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  Burning With Desire

  Bella Winters

  Copyright © 2019 by Bella Winters

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a piece of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  If you are reading this book and book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Published: Bella Winters 2019

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  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Excerpt

  Stay connected with Bella Winters

  Also by Bella Winters

  Blurb

  I hired her to help my daughter sleep easy,

  But now I want her in my bed!

  Julie: my daughter’s new nanny and my …

  Damn, this is so wrong,

  Give yourself a break Ricky.

  She’s your employee and so much younger and…innocent.

  But what if I want to claim her innocence,

  What if her love warms my heart,

  What if her curves ignite that flame of passion once again!

  And what if my daughter is falling in love with her too.

  But just when I think my damaged past is over,

  And never again going to haunt me,

  She disappears…

  Would the strength of my love ever bring her back?

  Would she ever have the guts to stand up against her own family?

  Chapter One

  Ricky

  You never know which call will end up being your last.

  The adrenaline flooded throughout my body as always when this call came in. I’d been sitting around the table in the lounge playing some cards with my coworkers/friends and really enjoying the nice, relaxing day when the bell started ringing and we had to grab our gear and rush to the trucks. It had been a relatively slow week in the fire game, but you could never really let yourself relax and think that everything was going to stay that way for long. That’s the way it was, the nature of the beast. Sometimes we would go for days without a single fire and then we’d have a week where we’d have one or two calls a day.

  Regardless, when the call finally came in, your chest felt like it was being gripped tightly by some invisible force and you would experience the fear that most people would never ever think of. They were lucky. It was the worst kind of fear. You were up against a formidable enemy, a brute force of nature, and you didn’t know if you would get out alive. And you weren’t sure if the people who needed your help would get out alive either.

  I tried not to overthink as I grabbed my gear and put it on before heading hastily to the truck. But sometimes fear just grabbed you and it wouldn’t let go. That was a dangerous situation. In training and in practice we learned to respect the enemy, but never fear it. Fear would paralyze you, it would muddle your brain, make you second guess yourself, and make you hesitate. Those things cost lives. And one day it would cost you your own.

  I couldn’t have that. I had Zoe to think about. Sweet Zoe, my eight year old daughter, my angel. I was all she had since her mother died a few years ago. Amanda… the love of my life. It had been over two years since she’d succumbed to the cancer that had ravaged her body. My sweet wife was gone, laid to rest, leaving Zoe and me alone. I’d tried to do the best I could for Zoe on my own, and most of the time I thought I did a really good job.

  “We’re almost there! Get in the game!” Patterson, our foreman yelled. He was leading the charge on the scene today, which basically meant he directed everything right down to the most subtle of movements. He was basically the coach of the team and if you wanted to keep working and you wanted to stay alive, you better listened to what the thirty nine year veteran firefighter had to say without a question.

  When we got to the blaze, even I was shocked by the magnitude of it. The entire house was up. Bright fire illuminated the windows pouring from the openings, practically melting the wood beneath, each mass of fire writhing in the wind like some kind of banshee wailing to be set free.

  The truck stopped and we all hopped out. There was a crowd of people standing in front of the house - watching, and some screaming. It was important that we zeroed in quickly on the people who might have actually lived there. It was usually easy to tell since they were emotional and visibly upset typically.

  Quickly, one young woman about twenty-five or so ran up to us screaming. “Amber is still in there! I can’t find her anywhere!”

  “Do you know where she might be? How old is she?”

  “She is twenty. I don’t know! I fell asleep!”

  The woman was screaming so loud that I could barely make out what she was saying. But I had my orders. The rest I would figure out along the way. A couple of us grabbed an axe and chopped down the door. It was so hot that it splintered easily. As it did so, a flood of black smoke began pouring out the door. I adjusted my gear and ran inside, doing my best to see through my flame retardant goggles.

  I tried to keep my head low as I entered. I was inside the living room. Most of the fire seemed confined on the floor above, but I could see the ceiling starting to give way. We had to move fast. Without waiting for a backup, I hurried up the stairs expecting each step to give under my foot and my body to go crashing through the wreckage of the staircase. But I made it to the top in one piece.

  “Ricky! Wait!” Toby Guiger yelled from below.

  “We don’t have time!” I yelled back. It is safety 101 that we don’t head off by ourselves during a rescue. This is how people get trapped and left behind. We work together as a unit, as a team in every single thing that we do. But if this girl was anywhere inside, we had to find her fast and we had to do it now. This fire was out of control, consuming everything in its path and turning to cinders.

  I knew the house would not be standing much longer.

  I glanced right and left and saw what appeared to be the bedrooms on the left side. “Amber! Are you there?” I screamed.

  I heard nothing as I kicked one of the doors. I anticipated that a wave of fire would come roaring out of the door at me at any moment, but so far I was being lucky. During a stressful time like this, you often had to rely on luck.

  The first door was a bathroom. I tried another. An office. Nobody there. Finally, I came to a bedr
oom. I didn’t see anyone at first. I was ready to move on, but then I heard a soft moan. I double checked and found a young woman lying down on the floor. She was propped slightly against the bed, as if she’d tried to get out but by the time she realized that there was a fire, the smoke had engulfed her too much.

  She might still be ok, but I had to get her out of there immediately.

  I knelt down and slumped her over my shoulders. Then I stood up under her weight to bring her out.

  Nearing the doorway, I suddenly heard loud cracks and flakes of plaster falling in front of me. I looked up and I could see flames engulfing the ceiling. Any second now it was going to collapse on us.

  I hurried out of the room. “Go! The ceiling is falling!” I yelled to Toby who was just at the top of the stairs coming to offer assistance. I hurried down the stairs with the girl on my back taking two at a time right on Toby’s heels.

  When we made it outside, I felt a rush of relief washing over me. I was covered in sweat. I felt my body being pushed to its limits from the extreme heat to now a more moderate air pressure of the summer. My legs felt heavy and this small woman on my shoulders suddenly weighed a ton. I carried her over to a stretcher where I noticed that she was totally out now. She wasn’t breathing anymore either. Dammit! Were we too late?

  I removed my gear off my head and face and instantly started to perform CPR on her. She was not going to die on my watch; I was determined not to let that happen. Toby helped with the chest compressions. One…two…three…four…five… Breathe!

  I breathed three gasps into her mouth. We continued this procedure four… five… and finally on the sixth time the woman started breathing and opened her eyes. She was gasping, terrified of what had just happened to her. My body suddenly felt exhausted as the adrenaline began to subside and relief washed through me. I thought she was going to be ok, but we definitely needed to get her to the hospital and get her checked out.

  Her eyes were white and bright looking compared to the smoky, soot that was now covering her pretty face. Amber was breathing deeply and strongly, her chest heaving up and down as the panic seethed through her eyes. She’d been through quite an ordeal.

  “Amber, you are going to be ok,” I said. “We got you out. You are safe.”

  Hearing those words caused her to break into tears. She was so grateful. And so was I. Grateful we’d got there just in the nick of time. This poor girl had almost died. This was why I had become a firefighter.

  This was why I had dedicated so much of my life and my time to this great purpose. It wasn’t always a day to celebrate, but today we’d achieved a bit of a victory. The house was a total loss, but it was just a house.

  “Amber!” Her hysterical friend came over just then screaming and crying. The two girls reunited and gave each other big hugs as they shared a good cry together.

  The crew fought the fire until it was finally out. Then most of us went home while they waited for the investigators to determine the root cause of the blaze. When I got back to the station, I jumped in the shower and scrubbed vigorously. The black soot from the smoke washed off my body turning the water and soap black as well. It was disgusting to look at and even after all those years when I am now used to it, it still made me cringe. It just reminded me that I had vexed a foe that had been trying to put me in the ground for too long. I knew one day, I would probably lose that fight. Any firefighter who made it through a long distinguished career without serious injury was lucky--plain and simple, no matter how skilled and knowledgeable you were.

  I finished my shower and since it was the end of my shift, I said goodbye to the guys and headed home. I was tired. This job had a way of draining you dry, both physically and emotionally. No matter how much training you had, it would get you every time. Sitting around waiting for the call for sometimes days on end would wear you out, and then going for a call, fighting the fire with all that gear on you was also brutally difficult.

  Amanda had always wanted me to get out and find another line of work. But this was what I was born to do. I could never see myself ever doing anything else.

  I was about halfway home and looking forward to a nice, relaxing evening when my phone rang. It was Katy, my sister in law. Well, technically, she was my former sister in law since Amanda’s death. She was supposed to be picking up my daughter, Zoe. What was this about? As a father, I immediately suspected the worst, that something was wrong with Zoe.

  “Katy? What’s going on?” I answered. I tried to keep my voice friendly so that my words did not come out accusatory. But I believed I may have failed in that endeavor.

  “Hey, Ricky,” Katy said. “Listen, I am stuck in traffic. There is some big accident and traffic hasn’t moved in like an hour. I’m not going to make it on time to pick up Zoe today. I’m so sorry.”

  I cursed silently and squeezed the phone a little. This was not what I needed to hear. I regained my composure and returned to the call. “Ok, I understand. I’ll get her. Thanks, Katy,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m so sorry,” Katy replied. She could probably tell I was angry, but I wasn’t angry at her.

  “It’s not your fault. I got to run. Talk to you later,” I said.

  I ended the call and turned off at the next exit. I would have to circle around a bit to drive towards Zoe’s school. Shit. This was going to be bad. I was going to be almost an hour late to pick her up. I called the admin office at her school to let them know what happened and that I was on my way. They would keep her in the office until I arrived.

  I really needed to hire another nanny. It had been almost a month since Lisa Williams, Zoe’s former nanny had quit to move across the country with her husband who’d just gotten a new job. It happened very quickly and it was very inconvenient as it left us in a bit of a lurch. I’d been trying to hire someone, but so far all of the applicants that I had just did not have the right temperament, the right experience, and there just didn’t seem to be that right connection that said they were a good fit. This shouldn’t have been that hard, and in recent weeks I’d been working so much that I just hadn’t had time to really get back to the interviewing process. It was so repetitive.

  So, Katy had been picking up the slack a bit here and there, but she had her own family and I didn’t expect her to really be a nanny to Zoe.

  I would have to get back to the selection process. I just hated that I wasn’t able to be there more for my daughter, but I had to work and I was doing the best I could on my own. I hoped I could find a good nanny, a nurturing woman who could be there for Zoe after school.

  I’d reached out to my circle of friends and family and after getting the runaround and the constant advice of how I should start dating again--which was annoying beyond belief-- I’d finally secured a meeting with a woman named Julie. My friend Ben and his wife Becky had recommended her after I’d spoken with them on the phone last night. I was actually supposed to meet with her today, but due to a change in my work schedule, I had to put it off until tomorrow.

  I didn’t know a lot about her other than she was twenty-five, and that she had been a nanny for a neighbor of Ben and Becky’s. They’d moved and she was now looking for something regular. Becky told me she was fantastic, so I was really looking forward to meeting her. I trusted Becky’s instincts.

  Becky also told me Julie was beautiful and that I should ask her out at some point. This was the last thing on my mind. I wasn’t sure what it was that made all of my friends think that I needed to be set up for romantic encounters. I was not ready. It had been over two years since Amanda had passed, but I still wasn’t ready to get romantic with anyone. This wasn’t what I wanted to do now.

  But when I really thought about it, I realized they could all see that I was lonely, I was broken, and I was not dealing properly with my grief and allowing myself to move on. I understood all of this perfectly, but it was still hard. I just couldn’t let myself go there.

  I kept thinking about the guilt, and how I would betray Amanda. We’d nev
er really talked about what would happen if one of us passed on. We were too young to think about it really, but I knew that deep down Amanda wouldn’t have wanted me to be lonely. I wouldn’t have wanted her to spend her life alone if the roles were reversed.

  Yet, knowing all of this, I couldn’t bring myself to go on and find someone that might end up taking her place in my life. My wife was dead. My angel, my partner, my entire world — she was long gone. I was alone.

  And that was the way I was going to stay. At least for now.

  Chapter Two

  Julie

  What was that noise?

  I felt the grip of fear embracing me as a shiver ran over my body. I’d heard something… it probably might have just been the wind. It had been really blowing like crazy this evening. I didn’t want to admit that I was afraid of being alone at night in a big and a quiet house, but I was spooking myself out now. I just wished the Normans would come home soon. I hated waiting for people, but I supposed that the longer they were out, the more I got paid. It paid to think positively.

  The Normans had tapped me to babysit for them that evening on super short notice. Luckily, I had nothing else going on and I was able to accept the job, but this was not my ideal scenario. I’ve always loved kids, and their kids were both as sweet as could be, but I needed something full time. Picking up a few hours here and there babysitting wasn’t going to cut it.