There's a man on my porch. He's dripping on my welcome mat. I did not invite him.
The video arrived at 6:02 a.m.—a wildland firefighter leaping out of a plane into a wall of smoke with a grin that made the entire Collins Community Group Chat lose their minds. By 6:21 a.m., the man himself was at my door.
Yes, yes, Griffin Hawk is gorgeous. He has eight years of fighting fires in mountains that would eat most people alive, a sealed incident report I cannot open, and an infuriating way of making promises and actually keeping them. But he needs to go.
I have systems. A seventeen-point roommate assessment. A thermostat set to sixty-eight degrees, non-negotiable. Three years of fuel load maps the county refuses to act on. I came back to Collins to rebuild my life quietly, carefully, with zero unvetted adrenaline allowed on the premises.
Griffin Hawk is a completely unvetted source of adrenaline.
He was supposed to stay one week.
Then it became sixty days.
Then his assignment ended, and he stopped counting.
And now he prepares my tea, feeds my cat punctually, never adjusts the thermostat—and studies my wind corridor data as if it were the most captivating thing he has ever encountered. Which is the problem. Because I don't know what to do with a man who isn't pushing, isn't performing, and isn't leaving.
My seventeen-point assessment does not have a category for this.
Hotshot is a slow-burn forced proximity romance set in Collins, Colorado—population 1,100, one peacock with a verified community chat account, one espresso machine with suspiciously excellent timing, and 247 neighbors who have absolutely nothing better to do than track the gap between two people at a kitchen table and report it to the group chat in real time.
It stands alone and comes with open-door heat, dual POV, swoony firefighters, and a guaranteed happily-ever-after.
Hotshot is book 3 in the Station 12 Firehouse Series.
