The Fireman’s Fake Fiancée (Men of Copper Mountain #9)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Ember

Smoke tastes like pennies and heartbreak.

It curls over the roof of my studio in thick gray waves, eating the night sky, swallowing the little string of lanterns I hung an hour ago to make the place look “festive artisan mountain witch.” Now it looks like a Viking funeral.

“My kiln!” I choke, boots sliding on gravel as I sprint toward the porch. “My molds—my sketchbooks—”

A wall of heat slams me in the face, shocking me backward.

The porch light pops.

Somewhere metal screams.

No.

No. No. No.

I lunge for the door anyway, hand outstretched, brain doing that bad thing where it shuts off and leaves the survival part to vibes and adrenaline.

A band of steel wraps around my waist and yanks me off my feet.

I yelp, wind knocked out of me, and I’m suddenly airborne, spun, pinned to a chest as solid and hot as the burning building.

“Let me go!” I thrash, hair in my eyes, tears blurring everything. “My books are in there—my pieces—stop, let me—”

“Not a chance.” His voice is gravel, smoke, and command. “You’re not dying over clay, firecracker.”

He hauls me farther away from the building, boots planted wide, his turnout gear brushing against my jacket. My heels dig into gravel.

“Stop!” I claw at his arm, but it’s like trying to peel a boulder. “Please, my portfolio is in there, I have commissions—”

“Ember.” He says my name like he’s throwing a rope. “Look.”

He tips my chin toward the studio.

Through the front window, flames roll across the ceiling in a hungry orange wave. The glass cracks. The roof pops again. My little pottery wheel? Gone. My display shelves? Gone. All the hand-painted holiday mugs with stupid little pine trees on them?

My throat closes.

I sag in his hold.

“Yeah,” he mutters, lowering us both until I’m on my knees in the dirt and he’s still braced behind me like a shield. “That’s what I thought.”

I let out a sound I don’t recognize. Half-cough, half-sob, half-wounded animal. Three halves. I don’t care. I press my palms to my eyes.

“This was everything,” I whisper. “I saved for two years. I moved out of the city. I—”

A gloved hand comes into my line of sight, offering something dark. His coat. Heavy, warm, smelling like smoke and cedar and man.

“I don’t need—” I start.

He ignores me and drops it over my shoulders anyway. The weight of it nearly folds me.

“You’re shaking,” he says flatly.

“I’m not—”

“You are.” He plants one big palm between my shoulder blades, steadying me like I might tip over. “Breathe.”

Easy for him to say. He looks like the fire made him more alive.

Two other firefighters hustle past us toward the building, hose line snaking behind them. Another guy is yelling, “Back side’s clear! Kill the power!”

Someone else is pulling out tools.

I just kneel there in the gravel like an idiot while my whole life burns down twenty feet away.

“I could’ve stopped it,” I croak, staring. “I unplugged the kiln, I swear I did—”

“Electrical panels are old in these historic buildings,” he says, eyes on the flames. “We’ll know more after. But this isn’t on you.”

My head snaps toward him. “You don’t know that.”

“Yeah,” he says, turning his face toward mine. His jaw is dusted with ash. There’s a smear of soot along his cheekbone. He is infuriatingly handsome in that kind of weathered, stoic, my-hands-could-build-a-cabin kind of way. “I do.”

“You’re just saying that because—”

“Because I’ve seen actual negligence,” he cuts in, voice low. “This isn’t it. You did what you could. Sometimes shit fails.”

My vision wobbles again. I hate it. I hate crying in front of people, especially hot people, especially hot people who just carried me like I weigh nothing.

I suck in a shaky breath. The coat slips. I shove it off.

“I don’t need saving,” I snap, wiping my face with the back of my hand. “I needed to get my work.”

His brows pull together. “You needed to stay alive.”

“I would’ve been in and out in two seconds—”

He barks out a humorless laugh. “You’d be dead in five.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Ember.” He leans in, eyes sharp. “Flashovers don’t care about your timeline.”

I bristle. “Don’t firefighter-explain at me–and how do you know my name?”

“Because it’s a small town. And I will explain until my last breath if you keep trying to run into burning buildings.”

“I was not—”

“You were.”

We glare at each other, the world around us chaos—lights spinning, radios crackling, the sharp hiss of water hitting flame—but it all fades into static compared to the weight of his stare pinning me to the earth.

“You’re bossy,” I mutter finally.

“You’re reckless,” he fires back.

“Maybe I like risk.”

“Maybe I don’t like scraping artists off the floor.”

My mouth pops open. “Artists?”

His gaze flicks over me. I realize I still have paint on my forearms—from earlier, when I was glazing that stupid snowman platter for Mrs. Hollis.

He notices everything. “Should I call you something else?”

“Yeah,” I say, lifting my chin. “Artist. Ceramicist. Maker. Chaos goblin.”

The corner of his mouth twitches.

Not a smile. Not even close. More like his facial muscles had an accident and almost formed one.

“Chaos goblin,” he repeats, voice a shade warmer. “Fits.”

“Thanks,” I snap. “You mountain caveman.”

He actually exhales a little laugh through his nose, like I annoyed him into amusement. “You always this mouthy?”

“You always this bossy?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” I huff, tugging his jacket back over my shoulders because now that I’ve had warmth, I do in fact need it, “me too.”

He watches me for a second, eyes narrowing like he’s figuring me out, cataloguing me, filing me under “problems to manage.”

Then he looks back at the building.

The flames are dying now, water steam-blasting the windows. My cute little wreath is ash. I want to cry again.

“Can I—” My voice breaks. I clear it. “Can I at least go see when it’s out? I need to know what’s left.”

He hesitates. I see the answer on his face: No, it’s a scene, it’s not safe, stay back, ma’am.

I cut him off. “Don’t you dare tell me to go home.”

“Do you even have a home?” he asks, brow lifting.

“I have a loft above the studio,” I say tightly.

Silence.

He looks at the studio.

Then back at me.

And I swear to God, the way his jaw works—it’s sympathy and frustration and that protective thing I do not want.

“Yeah,” he says. “Thought so.”

“I can stay with friends,” I rush to add. “I’m not a stray.”

His eyes do that slow roll down my body again—boots, paint-splattered jeans, oversized sweater, hair half up with a pencil stabbed through it, smoke film on my skin.

“You look like a stray,” he says.

“You look like you stepped out of a Chippendales calendar,” I shoot back.

That gets him. His mouth curves, slow and wicked, and I get a flash of dimples I did not sign up for.

“You flirting with the guy who just saved your ass?” he asks, voice dropping a fraction.

“Are you flirting with the girl whose life just burned down?” I counter.

“Maybe.” His grin slides to one side. “Got a cabin on the back of my property you can stay at. Been fixin’ it up and meanin’ to rent it–it’s yours for as long as you need.”

Heat skitters up my throat that has nothing to do with the fire.

I yank his jacket tighter and glare at the smoldering building. “I hate this.”

“I know.”

“I worked so hard.”

“I know.”

“My kiln was brand new.”

“I know.”

“It was named Gertrude,” I blurt, and then I laugh because that sounds so stupid out loud.

He huffs. “You named your kiln.”

“Yeah, and she was reliable, okay? No attitude. Unlike—” I flick my gaze to him. “—present company.”

That almost-smile returns. “You named a kiln and you’re calling me dramatic?”

“I am not dramatic.”

“You ran into a burning building.”

I point at his chest. “You carried me out over your shoulder.”

“That’s my job. Savin’ damsels in distress. You’re welcome.”

I open my mouth to argue again but get interrupted by a firefighter jogging over. “Clay—power’s cut, origin looks like that back wall behind the wheel. We’ll need the report tonight.”

My knight in ash and soot nods, all business again. “Good.”

The guy flicks a glance at me, confusion on his face. “She okay?”

My fireman–Clay–doesn’t even look at me when he answers. “She’s fine.”

“I am not fine,” I mutter.

He ignores me.

The other firefighter heads back. Clay finally turns to me again.

“Need EMS to check you?” he asks.

“No, Dad.”

“How’s your hand?”

I blink. “What?”

He grabs my wrist. My breath catches.

When did I scrape it?

There’s a thin red line over the heel of my palm, already blooming to a sting. He studies it like it personally offended him, then lifts his gaze.

“We’ll clean it,” he says.

“I can—”

“We’ll. Clean. It.”

Bossy.

Hot.

Annoying.

“Fine,” I grumble. “But I don’t need—”

“Saving. Yeah. I heard you the first thirty times.”

“Then stop treating me like I’m gonna fall over.”

“You are gonna fall over.”

“I am not—”

“You are, Ember.” His voice gentles, unexpected. “You just lost your whole world.”

My throat fists. Damn him.

“Don’t say it like that,” I whisper. “I can’t hear it like that yet.”

He pauses. Nods once. Then: “You have insurance?”

I scrub my cheek. “Yeah. I think. I pay something every month.”

“You think?”

“It’s probably fine.”

“It’s never fine.”

I tip my head back to look at him. “Do you live to kill hope?”

He stares down at me, eyes steady, rain starting to mix with the steam. “I live to keep people alive.”

“Poetic,” I snark, because I can’t just let him be noble. “Is that on your business card?”

“Firecracker,” he warns, voice dropping.

I shiver.

Why is that hot?

Why is him calling me a nickname hot?

Damn it.

“Okay,” I breathe out. “Okay. What now?”

“You stay here,” he says, already turning toward the building again. “I’ll get you a blanket and a medic to clean that hand.”

I grab his sleeve. “Clay.”

He looks back, brows up.

I swallow. “Thank you.”

He studies me for a long, quiet beat. Smoke still billows behind him. His profile is carved hard and dark against the flames.

“Could’ve fooled me,” he mutters finally, but there’s no bite in it.

Then he walks away.

I watch him go.

Even through the gear, he moves like he knows exactly what his body can do. Like any emergency is just another problem his muscles can solve. Broad back. Powerful legs. The kind of man the town whispers about.

I stand in front of the smoking corpse of my dream wearing a firefighter’s coat, smelling like ash, heart pounding from adrenaline and anger and… something else.

Something warm.

Something dangerous.

Something that started the second he said, not a chance, and refused to let me go.