The Heat Is On
Bella Manchelli’s deliciously exhausted from last night’s sizzling one-night stand, when she finds a dead body at her back door! Then that scrumptious stranger from last night is at her front door… and he’s wearing a badge.Police Officer Jacob Madden is all about duty. Can duty and smoking-hot sex blend for a while? Definitely! Until Jacob discovers that guys Bella dates turn up dead…
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“Shalvis thoroughly engages readers.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Shalvis’s writing is a perfect trifecta of win: hilarious dialogue, evocative and real characters, and settings that are as much a part of the story as the hero and heroine. I’ve never been disappointed by a Shalvis book.”
—SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.com
“A Jill Shalvis hero is the stuff naughty dreams are made of.”
—New York Times bestselling author Vicki Lewis Thompson
“Witty, fun and sexy—the perfect romance!”
—New York Times bestselling author Lori Foster
“Fast paced and deliciously fun. Jill Shalvis sweeps you away!”
—USA TODAY bestselling author Cherry Adair
“Riveting suspense laced with humor and heart is her hallmark and Jill Shalvis always delivers.”
—USA TODAY bestselling author Donna Kauffman
“A fun, hot, sexy story of the redemptive powers of love. Jill Shalvis sizzles.”
—USA TODAY bestselling author JoAnn Ross
Dear Reader,
Who doesn’t love hot alpha-male rescue heroes? When I wrote about my firefighters for the Blaze® line, I set them in the fictional California beach town of Santa Rey. In this book, we’re back in Santa Rey, this time with Jacob Madden, one of the city’s finest with a badge. He’s a bit tough, a bit edgy and more than a bit jaded.
Until he’s blindsided by a warm, funny and adorably wacky woman named Bella.
Problem is, Bella’s got a bit of a problem. A dead-guy problem. It’s complicated.
What isn’t complicated is how these two fall in love— hard!—when romance was the last thing they were looking for. Love tends to work that way.
Happy reading!
Jill Shalvis
About the Author
USA TODAY bestselling and award-winning author JILL SHALVIS has published more than fifty romance novels, including her firefighter heroes series for Blaze>®. The three-time RITA>® Award nominee and three-time National Readers’ Choice winner makes her home near Lake Tahoe. Visit her website at www. jillshalvis.com for a complete book list and her daily blog.
To my editor extraordinaire, Brenda.
Thanks for always believing.
Table of Contents
1
“OH, YEAH, BABY, THAT’S GOOD,” she whispered. So good that she wanted more. She couldn’t help herself, she’d never been known for having much self-control.
Not when it came to chocolate. Isabella Manchelli loved desserts, all of them.
Especially hers.
Which was why she was talking to them. Licking the last of it off her spoon, Bella then tossed the spoon into the sink, nodding in satisfaction and pride at the tray of little chocolate Genoese sponge squares she’d created. She wasn’t sure of much, but she felt quite positive that the little cakes were her personal best to date. She went to work making up a second batch, knowing her boss, Willow, owner of Edible Bliss Cakes and Pastries, would be clamoring for more for her customers as the day progressed.
And the day had a lot of progressing to do. By the very nature of her job, she was routinely up before dawn, baking, and today had been no exception. At just the thought, she yawned.
That’s what you get for staying up way too late last night…
Having her absolute last one-night stand.
Her last, because as much as she enjoyed the occasional social orgasm, she never got much pleasure out of the morning after. The slipping out of bed, hunting down her clothes from off the floor, carrying her sandals so as not to wake him up…
No, none of that ever felt good as good as the night before.
Even if this time, her first in a damn long time, now that she thought about it, the night before had been so admittedly terrific that she suspected she was still wearing a grin advertising just how terrific…
She angled her stainless-steel mixer so that she could use the appliance as a mirror and turned her head right and then left, inspecting herself.
Yep.
Ridiculous grin still in place.
She couldn’t help it. Mr. Tall, Dark and Drop-dead Sexy had really had it going on. She’d met him through the local rec indent’s singles club, when Willow had somehow talked her into signing up for their Eight Dates in Eight Days. Tall, Dark and Drop-dead Sexy had been her eighth date, and the only one she’d let so much as kiss her.
The kiss had been shockingly…wow. Which had led to one thing or another, and some more wow, along with a good dash of yowza, and then…the whole morning-after thing.
He’d caught her in mid-tiptoe and off-kilter; she’d decided to go with her standard protocol for such situations.
She’d told him she was moving to Siberia, and then she’d left.
No feelings hurt, no strings. Just the way she liked it.
So why she felt a little hollow, a little discontented, she had no idea.
Probably it was all the chocolate on an empty stomach. Or possibly not. Possibly, the impossible had happened, and her mother’s mantra—it’s time to settle down, Bella—was right.
