Free Flame (Firefighters of Montana Book 5) by Victoria Purman

be fostering something else entirely.”
    When Jacqui’s phone, positioned in her line of sight on the low coffee table in Cady’s living room, began to vibrate and blink, she quickly reached for it.
    “Vin?”
    A skitter of fear went through each of them. Cady could feel it reverberate around the room, through each of the hearts of the women gathered around her, until it lodged in her throat, making her breath disappear. They all watched Jacqui’s face for a reaction, a sign, a flicker of something.
    When a smile quirked the corners of her mouth and she exhaled, they breathed, too. “Okay,” she said, her face flooded with relief and love. “Get home safe. Love you, too.” She ended the call and slowly put her phone down on the table, before picking up her glass of wine and raising it in a toast.
    “They’re okay. Everyone’s okay. They saved two cabins up on the ridge and they’re back at Kalispell. To our Montana smokejumpers!”
    “To our Montana smokejumpers!” the women cried.
    *
    Within half an hour, Jacqui, Laurel, Lina, and Callie had left. They’d thanked Cady for the wine, the conversation, and especially the cupcakes, and she’d hugged them each in turn as they’d left. Being the partner of a smokejumper required an enormous amount of courage, too. Okay, so they weren’t the ones jumping out of planes, but they were the ones holding the fort at home, working in their own careers, some looking after kids alone, trying to make the extraordinary ordinary. Cady thought it took a particular kind of resilience and strength to partner those men and women. Her four friends had it in spades.
    As she stacked the wine glasses and the plates in the dishwasher, wiped down the coffee table, straightened the cushions on the sofa, and quickly went over the carpet with her vacuum, she couldn’t fight thinking about Dex. The rookie, that was what Jacqui had called him. He was, compared with the other men and women at the station. He’d only joined a year ago, about the time she had opened up Cady’s Cakes. A rookie he might be, but he wasn’t a kid. He’d long ago developed the physical strength of a hard-working man, someone who worked hard all day—she could see it in the width of his shoulders, his chest, the tightness of the muscles under his shirt. So, yeah, she’d looked. She’d imagined. She’d fantasized.
    Oh, yeah, she’d fantasized. And since his admission at The Drop Zone—that he’d kissed her back, that night four years ago, she’d fantasised a whole hell of a lot. Sheet twisting, sweat-inducing fantasies. Why had she remembered everything else about her clumsy attempt at seduction, and her subsequent shame and humiliation, but not that one particular detail that could have changed everything?
    He’d kissed her back. And then four years of nothing. For Pete’s sake, what was that all about?
    She stomped across her living room, grabbed the empty wine bottle from the coffee table, and tossed it in her recycling bin with a satisfying clatter of glass on glass.
    Was she hungry? She checked her watch. It was six o’clock, an hour since Jacqui had received the news that the team were heading home. She thought for a moment. No, she wasn’t hungry. She’d nervously eaten too much of her own caramel cupcakes.
    But she knew who might be after spending nearly forty-eight hours up on a ridge in the heat and the choking smoke.
    It was the least she could do. She knew how to feed people. She could drive over to Dex’s place and give him one of her delicious frozen meals. It would be her way of saying thanks.
    She checked her freezer. Since she worked such long hours, she’d got into the habit of cooking up big batches of her favourite meals, so she didn’t have to fuss about preparing dinner when she got home. After a whole day up to her elbows in flour, sugar, caramel, and icing, it was easy and convenient. And it meant she had a stash of options to choose from. She pondered what Dex would