We hope you enjoyed Maddie and Mauro! We feel like we introduced Mauro to you ages ago (for any new readers, he premiered in our Bedroom Games series last February. And then we sprinkled the brothers in through the Charity Case Series, just to tease you some more. #sorrynotsorry

The original idea for the setting of a family run Italian deli came from a place Piper visits for lunch sometimes. It’s cute, been in town forever and the family that runs it is always warm and welcoming. From there we decided that we’d love to do a series about three Italian brothers, each of whom work as a different emergency services provider. (When you try to integrate characters throughout series as much as we do, you have to plan ahead!)

When we plot out a new series, we try to give you a storyline that we haven’t wrote before. Flirting with Fire falls under the classic troupe, ‘Ugly Duckling’—where the girl who wasn’t pretty in high school suddenly loses the glasses and braces and drops a few dress sizes, transforming her into a swan. We didn’t much care for the name of this trope for obvious reasons and were happy to find that the trope has been renamed ‘Beautiful All Along’.

Although neither one of us liked going back to high school, it was enjoyable to write a story where the characters each have so much growth. Proving again, high school doesn’t define who you are and who you will become.

Maddie was a beautiful woman inside and out all along, but she had to find it within herself to really understand that. Her outward appearance wasn’t what Mauro fell in love with, he fell for the person she is. And once she saw herself the way he did, they could have their HEA.

Vanessa and Cristian’s story is coming up next in Crushing On The Cop...we have some ideas up our sleeve and although it’s a ‘Boss’s Daughter’ trope, there’s SOOO much more to their story.

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Now let’s put our hands together for our awesome team!

The cover is awesome thanks to Letitia from RBA Designs and we appreciate her hard work but Colton Bensen did give her a pretty gorgeous face to work with. Are we right?

Wander Aguiar for his top-notch photography skills making Colton our Mauro.

Ellie from Love N Books for line editing. We’re still working on giving you a manuscript with more notice (thanks for always being so accommodating and constantly getting it back to us on time).

Shawna from Behind the Writer for being ready when we are, offering not only her eagle eye but story development, too.

Dani Sanchez and the whole Inkslinger PR gang for their organization and planning to get Flirting with Fire out there to the bloggers and readers.

All the bloggers who carve out time to read and review our books. We know there’s a lot of books out there and your reading time is precious. Thank you! xo

All our early ARC readers, first for wanting to read our stuff early and for posting their reviews.

And of course, all our unicorns. <3 What can we say that we’ve haven’t in prior CUR’s? Without sounding like a cheesy romance novel you keep us going. Without our faithful group who love our characters as much as we do, we wouldn’t be inspired to develop more heroes and heroines for you to enjoy!

xo,

Piper & Rayne