She wants him as her fake fiancé. He wants her as his mate. Will their pretend engagement end in disaster?
Jaguar shifter Estevan “Steve” Lopez is a smokejumper, an elite firefighter who risks his life parachuting into rugged terrain to fight dangerous wildfires. When his grandmother pleads for help in fending off his rapacious older brother Aarón, who is plotting to take over the family business by having her declared incompetent, Steve vows to save her. But good lawyers are expensive, and being a firefighting hero doesn’t pay nearly as well as corporate raiding. If he’s going to save his beloved abuelita, Steve needs an infusion of cash. Fast.
Enter successful entrepreneur and fellow jaguar shifter Maggie Ornelas. The dark-haired pastry chef is fearless and fiercely independent. She’s spent her life successfully dodging her family’s matchmaking efforts…until her heroism during a harrowing rescue from a raging forest fire makes the national news, and draws unwelcome attention from her clan elders.
Ambushed by her parents and the clan matriarch at the grand opening of her newest top-tier bakery in Denver, Maggie’s handed an ultimatum: either repay her clan’s big business loan, or agree to an arranged mating to Aarón Lopez, the heir to a rival jaguar shifter clan—and someone Maggie loathes.
All seems lost until a knight in a yellow firefighter’s shirt steps up save her with a white lie about being her boyfriend. Even better, smokejumper Steve Lopez is Aarón’s younger brother, so her parents instantly approve of him. Maggie offers Steve a bargain he can’t refuse—if he’s willing to pretend to be her fiancé until she can scrape together the loan repayment, she’ll pay for the lawyer his grandmother desperately needs.
Things get complicated when Steve realizes that Maggie’s his fated mate, and that he wants to claim her for real. Meanwhile, she’s fighting her growing feelings for her fake fiancé because she’s afraid that yielding to love—and her clan’s wish to unite the Ornelas and Lopez jaguar shifter clans–will force her to sacrifice everything she’s worked for.
Will their fake engagement be the perfect solution to both their problems…or an utter catastrophe? This Bearpaw Ridge Firefighters spin-off romance features plenty of drama, a helping of steamy goodness, a dash of humor, and an HEA with no cheating.