1

SARAH JO

“Kiss the first hotshot you see. Whoever’s first in line, just lay one on him.” Rosalie waves her spatula for her emphasis, ponytail bouncing like an exclamation point. She’s the head cook at fire camp and my boss for the last few weeks, which means I’m supposed to do what she says. Somehow, I don’t think sexually harassing the hotshot firefighters was what HR had in mind.

Another cook mimes kissing, hooking a tanned arm around the neck of an imaginary lover. “A hot kiss, mind you. You’re not kissing your grandma. A little lip, a little tongue—that lucky boy won’t know what hit him. Nothing to it. And nothing you haven’t done before, I bet.”

Oooh… now my co-workers are speculating about my sex life. So much for my plan to keep a low profile—I’m about as visible now as a fireworks show on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. I stand there staring at them like I’ve never heard of kissing, tugging my oversized flannel shirt tighter around me. It’s big enough that I could use it as a tent. Or a turtle shell. If I were super smart, I’d pull my head inside the flannel and not come out for another century or two.

“A hot kiss for a hotshot,” another whoops.

We’re an equal opportunity camp: if men think about sex constantly, so do the women. Even me. I devote plenty of mental time to kissing. First kisses, dirty kisses, kisses with tongue, butterfly kisses… don’t make me pick between them. I’m an “E—All of the above” woman when it comes to choosing my favorite. Rough kisses, soft pecks, Eskimo kisses, French kisses—yes, yes, and yes please. Really, even bad kisses aren’t all bad because you can share a good laugh with your fellow kissee about whatever it is that went wrong.

So other than the sad fact that I need to not draw attention to myself, I don’t have any problem with my boss’s demand that I kiss a hotshot. I’m happy to take one for the team and add to the photo gallery I’m keeping in my head. You thought only guys stored up spank bank material? Think again. Last night over s’mores and before the piñata-smashing main event, my friend Lola suggested we rename the spank bank.

Rub club.

Jill till.

The flick file.

I’ve stored up my favorite kisses over the years, and yes, I re-run them in my head when it’s time for a little ménage a moi. I may have a kissing addiction, if we’re being honest. I’ve got an entire highlights reel of best-ever kiss moments stored up in my head. I’ve been accused—with some grounds—of preferring the warm up kisses to the main act. Some people make an entire meal out of appetizers and skip the main course. I’m done apologizing for liking what I like—and so if I prefer tongue action to sausage action, so be it.

At the moment, however, I’m on a kissing hiatus. I may just possibly have kissed the wrong guy a little bit too much, resulting in my presence in this fire camp in Nowheresville, California. A girl has to kiss a lot of frogs to find her prince, and my last frog was a warty one with nary a crown in sight. I got no magic fairy tale ending where he morphed into Mr. Tall, Dark, and Regally Handsome in order to sweep me off my feet in his private Learjet to some obscure but filthy rich European country. I was the happy recipient of no tiara, no happily-ever-after, and no super-talented dick. Instead, I’ve ended up with life on the lam and a minimum wage job that requires me to both cook and do the dishes.

The cafeteria I’m standing in used to be a mess hall back in Civilian Conservation Corps days, a period that I’ll put in the category of long, long ago. The building is still largely utilitarian, but the words dilapidated, rundown, and on its last legs also come to mind because the decorating style runs to worn linoleum and fuzzed-out screens. The cooks prop the screen door open with a rock. It definitely isn’t the Ritz, with its wooden picnic tables dotting the surrounding clearing for the overflow crowd.

And it’s certainly no dating Mecca.

Not that I’m interested in dating.

Or guys.

Sex and anything to do with the penis-possessing members of society are strictly off-limits, see the aforementioned plan of flying under the radar and sticking to the spank bank. I’m supposed to be hiding, not drawing attention to myself.

“I can’t just kiss the first guy I see.” My mouth protests, on auto-pilot while my libido considers the option. Seriously. The Big Bear Rogues light fires that have nothing to do with the trees and protecting the wildland interface. I secretly suspect that the nineteen men and one woman (go, sister!) who make up the elite team of wildland firefighters were hired as much for their pretty faces as for their fierce firefighting skills. Or maybe it’s the combination of a big, rough lumberjack of a man who’s bulked up even more by long weeks hauling a fuck-ton of equipment around the wild. Hell, I’d interface with Pick Revere, one of the hotshot team’s two seconds-in-command, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. We’ve only met once, much earlier in the summer before I started working here, but it was memorable. Even if he did accidentally scare the hell out of me, how do you forget that much man?

Pick is a bear of a man. When cooking gets boring—and since I’m no Michelin chef, I’m usually bored—I amuse myself by imagining him as a frontiersman. My brain likely has too much free time, but I’ve spent a lot of time lately contemplating the honed muscle and disciplined focus that is Pick. He’s precisely the kind of man who knows his way around the forest, and I’ve invented an entire resume for him. Fantasy Pick is comfortable with a hunting rifle or a ten-mile hike because he’s grown up on a diet of outdoor activities. He also moves with an easy confidence that does unspeakable things to my insides.

Because you just have to wonder if he knows his way around a bed and a woman’s body just as well.

Nope, there’s no missing this particular Big Bear Rogue. He loves what he does, showing up for more fires than even Hunter Black does. First in, last out, those two are practically joined at the firefighting hip. Perhaps I should add a ménage a trois to that spank list…

“She’s thinking about it,” a feminine voice gleefully calls me back to earth.

Snap.

“You don’t think an uninvited kiss smacks of”—I wave my spatula for emphasis before prying the slightly charred pancake off the griddle I’m manning—“sexual harassment? Won’t I be setting myself up for a sure meet and greet with a pink slip?”

I totally need to hang on to this job. Paychecks don’t magically deposit themselves into my checking account. I was down to my last few dollars when I stopped for gas in Big Bear Lake, California and saw the avalanche of Help Wanted and For Rent posters pinned to the wall. Old-fashioned kind of cute, I thought, tickled that someone still went the 8-x-11 route with a strip of tear-off numbers on the bottom.

Since being unemployed and on the run meant that I had time to kill and nowhere to be, I read while I worked my way through a car-warmed Coke. And it’s like Karma or God herself tapped on my shoulder because that’s how I’d found out about the Break Up Club. Or maybe my attention had been grabbed by the Craigslist posting printed out on hot-pink construction paper decorated with copious swirls of glitter glue. The sign screamed Look at me! and practically blinded me when a ray of sun hit the paper. Apparently, I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join said Break Up Club and “work through” the demise of a recent relationship. The poster promised an eight-step master plan guaranteed to purge douches, exes, and troublesome penes from every area of my life.

Since I didn’t want my ex finding me under any circumstances, purging sounded right up my alley. Even better? The Break Up Club was a sleepaway camp. Members got dibs on “charmingly rustic” cabins “situated in a pristine mountain environment.” I dialed the number pronto and became founding member number three. Finding semi-permanent shelter of the non-car variety had been step one in my Reinvent Sarah Jo plan, and even if I’ve ended up in a cabin that made tiny living look palatial, I’m happy. I have a roof, running water, and my own bathroom. It’s a definite step up from the cardboard box I’d envisioned when I bolted from Auburn. It’s possible that situation there could have sorted itself out, but I’ll take my chances on the cabin and the hotshots.

Work even magically fell from the sky and landed in my lap. I called on a few of the Help Wanted posters, and thanks to a completely understandable lack of people willing to make millions of pancakes for minimum wage, I ended up here. Thank God no one actually tested my cooking abilities before saying the magic words you’re hired. With my phone and Google, I can fake anything. I also flipped a digit on my Social—close enough to excuse if and when someone notices—and gambled no one had time to run a full background check when they were shorthanded. Hotshots can eat their weight in pancakes, I kid you not.

But back to the whole sexually-assault-a-hotshot thing. I’m sure you want to know how that turns out. I know I do.

Rosalie’s shaking her head. She’s still stuck on the whole kissing thing. “Those boys like a good joke.”

“Uh-huh.” Frowning, I examine my pancake. One side is definitely edible. The other? Not so much. With a mental shrug, I carefully position the pancake on the stack. Show only the good side. I’ve learned that, haven’t I? Strategic cover-up is the story of my life.

“The first guy in line. That’s the dare.” Rosalie crosses her arms over her ample chest where large letters declare Firefighters light me up and with which statement I am in whole-hearted agreement. It’s like mountain scenery. Sometimes, you just have to stop and stare.

“I dare you,” she continues. “We all had to do it. You want to be a summer cook and one of us, you kiss the guy.”

“I’m hardly new,” I point out. “I’ve been working here for over a month.”

Rosalie grins at me. “Yeah, but none of us thought you’d last this long.”

She makes a good point.

What she doesn’t know, however, is that the sad state of my checking account combined with my secret escape plan means that I have plenty of incentive to stick with the job, even if it isn’t fantasy fodder material. You know. Except for the sexy hotshots that parade through my line every day.

“I’m a sticker,” I say virtuously. It’s not like I’m pro-quitting, after all. I can totally polish my halo on this one.

“Uh-huh.” Rosalie snorts and points at my pancake. The one I’ve flipped over to hide the burned bits. “Hope you kiss better than you cook.”

Rising to the bait is stupid, but I’ve never liked backing down from a dare. I can do this. I just have to hope that the first man in line is decent looking. Yes, I’m shallow that way, but if I’m getting my first kiss in months, I want a good one.

“Hostile work conditions,” I grouse, pouring more batter out of the ancient Tupperware container. The griddle spits and hisses, trying to christen my forearms with second-degree burns. My flannel is multi-purpose—camouflage and protective gear.

“Honey, you want hostile, you go out there.” Rosalie jerks a thumb southeast where a thick column of oily black smoke punches up over the horizon. Seen from a distance, the fire is little more than a thick, sluggish haze right now. The hotshots headed out early this morning, on a mission to keep the fire small. Early is the perfect time to catch a fire and put it out. Later, when the sun rises and the day heats up, fire becomes a bear to stop, or so I’ve learned. I eavesdrop on a lot of conversations while I’m serving pancakes.

“You really did it?” I have to ask.

“Kissed the first man I saw? Honey, you bet I did. That hotshot didn’t know what hit him. Took him home with me, too, and kept him.” Rosalie laughs, amusement shaking her entire frame.

“This isn’t some kind of weird dating service, is it?” My suspicion is a hard-learned lesson. If a perfectly lovely, noble white steed popped its ass onto my front lawn I’d absolutely look it in the mouth. I’d run a background check on it too because no matter how pretty a horse is, it’s still going to shit all over your grass and generally make a public nuisance of itself.

Case in point? I went out with a perfectly respectable deputy sheriff, no questions asked, and that ex-boyfriend burned a house down around my ears and blamed me for the ensuing property destruction. To avoid certain legal charges, I’ve transplanted my city-loving self here to fire camp. Big Bear is my second chance, and sex isn’t on my to-do list. Although a kiss hardly counts as sex. A quick peck on the lips, a flirty answer to the girls’ dare, and my place here this summer is secured. Ka-ching.

The other cooks already have questions. Fitting in usually isn’t a problem for me even if irreverent is my middle name and I’m never quite certain when to shut my mouth and when to let her rip. But most people like a good laugh and I enjoy the company. Based on the super charred state of the pancake in my frying pan, however, I’ve still got fitting-in issues to resolve.

The noise of the returning crew drowns out Rosalie’s laughter. Battered pickups bounce over the rutted road, disgorging a load of hot, sweaty, buff hotshots and the unmistakable smell of smoke, outdoors, and something else indefinably masculine. If I could bottle the eau de hotshot, I’d never need to flip another pancake because I’d be a billionaire with a private island in Fiji.

The horde approaches. It’s refreshing that they eye my food and not my boobs.

One kiss. How can it hurt? I can go back to hiding in plain sight afterward.

“I’m in.”

Rosalie tosses me a pot of cherry lip gloss. “Lube it up, honey. Give him something to remember.”