Firestorm Read Online Free Page A

mugs of coffee and a plate of muffins while her friends situated themselves in the living room. Reyne’s cottage was basically just a wooden box with a wraparound porch and peaked roof. Her cozy front room featured a big picture window with a view of the town and the mountains. She had decorated the house in classic but feminine fashion—ivory walls with framed botanical prints, ivy stenciled around the tops of walls, a distressed, whitewashed screen to divide living room from dining room, and a recycled-brick fireplace with a two-sided hearth that fed heat to the sitting room on one side and her bedroom on the other.
    Rachel sank into an overstuffed white chair, pulled her long, sable hair from behind her back, and pushed off her flats, propping stocking feet up on the ottoman. She was a pretty woman, as tall as Reyne, but with more exotic features. Big, oval, green eyes. Enviable olive-toned skin.
    “Ahh,” she moaned. “This is heaven. Pure luxury. Remember our bachelorette days, Beth? Remember our incredible apartment in San Francisco? We once went with Country French decor too, Reyne. Sadly, those years of white furniture are over. But it’s great to visit. I feel like a real girl here. And listen … Not a kid to be heard for miles.”
    “Wait ’til Samuel starts teething on your coffee tables,” Beth groused, taking a sip of coffee and placing her mug on Reyne’s own low table.
    “Little Hope was just giving your furniture some help,” Reyne defended lightly, nodding toward the screen. “Look at that. You see? The distressed look is in.”
    “Yeah, right. I don’t think rows of tiny teeth marks are exactly what the decorators have in mind. It’s been over a year, and I still haven’t refinished ’em.” Beth shook her head as Reyne offered her a muffin.
    “Come on, Beth,” Reyne began gently. “Have you eaten today?”
    “I’m not hungry.”
    “Beth,” Rachel began, ganging up on her with Reyne. Since her diagnosis of breast cancer and her radical mastectomy the year before, Beth had continued to drop weight. “You don’t need to lose any more ground.”
    “All right, all right,” she said, giving in. “Let’s not ruin the moment with lectures.” She took a tiny bite of a poppy-seed muffin.
    Reyne laughed as she watched Rachel give Beth a you-can’t-fool-me-with-that-measly-effort look. “Boy, you have it tough, don’t you, Beth? I’d hate to be in your shoes, looking at that accusatory face.”
    Beth smiled, and Rachel’s face softened. It had been a hard year. Over the last months, Rachel and Reyne had helped the Morgans out a lot by baby-sitting their three-year-old daughter, Hope, or taking Beth in to the hospital for her checkups. But Beth was not faring well. Her cheeks, once rosy and dimpled, were drawn and sallow. Her clothes hung from her body, and even her short brown curls seemed listless.
    Beth had been the first to reach out to Reyne at the tiny ElkHorn Community Church three years ago. It hadn’t been long before Reyne decided that she wanted to settle in the village permanently, not just when she was stationed there on occasion to fight fires. Reyne had wanted a home, but not on the outskirts of a bigger city like Missoula. She wanted a home in a place where people knew her on the streets, welcomed her into
their
homes. And from her brief visits to the small mountain town, she knew Elk Horn was that kind of place.
    Beth was a living example of small-town hospitality, even though she was a transplanted Californian. She had welcomed Reyne at the Dub M for dinner, introduced her to her own friends—including Rachel and Dirk Tanner—made her feel like family. The high point had come when she and her husband, Matt, had offered Reyne purchase rights on a choice piece of property at the southeastern corner of their ranch. The only stipulations had been that she let cattle graze up to the fence that surrounded her acre and that they be given first option if she ever