Jules Cooper wanted to celebrate and have a little fun before the hard work began in the morning. She and the rest of her hotshot firefighter colleagues had arrived this morning, and all of them had been cleared to work the upcoming fire season after passing the arduous fitness pack test.

“Well done, boss,” Kelly her friend and only other female hotshot in the group toasted.

“It kinda feels weird,” Jules said, beaming with pride. She’d worked her ass off during winter taking additional courses, and just today she’d received the confirmation that she’d been promoted to crew leader and hotshot instructor.

“You’ll do just fine. You know that,” Denis said. One of their older colleagues, she and Kelly had been fighting wildfires with him for years. He kept complaining that he was getting too old for that shit, but came back every year like clockwork.

“Thanks. And I have the best team possible.” The base employed about sixty hotshots, twenty of them rookies. And starting tomorrow, she’d be working directly with the rookies, who’d been training their butts off the last few weeks.

“I wonder how the rookies are this year?” Castor chimed in.

“We’ll get to see them soon enough. They’re having their fitness test tomorrow.”

Jules nodded. “I checked the roster earlier today. Twenty made it through the basic training. And hear me out, guys, Kelly and I will get reinforcements, there’s one woman amongst them.”

“No way, and here I thought we could keep this last male domain for ourselves,” Denis groaned with mock indignation. “Soon we’ll be the minority.”

Everyone laughed. That wouldn’t happen anytime soon. Hotshot training was some of the most arduous physical training out there and the statistics gave proof to that claim. Close to a third of the rookies dropped out before the end of the first week, and at least another third of those who stayed and passed this season, wouldn’t be back for a second one.

“Remember that guy last year? The one who thought fighting wildfires is a piece of cake and he didn’t have to obey a woman? He ran with his tail between his legs after his first mission,” Kelly said with a laugh. In hindsight it was funny, but when Jules had been by his side, waiting in vain for him to do his part, she’d wanted to ring his chauvinist neck.

“God forbid we get another one of those this year. I’ll make sure everyone who’s not fit for the fight quits…” Jules pursed her lips in a half smile, but her flashing eyes gave her away. If someone had a problem obeying orders, he was out. “I, for my part, plan to stay alive.”

“Me too,” Denis said. “I’m planning to retire after this season.”

“Really?” Kelly gave him a playful punch on his biceps. “Haven’t you been saying that for the last five years?”

“No, this time I mean it. I’m getting too old for this shit,” he grinned, apparently not believing it himself.

“Anyone up for a game of pool?” Troy asked.

“Sure. Holler when you’ve secured a table,” Jules said, giving a full turn on her bar stool. That’s when she saw a guy so hot her stomach clenched. “Wow!” she whispered under her breath, letting her eyes take in his appearance and feeling her heartbeat speed up.

It wasn’t that she didn’t see super-hot guys day and night. She lived on base with plenty of ripped, muscled, testosterone-laden guys, for God’s sake. So why did this specimen cause her female parts to take notice?

The man was well-built with muscles in all the right places, his biceps bulging the black t-shirt, a tattoo snaking out from under the sleeve all the way down to his elbow. Holy Lord, she was a sucker for men with tattoos…and tousled dark hair cropped short…

When he caught her staring, she felt the blood shooting to her face. Fighting the urge to spin back around on her stool, she gave him her most arrogant glance, and mentally high-fived herself. But she shouldn’t have, because he smiled right back at her.

His dark blue eyes seemed to electrify the entire room, sending tingles coursing through her veins. Somehow, she managed to tear her eyes away from him and turned on her stool in a dignified arc.

“So, are you ready for the season to start?” she asked Kelly, who’d been ordering another beer.

Kelly grinned, nodding at the bartender when he handed her the drink. “Thanks, Mitch. Yes, I’m ready. Off-season is boring.”

Jules laughed saying, “Thank goodness. Gives us time to recuperate.”

She sensed his presence, before she saw him. A jolt of sensation snaked up her spine.

“Hi, you come here often?” an incredibly sexy deep voice asked. An internal war ensued between groaning at the corny line, or melting into a puddle at his feet. Something about his voice touched a part of her that had been long buried. To tell the truth, everything about him had her tied up in knots, waiting for him to wrap those muscled arms around her and press her against his hard body.

She glanced up at him, the smile in his deep blue eyes hitting her like a lightning strike. Holy Lord, how on earth could her body react like this to a man she’d never seen before.

Using all her mental strength to tear her eyes away from him, she decided it better to ignore him and picked up her beer. Kelly signaled with a slight shake of her head that she was paying attention to Mr. Hotness.

He leaned a hip on the bar, facing her sideways and then asked, “What’s your name? Mine’s Tyler.”

She had to give him credit for having balls, but that didn’t mean she would succumb to the unprecedented lust flooding her being. She wasn’t averse to having sex, actually enjoyed it, but she didn’t do relationships during fire season. Afraid that a romantic or even purely sexual relationship would mess with her focus, she’d decided long ago that sex and fires didn’t mesh. Better to end it right before it started.

“I’m Jules, and I’m going to save you a lot of trouble and tell you straight up I’m not interested in whatever you have going on in that gorgeous brain of yours.”

Tyler grinned at her, his wonderful eyes gleaming with mischief. “So, you think I’m gorgeous?”

Jules mentally rolled her eyes. Leave it to a man to take the compliment and ignore the rest. “Like I didn’t just tell you something you haven’t heard a thousand times already.”

“Let me buy you another round,” he said, glancing at her almost empty beer.

“Look, Tyler, I’m here with friends and really, I’m not interested.” She tried to soften her words with a smile, relieved when he simply looked at her for a moment and then inclined his head.

“Alright, but if you change your mind, I’ll be over there.” He shot her another panty-melting smile and then sauntered off, giving her a prime view of his positively gorgeous ass wearing long khakis. His aftershave lingered in the air, assailing her nostrils and dampening her panties from the waves of desire rushing through her.

“I can’t believe you brushed him off.” Kelly shot her a disbelieving look.

“Come on. There’s more than enough hot guys on base. He’s nothing special,” Jules said.

“Nothing special? So why’s your heart going a mile a minute?”

“It’s not.” Jules put a hand over her heart to hide the frantic hammering.

Kelly giggled. “Hey, it’s me. Your friend. Female friend I must emphasize. And I know lust when I see it. You’re lusting after that hot body.”

“I’m not saying he isn’t hot. I’m just not interested.” Actually, Jules was interested. A lot so. But rules were rules. Having an affair or even a one-night stand might derail her focus. And lack of focus meant that the firefighters depending on her might get hurt. Or worse. “Fire season starts tomorrow. No guys. Period.”

Kelly shook her head. “You and your rules.”

Jules turned and surveyed the tables in the bar. “Quite full today. Must be plenty of tourists in town.”

“Handsome tourists,” Kelly said and pointed to the table where Tyler was now taking his seat on the bench again, amidst some other muscular men and one blonde woman.

“I wonder what they’re doing here?” Jules said. Bear Mountain was the village that hosted the base camp for the hotshots, but it was also a popular starting place for a hike into the adjacent National Park.

“Probably out for a few days of camping. Let’s hope they are responsible and don’t give us the first fire of the season.”

Jules sighed. As much as she loved firefighting, at the same time she hated what the fires did. They destroyed so much of the wonderful nature and the wildlife. But what she hated with every fiber in her body were negligent tourists who caused fires to start because they didn’t adhere to the safety rules of camping out.

“Look at that one.” Kelly pointed at a guy in his mid-twenties who got a little too hands on with the woman he was trying to charm and ended up getting a glass of beer dumped in his face.

“Crash and burn,” Jules murmured with a chuckle.

“So how was L.A.?” Kelly asked.

Jules shook her head saying, “Dirty and crowded. I’m glad to be back up here in the mountains. I’d live here year-round if I could.”

“Bet your mom would love that, huh?” Kelly asked, the subject of Jules’ mom having occurred on more than one occasion.

“Not hardly.” Jules huffed a laugh, downing more of her beer. “She’s never going to understand why I do this job, and I’m okay with that. She spent most of the winter months trying to set me up with this actor or that producer.”

“So, she’s moving up in the world?”

“If you call rubbing elbows with some of Hollywood’s A-list actors and actresses moving up in the world, then yes. She just can’t seem to understand that her friends aren’t my crowd. I mean, they’re just people…”

“Who make lots of money making movies and posing for photographs.”

“Yeah, but money isn’t everything.” Jules paused a moment as she contemplated how different they were. “I’d rather spend a night out under the stars than gawking at stars made of concrete on a sidewalk.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m not in agreement with you on that one, but there are a few hot actors I wouldn’t mind meeting.”

Jules shook her head. “You’d be sadly disappointed. I know I have been. Everyone in that world expects you to be plastic, and they wouldn’t know what to do with a real-life person. They live for labels and being seen at the right events and hob-knobbing with the right people. That’s not for me.”

Troy’s signal that they’d procured a pool table cut the conversation short.

“Let’s go.” Jules followed them across the bar, holding her eyes hostage so they wouldn’t glance anywhere in the vicinity of the smoking hot Tyler. By the way her spine tingled, his eyes were caressing her backside. Throughout the pool game the exciting sensation of him watching her popped up again. Each time she turned to confirm or deny, he met her eyes, winked at her and then looked back to the group of ever changing men sitting at his table, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do. As if he’d known her all his life.

As if she already belonged to him.

Jules shook her head, eradicating the images of Tyler coming over and putting an arm around her waist, whispering dirty words into her ear and then knocking her out with that devastating smile of his.

Damn him and his perfect lips.

She ruined the perfect shot she’d needed to win the game.

“What’s wrong with you, Jules? Forgot how to play pool during off-season?” Castor teased her and finished off the game at the same time. “I win.”

Jules shot him an angry glance. “Sorry guys, I’m tired. I guess I better get some shut-eye.”

“Come on, it’s not even midnight. Stay and play one more game with us,” Kelly pleaded with her.

“Not tonight. We’ve all got an early day tomorrow. I’ll see you all at breakfast.” She nodded to everyone and started for the door.

Focused on the pool game, hell no scratch that, on erotic fantasies with Tyler, she hadn’t noticed the influx of new patrons in the bar. It was awfully crowded by now and some of the men had clearly pregamed and were in different stages of drunkenness.

“Hey, baby! Come on over. I’ve got something just for you.” A big man with longish dark hair and a moustache slurred.

Jules ignored the comments flung her way as she weaved between the tables, heading for the exit. But when a hand reached out and snagged her elbow, she spun around, knocking the offending hand away and backing up.