Rescue Me

Evernight
Publishing

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2013 Teri Fowler

 
ISBN: 978-1-77130-662-1

Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

Editor:
Karyn
White

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or
distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
 
No part of this book may be used or
reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names,
characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

RESCUE ME

Shades of Love, 2

Teri Fowler

Copyright © 2013

Chapter One

He was losing her.

The stunning TV show producer, half hidden by an enormous maple desk in
the middle of a stiflingly hot LA studio, dropped Seth Coulter's gaze and
frowned down at her lap. Seth swallowed a groan and hoped that damned phone she
couldn’t seem to keep her eyes or hands off for more than a few seconds at a
stretch hadn't just sealed the fate of his family's ranch. He'd much prefer it
if she couldn’t keep her eyes off him, especially with so little time to make
an impression.

The woman, who he now knew to be Maya Franklin, spoke without looking at
him, her attention still firmly fixed on her phone. "I'm sorry about this.
My boss doesn't like to be kept waiting."

Seth tried to guess her age. She looked to be about thirty years old and
only a couple of years younger than he was, but right now he felt like a kid
who'd been called to stand in front of the teacher's desk for being a bad boy.

He stared at the top of her sleek, dark head, tension building in his
gut. Under normal circumstances, Seth would have appreciated an unguarded
moment to gaze at someone so beautiful, but what this woman could do for him
and his family was far more important than some fleeting attraction.

The slim yet still somehow voluptuous female with a pair of killer legs
had strolled through the reception area at the start of the auditions, and
every man waiting had craned their necks to follow her progress across the
room. Her thin cotton T-shirt and beige slacks might have seemed a sedate
choice of clothing when compared to the attire—or lack of it—of the other women
Seth had seen wandering around the studio lot, but they clung to her in all the
important places and made her far sexier than her half-naked colleagues could
ever hope to be. He'd dragged his gaze away from her deliciously pert behind,
annoyed that a woman, albeit a stunning one, had made him lose focus. But his
eyes searched her out again when the sound of a soft husky voice caressed his
ears. Seth turned, just in time to watch with rigid fascination as she threw
her head back to laugh at a colleague's joke, exposing her long, coffee colored
neck. Her lush, cherry red lips parted to reveal a wide, dazzling smile, and
her eyes danced with mischief as a glow spread across her smooth, brown cheeks.
A hard pulse in his groin had him catching his breath, and he tore his eyes
away again, acutely aware that he would need to regain control of his body
before he got any closer to her.

But ten minutes in the room with her had cooled his ardor some. The
producer might look like the kind of woman that fantasies were made of, but
standing before her while she eyed him like a piece of horseflesh had been a
harsh and much needed dose of reality. As cold as her fleeting assessment of
his physical attributes might have been, it was still preferable to her losing
interest altogether.

"Am I boring you?"

The producer jerked upright in her seat and dragged her ebony eyes away
from the smart phone in her hand. A hot flash of temper put fire in her already
intense gaze until she blinked it away and blew out a tense breath. Maya placed
her phone on the desk and sent him a brittle smile that might have chilled the
blood of a less irritated man. But in his current frame of mind, Seth just got
a deep and perverse satisfaction out of rattling her cage, so he smiled right
back at her. She cocked a dark eyebrow, and her sinfully plump mouth curved
into a genuine grin before she bit on her lip to smother it.

"So, Mr..." Maya stopped to take a look at the sheet of paper
in her hand, making a good job of pretending she'd forgotten his name. "Ah
yes, Mr. Coulter. In your opinion, what makes you stand out amongst the many
contestants auditioning for 'Rescue Me'?"

Ignoring the way her voice turned every word into a caress, Seth fixed
her with a direct gaze, determined to make the most of having her full
attention again. "Well, I'm a volunteer fireman in Oak Ridge, Texas—my
home town. I grew up there, helping my family to run the ranch we've owned for
a couple hundred years. I'm also involved in a local charity, and I hope to
raise the public's awareness over the issue of drought affected farmers and
ranchers."

The shutters closed over her eyes, and Seth knew he wasn't going to get
the job before she spoke. "As you probably already know, Mr. Coulter—"

"Call me Seth."

She smiled. "Well, Seth ... as I was saying, there are more fire
fighters auditioning for this show than anything else
. '
Rescue
Me' will be made up of a mixture of the emergency services—police officers,
fire fighters, EMTs—all competing for the chance to win the five million dollar
prize."

"I know, I read the information pack your assistant gave me,"
Seth said, forcing a tight smile to hide his irritation. Surely the production
staff had known he didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell when they'd called
him a month ago to tell him he'd made it through to the first round of
auditions? Almost every other person he'd met in the waiting area had been a
fire fighter. Why had they agreed to audition so many? He'd wasted time he
could ill afford to lose to come to LA, leaving his father to try to cope alone
with the ranch. If he'd been lucky enough to get selected, his financial
worries would be over, at least in the short term, because the studio would
give the contestants a generous living wage as well as accommodation for the
duration of the show. Seth had planned to send the money home.

"Help me out here. Is there more you can tell me—something that
makes you unique?"

Maya's eyes crawled over him as she waited for his reply, and she sucked
her bottom lip between her teeth again in a gesture Seth was becoming familiar
with. Her gaze lingered on his jaw, and then slid over his neck and down to his
chest. Seth wished he'd chosen to wear the long, loose blue shirt he’d bought
specially for the audition rather than the tight white T-shirt he'd ultimately
chosen, because the second her dark brown eyes landed on his groin, he wouldn't
be able to hide his reaction to the caress of her gaze. Seth cleared his throat,
and Maya's eyes snapped up to his face, a tell-tale blush on her cheeks as if
she'd realized what she'd been doing.

"I'm a rancher and a mentor to a local orphanage, as well as a
volunteer at the ranchers’ charity I already mentioned. I hoped to use the show
to raise awareness, and I planned to share the money with the charity."

To his surprise, Maya grimaced and glanced down at the application form
she held in her hand, her brow creasing. She lifted the pen in her hand to her
glistening red lips and sucked the tip between her teeth. Seth dragged his gaze
away from her mouth, fighting to suppress a surge of heat from imagining that
luscious mouth doing the same thing to him.

"In real life, your charitable work is an admirable asset, but for
a TV audience, it's a reminder that life is very hard and very cruel, which is
exactly what they are trying to escape by watching a few hours of mindless TV.
They want to forget their problems, not be reminded of them. If you were to be
offered a part in the show, it would be on condition that you didn't mention
the charity. The orphanage might be okay. It will tug on the viewers’ heart-strings."

Seth knew Hollywood was tough, but in his naiveté he'd assumed that
starving kids would matter to them. To hear a pretty woman say such cold and
ugly words shocked him. "I guess it's been a while since you went without
a meal. Maybe that's why you think lonely children are more important than hungry
ones. They all need help, not just the kids you think will be useful."

Maya's cheeks flamed. "Don't make assumptions about me, Mr.
Coulter. You have no idea of my personal feelings about these issues. I might
have chosen the wrong words, but I was simply stating what the studio would
want." She held his stare for a second, and he watched the anger drain out
of her gaze until she glanced down at her hands, shielding her eyes from him
with her long, dark lashes. "But none of that matters now because, as I
said, Mr. Coulter—"

Seth took a step towards her and placed his palms on her desk. The
gentle scent of warm orchids swirled around him as he leaned close enough to be
able to see that the glow on her skin wasn't created with cosmetics, it was all
her. "So it's Mr. Coulter again now? I'll spare you the discomfort of
reminding me one more time, Ms. Franklin, that I'm just
a
nobody
with a cause."

He turned and walked out of the audition, cursing his own stupidity. The
last chance to save the ranch as it was had gone. They were just gonna have to
sell the top forty acres, and his dad would have to understand. Times were different
now, and very few ranches survived without making some drastic changes to their
set-ups. Seth planned to ask his father about the dude ranch idea again. The
old man was just gonna have to accept that things couldn't stay as they were.
If the Coulters didn't do something about their debts, then the bank sure as
hell would.