Love burns white-hot in this first scorching romance in an all-new trilogy about a family of firefighters from the New York Times bestselling author of the Play-by-Play novels and the Hope series. Firefighter Jackson Donovan doesn’t look back—as a rule. So when his past comes roaring back to life in the form of not-so-damsel-in-distress Becks Benning, the last thing he wants to do is relive old … last thing he wants to do is relive old times. No matter how tempting she makes it seem…
Now thanks to his two interfering brothers, Becks is living with them while she looks for a new place and tries to pick up the pieces of her tattoo business that went up in flames. Which means a grown up, smokin’ hot Becks is in his house, sharing meals, and digging up old wounds. And despite his better judgement, the more time he spends with this smart, artistic, incredible woman the more he wants her in his bed—and his future.
Becks always had it bad for Jackson. Unfortunately for her, not much has changed–he’s still honorable, hard-working, sexy as sin—and closed off. But there’s more than one way to get to a man’s heart and if Jackson doesn’t want to recall old memories, she’ll just have to help him make new ones. Because now that she’s found Jackson again, she’s not letting him go.
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Jackson and Becks knew each other when they were younger, Jackson was the leader of their group of homeless kids. The group got separated during a storm and Jackson and his two brothers took refuge in an abandoned house. The boys all woke up to the house being on fire and firefighters coming in to rescue them. As luck would have it the boys were all adopted by the firefighter that carried Jackson out of the house. Jackson and Becks don’t see each other again until her tattoo shop catches on fire and he ends up dragging her out. Jacksons brothers recognize Becks right away and jump right back to their friendship from childhood but Jackson has blocked out the past so he doesn’t remember her. As Jackson and Becks spend more time together the chemistry increases until they both slowly want more.
Hot to the Touch definitely delivered on the romance aspect, and Jaci Burton delved into the characters past and their emotions so much that I couldn’t help but be very interested in knowing how things would turn out for all the brothers! This seems to be the year for second chance romances for me so I was thrilled to find out that this wasn’t one. Even though the characters knew each other from their childhood a relationship never occurred when they were younger, so we were witnessing the first try for romance in Hot to the Touch. This was a good romance story, but Jaci Burton delved into deep issues about the foster care system and child homelessness, she didn’t just gloss over the fact that they were homeless as kids there was so much mentioned about how they felt during that time. I enjoyed reading this book, but there were parts of the book where it just felt like the same thing was being repeated. There were only so many times Jackson could claim he didn’t want to talk about his past and Becks trying to push him to acknowledge what happened when they were younger.
Hot to the Touch is a “touching” (terrible pun intended) story about first love. Two emotionally unavailable people find a connection worth pursuing. The hot fireman and the sexy tattoo artist have an intense heat between them, a shared history, and a fear that they won’t talk about.
Brotherhood by Fire has a heartwarming premise and makes me want to stick around for the other stories.