Heart On Fire Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Epilogue

  Want More?

  Miranda and Elliott Meet

  First Date

  Jonathon and Rose

  Proposal

  Just Married

  Two Pink Lines

  Fight

  Comfort

  So...

  Heart On Fire

  A.L. Cook

  Copyright © A.L. Cook 2017

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All characters portrayed within are over 18 years of age and enthusiastic consenters.

  The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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  One

  She felt like she had been doing this for an eternity. She moved rhythmically, her thighs burning and her breath escaping harshly from her throat. She shoved hair back from her face and wiped sweat from her brow, her heart beating wildly and her skin flushed.

  As she rounded the corner, sneakers slapping the frozen pavement, Erin Campbell thought longingly about how long it had been since her heart rate had been elevated by anything other than her early morning run. A lot longer than she cared to dwell on, so she pushed that particular musing away.

  She ran up the street, her breath steaming in the cold air, and pulled her beanie back down over her loose red-gold hair to cover her ears more completely. She was considering starting her run at six thirty in the morning instead of five, due to the cold, but she valued the silence and the aloneness of running so early, solitary on the dark streets.

  She cut across the small park a block from her apartment, and down a small laneway that smelled of warm, yeasty bread and sugar mixed with cold Alaskan air. It was the scent that she was beginning to think of as home, and about as far from the sticky saltiness of the ocean as she could find. She had fled to Juneau six months ago, and had been about as happy with her decision as she could be, given the circumstances.

  Pain lanced through her as a pair of warm, honey-brown eyes and gentle hands flashed through her mind, still breathtaking in its sharpness after all this time. And if her next breath sobbed out- well, she’d allow herself to take a moment to grieve some more, but it was time to move on.

  Erin slowed her pace as she reached the end of the lane and hooked sharply around the corner, just in time to run into a very large, very firm body. One arm came around her waist, hauling her tight against that body and keeping her upright as her shoes slipped on icy concrete, and a large hand gripped her hip firmly.

  “Whoa,” she inhaled sharply, struggling to catch her breath and maintain her balance. She inhaled deeply and was surrounded by the scents of pine, faint aftershave, and warm, clean skin.

  “Whoa, indeed,” a deep, amused voice chuckled over her head.

  Erin glanced up, intending to thank her rescuer, and actually did a double-take. Staring down at her, a smile playing around them, was a pair of the palest blue eyes she had ever seen. Her breath caught in her throat, not entirely caused by her run, and she was suddenly, acutely aware of how big the man was, how muscular and strong, and just how much of him she was pressed up against.

  “Hi there,” he grinned, his teeth startlingly white in his tanned face.

  He had a deep, rumbly voice that Erin felt in her chest where it was pressed against his, and she was sure she could feel his heart thumping against her breast.

  “Hi,” she replied, studying him intently in the warm light spilling from the store window they stood before. She took in the blond hair falling over one eyebrow, the full, luscious lips and the strong jaw and felt something flip over in her belly. He was not at all her type, but she’d be damned if his gorgeous face wasn’t doing it for her. The warmth of his body where it was pressed against hers was a delicious counterpoint to the cold breeze swirling around them, but all Erin could focus on was his curiously pale eyes.

  His grin widened and he snuggled her a little closer. “Come here often?”

  Snorting a laugh, Erin breathed him in again. He smelled divine; masculine, clean, and crisp, like fresh snowfall. As her breathing came back under control, she pushed gently against his chest where her hands had come to rest during their collision. Beneath the thick, cream-coloured knit sweater, the man’s impressive musculature was like granite.

  Slowly, reluctantly, and without taking his eyes from her face, he allowed her to move away from him. Erin felt her own reluctance bubbling within her, but she couldn’t think up a plausible reason to stay pressed so close to him, and so she took a cautious step back.

  “I’m so sorry,” she told him, crossing her arms over her chest to stay warm as her body cooled from her run in the icy air. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be here.”

  “That’s okay,” he rumbled back at her, smiling again. “I was just coming in to get coffee for my crew before work.” He gestured to the bakery they were standing in front of, which happened to be where Erin worked. “Although I have to say, meeting you like this has done more for me than a gallon of coffee ever could.”

  The flirtation in his words made Erin’s cheeks flare with colour. “You wouldn’t believe what we’re doing to drum up business these days,” she deadpanned back to him. “I work here,” she told him in response to his questioning glance, “or I do as soon as I have a shower and get changed. Why don’t you come in out of the cold and I’ll make you those coffees?”

  “Sure,” he agreed easily, opening the door and gesturing for her to precede him. “I’m Cameron, by the way. Cameron Thomas.”

  “Erin Campbell,” she offered him over her shoulder, as the warm and mouth-wateringly scented air enveloped them. “Maggie, I’m back,” she called out to someone in the kitchen out the back behind the counter.

  “Hey honey, be right out,” a cheerful voice called back.

  Erin slipped behind the counter and began warming up the coffee machine. “What will it be?” she asked as the machine began humming.

  He gave her his order, unwinding his scarf just as Maggie, Erin’s boss and only real friend in Juneau, came out from the swinging door to the kitchen. As soon as she laid eyes on Cameron her lined face lit up and she wasted no time coming around the counter to allow herself to be swept up into a hug.

  “Little Cam Thomas!” the older woman exclaimed, one gnarled hand coming to rest on his cheek. “Boy, you have been away too long!”

  Little? Erin thought to herself. She was tall, at five ten, but he was much taller than that, six two or three at least. She watched the exchange with interest, noting the obvious affection Cameron and Maggie had for each other and wondering what their relationship was.

  “Hey Mags,” he smiled, hugging her again. “I only come back for you, you know that. How have you been?”

  “Trucking along,” Maggie told him with a smile. She suddenly eyed him speculatively, smoothing her hands down her apron. “I see you’ve met my new p
astry chef slash cake decorator,” she said, turning to smile at Erin. “Makes the best damn brownies you’ve ever eaten.”

  “I have,” Cameron said, his curiously pale eyes steady on her face. “We just got intimately acquainted out the front,” he teased.

  “I ran into him!” Erin protested as Maggie raised an eyebrow at her. “Accidentally. He was lurking in front of the door-“

  “I was not lurking,” Cameron laughed.

  “Lurking in front of the door, and I ran around the corner and we collided,” Erin continued. And then we just kind of pressed up against each other for the fun of it for a while, she added mentally, a little shiver skating down her spine.

  And it had been fun in the most heated of ways, she had to admit to herself. Because the blond wasn’t just attractive, he was downright gorgeous. She stared at him as he stared at her, and taking him in lit a fire in her that started from embers she hadn’t realised still burned within her.

  He was tall, and built, and every inch of him exuded maleness in an almost primal way. He smiled easily, but his eyes, so pale and so blue, were focussed on hers, and very intense. His thick sweater did nothing to disguise the definition of his torso while the dark denim that so snugly encased his muscular thighs made her mouth go dry.

  Erin felt a frisson of desire shiver down her spine and curl around to nest low in her belly. Who was this guy, that he could elicit so immediate a response in her?

  The heated glance he shot her seemed to indicate that he was aware of it too.

  “If I’m going to get that kind of greeting from you I may have to start lurking every morning,” he told her, his tone leaving no doubt as to the kind of greeting he would like.

  Erin allowed her eyes to linger a moment longer, studiously ignoring Maggie’s speculative expression, then mentally shook herself and moved about getting things ready to make coffee, acutely aware that Cameron’s eyes remained on her as she did so.

  She was very grateful for the thick neoprene running bra and thermal running jacket as she felt her nipples draw to tight points and a heaviness fill her breasts. It had been years since her body had been so sexually aware of another man, and the wash of emotion that accompanied that knowledge was confusing. She hadn’t realised how much she missed it, the sharp stab of arousal or the knowledge of a man’s attraction to her. At the same time, though, she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted that attention, or wanted to feel that arousal again.

  She had always known the day would come when she would feel that pull of temptation, the desire to know more about a man than just that which polite conversation would reveal, but she certainly hadn’t expected to find it so abruptly, and in such a chance encounter.

  Catching sight of her own wavy and indistinct reflection in the espresso machine, Erin bit her lip before sighing. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Not only that, but it had been four years since her marriage had ended, and she had gotten so used to feeling nothing but the most basic and uninspired emotions that she had forgotten how overwhelming, how intense and enveloping raw attraction could be.

  But she couldn’t deny that this mountain of a man had done just that; he had awakened attraction within her, and she was at a loss as to what to do about it.

  *

  Watching Erin move around behind the counter, every luscious curve of her on display in form-fitting thermal running gear, Cameron could barely keep his eyes off her.

  Maggie, his mother’s oldest friend, watched him closely. He finally met her gaze and smirked at her raised eyebrow. She had his number, all right, always had done. It was no secret around town that Cam had a healthy appreciation for the fairer sex, but this felt different.

  Holding Erin against himself had made something within him slot into place. The way she had felt pressed against him felt like a memory, like they had been in that position before. Like his body remembered her. He had never experienced anything like it, but he sure was eager to do it again and see if the result was the same.

  “When did you get home?” Maggie asked him, choosing to ignore his scrutiny of Erin. For now. “Have you called your mama? How long are you home for?”

  “Of course I have,” he told her. “I went straight there from the airport when I got in on Sunday night. And I’m here for at least the next few months. I called Marcus to see if he needed any volunteers, and he told me there was a spot open if I wanted it.”

  “Marcus is the director of the Juneau Mountain Rescue team,” Maggie told Erin as she pressed Cameron down onto a white, enamel-painted café seat. “Cam always tries to set aside some time through the year to help out and volunteer with the team.”

  “Are they the ones that rescued the missing hikers from Mount Roberts a while back?” Erin asked, setting takeaway cups into a couple of carry trays.

  “That’s them,” Cameron told her. “In fact, I’m headed there now; we’ve got some intense training for the next few days to get in some practice before the snows really set in. It’s going to be a long day,” he added slyly, casting a sidelong glance at Maggie. “We’re going to need to keep up our energy…”

  “You’re about as slick as gravel, boy,” Maggie chuckled as Cameron grinned boyishly. “Erin, box up some pastries with that coffee, will you? And make sure you include some brownies. They’re Marcus’ favourite.”

  “Oh, are they, now?” Erin asked teasingly.

  “Hush, you awful girl,” Maggie blushed, leaning down to press a kiss to Cameron’s forehead. “I need to get the rest of this bread sorted, but you make sure you come back and see me soon. Tell your mama I said hello.”

  “I certainly will,” Cameron smiled, watching the older lady fondly as she went back to the kitchen.

  Then his eyes snapped to Erin with a laser-like intensity, making her stomach flip once more. “Here are your coffees and pastries,” she told him, clearly nervous.

  Because that’s exactly what it was, Cam realised. He made her nervous. She was doing an admirable job of trying to cover it up, but the way she watched him, wary and hesitant, spoke of uneasy discomfort. He didn’t think he’d done anything to make her nervous, but maybe he had come on a bit strong out the front of the bakery?

  Surely not, Cam mused. He had definitely seen the flare of attraction in her eyes as they’d stood, pressed so intimately together. And what amazing eyes they were. Cam had never seen any like hers before. So vividly green they had appeared luminous in the muted light coming from the bakery’s mullioned windows, they gradually lightened until they were the colour of amber around the pupil. The thick lashes framing them were dark, like they’d been ‘inked in by a sooty finger’, as his grandmother would say.

  They were certainly stunning, and were set into a lovely face to match. Her skin was lightly tanned with a smattering of freckles over her pert nose, and the lush cupid’s bow of her mouth had been enough for Cam’s own lips to tingle at the thought of pressing them to hers.

  Cam had had his fair share of women in the past- more than his fair share, if some of his friends were to be believed- but he had never encountered a woman who had made him feel so instantly and so viscerally, what he was feeling at that moment.

  He watched as Erin finished packaging up his and his team’s breakfast treats, aware that she was avoiding meeting his eyes directly. She was clearly unsettled, and while Cameron suspected it was in part because of they way they had met, he had a hunch that there was more to it than that.

  He could still feel the long, lean length of her pressed against the front of him, and felt his own body expressing its approval. He wanted to do it again, he knew that much, and started formulating a plan to do just that.

  “So,” he began slowly, “how on earth did you manage to talk Maggie into hiring you?” he asked.

  Maggie Stanthorpe, owner and baker in residence of Sweet Temptations, Juneau’s famed and best bakery, was notoriously hard working and determined. She and her husband, Burt, had opened the bakery together some thirty years previously as ne
wlyweds, and when he had died of a heart attack while Cam was still in high school, she had simply shouldered the responsibilities all on her own and kept going. But the entire process had made Maggie extremely protective of maintaining the bakery exactly as it had been when Burt had died, in what Cameron guessed was a kind of memorial to her late husband.

  For as long as he could remember, the same staff had worked in the bakery, the décor had remained the same down to the enamelled wrought iron furniture and blonde wood interior, as well as the famed quality of their entirely baked-on-premises pastries, cakes and breads.

  So for Maggie to have hired someone new- and not only new, but someone from outside of Juneau, if Erin’s Californian inflections were anything to go by, was nothing short of astonishing.

  “I baked for her,” Erin told him, coming around the counter to bring him the order.

  Cameron stood as she approached and reached for the coffee, making sure his fingertips slid over hers as he accepted the cardboard carrier. He smiled a little at her quiet inhalation, and he made sure to step a little closer, until he was just inside her personal space.