Hello and thank you so much to Night Owl Reviews for inviting me to visit today. I’m excited to talk about my new release The Last In Love, which is the fifth and final installment in my Ardent Springs series. And did I mention that the hero, Justin Donovan, is a firefighter?
Abby Williams, the heroine of The Last In Love, is growing doubtful that her second chance at a happy ending will ever come. She lost her husband to a roadside bomb about two years ago, and in that time she’s watched all her friends and family find love. Even her own mother. So it’s no wonder she’s in a bad place when the story opens.
Until Justin Donovan appears. The hunky fireman who just helped extinguish her kitchen fire sets off sparks of a different kind in Abby’s system. But the man beneath the sooty face seems to know her, and she realizes he’s the boy she used to babysit, now all grown up. And, boy, did he grow up.
Justin returned home from Chicago not long ago – for reasons he’d rather not share – and is ready to take a second shot at the girl who got away. Though a real estate developer in the windy city, Justin returns to volunteer firefighting upon his return to Ardent Springs, something he started doing the year after high school and continued through summers home from college. He doesn’t put much thought into the danger involved, but sees volunteering as a way to give back to the town where he grew up.
Offering his expertise on fires and their after effects, Justin helps Abby handle the insurance company and lends a hand sifting through the debris to assess the damages. Of course, he offers his assistance with the real purpose of spending more time with her. What else is a guy to do when the woman he’s always wanted insists he’s too young for her? He proves her wrong, of course. A little seduction can be a good thing.
I’d never written a firefighter hero before, and though Justin has a couple other jobs as well, exploring the pragmatism involved in this dangerous endeavor was interesting. His thinking is simple—there are fires and someone has to put them out. For Justin, running into a burning building is just part of the job. It isn’t until a particular fire goes bad that he realizes the effect his choices could have on the woman he loves. She’s already lost one man to a dangerous profession. How can he expect her to face that uncertainty again?
But that’s what makes Justin the best kind of hero. Even when it’s his life in danger, he’s thinking about someone else. What’s not to love about that? It also doesn’t hurt that he does a mean striptease, and can cook up a killer meal. That makes Abby one lucky girl.
If fireman float your boat and you want more after this one, check out Kimberly Kincaid’s Rescue Squad and Station Seventeen series, as well as Jennifer Bernard’s Jupiter Point series. You will not be disappointed!
Abby Williams lost her husband—and the future she envisioned—to a roadside bomb in a foreign land, so a kitchen fire is no big deal. When the local firemen show up to put out the blaze, the army widow finds herself attracted to one hot volunteer firefighter…until she realizes it’s Justin Donovan, a man five years her junior.
Justin has long carried a torch for Abby. But after she got married ten years ago, he put her out of his mind, left Ardent Springs for Chicago, and got a job as a real estate developer. Now he’s back—for reasons he’d rather not share—and he wants to prove to Abby that age is nothing but a number. Will Abby’s reluctance and Justin’s secrets extinguish any attempts at romance? Or will the sparks between them ignite a second chance at love?
Terri Osburn started putting words on the page in 2007. Five years later, she was named a finalist in the Romance Writers of America Golden Heart contest for unpublished manuscripts. Shortly after, she signed with an agent and moved into publication, with her debut novel, Meant to Be, released from Montlake Romance in May 2013. Terri lives on the East Coast with one high schooler, three long-suffering tabbies, and a hyper Yorkiepoo with attachment issues. To learn more about Terri, check out her website at terriosburn.com.
