By the time Mary Jacobsen finally awoke to the persistent shrilling of the smoke detector installed in her upstairs hallway, it was already too late to escape.

It was mid-June, and Bearpaw Ridge had been sweltering under unusually high temperatures for days. It hadn’t even cooled off much at night, which made it nearly impossible to sleep without air conditioning.

Which Mary’s cottage, originally built in the 1940s, didn’t have.

A new furnace and air conditioning had been on her list for a while, but there always seemed to be more urgent things to upgrade or fix, like her roof and the electrical wiring, or the lead paint on her doorways and window frames…the list went on and on.

She knew that her place was a money pit, but she loved it because it was hers and hers alone. After her failed attempt to mate Gary di Mannaro and their subsequent divorce, she had needed a place of her own to retreat to, away from her wolf pack and the well-meaning concern of her parents.

So, no air conditioning.

In desperation, she’d set up an air mattress in the only cool place in her home: her basement laundry room. Which luckily hosted fewer spiders than the storage half of the basement.

Mary didn’t know how long the smoke detector had been shrieking when she finally struggled to full consciousness. Any hopes that it was a false alarm were dispelled by the pungent odor of burning plastic and wood smoke seeping around the basement door.

“Crap!” Mary rolled off the air mattress, shoved her feet into her slippers, and grabbed for the flashlight she had placed next to the mattress.

Then she ran up the basement steps.

Luckily for her, years of emergency training kicked in before she did something monumentally stupid. Instead of yanking open the door, she stopped at the top of the wooden stairs and pressed her palm against the door first. Hot.

This is bad. Really bad.

In the flashlight’s beam, she saw tendrils of smoke creeping under the door and through the tiny spaces between the door and the doorframe.

Can’t get out that way.

That was when she knew she was in real trouble.

Her heart began to pound, and her skin began to prickle as her inner wolf rose in response to the danger.

Down, girl. You can’t help me right now.

She retreated back down the stairs and walked over to the vintage landline phone extension on the wall of the laundry.

She cursed the fact that she’d left her cellphone plugged in upstairs…all she had down here was an ancient rotary-dial phone. But it was better than nothing…and it had an extra-long cord. Apparently one of the cottage’s previous owners had enjoyed talking on the phone while puttering around down here.

She dialed the town’s emergency response center.

“Nine one one. What’s your emergency?” The familiar sound of Linda Barker’s calm voice helped soothe Mary’s rising panic.

“Hey, Linda. It’s Mary Jacobsen. Can you send the fire department over to my house? Something’s burning upstairs. I smell smoke, and my alarms are all going off.”

Mary knew that she sounded calm. Years of working as a cop did that to you, even when things got really shitty. Just like now.

Mary heard the sound of Linda typing furiously on a computer keyboard as she sent out the summons to the town’s volunteer firefighters.

“Honey, are you okay? Where in the house are you?” Linda asked.

“Yeah,” Mary answered. “I’m in the basement.”

She pushed down her wolf’s panicky conviction that they were choking on the smoke seeping down the stairs.

Linda’s tone suddenly became more urgent. “Can you get out?”

Mary eyed the narrow horizontal windows high above her and felt her stomach clench in visceral terror. When she’d first bought this house, she’d eyed those narrow windows with approval as good security features, too small for any adult to crawl through. Now she realized she was trapped.

I’m not getting out of here. I’m going to roast like a Thanksgiving turkey.

“Nope. A raccoon might be able to crawl out of here, but my ass is never going to fit,” she told Linda, desperately trying to keep her tone light even though her heart was pounding frantically, and she felt like she was choking in the increasingly smoky air.

I have to stay calm and think. Screaming and running around in circles isn’t going to help anything right now.

“Oh, no,” Linda said, sounding horrified. Mary heard another furious spate of typing on the other end of the phone connection. Then Linda said, “Sweetie, I’m gonna stay on the line with you, okay? The firefighters are on their way and should be there in another few minutes. Is there a lot of smoke?”

Her tone was back to normal—warm, calm, and professional. It helped Mary center herself and push down her wolf’s desire to shift and then throw herself against those too-small windows until they broke.

Like that would make things any better, Mary thought with disgust. We’d just get stuck.

“Not yet,” she replied, though the throat-scratching reek was growing stronger by the minute.

Is it getting hot in here? Oh, God, I think it is!

“Okay, here’s what I want you to do,” Linda continued. “Is there any way you can wet down a cloth and wrap it over your mouth and nose?”

Why didn’t I think of that?

“Lucky for me, my laundry room is down here,” Mary said. “Hold on.”

She put down the handset and lunged for the pile of clean dish towels that she’d washed a couple of days ago but hadn’t gotten around to putting away yet, and grabbed one.

The laundry room had a deep sink, and Mary quickly soaked the dish towel before wringing it out. She draped it over her mouth and nose, then pushed her hair out of the way and tied it at the back of her head.

She heard approaching sirens in the distance and felt an instant of overwhelming relief. Maybe I won’t die in here, after all!

Then she glanced up, spotted the red glow around the edges of the basement door, and her relief turned to despair.

How long would it take for the fire to burn down through the floor above her and for her house to collapse on top of her like a blazing funeral pyre?

“The guys know I’m in the basement, right?” she asked Linda and heard the panic in her voice.

“Yeah. They’ll get you out of there, don’t you worry,” Linda replied.

Mary heard the crackle of a radio transmission and unintelligible words on the other end of the line. Outside, the sirens grew steadily louder.

Then Linda said, “Dane just radioed me to tell you that they’re pulling up to your house right now. Everything’s going to be all right, Mary.”

The sirens were ear-splitting now, drowning out Linda’s voice as she continued to talk. Mary saw the flashing red lights through her useless basement windows as the fire engines pulled up in front of the house.

“I see them!” she shouted into the phone.

Then the line went dead, and Linda’s reassuring reply cut off mid-sentence.

Mary spent the next few minutes in an agony of waiting as the smoke in the basement grew from irritating to choking. She heard muffled shouts from outside and the sounds of banging and thumping against the deep rumbling background noise of the fire engines’ motors.

She moved around the basement, going up on tiptoes to peer through each of the high, narrow windows in turn, trying to see what was happening outside.

Where the hell are they? What’s taking them so long?

Mary heard an ominous creak above her and pressed herself against one of the basement’s concrete walls as she stared at the smoke-wreathed door at the top of the stairs.

Is this it? Is this the end? Is the fire going to get me before anyone can get down here?

The creak sounded again…and again. And she finally recognized what the creaks were.

Footsteps! Someone’s in the house! They’re looking for me!

“Mary? Mary? Where are you?” The muffled shout was audible even through the ceiling

She drew deep breath of the smoky air, grateful for the damp cloth that filtered out the worst of it, and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Down here! In the basement!”

In response, she heard the heavy footsteps moving above her.

An instant later, the basement door swung inwards. Smoke billowed down the stairs and rose to frame a tall, broad-shouldered figure armored in a helmet, full-face mask, air tank, and turnout gear marked with reflective tape.

For a heart-stopping moment, she scented a bear shifter through the choking haze of smoke, and her first thought was, Evan!

But she knew that was impossible. Evan Swanson was somewhere hundreds of miles away from Bearpaw Ridge, spending the summer doing whatever it was that a wildlife biologist did in the Montana wilderness.

She raised her flashlight and shone the beam in the firefighter’s direction, careful not to blind him.

“I found her!” he exclaimed into his radio, his voice sounding distant and muffled behind the faceplate of his SCBA mask.

He headed down the stairs toward her. “Is there anyone else in the house? Any pets?”

She heard the crackle of a radio transmission in reply. “Is she okay? Any injuries?”

Mary shook her head. “I’m the only one here. No pets,” she said loudly. “And I’m fine!”

And immediately gave the lie to her words when a coughing fit seized her and she doubled over, clutching the damp dishtowel tied around her face.

The firefighter relayed her words over his radio, then put a heavy, reassuring hand on her back. “Okay, Mary, let’s get you out of here.”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she wheezed, feeling giddy with relief.

She straightened, ready to dash up the stairs behind him.

To her astonishment, he reached out and swept her up in his arms.

“Hey!” Mary exclaimed and stiffened reflexively in his hold.

“What? You want to walk through a burning house in your slippers?” the firefighter asked incredulously.

“Oh.” Mary fought the urge to giggle as a mixture of embarrassment and relief bubbled up inside her. “Yeah, I guess you have a point.”

The next few seconds were a blur as the firefighter carried her swiftly out of the basement and through her house. She held her breath and craned her neck to see how bad it was, but the thick mass of black smoke prevented her from seeing much.

She did catch glimpses of flames and patches of sullen red, which made her heart sink.

Then they were outside on her heat-browned lawn, surrounded by the strobing lights from the fire engine and paramedic van parked in front of her house.

Her rescuer carried her over to the paramedic van and gently put her down.

She drew breath to thank him and began coughing again. Her throat and lungs felt like they were on fire.

“Sit here.” He put a hand on her shoulder, firm and comforting, and she lowered herself to the van’s broad rear bumper. “Fred! We need some oxygen here!”

Fred Barker was already pulling equipment from one of the compartments. He was the senior member of the all-volunteer Bearpaw Ridge Fire Department, and Mary had known him for years. His wife Linda was the town’s emergency dispatcher.

Hopefully she’d heard by now that Mary was safely out of the house.

The firefighter who had rescued her pulled off his SCBA mask and helmet, revealing rumpled dark hair and dark stubble along with the tired eyes of someone who’d been rousted out of bed at oh-dark-thirty by an emergency call.

His hazel eyes and handsome features marked him as one of the Swanson bear shifters, but not one that Mary recognized at first glance.

She looked at the name on the front of his jacket. It read SWANSON, TY.

Then it hit her.

“Tyler?” she asked, in the space between coughs.

She’d heard he was back in town but hadn’t run into him before this morning.

He smiled at her, and she felt an odd flutter in her chest. “Hey, Mary. Long time no see.”

Not since high school graduation, a good fifteen or so years ago, Mary realized. He’d matured from the tall, skinny kid who’d worn his bad attitude as defiantly as his faded heavy metal T-shirts.

He was still tall, but now he had filled out in all the right ways, with a bear-shifter’s big-shouldered, broad-chested body.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” she wheezed. “We really miss him around here.”

A pained expression crossed his face, as if she’d just hit an exposed nerve. “Yeah, so I’ve heard. Thanks,” he added belatedly.

What’s that all about?

Michael Swanson had been well-respected in the county until he’d been killed in a house fire last autumn. He had managed to rescue his mate Phoebe, an Ordinary woman, from their bedroom, but had been overcome by smoke and toxic fumes when he went back into the house to try to save his wedding photos and computer.

Fred appeared at her side, pulled the now dry and smoke-stained dishcloth away from her face, and clapped a clear plastic oxygen mask over her mouth and nose.

He had steel-gray hair that stuck up in mussed tufts, as if he’d climbed straight out of bed and into his turnouts. His smile was kind, though, and his brisk examination was gentle but competent.

Mary inhaled the bottled oxygen gratefully and felt the tight burn in her chest and throat ease as Fred deftly took her pulse and shone a light into each of her eyes in turn.

“Bit of smoke inhalation, but I think you’re gonna be just fine,” he informed her. He continued in a half-joking tone, the crow’s-feet around his gray eyes crinkling with humor. “Got any burns, bruises, cuts, or broken limbs?”

Mary looked down at herself, noting her now filthy pajamas. “My fashion sense appears be broken,” she answered wryly. “But the rest of me is still in one piece.”

Tyler crouched next to her. He handed her a bottle of water, and she wanted to kiss him in gratitude.

“Is there anything inside the house that you’d like me to look for?” he asked, his eyes warm with compassion. “Photo albums, pictures, heirloom vases, designer shoes…anything like that?”

“I have a shelf with photo albums next to my fireplace in my living room,” she replied. “And my laptop is sitting on the coffee table. If you could get those—” she paused and looked at him earnestly “—without putting yourself in danger, I’d be really grateful.”

“I’ll do my best.” He smiled as he rose to his feet, and she felt that odd flutter again.

It wasn’t just that he was smoking hot, like most of the male Swansons in the area. It was the weird sense of having an instant connection to him.

He just saved my life. That’s probably why.

Tyler donned his SCBA mask and put his helmet on again and strode across the lawn to her house.

Mary saw the smoke pouring from every window and out of a large hole that one of the firefighters was busy chopping in her new roof. Other firefighters had pulled hoses around to the back and side of her house and were busily dousing the flames consuming her garage.

Mark Swanson, identifiable by the SWANSON, M on the back of his jacket, stood in the front doorway of her house, a hose trailing behind him. He directed a steady stream of water into the interior as black smoke poured out above him as if it was being banished from the house.

Tyler paused momentarily to talk to Mark before he slid past the other firefighter and disappeared into the smoke-filled interior of her house.

She wasn’t aware that she was holding her breath until Fred poked her lightly in her upper arm.

“Breathe,” he commanded. “It’ll be okay, because you’re okay.”

“I can’t believe I told him to get my photo albums,” Mary muttered. “It’s not like I’m ever going to look at my wedding pictures again, what with the divorce and all.”

“Maybe,” Fred said, his tone kind. “But those photos are still a part of your history. You might regret it if they were destroyed and gone forever.”

“But are they worth putting Tyler’s life at risk?” she asked. God, what was I thinking? Even the laptop is backed up to the cloud.

She felt an insane urge to hop up and run after him into the house and tell him to forget about it. If something happened to him because he was trying to rescue her stupid photo albums…

Fred followed her gaze and studied the house. “He’ll be fine,” he added. “He’s only been a firefighter for a few months, but he doesn’t take unnecessary risks.”

Despite Fred’s reassurance, Mary felt a steel band of anxiety tight as a corset around her chest as she waited anxiously for Tyler to reemerge from her burning house.