She wants him as her fake fiancé. He wants her as his mate. Will their pretend engagement end in disaster?
Jaguar shifter Esteban “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.
My Review
This book starts out with Maggie. She is a Jaguar shifter and also a smokejumper. She gets trapped in an awful situation out in the wilderness, and the smokejumpers actually manage to help out. About a week later, her bakery is opening, and they go in for a visit. She convinces Steve, another Jaguar shifter and smoke jumper, to play her fake fiancé so her parents and grandmother won’t choose her mate. Things get complicated for both of them. But Steve actually does want to court her. She starts to think it might be worth it. It will be interesting to see what happens?
I really like how this author writes character thoughts into her stories. She does jump in point of view as needed but also will include reflections and conversations. I love how the author let everything destruct for her characters before it all came about right. This was a great shifter romance, well done, and very steamy. I really enjoyed this book and the Jaguar shifters.
This is the last book in this triolgy for the Smoke Jumpers. I loved this book .
If you would like to read Free Fall by Ophelia Sexton you can find it Amazon. As an Amaon Associate I earn on qualifying purchases.
If you havent read the rest of the Rocky Mountian Smoke Jumpers Triology , they are stand alone books but you can check them out here.
If you love this book you may also like books with theese tags paranormal romance and fated mates.
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