Montana Fire: A Small Town Romance - Book 1 Read online

  Montana Fire

  A Small Town Romance - Book 1

  Vanessa Vale

  Montana Fire

  Copyright © 2011 & 2018 by Vanessa Vale

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination and used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from both authors, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  * * *

  Cover design: Bridger Media

  Cover graphic: Hot Damn Stock; Fotolia: chesterF

  * * *

  Edition 2: This book was previously published.

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Note From Vanessa

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  Montana Ice - Chapter One

  About the Author

  Also by Vanessa Vale

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  1

  “I’m not sure which one I want. I didn’t realize there were so many choices!”

  The woman wasn’t on the hunt for a new car or juice boxes at the grocery store. Nope. She wanted a dildo. I called her type a Waffler. Someone who contemplated all options before even attempting to make a choice. Because of Miss Waffler, I had ten different dildo options spread out across the counter. Glass, silicone, jelly and battery powered. She needed help.

  That’s where I came in. My name is Jane West and I run Goldilocks, the adult store in Bozeman, Montana, my mother-in-law had opened back in the seventies. Story goes she named it after the fairytale character when a mother bear and her two cubs strolled down Willson right in front of the store the week before it opened. She called it fate. Or it could have been because her name is Goldie, so it made sense. I started working for her when my husband died, a temporary arrangement that helped her out. Three years later, things had turned long-term temporary.

  The store was tasteful considering the offerings. The walls were a fresh white with shelves and displays just like you’d find at the typical department store. Then tasteful made way for tacky. Gold toned industrial carpet like you’d see in Vegas, a photo of a naked woman sprawled artfully across a bearskin rug hung over the counter. A sixties chandelier graced the meager entry. Goldie had to put her unique stamp on things somehow.

  It wasn’t a big store, just one room with a storage area and bathroom in back. Whatever she didn’t have in stock—although you'd be amazed at the selection Goldie offered in such a small space—we ordered in. Montanans were patient shoppers. With few options store-wise in Bozeman, most people ordered everything but the basics from the Internet. There’s one Walmart, one Target, one Old Navy. Only one of everything. In a big city, if you drove two miles you came across a repeat store. Urban sprawl at its finest. Not here, although there were two sets of Golden Arches. One in town and one off the highway for the tourists who needed a Big Mac on the way to Yellowstone. The anchor store of the town’s only mall was a chain bookstore. No Nordstrom or Bass Pro Shop out here. You shopped local or you went home to your computer.

  In the case of the woman in front of me, I wished she’d just go home.

  Don’t get me wrong, I liked helping people and I was comfortable talking sex toys with anyone. But this time was definitely different. Big time.

  Behind Miss Waffler stood a fireman. A really attractive, tall, well-muscled one wearing a Bozeman Fire T-shirt and navy pants. Can you say hot? A hot man in uniform? Yup, it was a cliché, but this one was dead-on accurate. God, he was literally heart stopping gorgeous. He’d made mine skip a beat. I felt all tingly and hot all over.

  He’d come in while I was comparing the various dildo models before I went into the perks of having rotation for best female stimulation, and when I looked up…and up and he was there, I practically swallowed my tongue. I’d certainly lost my train of thought. I had no idea God made men like him. Magazines, maybe. Real life? My real life? Wow.

  “Can you explain the features of each one again?” Miss Waffler had her fingers on the edge of the glass counter as if she were afraid to touch them. Petite, she was slim to the point of anorexic. Her rough voice said smoker, at least a pack a day. Her skin was weathered, either from cigarettes or the Montana weather, and wrinkles had taken over her face. She’d be pretty if she ate something and kicked the nicotine habit.

  I gave her my best fake smile. “Sure.”

  I darted a glance at the fireman over the woman’s shoulder. Sandy hair trimmed military short, blue eyes, strong features. Thirties. A great smile. He seemed perfectly content to wait his turn. If the humorous glint in his eye and the way he bit his lip—most likely to keep from smiling—was any indication, he was clearly enjoying himself. And learning something about dildos. Maybe he wanted some options for his girlfriend. He had to have some woman warming his bed. A radio squawked on his belt and he turned it down. Obviously, my lesson on sexual aids was more important than a five-alarm fire.

  Miss Waffler was completely oblivious of, and unaffected by, the fireman. I now knew why she wanted a dildo.

  I picked up a bright blue model. “This one is battery powered and vibrates. Ten settings. Good for clitoral stimulation.” I put it down and picked up another. I was used to talking sex toys with people. Some guys, too, but I was dying of embarrassment having said clitoral stimulation in front of him. I just imagined this hot fireman stimulating my clit. I squirmed, cleared my throat and continued. “This one is glass. No batteries, so it’s meant for penetration. The best thing about it is you can put it in the freezer or warm it and it provides a varied experience.”

  The woman made some ah sounds as I gave the details. I went through all the possibilities with her one at a time. I got to the tenth and final model. “This one is obviously realistic. It’s actually molded from the erect penis of a porn star. It’s made of silicone and has suction cups on the base.”

  Fireman peered over the woman’s shoulder as I suction cupped the dildo to the glass counter. Thwap. He didn’t seem too stunned by the size. Did that mean he was that big, too?

  “You can…um, attach it to a piece of furniture if you want to keep your hands free.”

  Both fireman and Miss Waffler nodded their heads as if they could picture what I was talking about.

  “I’ll take that one,” she said as she pointed to number ten. The eight-inch Whopper Dong.

  “Good choice.”

  I rang up Miss Waffler’s purchase and she happily went off to take care of business.

  And there he was. Mr. Fireman. And me. And dildo display made three. Fortunately, he stood in front of the counter and I wasn’t able to look down and see if his Whopper Dong fit inside his uniform pants. Oh god, I was going straight to hell. He saved people’s lives and I was thinking about his—

  “Um…thanks for waiting.�
�� I tucked my curly hair behind an ear.

  “Sure. You learn something new every day.” He smiled. Not just with his mouth, but with his eyes. Very blue eyes. I saw interest there. Heat, too.

  Right there, in the middle of my mother-in-law’s sex store, dildos and all, was the spring thaw in my libido. It had long since gone as cold as Montana in January. Who could have blamed it with all of my dead husband’s shenanigans? But right then, I felt my heart rate go up, and my palms sweating from nerves. The fireman didn’t seem the least bit fazed by my little sex toy talk. I, on the other hand, was having a hot flash like a menopausal woman just looking at him. I needed to be hosed down. Speaking of hoses—

  “I’m Jane. What can I help you with today?” Hi, I’m Jane. I’m thirty-three. I like hiking in the mountains, cross-country skiing, I’m a Scorpio, and I want to rip that uniform off your hot body and slide down your pole. I wiped my sweaty palms on my shorts.

  He laughed and held out his hand. His grip was firm, his skin warm and a little rough. “Ty. Thanks, but no toys for me.” A pager beeped. He looked at it on his belt briefly and ignored it.

  “Don’t you need to answer that? A fire or something?” I asked, pointing to his waist.

  “Cat up a tree,” he joked, the corner of his full lips tipping up.

  I laughed, and heard my nerves in it. I took a deep breath to try and calm my racing heart. It didn’t work. All it did was make me discover how good he smelled. It wasn’t heavy cologne. Soap maybe. I didn’t really care if it was deodorant. He smelled fabulous.

  “Actually, it was for Station Two. I’m here for your fire safety inspection.” He placed papers on the counter. Had he been holding them all this time? I hadn’t noticed.

  “Oh, um…inspect away.”

  Inspect away?

  He grinned at me as I blushed, ready to slink behind the counter and die of embarrassment. Fortunately, he switched topics. For the next fifteen minutes, we went over fire inspection paperwork with the attraction I felt for him an elephant in the room the shape of a dildo.

  * * *

  The next morning, I was out bright and early. If you lived in Montana, you got out and enjoyed good weather while the getting was good. Even in July. Especially in July. The days were long, the sky was big and there was a lot to do before it got cold. I didn’t mean November like the real world. This was Bozeman. Summer was over the day after Labor Day. It had even been known to snow in July. With that small window for wearing shorts and flip-flops and the threat of white flakes at any time, I was out and about by seven on a Saturday. I got more done before nine in the morning than the military. Not because I really wanted to, but because I had kids.

  My boys, Zach and Bobby, were raring to go. Since it was Saturday morning, that meant garage sales. To kids, garage sales were serious business. Toys to be had, books to find. Even free stuff to rake in. As a grown up, I loved buying things I didn’t know I needed. Last week, I bought a shoe rack for my closet and a toaster for the pop-up camper. For two dollars, I could have some toast while camping in the wilderness.

  We were in the car, Kids Bop bounced out from the CD player. I had the hot garage sales circled in the classifieds, the Bozeman Chronicle open on the passenger seat next to me, ready to guide us to our treasures. The morning’s first stop was a volunteer fire department’s pancake breakfast. Bargain shopping could wait. With a pancake breakfast, I didn’t have to cook—at seven in the morning, who wanted to?—the kids could stuff their faces, and I could get coffee. Coffee.

  I realized the boys were yakking at me, so I turned down a sugary version of Dynamite to listen.

  “He’s so cool, Mom. He’s a fireman and he was a soldier and he said we could play in his yard. He’s at least seven feet tall. His snow blower is bigger than ours. His truck is silver and it has four doors,” Zach said from his booster in the back.

  “He gave me a high five after I ridden my bike down the sidewalk. His name is Mr. Strickland,” Bobby added. I peeked in the rearview mirror and saw him nod his head, super serious.

  The man I’d heard about ever since the boys woke me up was Mr. Strickland, the new neighbor. Mr. Strickland did this, Mr. Strickland did that. The boys’ new super hero had bought the house two doors down and just moved in. I hadn’t met him yet, but the kids obviously had. In my coffee deprived mind, I pictured a fifty-something man with half a head of graying hair, a slight paunch—he was a fireman, so it couldn’t be too big—and by Zach’s description, taller than a basketball player. Great. He’d come in real handy when another ball got stuck up in the gutter.

  “The Colonel likes him a lot,” Zach said.

  Well, that settled it. If the Colonel gave his approval, the man had to be all right, regardless of gargantuan size. The Colonel’s real name is William Reinhoff, but everyone who knew him, which was the entire town, called him Colonel. He’d earned the title while fighting in Vietnam and it stuck. Gruff and ornery on the outside with a campfire toasted marshmallow center, he was one of my favorite people. The Colonel’s house was wedged between Mr. Strickland’s and mine. He was next-door neighbor, pseudo father, close friend, occasional babysitter, and my mother’s long-distance boyfriend. The kids had obviously met Mr. Strickland with the Colonel while I was at work yesterday and the man had made a serious impression. No way would the Colonel let the kids call the man by his first name. He was entirely too old school for that.

  I pulled into the packed dirt parking lot of the fire department, parked, and turned to the kids. They sat in their boosters with the dollar bills I’d given each of them to spend on garage sale paraphernalia clenched in their fists. At seven, Zach was string bean skinny with knobby knees and dimples. Blond hair and light eyes had him looking like me. No one was sure where Bobby got his black hair and dark eyes as they surely hadn’t come from either me or his father. Some people said he might be the Fed Ex man’s kid, but I didn’t see much humor in that. My husband had been the cheater, not me.

  “Take only what you can eat, good manners, and put your dollar bill in your pocket so you don’t lose it,” I reminded them.

  The kids nodded their heads with excitement. Garage sales and pancakes. Could life get any better?

  The sun felt warm on my face. It had just popped up over the mountains, even though it had been light for almost two hours. “Leave your sweatshirts in the car. It’ll be warm when we come out.” I stripped off my fleece jacket and tossed it onto the front seat. It might have been summer, but it still dropped into the forties overnight.

  The breakfast was in the fire department’s bay. One big space, concrete floor and walls made of gray sheet metal siding. Two fire trucks were parked out in front with volunteer firemen watching kids swarm over the equipment. My two looked longingly at the apparatus but knew they could explore only once they’d eaten. Inside, it smelled like bacon and coffee. Two of my favorite things. I collected paper plates and plastic utensils and got in the buffet line for food.

  “There’s Jack from school,” Zach said as he tugged on my arm and pointed. I waved to Jack and his parents who were already digging into their pancakes at one of the long tables. Everywhere you went in Bozeman, you ran into someone you knew. It was impossible to avoid it. Even a seven-year-old like Zach felt popular. It was nice sometimes, the sense of community, but once I’d ducked around an aisle at the grocery store to avoid someone so I didn’t have to talk to them. Who hasn’t? That time it had been my dental hygienist, and I hadn’t been overly interested in being interrogated about my flossing practice.

  Since I ran Goldilocks, the only adult store nearby—you had to go all the way to Billings otherwise—I had a lot of customers. Local customers. It was hard sometimes to make small talk with someone at the deli counter when you really only knew them from the time they came to the store to purchase nipple clamps for the little wife. Thus, the ducking around in stores. I held a lot of confidences, kept a lot of secrets, and over the years, the general population trusted me with them.
r />   We approached the first breakfast offering. At the word ‘eggs’, the boys stuck out their plates. I watched them load up and move on to hash browns, which they skipped over with a polite, “No, thank you.” I gave myself an imaginary pat on the back for their good manners. They could squawk like roosters at each other but were almost always polite to strangers who offered food.

  “Mom! There’s Mr. Strickland!” Zach practically yelled.

  “Hi, Mr. Strickland!” Bobby chimed.

  I searched for Mr. Strickland over the crowd of tables, down the length of the food, looking for the Mr. Strickland of my imagination. Where was the fifty-something man? The paunch? Zach held out his plate for pancakes.

  “Hey, Champ!” the pancake man said to Zach.

  My heart jumped into my throat and I broke out in an adrenaline-induced sweat.

  “Holy crap,” I said.

  Pancake man was not fifty. Not even forty. He most definitely didn’t have a pot belly. Only an incredibly flat one under a navy fire department T-shirt. Solid. Hot. Zach had certainly exaggerated Mr. Strickland’s height. He was tall. I had to tilt my head up a bit to look him in the eye, which I found A-OK. Being five-eight, I liked a man with altitude.

  The fireman was certainly lighting my fire.

  “Holy crap?” Pancake man, also known as Mr. Strickland, replied.

  Flustered, I tried to smile, but I was mortified. Not because I’d said holy crap. That had just slipped out. I could have probably come up with something better, but holy crap, he was the fireman who’d come into the store for the fire inspection. The one with the Whopper Dong. The one who—