Smokin’ Hot Mountain Man Protector (Hot Mountain Nights 2 #15)

Chapter One | SUNNY

Chapter One

SUNNY

By the time the third strawberry-basil shortcake cone collapsed into a sugared little crime scene, I’d accepted two things.

One, Cinder Ridge Meadow didn’t care about glamour.

Two, my six-inch fire-engine-red wedges were going to become either a brand signature or the reason the county search-and-rescue team found me face-down in dry grass with lemon mascarpone in my hair.

“Sunny, please tell me that one was supposed to ooze,” Joelle said from behind the prep table.

I lifted the waffle cone in question. Roasted strawberries slid down my wrist, glossy and red, while lemon cream made a dramatic escape toward my elbow.

“Absolutely,” I said. “This is rustic abundance.”

Joelle Bellamy looked at the cone, then at my yellow gingham tie-front top, then at the branded apron failing to contain either my curves or the powdered sugar situation. “It’s leaking on your bracelet.”

“Luxury rustic abundance.”

Across the meadow, Ed Barlow lowered his camera just enough to glare over it. His ball cap sat low on his weathered forehead, and one of his headset cords had already found the only thistle in a twenty-foot radius.

“I’m getting audio on cream hitting dirt,” he said. “That part sponsored?”

Caprice Calloway clapped once, hard enough to make her statement earrings swing. “Perfect. Sunny, give me bright, sexy, campfire queen energy. Less wrist leak. More national campaign.”

I smiled toward the camera because that was what Sunny Burns did. I smiled when sugar burned, when sponsors panicked, when men at food festivals called my work adorable and then asked who’d really developed the recipe.

The summer air shimmered above the meadow, thick with pine dust, hot grass, butter-cookie crumble, and woodsmoke.

“Reset,” I said. “We’re making fire behave.”

Fire, for the record, had never once behaved because a woman in those wedges told it to.

Joelle handed me a fresh cone from the lined tray, this one packed with toasted butter-cookie crumbs, warm sugared berries, and a swirl of lemon mascarpone that held its shape for exactly the three seconds Ed needed to get the beauty shot.

Beyond him, Cinder Ridge Meadow rolled open under a hard blue Montana sky, all dry gold grass and dark pine edges, with Fire Mountain rising in the distance like a postcard that could absolutely kill a person if she wore the wrong shoes.

Which I had, proudly.

The shoes were patent leather, six inches, and completely absurd on dirt.

They also made my legs look incredible below my high-waisted denim shorts, caught the same bright pop as the bandana tied on top of my coppery hair, and turned my whole S’more Than Ready campaign look into exactly what the brand deck promised: Firecracker Retro Camp Glam.

No one clicked on a mountain-food video because the chef looked ready to alphabetize bear spray.

“Camera’s still rolling,” Ed said.

“I’m aware.” I angled the cone toward the lens. “Welcome back to S’more Than Ready, where campfire food gets a glow-up and nobody has to pretend a charred weenie on a stick is the height of outdoor cuisine.”

“Careful,” Joelle murmured. “The charred-weenie people have Wi-Fi now.”

“They can come for me in the comments. Engagement is engagement.” I smiled wider, lifted the cone, and let the firelight catch the berries.

“Today, we’re making strawberry-basil campfire shortcake cones with lemon mascarpone and butter-cookie crumble.

It’s bright, messy, sexy, and exactly the kind of dessert that says, yes, I came to the woods, but I’m not giving up citrus zest just because a pine tree is watching. ”

A bead of sweat slid between my shoulder blades beneath the apron.

The afternoon heat pressed down hard, the kind of dry summer heat that made the meadow smell like sun-baked grass and warm bark.

My fitted yellow top clung under the apron, my freckles were probably staging a hostile takeover of my nose, and my curls had started escaping the bandana in copper wisps.

But the cone held.

For one perfect second, it held.

Then the lemon mascarpone sighed out the side and dropped onto one wedge.

Ed made a sound that might have been a cough or the death of his faith in art.

Joelle reached for a towel. “Luxury rustic footwear abundance?”

I looked down at the cream sliding over my toes and the perfect matching pedicure I’d paid actual money to have painted the color of emergency vehicles.

“Cut,” Caprice said cheerfully. “Beautiful chaos. We’ll use it.”

“We are not using my foot cream as campaign content.”

Caprice strode toward me, five-foot-nothing in utility shorts, a sleeveless black top, gold hoops, and big white sunglasses pushed into her honey-blond hair. “Sunny, sweetheart, your foot cream has relatability.”

“My foot cream has a lawyer.”

“They also love your face when you’re pretending not to be furious.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“Exactly.” Caprice turned to Ed. “Did you get her threatening to sue dessert?”

“I got the whole dairy deposition,” Ed said. “Audio’s weird, though. Wind’s kicking up.”

I glanced toward the edge of the meadow.

Dry grass leaned in one long shiver, bending away from the pines.

The cooking station sat in the cleared area we’d been told to use, framed by two folding prep tables, a heat-safe mat, a portable grate, buckets of water, a fire blanket, an extinguisher, and enough stainless-steel bowls to make us look prepared rather than deliciously doomed.

Behind us, my retro camper gleamed cream and cherry-red under the sun, wrapped with the S’more Than Ready logo in big playful letters.

It was cute. It was professional. It was mine.

And every time someone said cute like it meant lesser, I wanted to hit them with a cast-iron skillet.

Joelle crouched at my feet with a towel, dabbing lemon cream off my shoe with hostage-negotiator calm.

“We have twelve clean cones left for close-ups,” she said. “Four backup jars of mascarpone, two berry trays, one basil bunch that still looks perky, and Ed’s left battery is at forty-three percent.”

“Marry me,” I said.

“I’m holding out for someone with less dairy on her foot.”

“Understandable.”

Caprice checked her phone, then looked at the setup, the meadow, the cookfire, and the portable reflector. “We need the hero shot with more flame.”

Joelle looked up. “We have flame.”

“We have polite flame. I need wow flame.”

“Caprice.”

“Not bonfire. Just a little more visual.”

“This is a dessert segment, not a dragon birth.”

Caprice pointed toward the camera. “The sponsor bought campfire fantasy, and the heat source is currently giving modest tea candle.”

“That modest tea candle is under my legal and emotional supervision.”

Ed shifted the camera on his shoulder. “For the record, I enjoy modest. Modest doesn’t melt microphones.”

A ribbon of gray smoke curled up from the cookfire and drifted toward the pines.

The fire itself was small, built in the portable raised pit the production contact had approved.

Everything about our setup had been signed off.

Paperwork. Emails. Map pin. Production notes.

Caprice had a whole folder on her phone labeled PERMITS / PLEASE DON’T RUIN MY LIFE.

We weren’t idiots.

We were women with clipboards.

That was different.

“Joelle, confirm the zone again,” I said.

She stood, pulled her phone from the pocket of her olive utility vest, and swiped with her thumb. “We’re in the marked meadow area from the brand packet.”

“Thank you.”

“However,” she added, because Joelle believed in killing joy with accuracy, “the map they sent was weirdly zoomed.”

Caprice made a tiny noise.

I lowered the cone. “Caprice.”

She lifted both hands. “The location contact said Cinder Ridge Meadow, north access clearing. This is Cinder Ridge Meadow. We came from the north access road. We’re good.”

A stronger gust pushed through the grass. The smoke shifted, flattening for a second before it lifted again. Heat prickled along the back of my neck, partly from the sun and partly from the unpleasant awareness that grass that dry and wind that pushy weren’t my favorite combination.

I was a chef, not a firefighter, but I’d grown up around fairgrounds, concession trailers, generators, propane tanks, grease burns, and men named Dale who thought safety instructions were a personal attack. I knew enough to respect heat.

I also knew enough to be irritated when heat failed to respect me back.

“Let’s keep it small,” I said. “The food is the drama.”

Caprice’s sunglasses slid down her nose. “The food is the drama because you’re the drama.”

“I’m choosing to receive that as a compliment.”

Joelle passed me another cone. “Fresh hero cone. Less unstable. I reinforced the bottom with crumble.”

“I take back my proposal. We’re already married.”

She straightened the front of my apron, which read S’MORE THAN READY in red script across my chest. “Please stop moving like the meadow is a runway.”

“I can’t. The shoes require commitment.”

“The shoes require a waiver.”

Ed lifted his camera again. “Can we shoot before the whole cone turns into soup?”

I took my mark beside the cookfire, angled my body so the apron sat right over my curves, and lifted the cone.

The reflector bounced bright light across the berries.

The pines framed the shot. The camper shone behind me.

The little flame licked under the grate like it had finally remembered we were paying it.

For one breath, everything worked.

I was thirty years old, standing in a meadow outside Hope Peak with my own brand on my chest, a paid campaign under my feet, and a dessert I’d built from scratch catching the light like edible summer.

Cute could sell.

Cute could cook.

Cute could pay invoices, impress sponsors, and make every man who’d ever asked if my boyfriend did the grilling choke on a waffle cone.

I looked straight into Ed’s lens. “Campfire food doesn’t have to be basic. It can be smart, bright, sticky, beautiful—”