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- Herausgeber: Lynn Burke
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
A woman striving to make her dreams come true. A man who took from her without asking. Can a second chance save them from the consuming wildfire?
A child born of the wilderness, I don’t know many women. Never had one of my own.
But sassy little Annie Charran owned my heart long before I stole her first kiss. She paid a high price for my actions, and even though I want her for life, I’ll never fit into the one she has planned for herself.
Given the opportunity to beg forgiveness, I grab it—and end up facing death.
With instincts overriding my senses, I take again.
But this time, a wildfire flares, demolishing everything in its path. Survival means sacrifice, and for me, life trumps dreams.
I’ll force Annie to give up what she wants most, even if it means I lose her forever.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Wildfire
Midnight Sun 3
Lynn Burke
Copyright © 2021 by Lynn Burke
All rights reserved.
Editor: Avril Stepowski
Cover Art by Golden Czermak / FuriousFotog
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review or article, without written permission from the author.
Visit my website at authorlynnburke.com
Wildfire
A child born of the wilderness, I don’t know many women. Never had one of my own.
But sassy little Annie Charran owned my heart long before I stole her first kiss. She paid a high price for my actions, and even though I want her for life, I’ll never fit into the one she has planned for herself.
Given the opportunity to beg forgiveness, I grab it—and end up facing death.
With instincts overriding my senses, I take again.
But this time, a wildfire flares, demolishing everything in its path. Survival means sacrifice, and for me, life trumps dreams.
I’ll force Annie to give up what she wants most, even if it means I lose her forever.
Contents
1. Annie
2. Roan
3. Annie
4. Roan
5. Annie
6. Roan
7. Annie
8. Roan
9. Annie
10. Roan
11. Annie
12. Roan
13. Annie
14. Annie
15. Roan
16. Annie
17. Roan
18. Annie
19. Roan
20. Annie
21. Roan
22. Annie
23. Roan
24. Annie
25. Brock
26. Annie
27. Annie
28. Annie
29. Roan
30. Annie
31. Roan
32. Annie
33. Annie
34. Roan
35. Brock
About the Author
Also By Lynn Burke
Annie
“What will you do if he happens to stop by?” Mom’s voice, muffled by the headset, reached me over the plane’s rumbling engine as she flew us deep into the wilderness.
I stared at the snow-capped mountains to my right, knowing who she spoke of, but I didn’t have a ready answer. “Not sure,” I stated the truth. Part of me longed to see his face after eight years, the other part of me wanted to scar up that face for what he’d put me through.
The first time I saw him, I fell in love. Only twelve years old, a little girl whose hormones had yet to kick in and put me on the right path like the rest of my friends, and I’d got warm fuzzies in my belly over his lopsided smirk. Imagined hearts in my eyes like those silly old-time cartoons I sometimes caught Mom and Dad watching.
Young love…it set me to dreaming of having what my parents did after twenty something years together. Unconditional. Affection all the time. Mad love, the type that made Dad act like a bear sometimes in defending Mom or when looking out for her.
I wanted a man like my dad. He always claimed he’d “grown up” in the wilds of Alaska even though he hadn’t moved there until later in life, but I knew such a one. A young man who had grown up out in the middle of nowhere and seemed the sort to turn into an animal in order to protect his loved ones.
Roan Kelly.
It’d been eight years since he’d stolen my first kiss, eight years since he’d burned me—literally—and broke my heart by not seeming to care.
He’d come to town once a few years back, but I made sure to be out of town at my cousin Kari’s house in Fairbanks. I didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to get caught up in those green eyes of his that seemed to read clear through to my soul and sent shivers from head to toes.
Last I’d seen him had been when Dad carried me toward the plane Mom had fired to life, the searing pain in my hand stealing my breath and sending tears down my cheeks. Roan hadn’t followed on our heels like a man sorry for what he’d done. He didn’t ask forgiveness, didn’t apologize for being the one who’d caused me serious injury and the possibility of ending my dreams. He’d stayed right where we left him—by the fire pit, hands fisted at his sides. Mute and emotionless.
He’d gotten what he’d wanted—my first kiss—and obviously didn’t care enough about me to make sure I was okay.
I hadn’t been for a very long time.
I glanced down at my hands clasped lightly on my lap. My right still had ragged, ugly as sin scars on some fingers. I didn’t release my hold to inspect the palm. Those scars remained, too. Even after grafts, evidence of falling hands first into a burned down bonfire full of glowing, red-hot coals couldn’t be erased, nor could the phantom pain that lingered. A constant reminder I couldn’t get rid of.
If he hadn’t caught me the first time, stolen my sweet sixteen a day early, chased after me when I’d sprinted off full of giddiness and elation at his fulfilling my secret fantasy I would never verbally admit to…
But years later, I’d found another perfect man who sent similar shivers to my toes—until he, too, broke my heart. The pain of that lingered as well, but for a whole different reason.
Letting out a sigh, I turned my focus on the window beside me, staring out over the Alaskan wilderness far below Mom’s old plane she refused to retire.
The thing was old as shit, but still ran like a dream. The first Midnight Sun Charter plane, her precious ’54 Beaver. Mom and Dad’s business had grown over the years. Five other planes, two of which ran joy rides for paying vacationers wanting to experience Alaska from the skies.
I’d co-piloted with Dad a few times, and it’s where I’d met the second love of my life as we’d flown his family to see the sights. He hadn’t looked anything like Roan. Didn’t have the same deep voice, the dark hair, and vibrant green eyes, but my heart ended up broken regardless.
Different men. Same result.
I’m not made for that kind of love.
That truth had run countless times in my head, but at least my heart didn’t ache as bad as it had a month earlier.
“You okay, sweetie?”
I turned toward Mom, hearing the clear concern in her voice muffled through the headset, and forced a smile. “Yeah.”
“You’re sure about this?”
Rolling my eyes, I snorted a huff.
“I know, I know,” she said with a sigh, turning once more to look out the plane’s windshield. “You’ve assured me a million times over this is what you want.”
“Yeah.” I, too, looked ahead, waiting for the turn that would bring our homestead into view. “It’s just a broken heart, Mom. I’m not some damsel in distress hoping to find my knight in shining armor out in the woods.”
“It could happen,” she said with a shrug and smirk.
Yeah, it had happened for her, but if nothing else, my ex tackled those daydreams to the ground.
“Love will come when you aren’t looking for it.”
“With what?” I motioned toward the vast nothingness out the windows. “A griz? A wolf?”
Mom didn’t laugh. “You carry that pistol, knife, and sat phone everywhere you go, understood?”
“Yes, Dad.” Sarcasm oozed, but he’d said the same thing a dozen times before seeing us off.
“He’s not any happier than I am about this, but I’d rather have you be a forty-minute flight away than overseas like you considered doing when Justin… Sorry.”
Yeah, the dreamer in me thought. Head to Tuscany and forget all about my ex.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I murmured.
I’d considered falling for an Italian who owned an olive orchard but only because I loved olives, not because I was interested in allowing myself to be vulnerable ever again. A case of olives packed in the cargo area behind us. They would be the love of my life.
“I’m going to be just fine.”
“I know, sweetie. You’re one of the strongest young women I know.”
“And the summers at the homestead prepared me for the zombie apocalypse,” I reminded her with a small laugh, knowing it to be the absolute damn truth. “I got this.”
Mom smiled and reached over to squeeze my hand. “You get bored or lonely, I’ll come for a visit. Girls weekend. Wine, chocolate, and sleeping in.”
While that sounded like a lot of fun, I wanted quiet time to finish writing the three-book series I’d been working on for what seemed like forever. It didn’t help that I had put my dreams of becoming a published author aside for my ex—because my daydreaming and writing took too much time away from him.
Insecure bastard.
He’d demanded all my attention, and I’d given it to him because I’d been so desperate to find what my parents had. I had come to realize the truth of that fact—and his damn insecurities—but had been blinded for too long by the warm fuzzies. By hope. By dreams. With my second broken heart, that whole twenty-twenty hindsight shit hit hard.
Dad was one of a kind and growing up in our household had instilled unrealistic expectations in my heart. I’d never find someone who looked at me like I supplied their oxygen—but holy hell, I still wanted it. Dreamed of it. Scribbled stories in my journals since childhood about fairy lands, trolls, and elves. True love fated by cupid’s arrow.
It’s time to put me first, just like Mom always told me to do.
“I won’t be a pushover ever again,” I murmured half to myself, thinking about the choice I’d finally made for me.
“Good,” Mom snipped the word in my headset. “I never liked how you gave up yourself for Justin.”
I lifted my chin. “I’m back to good old bitch Annie—selfish and independent. A woman who refuses to settle.”
“That’s my girl.” Mom laughed while banking toward the south. “You make me proud.”
The Charran homestead appeared in the distance, the small one-room cabin’s gray logs nearly blending into the brush along the river. Dad had ripped off the roof and built up the walls higher to put in a loft above their bed for Junior and me, but other than that, the cabin looked the same since I could remember seeing it the first time at three years of age.
Dad had shown Junior and me how to survive in the wilderness, how to hunt, fish, and track. Every summer, our family filled my mind up with memories, and I, in turn, filled up countless journals with stories long lost.
Once upon a time, the homestead had been what I’d looked forward to the most. Quiet to write. Quality time with loved ones. An occasional visit from Roan and his family who lived upriver. Until that fateful night all those years ago when I learned he’d only wanted a kiss and couldn’t be bothered to worry about the injury he’d caused.
Men and their damn selfish desires.
I let out another sigh, knowing Mom would head to the Kelly homestead next with the pile of spring supplies behind mine, but I didn’t mention their son’s name, nor did I want to talk or think about him.
He’d broken my heart first, brought on that first inkling of mistrusting love. My ex, Justin, just hammered the truth home.
Two men. Two broken hearts.
I’m so done. It’s me time, bitch.
Smirking at the fact I spoke to my muse with excitement for the first time in years, I looked forward to settling in. Pouring myself some wine, curling up by the fire, and typing away.
No internet, no social media to distract me. No man sneering or laughing at my “unattainable” dreams.
I would have my three-book series hammered out in a matter of months. Three before I had any plans of company—no matter how much mom called the sat phone and bugged me to let her visit.
Dad sat at home recovering from having his appendix taken out, and Junior went and got himself hitched a few years back, his wife popping out two boys who looked just like him in two years. She hated the homestead, and he loved her like Mom did Dad.
So, no Junior. No Dad—and no Mom.
Just me and you.
I imagined my muse laughed maniacally in my head, rubbing her hands together with glee.
Time for us, time for taking control over my life and fulfilling my dream, one I would let no man take from me ever again.
Roan
I cast into the river below Pa’s cabin, the plop of my lure lost in the noise of water finding its way between rocks and boulders. Fish weren’t biting, but I hadn’t been intent on catching anything for dinner, anyway. My gaze strayed to the east more often than it did across the water looking for better places to fish.
The waiting, I hated—but I no longer held my breath in anticipation.
After eight years, I gave up hoping Annie would be in the cockpit with her mom or dad when they flew supplies in. Didn’t keep my heart from thumping heavily every time my ears caught the drone of a plane engine approaching. I made sure to be around the homestead on delivery days…just in case.
The real reason for my fishing rather than out hiking in peace and quiet.
Far as I knew, Annie hadn’t ever forgiven me for kissing her without consent on the night before her sixteenth birthday, then being the one responsible for her burned hand. All because I’d wanted another taste of her soft lips and sweet breath and had chased her around the dying fire after her parents had retired to their tent and Ma and Pa to our cabin.
The guilt, my inability to react to her pain, embarrassed the hell out of me. I never spoke of it, never admitted to my parents what I’d done, why she’d been running and fell into the fire.
Because I’d become an animal acting on selfish instincts alone. Salivating at her heels like a starved wolf. My lack of control had caused the one woman I wanted to leave our homestead in a rushed escape by plane.
Her dad had returned a few days later for their belongings, but even then, I’d hightailed it to the hills to keep from having to face him, his anger, for causing his little girl pain. It wasn’t until a year later that I’d learned through Ma that Annie had healed up enough to have full use of her hand.
I still dreamed of her, waking at least once a week with my cock a single stroke away from erupting in spurts of sticky white. Damned instincts.
She’d been my first kiss.
My only kiss.
And at fuckin’ twenty-seven, I felt doomed to a solitary life, never knowing what it felt like to lose myself between a woman’s thighs. Brock had taken me to town with Pa’s blessing when I’d turned twenty-one to open a savings account of my own for my share of skins and gold we panned together. Brock had offered his home for a short time, to enjoy the sights of the town, perhaps find a woman— same as Pa had suggested.
But I’d fled back to the wilderness rather than take advantage of the Charran’s hospitality.
Too much noise.
Too many lights.
Unbearable smells.
And no woman I’d seen compared to the dark-haired beauty who’d stolen my heart when I’d been nothing but a kid. Annie had made herself scarce that single day I’d been in town. Didn’t catch one glimpse of her.
Little Annie Charran.
I cast again, teeth clenched against a groan as my cock stirred in my pants, same as every time I thought too long on her.
Spitfire with the kind of life in her dark eyes that sets a man’s soul on fire. The kind of smile and laughter that makes life worth living.
Until you take away that smile, that laughter.
Jessie told me her daughter had healed up just fine the first time I’d found the balls to face one of her parents after the accident. Brock had assured me there was no ill will with the following delivery, but their family never flew out to visit again the way they’d used to.
And the Kelly family never hiked down river to visit during the summer months, either.
Time dragged on while I waited on the plane every spring and fall, only to be disappointed again to find the co-pilot seat empty. Brock and Jessie had forgiven me once I’d manned up and asked for it without going into details of what had truly happened. And I’d heard through Ma who heard from Jessie over a sat phone call once, that Annie didn’t want an apology. Wouldn’t offer forgiveness no matter how much I groveled.
Sassy, stubborn girl, but that part of her made me hard, too.
Pa suggested a mail order bride when I got too cranky and restless, and as the years slipped by and the woman who’d burrowed into my head never showed, I began to give his suggestion some thought.
“Need a cabin and land first, though,” I muttered my usual excuse to myself while reeling in my lure.
Ma and Pa offered a parcel of their acreage up past the berry brambles, but I wanted a bit of distance, even if I couldn’t afford it. Couldn’t have my sisters stopping by whenever they felt the need to drive me insane.
But did I want a woman I’d never met? Was it possible a woman existed with more beauty, more fire, than my Annie?
My much younger twin sisters teased me that I’d lost my heart to her because she’s the only woman outside them, Ma, and Jessie I’d ever met.
But I’d seen dozens of women in town.
And my heart knew, just like Pa told me his did when he’d first seen Ma. She was life, and mine turned up empty every fuckin’ day without her.
Tired of casting, I set aside my pole and scoured the area for spiders a ways from the river’s edge before settling onto my ass. Cotton grass rose around me, their seed heads waving in the gentle breeze ruffling my too-long hair Ma needed to cut. The lichen beneath my backside had all but dried out since we’d had less snow than normal that winter, and the spring hadn’t brought much-needed rain.
The land around me appeared as bleak as my hopes for more even though Mother Nature’s time of renewal had come.
A low hum I recognized ticked my heart rate up—but it approached from down river.
Brow furrowing, I stood, scanning the blue sky to the east thinking my ears deceived me. The hum grew louder to my right, and I angled that way. Less than a minute later, Jessie’s plane appeared.
I grabbed up my pole and hiked through the grass tussocks, taking care to keep from their clumps so as not to roll an ankle as I’d done dozens of times in my childhood before learning better. The plane buzzed up behind me, flew overhead, and I tilted my chin high, adrenaline rushing to thump my heart as it always did when Jessie’s old plane flew over our home.
She banked and descended low enough I could make her out in the cockpit as she readied to land on the river.
Alone.
No Annie.
Hating the feeling of my heart falling yet again even though I’d felt sure I hadn’t put any hope in seeing her, I slowed my steps. No sense rushing to unload supplies and having to carry the bulk of them up to the cabin. Ciarra and Nissa, my sisters, would help, as would Ma, but Pa and I would see to most of the work— same as always.
Both girls squealed as Jessie’s pontoons dragged in the water, their giggles and excitement while rushing down the path to the river lifting my lips. I expected they looked forward to the bags of books Jessie always brought from the library’s yearly spring clean out—same as me.
Ma had taught us to read, and I devoured everything dropped off at our place. Thrillers, mysteries, romance…I loved them all. Even though I had no wish to live elsewhere, or even visit for that matter, I sure as hell enjoyed reading about it. Living vicariously through an author’s imagination.
Jessie hopped out of the cockpit, tied up to the log ramp Pa and I had replaced a week earlier, and she hugged both my sisters, their words lost in the breeze blowing in my face.
Ma and Pa approached at a slower pace, holding hands as usual when making their way down the pebbled path, but Jessie’s smile my way took the sting of longing for a similar relationship away. I felt my own grin grow.
A visitor, even if only for a short time, brought much needed excitement to the wilderness.
Jessie eyed my beard I’d let grow out over the winter, her smirk and the light in her eyes letting me know she approved of how I’d let myself go. “Looking good, kid!” she called my way.
I set aside my pole and accepted the hug she offered, her scent sweet as vanilla.
Pa and Ma came up behind me, and more hugs, more words of welcome took a few minutes like it always did.
“No Brock or Annie,” Ma mentioned—for my benefit in hoping for word of her, I expected.
“Brock had emergency surgery two days ago.”
“What happened?” Pa asked before I could question Jessie.
“Appendix.”
“He okay?” I asked.
“He’s fine.” Jessie nodded toward the plane with her head, her way of telling us it was time to unload so she could get back to him. “Annie’s down at the homestead.”
My feet stayed planted, heart stuttered out, and kicked back to life as my family fell into line behind her. “Alone?”
“Yeah.” Jessie pulled open the plane’s side door and climbed inside. “She said she’s needing some peace and quiet to find herself.”
“If any woman besides you and Saige can make it out here alone, it’s Annie.” Pa took the first box while Jessie beamed over his words of praise.
“She’s a strong one,” Jessie agreed, turning to take up another box and hand them off to my waiting sisters and Ma. They exchanged a few words, but my brain buzzed.
Annie.
A two days’ walk away.
Alone.
Vulnerable—no, scratch that. The woman was anything but vulnerable. Even at a day shy of sixteen, last I’d seen her, she’d been a feisty one. The kind that would face a grizzly like her dad had done and live to tell about it.
Pa and the women headed up the pebbled path, and I reached for the box Jessie held out to me.
“Do me a favor, Roan?” she asked, still grasping the box so I couldn’t turn away.
“Whatever you need.” I meant the words, too.
“Would you check on her in a couple weeks? Make sure she’s doing okay? She’s a strong woman, but she’s also stubborn as hell.”
“She’ll stay down there no matter what she encounters,” I added, knowing exactly what Jessie had meant.
She smiled and released the box with a wink. “Seems you know my daughter.”
I did. We’d been damn near inseparable throughout our teenage years.
“She’d like to see you,” Jessie stated quietly, keeping my feet firmly planted in place with her steady gaze.
“I doubt that,” I muttered, reminded yet again of that phone conversation between her and Ma that had damn near broken me.
“I caught her looking upriver more than once while we unpacked her things.”
I wasn’t one to keep from sharing the truth—except for the time I’d turned into an animal. But maybe it was time for honesty. Maybe voicing my embarrassment, my unrelenting guilt would make things better.
“I was chasing her that night,” I admitted after a quick glance up the path to make sure my family wasn’t close by. “I stole her sweet sixteen from her, lost my head, and became nothing more than a drooling dog.”
“She told me.”
I jerked my focus back toward Jessie to find a small smile still on her lips. “She did?”
“Girls like to gossip.”
“I feel like shit for what I did—sorry for cursing, ma’am,” I muttered.
“And I feel like a shitty mom for not being able to get through her thick skull that you hadn’t meant to cause her any harm.”
My lips twitched. Annie sure got her sassiness from her mom. “I stood there and stared. Couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Nothing but a damn chickenshit.”
“It’s called shock,” Jessie stated firmly, “and it’s not unusual, nor is it ever too late to ask for forgiveness—in person.”
Pa started back down the path.
“I’ll never be good enough for Annie, even if she does find it in her heart to forgive me.” I kept my voice low. “She’s a goshawk and I’m a chickadee. She could rule the skies if she wanted—and she needs and deserves a better man by her side through life.”
“Roan.”
“Yes, ma’am?” I tore my focus off the box of canned peaches I’d taken to staring at, not sure if it was the thought of sweet fruit or Annie that set my mouth to drooling.
She smiled at me. “What she needs is a man who is going to support her. Her dreams. Her wants in life.”
I nodded even though I didn’t understand why she told me what Annie needed. I couldn’t support myself, my own dreams, let alone someone else’s.
“Yes, ma’am, she does.” Turning away, my heart fell a little bit more. So much for making things better by spilling my guts.
