Falling for the Hotshot

Chapter 1

Smoke Signals

Autumn

“I’ve never seen a year as dry as this,” the man, standing in front of me in the checkout line at Fairy Falls Grocery, exclaimed to the cashier.

He was dressed in overalls, a plaid button-up shirt, and muck boots that looked so pristine, like they’d yet to face the elements of when water and dirt mix into mud.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the weather the first half of the year, as I had been too busy being consumed in wedding planning, but now that he said it, it did seem unusually dry.

Peering out the bright glass walls of the grocery store while the man chatted idly as the checker rang up his items, the leaves on the parking lot trees looked crispy.

In past years, their bright green foliage was lush and full.

These sad, sparse trees looked like they hadn't seen water in months. Because they haven’t, I told myself, after summarizing the conversation of the man and the checker.

As I loaded my bounty of items onto the conveyor belt, I considered the fact that we had nearly skipped winter this year.

Aside from a few early frosts, and a few flakes of snow that fell in the evenings that were promptly gone by morning, we hadn’t experienced the winter that Wyoming was known for.

As if on cue, a band of wildland firefighters walked in.

The cashier turned her head so fast, I laughed.

She paid no mind to my giggles, and after she was done savoring the cute men, she turned back with a little color in her cheeks.

“Sorry,” mumbling under her breath, as she started to scan my items twice as fast.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said with a smile.

Her eyes went to the ring on my finger. My eyes went to the bare finger she had lacking a ring.

“I may be engaged but I can appreciate the good looks of firefighters,” I said joyfully.

She nodded in reply as I relished in my relationship status to my pre-med, pastor's son.

Everyone thought I had won the lottery in love, and I was keen on the idea myself.

“I was engaged once, too.” The words came out like a whisper.

“Oh yeah?” I replied, a little too quickly, a little too hopeful, as if I had just discovered a camaraderie amongst us.

Something in common with a total stranger.

But then it dawned on me that “is engaged” is very different from “was engaged.” Something horrible must have happened to end their relationship, and my heart sank, as now my reaction put her on the hook for further explanation.

Being me, I couldn’t just let the silence hang between us, so I changed the subject as quickly as I could.

“Woo-wee! A pumpkin trifle for only $6.99?” The sign next to the register was advertising the most delectable-looking dessert.

The cashier smiled, scanning a barcode that she had taped to the register. It was a common purchase, I guessed.

“Show your receipt to the bakery on the way out. They will make one for you, and it only takes a few minutes.” I nodded, thrilled to be free of the earlier conversation, and about to be filled with wonderful fall-flavored sugar.

Fall in Maple Haven, Wyoming, wasn’t even here yet, and it didn’t need to be here for it to be already in full swing.

In years past, people waited until at least Labor Day before they started using their pumpkin-scented everything.

Cinnamon-flavored everything. Maple-syrup-coated goodness on every corner.

But these days, it wasn’t even July 15th, and we all just pretended we weren’t sweating our tails off before reaching for the pumpkin frappes and cinnamon apple ciders.

There was just something about how the sun hung in the sky that made me crave more carbs in the form of sweets and comfort foods.

Just tonight, I was planning on making a sweet potato casserole, and I found the perfect pumpkin-shaped marshmallows to throw on top.

Now, I’d be eating it with a healthy side portion of trifle.

It’s a good thing my wedding dress wasn’t form fitting, or I would’ve had to go down and get a gym membership at Maple Haven Muscle.

I took my receipt and headed towards the bakery near the front doors of the grocery store.

A brilliant design, as the moment you walked into Fairy Falls Grocery, you were on sensory overload from the delightful concoctions of whatever happened to be getting made that day.

Normally, I couldn’t come here on an empty stomach.

It was my one rule that I tried to hold myself to.

Today, I was feeling a little snack-ish, however, and my cart of full shopping bags showed an overflowing number of items that were not on my list.

As I waited on my trifle, I watched the baker pipe copious amounts of vanilla bean whipped cream into the large clear container.

Bouncy pumpkin sponge cake topped the fluffy layer, and the rich topping started all over.

It was mesmerizing to watch, so much so that I almost didn’t notice my phone was buzzing.

It was a text message from my fiancé, Ray. My heart warmed every time he texted me. But while reading this one, my face fell.

“I can’t come to dinner tonight. My mom just plucked an enormous butternut squash out of her garden, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she commemorates the moment with a custom t-shirt.

She’s parading around with it... I fear it would break her heart if I didn’t stay and eat the soup she makes with it tonight. ”

I had invited him over to my place for dinner several times a week.

Though, now, I can’t recall the last time he actually came.

We hadn’t spent much time together as of late, but I had previously hoped that would have changed when he was off of school for summer break.

But then, Ray kept signing up for more online classes.

More local training. More one-on-one study sessions with his fellow students.

Sure, being in medical school probably had a lot of responsibilities.

He wanted to be the best doctor he could be, after all.

I wanted that, too. The last thing I wanted was for him to be a part of a Netflix documentary twenty years from now.

But I was seeing less and less of him as the weeks went on.

I didn’t let my mind go to where it wanted to go, but I also couldn’t remember the last time he told me he loved me.

There were things that I had let slide because I never wanted to “rock the boat.” When Ray’s dad took over pastoring at our church, and when Ray made his first appearance on a weekend at home from college, I felt myself and the entire congregation gasp.

He was not only handsome, but his future resume made everyone swoon.

Then, when my parents took it upon themselves to introduce us after cornering him at a church social that afternoon…

I couldn’t help but notice the way his eyes sparkled when he talked about his schooling.

He knew what he was doing. Around my parents especially, he was very charming.

The way his teeth sparkled when he smiled was intriguing.

The way I felt like my entire insides were sparkling when he paid any attention to me at all made me fall for him quickly.

And now, here I was. No longer the often being the recipient of his sparkling and feeling less sparkling myself by the minute.

I slipped my phone into my back pocket, not wanting to deal with the distressing thoughts that were stemming from the text, as a wildland firefighter got in line at the bakery behind me.

I gave a casual look over my shoulder, and I must have forgotten to put on my jaw-holster that morning because it almost hit the floor when I saw him.

He was drop-dead gorgeous. A five-alarm fire of a man.

Broad-shouldered, tan skin, amber colored eyes.

I had never seen brown eyes as light as his.

It looked like they were glowing. Like he was in a movie and they added special effects.

If his looks were a level of heat, there would be flames coming off of his skin.

It’s a good thing he knew how to put them out.

“Here you go, ma’am.” I closed my eyes, realizing they were still glued to the man behind me, as someone just called me one of the worst terms in the English language.

“Thank you,” I said, picking up the heavier-than-expected dessert.

It must have been five solid pounds of pure vanilla and pumpkin goodness.

Surely, this was too much for me. This dessert could have fed the entire wildland fire department in Maple Haven.

Perhaps, I should have turned and given it to the handsome firefighter, you know, as a thank you for keeping us safe.

But the thought of turning back around and facing the man I’d just straight up OOGLED for longer than socially acceptable, which was anything over .

0 seconds, just made me feel more embarrassed.

Never mind the fact that I was engaged, and it was extremely inappropriate.

My mind went to the biblical commandment about coveting and donkeys.

I felt genuine remorse as I pushed my cart to the door, not wasting any time exiting to the parking lot.

“Hi,” was the last thing I heard, as the baker greeted the firefighter. When I had walked up, she had asked me plainly what she could get for me. Clearly, his looks were not lost on her either.

That night, as I ate my sweet potato casserole at my tiny kitchen table, I turned the television on for some background noise.

I didn’t want to admit it, but I felt more alone in my relationship lately than I did by myself.

The television was on pretty much 24/7 when I was home.

I hated that, and the irony was that Ray would’ve hated that even more.

I flipped to the news channel, where the Big Horn Meteorologist Hailey Wilder had just come on for a segment.

“Good evening, Wyoming. Hailey Wilder checking in from Big Horn.” The scene behind her was a sparse forest, with tall, towering timbers that looked more like telephone poles than trees.

I turned up the volume. “I’m standing in front of the Timber Creek Forest, which, as you can see, has seen better times.

” She held up a small, glass container in her left hand, while the camera gently zoomed in.

“This specimen is called the pine beetle. And this,” she said, giving the dead trees reference, “is what it does to our forests.” She went on.

“After experiencing the warmest winter that Wyoming has on record, we are under severe drought conditions. You may remember the infamous storm we had a few years back,” she smirked, certainly referring to the one that made her viral.

“Believe it or not, that was the last substantial moisture we received in Northern Wyoming. Still, Big Horn is faring better than neighboring counties, such as Maple County, home of Maple Haven. Their reservoir levels are the lowest we’ve ever seen.

So, what does this have to do with the pine beetle?

” I had forgotten about the bug specimen in her jar as I robotically ate while hearing about Maple Haven.

“You take a dead, diseased, bug-infested forest. Add a drought, and you just hope that lightning doesn’t strike.

But we all know that here in the mountains, we get more than our share of the thunderous cracks.

It’s truly a miracle that we have not had a major fire event this year in Northern Wyoming as we have experienced in other parts of the state.

As we head into the fall season, where the temperatures are not letting up even a hair, may we all pray for rain.

” The segment ended, but the image did not leave my mind.