Hi Readers! Mari Carr and Jayne Rylon have an excerpt for you!
James Compton is a man of two worlds. For half the year, he’s Seth’s oldest boy, working with his family and the horses on Compass Ranch. The other half, he’s Jamie, a daring smokejumper on the West Yellowstone Squad. Those two halves make him feel whole, happy, satisfied. Until he meets his boss’s daughter, Ivy…
Ivy Wagner’s life should be complete. College degree in hand, she’s excited to embark on her career as a large-animal vet. Add in the attention of one very sexy James Compton, and her future should be all sunshine and steamy shared showers. However, a shattering loss in her past ensures Ivy will never date a smokejumper…no matter how perfect for her James may be.
As the couple grows closer, it’s clear they’re headed for a day of reckoning. Ivy can’t lose someone she loves to a raging wildfire, and James may be incapable of giving up a vital part of himself, of living half a life.
When James faces his own loss, the pair are forced to confront their individual demons. What will they willingly let go of…and what will they choose to fight for?
EXCERPT: Into the Fire
He’d arrived in Yellowstone a couple days earlier, ready to begin his refresher training. This marked his sixth year as a smokejumper with the West Yellowstone Squad. Jake hadn’t just pulled him out of a dive the night of that bar brawl, he’d pulled James’s head out of his own ass as well. With a purpose and a goal, James had started working out, started ticking off boxes to build his resume in order to qualify for the squad.
Smokejumping was not for the light of heart. It required strength and experience. One he’d gained on the ranch, the other at the Compton Pass Fire Station. His mother had been less than pleased with his chosen career path. Actually, her initial response had been something along the lines of, “You will jump out of a plane into fire over my dead body.” However, Dad hadn’t said anything at all. Instead, he’d nodded and given James an approving smile that had soaked into him like warm sunshine after a heavy snow.
Since then, he’d felt like a man living two very different lives. Half the year, he spent here, as Jamie Compton, jumping out of planes and into fires, fighting to protect this incredible wilderness. The other half, he returned to life as James, Seth’s boy, working with his dad, uncles, and cousins to protect the horses, their ranch, and their legacy. He wasn’t sure how to explain it, but putting those two unique halves together made him feel like a whole man, and home had begun to mean more than it had when he’d been a stupid nineteen-year-old with more pride than brains.
He hadn’t waited more than half an hour when the hot pink flashed in his peripheral view. Ivy was moving at a pretty good clip, her journey to the woods clearly more about watering the tree than enjoying a leisurely hike. She slowed when she spotted him, cautiously remaining about ten feet away.
James raised his hands in the sign of surrender, especially when he noticed her red-rimmed eyes. She’d been crying. “Still not a murderer. Still not a rapist,” he said lightly, hoping to make her smile. He failed.
She lifted her hand, revealing the pepper spray. “The fact you’re lying in wait here doesn’t reassure me of that.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. I’m sure it doesn’t. Thing is, I was raised to be a gentleman. To make sure women were protected. And while I appreciate that you’ve taken precautions,” he gestured to her pepper spray, “I sure would rest easier tonight, knowing you made it back to your car okay.”
The woods had never seemed so still and quiet as they did while he watched her try to make up her mind. He didn’t realize how much he wanted to keep talking to her until he was forced to wait.
“You can frisk me if you want. I don’t have any weapons except an old pocket knife.”
She rolled her eyes in an exasperated way that told him he was starting to win. “I’m not coming any closer to you. And something tells me you’d probably enjoy being frisked.”
Previous Book: Heaven on Earth
Jayne Rylon Jayne Rylon is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. She received the 2011 Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award for Best Indie Erotic Romance. Her stories used to begin as daydreams in seemingly endless business meetings, but now she is a full time author, who employs the skills she learned from her straight-laced corporate existence in the business of writing. She lives in Ohio with two cats and her husband, the infamous Mr. Rylon. When she can escape her purple office, she loves to travel the world, avoid speeding tickets in her beloved Sky, SCUBA dive, and of course read.
Mari Carr Writing a book was number one on Mari Carr’s bucket list and on her thirty-fourth birthday, she set out to see that goal achieved. Too many years later, her computer is jammed full of stories, novels, novellas, short stories and dead-ends and she has nearly eighty published works. Virginia native, Mari Carr is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller of contemporary erotic romance novels. With over one million copies of her books sold, Mari was the winner of the Romance Writers of America’s Passionate Plume award for her novella, Erotic Research. Join her newsletter so you don’t miss new releases and for exclusive subscriber-only content.
