Free On Fire by Stef Ann Holm

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Chapter One
    Kate Larsen pulled back on the grocery cart’s handle after almost crashing
into three Boise firefighters doing their shopping.
    “I’m sorry!” she gasped. Her nose had been deep in her grocery list for the
baby shower. “I didn’t see you.”
    The fact that she hadn’t noticed the good-looking trio was a sad reminder
that it had been far too long since she’d gone out on a date.
    “Not a problem,” one remarked, his voice deep and causing her to take notice.
He had a slight resemblance to a movie actor, but she couldn’t place which one.
He seemed to have a good-natured air about him, something that put a sparkle in
his brown eyes.
    He was taller than the other two, held his wide shoulders in a soft posture,
but his chest was quite broad as it filled out the blue Boise Fire Department
T-shirt.
    “I…” Sobering, Kate’s mouth clamped shut. The white lettering on that blue
fabric was another startling reminder. She was talking with the enemy. She
should have run them down with her cart when she had the chance.
    Kate wrote a weekly column for The Idaho Statesman, and her latest
restaurant review had caused an uproar among firefighters. So shoot her — she’d
hated their beloved rib restaurant! The food had been hideous, the barbecued
ribs greasy and too spicy. As a food critic, her job was to give her honest
opinion. And it had been a big thumbs-down for the Rib Shack. How was she
supposed to know that every firefighter in Boise loved to ride his motorcycle
there on a Sunday afternoon for the ambiance? For the guys, it wasn’t about the
food, but rather the river view from the outside patio where they could smoke
cigars, eat plates of ribs and talk shop.
    Station 9 had written a rebuttal piece and it had been printed a few days
ago, and each day since, another station chipped away at the findings in her
review. This morning’s lambast from Station 6 was about as bad as it got. And as
fate would have it, the men before her wore the lion’s den emblems on their
T-shirts. Not only were they the enemy, but the enemy of the day.
    The men gave her an appreciative gaze, not realizing who had almost run them
into the Fruit Loops display. If they only knew she was “Katherine Largo,” she’d
be wearing the cereal boxes on her head.
    “Hey, we forgot the chip dip,” one of them said, drawing Kate out of her
thoughts.
    She glanced at their cart. It was filled with deli platters, pop, chips and
snack cakes. How could these guys keep their weight down eating all that junk?
    With an easy grin that evoked a shiver of awareness through her, the tallest
firefighter remarked, “We’re having a Superbowl party at the station.”
    Kate didn’t follow football, but no one could have missed all the commercials
advertising the big game on television today.
    She shouldn’t have said another thing, should have gone on her way without a
backward glance. But because the fire department had declared her taste buds
must have been refined at Taco Bell and that she didn’t know a good rib from a
bad burrito, Kate smiled and gave a soft laugh as she pushed forward to the
baking aisle. “Wouldn’t you just kill me if I had a fire at kick off?”
    “Lady,” one of the big men said, “Don’t even think about it.”

     
     
Chapter Two
    The smoke detector wouldn’t stop going off.
    Kate had smacked it with a broom handle, but that sucker was still chirping
on red alert while a mini-campfire was ablaze inside her oven.
    Why had she even tried to bake cupcakes for the baby shower? Had the stress
of hosting this shower caused temporary insanity? She wasn’t a cook. She was an
eater. She reveled in the various textures, tastes, varieties of foods. She
adored flavors and all the wonderful things about fine, and not so fine, dining.
Which is why she almost always left the cooking up to someone else.
    She couldn’t figure out what went wrong with her cupcakes, but as they