High Heat is book 2 in the Hotshots series by Annabeth Albert. She has long been a favorite author for me and I’m really enjoying this series. We first met Garrick in book 1, Burn Zone, but you don’t really have to read that to enjoy High Heat but it is a story that I can highly recommend.

High Heat has a great age-gap trope but it’s not beat to death. (I hate it when the older guy keeps saying something like “we can’t, we shouldn’t, I’m too old for you” over and over.) The age difference is acknowledged and comes up but not excessively.

We already know from the blurb that Garrick suffered life-altering injuries while on the job as a smoke jumper. High Heat deals with his recovery and how he is handling his injuries along with throwing a little monkey wrench into the mix in the form of his neighbor’s grandson.

Rain is visiting his grandmother for the summer but has no plans to stay beyond that. A sweet dog named Cookie and his grandmother’s next-door neighbor seem to be bent on changing those plans. I loved Rain so much. He is such a caring young man and he’s falling for Garrick. He has a nurturing personality and he loves Cookie, the dog he helped Garrick rescue. He doesn’t see Garrick’s injury as something to be put off by. He wants to help when needed but he doesn’t see the injury as anything that should keep him from wanting to be with Garrick.

I loved this story so much but I was getting a little concerned that no tears had really come and I was getting pretty close to the end. Tears for me are a sure sign that I’m loving a book and Annabeth knows just how to bring on mine. Well, I shouldn’t have worried. There were plenty of sad and happy tears as I got to the end of the book. Such a great story!

I’m going to repeat a few things I said about book one because it also applies to High Heat:
Something I really love to read in a book is a great epilogue. High Heat doesn’t have a chapter called Epilogue but the last chapter takes place a few months after the main story has concluded; to me that is an epilogue. 😊 And it’s a great one.

I don’t always read the stuff at the back of the book, after the story ends, but the information Annabeth writes in her Author Note and Acknowledgments is definitely worth reading. There is also an excerpt from the next book in the series – Feel the Fire. I usually don’t read those either but I couldn’t resist this one. It’s a second chance story, which is one of my very favorite romance tropes; I can’t wait to read it.

Reviews for Annabeth Albert

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Emerging from the bathroom, he pulled up short in front of the bed where a very happy, very sleepy Cookie was lounging against his pillows.“Hey! I thought I told you to lie on your bed.”

Thump. Thump. Wagging her tail, she gave him a canine grin.

“That’s the people bed. Yours is over there.” He pointed at her bed. “Go lie down.”

Helpfully, she scooted over about ten inches but otherwise didn’t seem inclined to budge.

“Five minutes, okay? Five minutes and then you’re going to your bed.” Sitting next to her, he adjusted the bed’s angle. Replacing his previous cheap king set with this setup had been a bit of a splurge, but it beat the rental hospital bed he’d had at his dad’s. He was a big guy. He needed his space. And he was not prepared to share that space with a stubborn pooch.

“Go lay down,” he tried again after giving her some pats, but all she did was move to the foot of the other side of the bed. Yawning and out of energy, he was no match for a stubborn dog. “Fine, fine. Let’s not tell Rain that you rejected his bed selection.”

Usually nights were hard—his pain level tended to spike at night in unpredictable ways, his sleep could be

fitful, and his mind raced through hundreds of dismal scenarios. He’d never had an anxiety problem before the accident, but lately, calming down at night was particu¬larly problematic. If he was physically exhausted, it was easier, but then physical tiredness tended to mean more pain, which meant more sleeplessness, which meant more time for worries to charge back up.

But that night he didn’t even need to play on his phone and was asleep even before he could try again to get Cookie to move. The next thing he knew it was morning—and not crack-of-dawn morning either, but a sunny eight o’clock. A banging noise was coming from the front door.

Had to be Rain come to walk the dog. And sure enough, his phone was full of several missed messages from Rain asking about a time to come over.

“Coming,” he hollered. Hell. No time to get dressed. Letting Cookie lead the way, he used the crutches to get as far as the wheelchair, then switched to the faster method to get to the door.

“Oh, good! You survived the night!” Rain greeted him cheerily. “And uh—wow. Um. You need me to wait a minute?”

Rain’s gaze was riveted to Garrick’s chest in a blatantly appreciative way he hadn’t experienced in months. Damn. Felt good. Too good. And his shorts were hardly designed to conceal his body’s reaction to Rain’s attention if his dick decided to power up like it had last night. Abruptly, he spun away from the door. “Come on in. Sorry. We slept late. Like ten hours. I can’t believe it. That never happens to me.”

“You must have needed it. Did Cookie stay in her bed all night?”

“She stayed quiet,” Garrick hedged, not wanting to hurt his feelings by telling him Cookie had rejected the bed but also not wanting to outright lie either. “She must have needed the rest too. You want to take her out? I’ll find both a shirt and her medication while you’re gone.”

“Sounds great.” Rain bounced on the balls of his feet before fetching the leash from the key rack where he’d hung it the night before. His hair was still up, but messier than the day before, and he was wearing silver shorts and a close-fitting pink T-shirt with several members of that pony show Garrick’s sister’s kids liked, and Squad Goals written under the ponies in swirly script.

“No job interview today?”

“Nope. Didn’t want Miss Cookie feeling bad about being the only one in pink. I figured we could match. And I told you. I like it.” Rain’s eyes were defiant, daring Garrick to object.

“Hey, you wear what you want to wear.” Without coffee on board, he was struggling to sound supportive and not lecherous, because damn. Rain looked good in pink, all warm and glowing. It made his eyes more golden, and somehow the contrast with his sharp jaw did all sorts of interesting things to Garrick’s insides. While his taste in partners could be eclectic, the one unifying feature was usually confidence, because there were few things sexier than a fearless person who knew themselves and what they wanted. He’d already noted Rain’s innate confidence the day before, and today’s outfit choice only made him that much more appealing.

“Good.” Rain clipped the leash to Cookie’s collar. “We’ll be back.”

While they were gone, Garrick found a T-shirt of his own, black and plain because he didn’t have the same need for sparkle as Rain, but man, did he appreciate glam in people who enjoyed it. As he made the coffee, he watched Rain and Cookie coming up the sidewalk at a decent trot, Rain’s mouth moving like he was talking to the dog. Cute. So damn cute. And so very off-limits.

Copyright © 2020 by Annabeth Albert

Hotshots Series

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