Hi guys! first of all, I have no affliation with vin at all. just a fan. Hope you don’t mind a promo post, but I’m so excited. My first vin-inspired hero book goes on sale March 1 at www.triskelionpublishing.com. It’s called Hotshot, about a female wildland firefighter. I’m posting the blurb, and then a couple of scenes with my hero for you to preview. I’m in a contest with a fellow author whose book also comes out tomorrow to see who can sell the most books during the month of March, so I’m running a contest on my site www.michelleperry.com. Sign my guestbook or email me to register to win prizes from Hotshot, such as T-shirts, candy packs, bookmarks, lighters and the special orange roses the hero gives the heroine. My friend doesn’t like vin and think its weird I’d model a hero after him. She prefers the foreign, girlie man, Fabio type and says that’s what romance readers want. Sheiks and princes. Bah. Let’s show her we like our men bald, tattooed and sexy as hell.
Hotshot
Gathering storm clouds bruise a perfect summer sky. Thunder rumbles in the distance as daylight surrenders to darkness. As temperatures drop and the wind begins to howl, a jagged bolt of lightning streaks toward the earth. In the heart of the forest, a young juniper tree explodes, spewing forth a giant fireball.
The dragon is born.
“It’s the devil’s breath,” the locals say, referring to the hot, unseasonably gusting winds that spur the blaze on. The fire feeds on its drought-ravaged surroundings, snapping 80 foot ponderosa pines like twigs. As it roars through acres of dense forest, an elite group of firefighters called hotshots converge to save a nearby town.
Nika Jacks is here to slay the dragon.
In the Arizona wilderness, her five years serving as a lieutenant on a Tennessee fire department mean nothing. Here, she’s just another rookie hotshot coming to fight against an enemy she can barely comprehend. But the first time Nika faces the two hundred foot flames, she knows this is what she was born to do.
It’s hot, grueling work, but Nika is determined that nothing is going to stop her: not a smokejumper ex-husband in the same camp, not a crew boss who thinks women don’t belong in fire service and most certainly not the wacko who’s started leaving her love notes at camp.
On the fireline, Nika finds herself working side-by-side with a crew of California inmates, short-timers convicted of non-violent crimes who are up for parole in a few years. Strangely, she feels more comfortable with them than she does her own crew. Like them, she is an outcast.
The only woman on a twenty man crew, Nika takes her share of abuse. When she gets the first series of love notes, she assumes it is a prank. One letter begs her to meet with her admirer and Nika decides to play a prank of her own. An innocent joke sparks a madman’s rage and now the gifts he leaves her are deadly, like a rattlesnake in her sleeping bag.
To add to her troubles, she finds herself insanely attracted to one of the members of the prison crew. All hell breaks loose when a prisoner starts a disastrous blaze in the wilderness to aid his escape. Nika learns the prisoner she’s attracted to is an undercover FBI agent sent to find a stolen fortune buried in the woods.
J.T. and Nika share a spontaneous, burning attraction that is repeatedly thwarted by their dedication to their careers. The woods are crawling with crazies and it will take all their resources just to survive the summer.
*****
The first time I saw J.T. Riley, I was kicking ass and taking names, playing poker for Marlboro Lights. I don’t smoke. Personally, I thought it was a stupid habit for a firefighter to have—like we don’t breathe in enough of that stuff as it is—but, hey, I was bored.
I sat at a table underneath the cafeteria tent with Gaines, Brian and Kelsey, a guy from Brian’s crew. Gaines was grumbling that maybe we should play hearts instead when I felt someone’s eyes on me and glanced up at a man who literally stole my breath.
Not that he was pretty—I had once been married to a man who made Brad Pitt look like a boil on the face of humanity—pretty didn’t do much for me anymore. This guy was sexy. He radiated sheer, animal magnetism. I made a conscious effort to shut my gaping jaw before I slobbered on my cards.
He was big, probably six-one or six-two, with a body that looked like it’d been chiseled out of granite. The faintest growth of stubble darkened his scalp, and I found myself wondering how it would feel to run my hands over it.
As I stared into his whiskey-colored eyes, he winked. My jaw dropped again, and I glanced quickly down at my cards. That didn’t last long. My eyes wouldn’t obey my brain and soon I was staring again. His crew fell into the food line.
In a few moments, he would be right beside me.
A green and blue dragon tattoo adorned his muscular forearm, peeking at me from underneath the rolled up sleeve of his orange Nomex shirt. The line shifted, and he angled to the side as though he were trying to keep me in sight. His eyes never left mine.
“Hellooooo, earth to Jacks. Are you in or out?” Gaines demanded.
“I’m out.” I folded my cards face down on the table, although I honestly couldn’t remember what they were.
My heartbeat quickened as he stopped beside Brian’s shoulder.
“Hey,” he said. His voice was low and gravelly and it made the skin on the back of my neck prickle. I loved deep voices.
“Hey,” I managed.
“What’s good up there?” He gestured toward the buffet table.
“All of it, after eating MRE’s for the last two days.”
His laughter rumbled low like thunder. I swear I felt it vibrate through my body.
“I hear ya,” he said.
Brian kicked me under the table, and I shot him an ‘I saw him first’ look.
The line started moving again and my crush frowned. “See you around,” he said.
“Yeah, see you.”
As soon as I thought he was out of hearing distance, I leaned forward and hissed at Brian. “Why did you kick me?”
“You shouldn’t be talking to those guys,” he replied.
I glanced over my shoulder. They looked like all the other crews, except for the orange Nomex. “Who are they?”
“The orange herd. Hoods in the woods,” Kelsey replied.
“What?” I demanded, and looked to Brian for a translation.
“That’s one of the convict crews.”
The sexiest guy I’d ever seen and he was a criminal?
“Noooo!” I whined.
Gaines snickered. “Jacks has the hots for a jailbird. He’s probably a serial killer or something.”
“Actually, they’re all non-violent offenders. Short-timers who will be up for parole in one to two years,” Kelsey offered.
“That’s reassuring,” Gaines said solemnly. He elbowed me and grinned. “Gee, Jacks. Maybe you can wait for him, be his honey on the outside, send him nudie pictures in jail or something.”
He reached to pilfer a cigarette from my pile, and I smacked his hand. I glanced back at the line. Mr. Hot Bod picked up his tray and joined his crew across the cafeteria.
It figured.
Apparently my instinctual process for picking men was not only flawed, it was shot to hell.
*****
(Nika’s crew and the convict crew are carrying loads of water back to camp)
I was still smiling when J.T. crossed the bridge with the next load.
“You been playing in the creek again?” he asked. “I’m thinking about it.”
Sweat beaded the top of his shaven head. He gave me this smile that made my heart thump crazily in my chest and then lifted his orange shirttail to wipe his face, revealing the tan, chiseled six-pack beneath.
“Whoa,” I mumbled before I could stop myself.
My face grew hot when he grinned and I realized he’d heard me.
“That’s what I thought the first time I saw you,” he said. “Whoa.”
He was standing an arm’s length away. If I reached out, I could touch that chest, something I’d been fantasizing about for days. The air in the space between us seemed to heat, almost to crackle. He took a step toward me.
The thought that, ‘hey, he’s going to kiss me’ was followed by closely by ‘hey, I’m going to let him.’ My blood pressure skyrocketed and I felt almost dizzy.
When I saw the spark dance above his head, I thought I was losing my freaking mind.
Then I saw another one.
Those gorgeous brown eyes narrowed as it blew by his ear like a pesky firefly. I think he even swatted at it before his eyes flew back to mine with a look of dawning horror.
Before he turned his head—before I could look up—we heard it. The roar of the fire shook the ground beneath us. It exploded over the hillside that J.T. had just crossed like a gigantic orange fireball.
I had my radio in hand before I realized what I was doing.
“Blow-up!” I screamed. “Blow-up! We’re hit!”
J.T. went for his shelter. In training, they’d taught us how to deploy in 20 seconds.
We didn’t have 20 seconds.
I grabbed his hand and gave him a vicious yank. “No time!” I shouted, and half-expected him to fight, but he didn’t.
Hand in hand, we raced the fire to the creek.
Screaming.
I heard screaming, and it took me a second to realize it was the trees.
The tall pines above the ridge twisted and shrieked like huge, lumbering monsters as the fire exploded the sap inside them. Flaming pine cones rained down us.
A wall of flames eighty feet high roared toward us like a locomotive straight from hell. Even though I knew it would mean death, my first impulse was to turn on my heel and run the other way.
We weren’t going to make it. The gasses from the fire would hit us first, searing the oxygen from our lungs.
But then we were in the creek. I took one great, hot, gulping breath before we plunged below the cool surface. For an instant, nothing … then it rumbled over us like an earthquake. A fiery orange glow lit the top of the water, illuminating the depths. I tucked my knees in and tried to force myself to the bottom. The creek was only about 10 feet deep. I hoped it was enough.
J.T. was in trouble.
His arms flailed and panic contorted his face. He must not have gotten a good breath. He kicked off the bottom, and I made a desperate lunge for his waist. If he didn’t stay down, he would be incinerated.
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