Ignite: A Werebear + BBW Paranormal Romance (Bearpaw Ridge Firefighters Book 3) Read online

  Ignite (Bearpaw Ridge Firefighters Book 3)

  By Ophelia Sexton

  Published by Philtata Press

  Text copyright 2016 by Ophelia Sexton. All rights reserved.

  Cover by Jacqueline Sweet

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Excerpt

  "Thanks for the offer, that's really nice of you," Steffi said, firming her resolution against his dangerously tempting offer. "But I still don't think it's a good idea."

  Evan stared at her as if she'd suddenly switched to speaking Russian or something.

  "Wait…so you're attracted to me, I'm attracted to you, we're both available…and you're still turning me down?" he asked slowly. "Why?"

  Steffi swallowed hard. Because I'm terrified that I'll fall for you, and you'll break my heart. Because feeling a spark when we're kissing doesn't mean that you'll want to actually be my boyfriend. I don't want to hook up with you, then watch you go date someone else. Someone as thin and pretty as Mary.

  Bradley hadn't been the first man who had found Steffi attractive enough to sleep with but not good enough to have an actual relationship with. And so far, everything she'd heard about Evan from the people who knew him well was that he dated a lot but avoided any kind of commitment.

  After Bradley, Steffi had promised herself that she'd never settle for less than someone who wanted her and only her and who was open to making a commitment.

  And the first step to finding a man like that was to avoid players, no matter how charming and sexy they might be.

  "Because I'm not your type," she said, as calmly as she could. She felt like her chest was being squeezed by a boa constrictor. Before he could protest, she continued, "And you're not mine."

  "Now, that's a lie, Steffi, and I ought to know," Evan said in his most seductive voice. He took a step closer to her, and she found herself backed against the car. "And I can prove it to you."

  Dedication

  As always, this book is dedicated to Keri and Andy in beautiful Salmon, Idaho, with many thanks for their hospitality, friendship, and warm support for my writing endeavors.

  Thanks also to all of the fire departments across the country who make their firefighter training videos available to the general public on YouTube. Any technical errors in this book are wholly the fault of the author.

  And finally, this book is in loving memory of Bear.

  You were a Very Good Dog, and stole all of our hearts on the day my sister and brother-in-law brought you home as a puppy from the shelter…even if you did enjoy snatching baguettes off tables and slaying the evil vacuum cleaner in its den, er, closet.

  Chapter 1

  Cupertino, California

  It was Sunday afternoon, and Steffi Tristan had just put her nine-month-old niece Olivia down for a nap when the phone rang.

  I bet it's Rajesh calling to ask me when I'm planning on sending out those email blasts. She sighed and went into her living room to answer the call.

  Luckily, Olivia hadn't stirred when Steffi's ringtone began to play. She was out cold and could probably slumber her way through a wild party in the next room.

  Steffi's dog Royce followed her out of the bedroom. As he had done every day since Olivia arrived, the dog settled down to lie across the threshold of her bedroom, in front of the closed door, as if guarding the sleeping baby within.

  When she’d adopted him, the volunteers at the local shelter had told her that the cute puppy was a terrier-black Lab mix, with maybe a bit of sheepdog thrown in. Royce had quickly grown into a sweet-natured, fifty-pound lapdog with the stocky, deep-chested body of a pit bull and the head of a Labrador retriever.

  Thanks to an understanding boss with kids of his own, Steffi was working from home this month. She divided her time between planning the marketing campaign for the next release of Copper Shark Systems' flagship product and babysitting little Olivia while Steffi’s sister Jessica and brother-in-law Patrick were away for the summer, working on a dinosaur dig in far northern Alaska.

  Steffi's company had a beta release planned by the end of the month, so she was working weekends and evenings right now to coordinate trade show announcements and the beta program for existing Copper Shark customers who had expressed a willingness to serve as reference sites later on.

  Steffi pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket, expecting to see Copper Shark Systems' caller ID. Instead, it was Mom and Dad's number.

  Uh-oh.

  She tapped Answer. "Hey, Mom!" she said as cheerily as she could, bracing herself for yet another outpouring of unwanted and unneeded childcare advice.

  She might be unmarried and childless, but Olivia had been in her care for nearly a week now, and she hadn't killed her niece yet.

  "Steffi," said her dad, hoarsely. "I have some bad news." His voice didn't sound anything like his usual hearty, confident tone. "I, uh…"

  His voice trailed off, and he sighed heavily.

  Dread congealed like an icy lump in Steffi's stomach. A dozen awful scenarios raced through her mind. Is Dad okay? How about Mom? Jessica?

  "Dad," she said when the silence had stretched painfully long. "What is it? What happened? Are you okay?"

  Royce raised his head and stared at her, as if sensing her sudden emotional turmoil.

  Another deep sigh. "I'm fine," he began. Then stopped for another long pause. Finally, he said, "I—I just got a phone call from Dr. Harmon, Patrick's boss at the university. Jessica and Patrick's plane disappeared en route to the dig site in Alaska."

  Steffi felt as if she'd just been kicked in the solar plexus. All the breath whooshed out of her body. Her legs suddenly felt like jelly. She sat down hard on her couch.

  "What?" she said stupidly. "What happened?"

  Olivia. Oh, God, Olivia. Steffi thought of her niece, sleeping peacefully in her portable bassinet.

  Royce stood up and padded his way over to Steffi. He put his chin on her knee, his head a heavy, comforting weight, and stared up at her with soulful whiskey-colored eyes.

  "We don't know yet. All we've been told is the pilot apparently deviated from his planned course due to bad weather. The Alaska Air National Guard sent out search and rescue pilots three days ago, but they haven't had any luck because of the weather."

  "But they think the plane crashed?" Steffi asked. Her lips felt stiff and numb with shock.

  She put her free hand on Royce's head and stroked his short, glossy fur. He felt warm against her suddenly cold hand.

  You idiot, of course it crashed, she thought as soon as the words left her mouth. Jessica and Patrick wouldn't have decided to just go off somewhere else, not in bad weather and not with an exciting dinosaur dig awaiting them in the high Arctic.

  "I'm afraid so," Dad said, in the same broken voice. "The gentleman who called me told me that investigators with the NTSB are analyzing radar data transmitted by the plane in hopes of getting a better picture of the flight's trajectory." He stopped speaking, and Steffi could hear him swallow. "Your mom and I are praying for good news, but it—it doesn't look good, Steffi."

  "Oh, God," Steffi said. "Jessica…and Patrick, too?"

  "I'm afraid so." D
ad's voice was gentle and a little hoarse. "We—we just have to—"

  His breath caught with an odd sound, and Steffi realized that he was crying. Her big, strong, stoic father was crying.

  Her older sister Jessica had always been the family's golden child. Tall, blonde, beautiful, outgoing, and scarily smart, she had been in her last year of medical school when she met and fell in love with a big, handsome paleontologist named Patrick Swanson.

  She had graduated at the top of her med school class a few months later, then promptly married Patrick and moved to Anchorage to work at the Alaska Clinical Research Center.

  Jessica had led an adventurous life for the first couple years of their marriage, frequently accompanying her husband on his digs in the high Arctic, 300 miles north of Fairbanks, where he was part of a University of Alaska Museum of the North paleontology team uncovering fossils from a much warmer era in Earth's history. Jessica volunteered as the team's doctor and used her knowledge of anatomy and biology to help analyze the fossils that they discovered.

  When Jessica had gotten pregnant with Olivia, Mom and Dad had been ecstatic at the prospect of their first grandchild. And once Olivia was born, Steffi, much to her surprise, found that she loved being an auntie to the cutest little baby girl in the world.

  So it hadn't seemed like much of a sacrifice on Steffi's part to volunteer to work from home for the summer and babysit Olivia, so that Jessica could return to the Liscombe Bone Beds dig after two years' absence. Steffi's boss Rajesh Parwal had been very supportive, and he had given Steffi permission to work from home for most of that time.

  Jessica had been grateful for the chance to spend the few short weeks of the Arctic summer working side-by-side with her husband under the midnight sun. She had flown from Anchorage to the Bay Area for a quick visit a week ago, and dropped off Olivia at Steffi's place with many thanks. Steffi remembered that her sister had looked radiant with happiness, especially when she talked about Patrick and their life together in Anchorage.

  And now, Jessica was gone. Might even be dead.

  Steffi clutched the phone. "Oh, God, Dad. I'm so sorry."

  She and Jessica had always gotten along well, but ever since they were both little, Steffi had resigned herself to the fact that she was the fat, awkward one and Jessica the tall, slim, beautiful one. Their parents loved both of them, but Steffi had always known that Jessica was their favorite.

  It wasn't Jessica's fault. Gifted with a knockout combination of looks and brains, Steffi's older sister had always dazzled without any conscious effort on her part. She couldn't help outshining everyone around her.

  And when Jessica was in the room, no one even noticed that Steffi was there, too, plain, shy, and always at least a few pounds overweight despite a constant round of dieting and exercise.

  At least she had gotten the family brains. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in English, Steffi had found a job in the Product Marketing division at a small Silicon Valley startup.

  She found it was the perfect job for her—well-paying, with smart, nerdy co-workers, projects with enough challenge to keep her interested both on the technical and creative fronts, and a boss who appreciated her talents.

  With Steffi and Jessica leading such different lives now, Steffi had slowly stepped out of her sister's shadow. She had even developed a tentative social life, with occasional dates and a few friends. And yet the sense of rivalry with her older sister had lingered until this visit.

  What if Jessica was really gone forever? How would Mom and Dad deal with being stuck with their second-best daughter?

  What do I do now? And what about Olivia?

  "What's going to happen now?" her father asked, echoing Steffi's thoughts.

  Steffi looked at her closed bedroom door, picturing Olivia's sweet little form sleeping peacefully inside the room, and felt a fierce surge of protectiveness. She rested her hand on Royce's head, feeling the solid shape of his skull beneath her palm.

  "I'll take care of Olivia until we get some real news," she said. "I'll keep her safe until Jessica and Patrick—until they come home, damn it," she finished fiercely.

  In the meantime, she was determined to be the best foster mother in the world.

  * * *

  Bearpaw Ridge, Idaho

  "You broke up with Emma?" His mother paused in the act of passing Evan a bowl of mashed potatoes and stared at him. He saw the disappointment in her expression and steeled himself. "Why?"

  Feeling cornered, Evan Swanson said, "She was nice and I liked her, but she really wanted to settle down with a mate and get started on a family ASAP. I, uh…"

  His voice trailed off as he fought against sounding too defensive under his mother's implied criticism.

  He was a grown man with a doctorate, and yet with a few well-chosen words, Mom could still make him feel about fourteen.

  "Panicked?" interjected his older brother Mark sarcastically. "You panicked at the thought of making a commitment? What a shocker!"

  "I did not panic—" Evan snarled in reply but was interrupted by Mark's human mate Caitlyn.

  She punched Mark in the arm. "Sweetheart!" she said reprovingly. "Be nice to Evan."

  "Now, why would I want to do that?" Mark asked with mock innocence.

  He grinned at Caitlyn, and a dimple appeared on his cheek, barely visible under his neatly trimmed dark beard. She just rolled her eyes and shook her head and gave Evan a sympathetic look.

  Evan really liked his pretty blonde sister-in-law, and she had worked a miracle mellowing out his formerly uptight brother in the year since Mark had mated her.

  It was Sunday night, and that meant all of Elle Swanson's sons who lived at the Grizzly Creek Ranch were having dinner at her house, just like they did every Sunday.

  It was the ranch's original house, a grand Victorian with a dining room large enough to accommodate all of Evan's brothers, along with their mates, children, and guests.

  Elle was the matriarch of the Swanson bear shifters in Bearpaw Ridge, and Evan's mom. She was tall and solidly built, with warm brown eyes and light brown hair frosted with gray. She was a strong-willed woman who had single-handedly managed the Swanson family ranch in the years since Evan's dad had died in a car accident.

  Even now, with all her children grown and her oldest son Dane serving as ranch manager, she ruled her family and assorted ranch hands with a firm hand tempered by kindness and good humor.

  And after her two oldest sons mated with Ordinary human women, she was also desperate to pair Evan off with a shifter woman.

  Over the past year, she had driven Evan crazy with her matchmaking attempts whenever he was home. Which was one reason he had recently joined a team of fellow wildlife biologists doing a long-term interagency study of lynx populations in the far northern part of the state.

  The truth was, Evan liked women. All women.

  He didn't care if they were shifters or Ordinaries, tall or short, thin or curvy. And he really liked smart women, especially if they had a sense of humor.

  But basically, he was happy to date any woman who found him attractive. He had once told Mark that his basic requirements for a good date were "smiling and naked," and that wasn't really too far from the truth.

  But as he began to approach the end of his twenties, his relationships seemed to be getting shorter and shorter. More and more of his dates quickly expressed their desire for a mate and children, which was the death knell for continuing the relationship, as far as Evan was concerned.

  He found himself mostly dating Ordinary women these days, if for no other reason than that they vastly outnumbered shifter women.

  It was always risky when shifters became involved with Ordinaries, but the truth was, Bearpaw Ridge didn't have a lot of shifter women who weren't also his relatives.

  Last winter, Evan had finally signed up for ShiftMatch, an online dating and matchmaking service for shifters, partly because he'd already dated nearly every eligible shifter woman within a hundred miles
of Bearpaw Ridge, but mostly to get Mom off his back.

  He'd been honest in his profile that he wasn't interested in marriage or mating right now, but that hadn't discouraged his first few matches from trying to change his mind once they'd been dating for a few weeks.

  "But Evan told us all that Emma was a good match," Mom persisted. "And that she was a bear shifter from an old and respectable lineage."

  Evan shrugged. Mom was just blowing off some frustration. Besides, he had already broken up with Emma. What was done was done, and it wasn't like Mom was going to be able to change that, no matter how much she argued Emma's case.

  But now his oldest brother Dane was frowning at the implied criticism of his own human mate, Annabeth.

  "Mom, didn't you promise to stop mentioning lineages?" he asked, his voice deepening into an almost-growl.

  Annabeth, a pretty, curvy redheaded baker who always smelled enticingly of vanilla and cinnamon, put her hand on Dane's forearm. "Dane, it's okay—" she began.

  "It's not okay," he muttered.

  Dane kept his voice low, because he currently had his seven-month-old son Matthew sitting on his lap and was guiding the baby through drinking from his two-handled sippy cup.

  Like all of the Swanson children, the little boy was big for his age and had an unruly thatch of dark hair crowning his head.

  But he hadn't shown any signs yet of being able to shift into a bear cub, something that Evan knew disappointed his Grandma Elle and was probably driving her desperation to match Evan up with another bear shifter.

  Thankfully, Mom moved quickly to defuse the situation. "Annabeth, Caitlyn, you know I love you both, and I couldn't be happier with you as my daughters-in-law! But I was so happy when I heard that Evan had signed up with ShiftMatch."

  Mom's brown eyes drilled into Evan as if she was trying to peer into his soul.

  "But he keeps finding these nice girls and dating them for just long enough to give me hope, and then he breaks up with them! Emma was his fourth match!"

  "And she wasn't the right one!" Evan said, fighting to hang onto his calm. "Weren't you the one who told us all to go slow and be very careful about choosing our mates?" He took a deep breath. "And I'm not doing it for you, Mom, I'm doing it for me! And I'm nowhere near ready to settle down and start a family, not with a job that keeps me out in the field for weeks and months at a time!" He shook his head. "Can you imagine being a newlywed or a father and having to tell your mate, oops, sorry, I'll be out of cell range for the next eight to ten weeks while I'm chasing lynx through subalpine forests?"