Burning Love
A Hot Aussie Knights Romance
Trish Morey
Burning Love
Copyright © 2017 Trish Morey
Smashwords Edition
The Tule Publishing Group, LLC
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-946772-50-3
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
The Hot Aussie Knights Series
Excerpt from Hot Mess
About the Author
Chapter One
Adelaide
Caleb Knight slammed his locker door shut and slumped onto the nearby bench, letting his aching head flop into his hands. Sometimes life just sucked, though ironically, that seemed an honour reserved for the witnesses – the ambos and emergency services who were first on the scene. Along with the family, of course, the ones left behind. The ones whose lives hadn’t just been prematurely snuffed out because of some stupid, senseless, and ultimately fatal act.
He closed his eyes but he knew the images would stay with him. There was no way he could unsee what he’d witnessed today.
Like the images of the fifteen-year-old unlicensed and unrestrained driver, her long, blonde hair matted with blood, the fear she felt when she’d realised the two cars would collide preserved for all eternity in her open blue eyes as she lay broken and lifeless on the bitumen.
And of her cowardly nineteen-year-old boyfriend reeking of alcohol and protesting to the police officers questioning him that it had all been her idea to drive, and that it wasn’t his fault.
But then the gut-wrencher, the female driver of the other car trapped and barely clinging to life in the small hatchback that had been crushed like tinfoil when the high-powered Subaru had run the red light. Even the Jaws of Life he’d wielded hadn’t been strong or fast enough to cut through the wreck in time to save her life, before her heavily pregnant body had been rushed to hospital in a desperate mission to save her baby.
Yeah, sometimes life sucked.
What a fucking mess. He sighed as he rubbed the back of his neck. He’d joined the fire brigade to put out fires, not to scrape people off the road. Although that was only half true. He’d joined because, going back three generations, that was what the men in his family did. From saving people and property, their pets and livestock from fires to demonstrating to the public at the annual Royal Adelaide Show how to use a fire extinguisher. And, sure, rescuing the odd kitten stuck in a tree. God, how he wished today had been all about rescuing kittens.
“That was a rough one,” he heard Richo say behind him. “I sure could do with a cold one after that. You in?”
“Maybe.” He nodded to get rid of his crew mate, to make it look like Caleb was on the same page, but he knew what he needed when he felt like this wasn’t a day off. It was Ava.
He needed Ava.
Chapter Two
Ava Mattiske sensed the change in light behind her. Sunset, she registered with surprise, turning her head towards the big picture windows that ran one length of her studio and overlooked the steep creases of the Uriarra Gorge below to the city and sea beyond. It had been mid-afternoon the last time she’d looked out, the cloudless sky had then been an infinite blue, the air almost shimmering in the thirty-plus temperatures. Now the rugged gorge with its rocky escarpments and bush-filled slopes and ridges was alight with the golden red rays of the westering sun.
Her favourite time of day.
She turned back with a critical eye on the unfinished still life she’d been working on for days now. She’d been struggling to capture the poetry of the simple composition of lemons and blue and white striped jug she’d arranged against a snowy white-tiled backdrop. She thought she almost had it at one stage today, thought she could get it if she just persisted. But still it didn’t sing with the vibrancy it should. Something was missing.
The light summoned her back to the windows, demanding her attention. There was no rush to finish her work, she decided, wiping her hands on a towel. No need to fight when she could finish the painting tomorrow. Right now it was the sun’s turn to paint. She cleaned her brushes, poured herself a glass of chilled sauvignon blanc, and pulled up a chair on the terrace outside to enjoy the show. The sunsets were just one more reason to love living here in this special place in the Adelaide Hills, where the sky went on forever and the land was richly textured, the ridges and valleys steep and rocky, and in stark contrast to the long flat plains of Adelaide below.
She could never live down there on the flat. Texture was what she craved. Big sky. Shifting clouds. The sunsets were a bonus, just like the visiting wildlife, and the gully winds at night that came to banish the worst of the summer heat.
Not to mention the isolation.
She could work here. She could relax and let the ever changing landscape and the ever changing colours feed her soul.
She was safe.
Her glass was near empty, the sun a molten ball dipping its toes into the sea, when she heard a car approaching the house along the long driveway behind. She stiffened, cocking an ear, wondering at the intrusion. Caleb’s car, she realised, and a momentary spike of pleasure at his unexpected arrival
