Fire and Love (Hope Falls Book 13) Read online

  Fire and Love

  by

  Melanie Shawn

  Melanie Shawn © 2017

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from Melanie Shawn. Exceptions are limited to reviewers who may use brief quotations in connection with reviews. No part of this book can be transmitted, scanned, reproduced, or distributed in any written or electronic form without written permission from Melanie Shawn.

  This book is a work of fiction. Places, names, characters and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic content. It is intended only for those aged 18 and older.

  Cover Design by Wildcat Dezigns

  Copyedit by Deanna McDonald

  Proofreading Services by Raiza McDuffie

  Book Design by BB eBooks

  Published by Red Hot Reads Publishing

  Rev. 1.0

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  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

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Fire and Foreplay

  Other Titles by Melanie Shawn

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  ‡

  “How do you feel about surprises?”

  Eli Bishop heard a female voice beside him. When he turned to his right, he found his cousin sporting a huge grin on her face. He dropped his arms to his sides and tilted his head to hear her better over the music pumping through the speakers at Lucky’s gym.

  “What?”

  “Surprises!” She spoke at a higher volume than normal to be heard. “Where do you land on them?”

  He lifted his arm to wipe the sweat off his forehead and tried to catch his breath. His chest, arms, and legs were all burning from the punishing workout she’d just interrupted. “I’m not a fan.”

  “Okay, well—” Deanna spoke slowly and took a deep breath before words rushed out of her mouth like the whitewater rapids on the Truckee River. “In that case, whatever happens in the next five minutes, promise me you won’t be mad.”

  He stared at her blankly for a moment. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing.” Her response was immediate as her green eyes widened with faux innocence.

  “Nothing?” Eli’s tone reflected that he wasn’t convinced.

  “I didn’t dooo anything.” She lifted her right pointer finger up in the air to emphasize her point. “Technically.”

  “Technically?” he parroted.

  “Yes,” she maintained, as she dipped her head in a swift nod and added, once again, “Technically.”

  His breath was still labored as he tried to get to the bottom of this. “Then why am I going to be mad at you?”

  “You’re not!” she shouted with a little too much enthusiasm for his liking. Her smile now so broad it reached both sides of her face as she grabbed at straws to make her case. “Because you promised you wouldn’t be.”

  “I didn’t promise anything,” he corrected.

  “Okay.” She stuck her pinky in his face. “Then promise.”

  “Pinky promise?!” He chuckled. She hadn’t pulled out her go-to test of trust and loyalty since she was a kid. He stepped closer to her, away from the guys doing rope work and crossed his arms as his left brow rose. “You’re pulling out the big guns. This must be serious.”

  Her lips tightened in a determined line.

  Sweat dripped down his back as he raised his forearm to show her that he was wearing gloves, thus making their childhood tradition impossible.

  “Right.” She dropped her outstretched little finger to her side with so much force, a swoosh of air fanned along his face.

  Eli had three older brothers and no sisters. Deanna had easily filled that spot. Unlike Eli’s parents, who’d just celebrated their forty-fifth wedding anniversary, Deanna’s were divorced before her third birthday. Her father, Doug Bishop, had been a professional baseball player her entire childhood. His career kept him on the road during the summer, which was when his visitation was, so he would send her to stay with his brother, Eli’s dad. She was more than just a cousin he saw on holidays. She was his little sister.

  “What’s going on, Dee Dee?” Since she was pulling out the big guns he figured he should too, using a nickname that she hated from Dexter’s Laboratory, a cartoon they used to watch as kids.

  His goal was to irritate her enough to spur a reaction. She needed to get on with whatever it was she wanted to say. Not because he was worried that she’d actually done something he’d be upset about. He just wanted to get back to his workout.

  Instead of copping an attitude, she fidgeted with the hem of her shirt as she cast her eyes down to the ground. “Well…see…umm…”

  When she didn’t take the bait, nervousness wormed its way up his spine. Her behavior was so unlike the confident, take-no-prisoners, badass cousin he knew.

  Growing up, Deanna hadn’t just kept up with Eli and his brothers, she’d outshined them in most things. From rock skipping to fence jumping to treehouse building, Deanna was always at the top of the leader board. As an adult, she was the first female firefighter in Hope Falls, and she’d done it on her own merit. Eli hadn’t pulled any strings to get her on at the station. She was a force to be reckoned with. Seeing her so unsure of herself wasn’t a good sign.

  “Just say it,” he demanded, suddenly taking this conversation a little more seriously than he had been.

  She started to say something but before any sound hit the airways, Deanna’s fiancé swooped her up into his arms, picking her up off the ground. Lucky kissed her like he was a sailor that had just come off of a nine-month cruise. It was like watching the ending scene of a rom-com movie play out in real life.

  And this wasn’t an isolated scene. Their entire relationship had been like this. Their wedding wasn’t for another month, but they’d jumped ahead and started living in the honeymoon phase of their relationship preemptively. If Lucky had gotten his way, they would’ve already made it official but Deanna had just started working at the firehouse and she wanted to get past her probation before planning the nuptials.

  Lucas “Lucky” Dorsey was a retired MMA fighter who’d moved to Hope Falls last year and opened his gym next door to the firehouse. Eli had been skeptical, at first, when the fighter—who’d earned the nickname Lucky for his reputation with women—had set his sights on Deanna. But, Eli had seen that what the fighter felt was the real deal and also that his cousin had fallen hard for the MMA Casanova, even though she’d denied at the time. So, he’d had a come to Jesus talk with her and told her that if she let fear or pride or anything get in the way of her happiness she’d regret it for the rest of her life.

  Eli had learned that lesson the hard way.

  When his cousin�
�s feet hit the ground the smile on her face spread from ear to ear and, unlike the one she’d worn a few moments before, this one was genuine. All that was missing were cartoon hearts floating around her head. He couldn’t be happier for his cousin and was glad that she’d heeded his advice and not made the same mistake he had. She deserved all the love and joy this world had to offer.

  Lucky kept his arms snaked around her as he enthused, “This is a nice surprise!”

  Deanna shot a pointed look toward Eli. “See, some people like surprises.”

  “Some people like to tattoo their eyelids,” he shot back. “I’m not either of those people.”

  Lucky ignored their exchange, his focus solely on Deanna. “I thought you were heading to the city for your fitting?”

  Deanna’s eyes bounced nervously between Eli and her fiancé. “Plans changed…”

  Seeing her distraction as the perfect out of the conversation he’d never wanted to be a part of anyway, he shifted his body to return his attention to his workout. He’d just got off two consecutive forty-eight-hour shifts. The station was short staffed, and everyone had been pitching in. His body had screamed at him to go straight home to his bed, but he knew if he did, the last thing he would achieve was restful sleep. Summer tourist season was just kicking off, which meant his hibernation was over.

  The influx of tourists meant an influx of lodging needs, which shouldn’t affect Eli in the slightest, but it did. He lived on two acres surrounded by pine trees with a creek that ran through the middle. His house was the main house, and three bungalows sat nestled against the back of the property line. Originally, his home was used as a rental that brought income to the owner, but when he moved to Hope Falls four years ago, Eli fell in love with the cabin. He’d made an offer that had been accepted with the condition that the owner, Crazy Jay, retained the bungalows so he could continue to rent them out.

  The first couple years at the cabin had been fine. Summer and winter months had brought sporadic lodgers, but it was nothing that interfered with Eli’s life. Then Airbnb’s popularity exploded and things had gotten out of control. In peak season there was a constant stream of people, and the guests assumed that Eli was the owner since he lived on the property. Their assumption led to them seeking him out for any issue question, concern, or problem. And there were quite a few problems since Jay was cheap and only made repairs and upgrades when it was absolutely necessary.

  All of that would be bad enough, but lately there’d been another wrinkle in his hibernation habits. His evasive slumber was made even more elusive thanks to a recent unexpected complication. For the past six months, every time he closed his eyes he saw a ghost. An apparition from his past that had haunted him since he was eighteen, but whom he’d unexpectedly run into six months ago. His brain had been stuck like a broken record on her image ever since. Her voice. Her eyes. Her smile. He was beginning to think he was going to need to perform an exorcism to rid himself of the memories that possessed him.

  If he had any hope of getting rest, he had to be so physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted that his body had no choice but to pass out. So now, before he went home, no matter how bone-tired he was, he stopped by the gym and pushed his body to its limit to help him crash so hard he would sleep through anything.

  As Eli was getting back to his mission, he’d just lifted his arms to pummel the heavy bag hanging in front of him when he caught Lucky’s eyes cut in his direction in alarm then back to Deanna. His expression caused Eli to return his attention back to their conversation.

  They were speaking in hushed tones. His lipreading skills weren’t expert by any means but being the youngest of four brothers had given him intermediate-level abilities. He easily managed to make out Lucky ask his cousin, “Does he know?”

  Deanna shook her head.

  Maybe this wasn’t the time to check out of this conversation. It seemed that his workout was going to need to wait. Lifting his right glove to his mouth he tore the Velcro off with his teeth, then took them off.

  After removing both, he dropped them into his bag, straightened and asked directly, “What’s going on?”

  Lucky and Deanna both stared at him with matching blank expressions.

  Before either spoke, someone called out Lucky’s name from across the gym. He looked torn as to whether or not he wanted to walk away from whatever this was but ultimately kissed Deanna once more and playfully swatted her backside.

  As Lucky returned to the cage where he was working with one of his fighters, he slapped Eli on the shoulder and wished him an ominous, “Good luck.”

  Deanna’s face set with conviction as she motioned toward the hallway. He followed her, his curiosity peaked.

  “Okay,” she breathed out as she spun to face him. Her tone similar to the one she used when she’d try to calm an injured person in the field as she asked, “You know how Jake’s cousin Gabe is coming to Hope Falls and Lucky is going to be training him?”

  “Yes…” he answered. Jake was the fire chief and everyone at the station was aware of his cousin Gabe coming to town.

  “Well, did you know that Gabe has had a documentary crew following him around for the past year?”

  No. He didn’t. That was brand new information to Eli, but he didn’t have the chance to reveal that because his cousin seemed to be on a roll.

  “Well, it turns out the documentary is going to follow him here to Hope Falls and film his training with Lucky. It’s really great exposure for the gym!” She exclaimed. “I’ve known that it was a possibility for a while, but I wasn’t sure if it would happen because they were running out of funding. Well, their financing was locked in over the weekend, and they’ll be here any minute. That’s why I’m here instead of in San Francisco for my fitting. I’m going to meet them. They want to do a walkthrough of the gym. They also want to get releases signed for everyone that will possibly be featured on the show.”

  “So…what?” Eli crossed his arms in front of his chest as he tried to figure out what was causing his usually even-keeled cousin to behave like this. “You want me to be part of the documentary? You want me to sign a release? Why would you think that would make me mad?”

  Deanna had grown up with two famous parents. Besides her father being a pro athlete, her mother was a supermodel. Because of that, she shied away from the spotlight, or any public platform. She didn’t have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, or any other social media account. Eli didn’t either, but only because he thought that they were a waste of time. But his cousin’s reasoning was much more personal. She was one of the most fiercely private people he knew. So he understood if she was hesitant to be a part of the documentary, but he didn’t understand why she would be nervous about asking him to be involved.

  “A release? Yeah, I guess you probably should.” She nodded as she wrung her hands in front of her. “But that’s not the surprise.”

  He braced himself for the other shoe to drop. When it didn’t, he snapped, “Just say it.”

  His patience was wearing thin. Thanks to being called out a dozen times over the past four days he hadn’t slept. His body was sore and tired. All he wanted to do was get back out on the floor, finish his workout, go home, and crash.

  “Fine. Do you remember, right before Lucky’s last fight that I ran into Kenzie?”

  Mackenzie Sutton. The ghost from his past that had made his sleep near impossible.

  He wished he could forget. Unfortunately, he’d never been able to forget anything about that girl. Her image, her mannerisms, her soul was branded into his memory. She was so engrained in him she might as well be in his DNA.

  No matter where he was, what he was doing, she was there, in his mind. She was like a shadow that followed him everywhere.

  For his own sanity, he’d done everything he could to erase her from his memory. Her long blonde hair. Her large, expressive eyes. Her sweet smile and her hypnotizing voice. He had to actively work not to remember every smooth line, dip, and curve of
her body. The way her lips would curl into a half smile right before his lips would meet hers in a kiss.

  He’d tried to replace those memories with other women. That hadn’t worked. For a short stint in his mid-twenties, he’d tried to erase her using alcohol. He’d drowned himself in a bottle night after night, but all it did was make his memories more vivid. He’d even gone down the hypnosis path after one of his friends had used it to stop smoking. The hypnotherapy had worked like a charm for his friend, but it turned out Kenzie was more addictive than nicotine. Eli had walked out of the therapist’s office and before he’d even made it across the parking lot, he’d looked up at the cloudy sky and remembered how she’d lay on the grass with her brother and point out clouds that were shaped like animals. She’d name them things like Fluffy the Frog, Smokey the Snake, and Wispy the Walrus. Needless to say…he hadn’t been cured.

  It took Herculean effort not to obsess about every cute and quirky personality trait that she had.

  The way she talked with her hands when she got mad.

  The way she got the hiccups whenever she was nervous.

  The way she hyperventilated when she got excited.

  The way she always answered mmmhmm whenever she was distracted or avoiding questions.

  The way her nose twitched like Samantha on Bewitched when she was stressed.

  The way she could get stubborn over the most mundane and seemingly insignificant things.

  The way she kept a stash of junk food in a “secret” compartment AKA drawer in her nightstand, but only allowed herself to indulge on “special occasions” which ranged from good hair days to getting accepted into her dream school.

  He’d tried to ignore, suppress and deny her hold on him. It wasn’t working, but it was the only way he knew to navigate the emotional minefield of his feelings for Mackenzie Sutton.

  “I don’t want to talk about her.” He gave the same response he’d been giving for the past six months every time his cousin tried to bring her up.

  “Oh, I know you don’t. You’ve made that painfully clear,” Deanna let out a forced puff of air.