. He didn’t chase after every female who had a pretty face and a great pair of legs. Even Braden had let a woman mess with his head and his heart. Dawson had always been smarter than that—until Avery Kincaid had stared at him with those gorgeous eyes of hers.

Her beauty wasn’t what worried him the most, though. She was smart and ambitious, or she wouldn’t be working for a national network at her young age. Everyone in Northern Lakes bragged about the hometown girl who was making it in the big city.

“If I didn’t offend you,” she asked, “what is bothering you?”

She turned toward him now, so that her breast rubbed against his arm. And her knee pushed against the side of his thigh. Every muscle tightened in his body.