"powerful contemporary"

In Colorado because two smoke jumpers died fighting a blaze on Storm King Mountain, TV news reporter Jen Delazzeri is sent to cover the tragic breaking story. Jen does not want to go there or have anything to do with covering fires as she can still smell smoke from the devastating 1994 blaze that took the lives of fourteen firefighters. Smoke jumper Max Rickman saved her life back then and soon after they made love. However, he ended their relationship immediately feeling guilty as one of the dead was his fiancée.

Still if she wants to go network she needs to cover whatever the local station assigns her so Jen goes to the sight. There she meets Max again; he has never forgotten her, but becomes irate to learn he sired a child with Jen that she never mentioned to him before though he logically understands her reasoning. He demands time with his twelve year old daughter Elena and wants Jen to apply her investigative skills to what led to that tragedy almost thirteen years ago even as the adults fall in love.

Though the plot of not revealing a child to the father until years later has been over done in romance novels, Margot Early refreshes it with strong lead characters starring in a powerfully vivid story line; readers will smell the smoke. Jen and Max are likable heroic protagonists who have that previous deadly fire between them. The love connecting them both wants the best for Elena; who realistically has major doubts that her parents should marry leading the pair prepared to ignore their attraction BECAUSE OF THEIR CHILD.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted January 25, 2007