Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 29299 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 146(@200wpm)___ 117(@250wpm)___ 98(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29299 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 146(@200wpm)___ 117(@250wpm)___ 98(@300wpm)
Not in love. Not after the fire that took his wife and nearly hollowed him out for good.
His world is simple now—his daughter, his duty, and the quiet ache he keeps buried beneath control.
Then Tessa rear-ends his truck on a chaotic Devil’s Peak morning.
She’s flustered. Apologetic. Too young. Too warm. Too alive.
Tessa only planned to stay for the summer. Fresh out of college and running from her own doubts, she needs the job. What she doesn’t need is a brooding, devastatingly intense single dad whose dark eyes linger a little too long and whose touch feels like it could undo her.
Sawyer tells himself he’s protecting her by holding back.
Tessa refuses to be someone’s almost.
And when a fire call drags Sawyer back into the trauma he’s been hiding from, he’s forced to face the one question he’s avoided for almost a decade: can he risk loving without losing everything all over again?
FLAME is a slow-burn, high-heat nanny romance featuring:
🔥 A protective, widowed firefighter
🔥 A sunshiney nanny with sass
🔥 Forced proximity in a mountain cabin
🔥 Age-gap tension and undeniable chemistry
A Single Dad, Forced Proximity, Age Gap Firefighter Romance
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
Sawyer
Imove through life like a man waiting for the next hit.
At the firehouse, that works in my favor. I’m steady. Controlled. The one people trust when everything’s burning and loud and going sideways. I don’t flinch. I don’t hesitate. I do the job and keep everyone alive.
At home, it’s quieter.
Too quiet.
My daughter is still asleep when I leave the station after a twelve-hour shift that stretched closer to fourteen thanks to a barn fire that refused to die quietly. The smell of smoke clings to me, baked into my clothes, my skin, my bones. I don’t bother changing. I just want a shower. Coffee. Sleep.
I slide into my truck as the sun creeps up over Devil’s Peak, traffic already thick by small-town standards with commuters and delivery vans. I sit at the red light on Main, forehead resting briefly against the steering wheel, and let myself think about nothing.
That’s when I hear it.
Crunch.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just enough to snap every muscle in my body tight.
I lift my head slowly, already knowing.
I check the mirror.
A compact sedan sits a little too close to my bumper.
I close my eyes. Count to three.
Then I put the truck in park and step out.
She does the same, climbing out of the sedan with a sharp intake of breath like she’s bracing for impact. She’s smaller than I expect. Curvy in a soft, real way. Dark hair pulled into a messy knot that looks like it gave up halfway through the morning. She’s wearing a coat that’s too thin for the cold, and when she sees me, her eyes go wide.
“Oh my God,” she says immediately. “I’m so sorry. I swear I wasn’t on my phone. The light changed and—”
She cuts herself off when she really looks at me.
At the turnout coat still slung over my shoulder. The soot smudged along my jaw. The fact that I’m built like someone who doesn’t lose fights.
Her apology softens. Turns careful.
“I—I just tapped you,” she adds, quieter. “Barely.”
I glance at the bumper. She’s right. A scuff. Nothing bent. Nothing cracked.
I exhale through my nose. “You okay?”
She blinks. “Me?”
“Yes. You.”
Her mouth curves despite herself. “I’m fine. Embarrassed. Possibly mortified. But physically intact.”
That shouldn’t do anything to me.
It does.
“Good,” I say, because I don’t trust myself to say anything else.
She steps closer to inspect the damage, and I’m suddenly aware of how close we are. Of how she smells faintly like warm vanilla and cold air. Of how the morning light catches on her lashes.
“I can call insurance,” she offers quickly. “Or—well—this probably isn’t worth it, but I can—”
“It’s fine,” I say. “No harm done.”
Her shoulders drop in relief. “Thank you. Really. I just—first day nerves.”
“First day of what?”
She glances up at me again, then seems to remember she’s supposed to be flustered. “New town. New job. New routine. I was rehearsing what I was going to say when I got there.”
“Important words?”
She snorts. “Very. Mostly ‘hi’ and ‘please don’t cry.’”
That pulls a low sound from my chest before I can stop it. A laugh. Rusty from disuse.
Her eyes flicker to my mouth. There’s a beat. A moment too long.
Then she clears her throat. “I’m Tessa.”
“Sawyer.”
She glances at my coat. “Firefighter?”
“Yes.”
“Figures,” she says, like that confirms something she already suspected.
“Why’s that?”
She gestures vaguely at me. “You have that look. Hero energy. Like nothing rattles you.”
I think about the way my hands still shake sometimes when I wake up from dreams I don’t remember having. About the way silence presses too hard on my chest at night.
“Something like that,” I say.
A horn blares behind us. The light’s gone green.
Tessa startles, then laughs at herself. “I should get out of your way before I cause an actual accident.”
She reaches into her coat pocket, pulls out a card, and hesitates. “Just in case?”
I take it. Our fingers brush.
Static jumps between us. Sharp. Unexpected.
Her breath stutters. Mine does too.
“Drive safe,” she says, voice softer now.
“You too.”
She nods, then turns back toward her car. Halfway there, she glances over her shoulder. “Hey, Sawyer?”
“Yes?”
“Sorry again.”
I watch her go, my grip tightening on the wheel as I think about the way her teeth cut into her pillowy bottom lip when she looked up at me, heat burning on her cheeks. She’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen in Devil’s Peak, too sweet. This place and the kind of men that call this mountain home will ruin her. As I pull into my driveway ten minutes later all I can think is that I need to stay away from Tessa, for her sake as much as mine.
Chapter 2
Tessa
Ialmost don’t knock.
The cabin sits tucked into Devil’s Peak like it grew here—dark wood, wide porch, smoke curling lazily from the chimney like it’s breathing. Quiet. Private. The kind of place you retreat to when you don’t want to be found.