Smolder: A Steamy Grumpy Boss Firefighter Romance

Fire ChiefNoah Bakerhas given up everything— friendships, relationships and love to earn his spot as the city’s youngest fire chief. If that makes him a cold, calculating grump, that’s the price he will pay to keep the city safe. He turned off his feelings to rebuild his department, and no-one will dare disrespect him in his own house.Until the beautiful rookie with a smart mouth challenges his ice cold rule… in public.

Erin Hudgenstests not only his patience but his control because every time she opens her gorgeous mouth he wants to shut it with his own. No one has ever made the Chief this hot and bothered, but she’s a complication he can’t afford.He's gonna need a cold shower STAT before he has to call a five-alarm fire on himself because she just asked him out . . .

Author's warning: This hot grumpy boss romance mixes the drama and high-adrenaline of Chicago Fire with dirty scenes worthy of Fifty Shades. One-click for a scorching first responder romance with real heart-pounding fire, and medical scenes - written by a real-life ER doctor.

Chief Baker set his pen down serenely. “Hudgens, is it? A word outside.”

If there was a level of silence more silent than silence, the room got there.

Erin stood, wishing she had some impulse control. It would have been a good idea to resist the need to protect her team and not call out the Chief on his management style.

“Is there a problem here, Hudgens?” the Chief asked when they were alone in the hallway. His voice was dangerously controlled and low. The cute guy who had seemed so non-threatening at yoga earlier today was looking at her like a lion who’d cornered a baby gazelle.

“No problem, sir,” she said, keeping her gaze on a point on the wall behind him. A good firefighter could control her air, her emotions, and her attraction to her superior officer.

“Good, because I don’t remember asking about Dispatch.” He was over five inches taller than her, and even though he was two feet away, she could feel him crowding her. She was going to be pushed back against the wall, unable to move or defend herself.

“I believe the purpose of an incident debrief is to determine the root cause of a poor outcome. Isn’t that the protocol?” she responded.

He shifted to draw her eyes to his. Vestiges of the polite professional mask he wore in the conference room disappeared. If looks could kill, Erin would have ignited right there from a bolt of blue. Half of her wanted to run, and the other half wanted to taste his lips in an unforgivably inappropriate way.

This was new; no guy had ever made her feel this way—too aware, too close, too captured. Being stuck in the storeroom together had only revealed the merest hint of the current arcing between them now as she challenged his authority by defying him.

Wild thoughts threatened to overwhelm her. Impulsive ones that told her she should grab him by the lapels of his jacket and kiss him the way she’d imagined this morning.

“The protocol is to treat your superior officer, the head of your fire department, with respect and appropriate deference.” He probably wasn’t thinking about sex in the empty HQ hallway.

Erin wasn’t going to back down. Not when her team’s lives were on the line. She owed them her loyalty first. “How long until the next unit showed up? How long were we left hanging?”

“That’s enough.” Baker transfixed her with what she could only describe as pure animal magnetism. “Do you understand, Hudgens?”

“Yes, sir.” She couldn’t refuse a direct command. She had three years of indoctrination to obey her officers. “Sir, if I can just go back in—”

“No. You’re dismissed from this incident debrief. Get out of my sight before I have to discipline you.” His movements were slow, and he deliberately leaned forward two inches, looming over her, a mockery of this morning. “Learn to keep your mouth shut.”

With that, he took three steps back to the conference room door and shut off whatever pheromone he’d been using on her. Erin reeled with the sudden backlash of her hormones getting fully rejected.

Now she was pissed. The Fire Chief, knowing she found him attractive, had used some evil dark Jedi Sith Lord sex whammy on her. She stepped away from him and waited until his hand was on the door handle. “No one came, did they? Dispatch never heard us.”

He gave her a glower. “Their computer system crashed for twenty minutes. But it doesn’t excuse the sloppy actions of your officers.” He closed the door behind him without a backward glance.