Wild Hearts: Ice Queen Lesbian Romance (eBook)

Two ice queens.
One audit.
Zero chance of keeping it professional.

Shannon runs search and rescue like her life depends on it. Tess has been hired to decide if Shannon’s job should exist. Neither of them planned on a wildfire that tears through everything they have clung to and leaves them with nowhere left to hide.

Ice Queen
Slow burn
Enemies to lovers
Forced Proximity
Workplace Romance
Found Family
Professional Rivals

Chapter 1
Shannon
The ledge was narrower than dispatch had estimated. Shannon registered this as she rappelled the
final thirty feet, rope singing through her descender, boots finding purchase on granite that
wanted to crumble.
Twelve inches. Maybe fourteen. The hiker had wedged himself into a crack where the rock face
angled back, one leg dangling over a drop that would kill him if he moved wrong. He was
conscious. He was also talking, which didn’t help.
“Oh thank God, oh Jesus, I thought nobody was—”
“Don’t move.” Shannon freed herself from the rappel line and locked into her anchor in one
motion. “What’s your name?”
“Derek. Derek Howland. I was just trying to get a photo of the—”
“Derek. Stop talking. Breathe.”
He stopped. His chest heaved twice, three times. She watched his pupils, the sheen on his face,
the way his fingers gripped the rock. Shock was settling in, but not deep. He’d been here three
hours. Long enough to stiffen up, not long enough to deteriorate.
Above her, the rest of the team held position on the ridge. Martinez had the stretcher ready.
Colton was managing the rope system. Kep was waiting with them, still as stone the way two
years of this work had taught him. He knew his job was done, but hers wasn’t.
Shannon pulled out a sling and began rigging the hiker into a harness.
“I can’t feel my left leg,” Derek said.
“You’ve been sitting on it for three hours. It’s asleep.”
“But what if—”
“It’s asleep.” She threaded webbing around his thigh. “When we move you, it’s going to hurt.
Pins and needles, then burning. That’s normal. Don’t fight me when it happens.”

He nodded too fast. She could see the questions stacking up behind his teeth. How did I get here,
how did this happen, I was only going to take one picture. But he swallowed them. Good. She
didn’t need his story. She needed his cooperation.
The wind shifted. Shannon paused, her hands still on the harness, and lifted her head.
East. The wind was pushing east now, earlier than the forecast had promised. Up on the ridge,
the team would know, be securing positions to allow for the change. If the shift held, the updraft
on the east face would strengthen within the hour. That face was two hundred yards from their
current position. Not a problem today.
But if this had been a more technical extraction, if Derek had fallen another fifty feet, if the
anchor points had been on the east face instead of the south, she’d be making a different call to
his family tonight. Third time this month the models had been wrong.
She filed it away. Updated the mental map she carried of every ridge and drainage in the Elk
Ridge Wilderness.
She keyed her radio.
“Alpha to ridge. Wind’s shifted.”
“Copy, Alpha. We see it.”
“Twenty minutes.” She went back to the harness. “I want him up in twenty.”
“Understood.”
The hiker’s grip on the rock had loosened. He was watching her hands now instead of the drop.
His breathing had evened out.
“You’re going to be fine,” she told him. Not because it was comforting, but because it was true.
“This is a straightforward extraction. You’ll be at the hospital by four, home by tonight.”
“Really?”
“I don’t waste words on things I don’t mean.”

She finished the harness, checked every buckle twice, then removed his grip from the rock face.
He flinched when she moved his hand.
“Trust the system,” she said. “Not the rock.”
The haul took eighteen minutes.
Shannon climbed alongside the stretcher, one hand on the frame, guiding it past the sections
where the rock jutted out. Derek had gone quiet, either from the pain in his waking leg or from
the vertigo of being lifted up a cliff face in a metal basket.
At the top, Martinez grabbed the frame and swung it onto flat ground. The team moved in,
checking vitals, prepping for the hike out.
“Worst part’s over,” Martinez told Derek, one hand on the stretcher frame. “Downhill from here.
Literally.”
Derek managed a laugh. “I’m never hiking again.”
“You say that now. Give it six months.” Martinez grinned. “We get a lot of repeat customers.”
The team worked around him, needing no direction. Shannon unclipped from the rope system
and stepped back, allowing them to do what they knew how to do.
Kep was there.
He didn’t push or whine. Just arrived, the way he always did when the hard part was over. A
presence at her knee she didn’t have to acknowledge but always felt. His fur was warm from
lying in the sun.
Her hand found his head. Rested there.
She didn’t look at him. Didn’t speak. Just let her fingers settle into the familiar texture of his coat
while her eyes tracked the team securing Derek for the carry out. Around her, the volunteers
laughed, riding the energy that came after a clean extraction.

She stood apart from it, her hand on her dog’s head, and let the moment hold. Kep leaned into
her palm. One slow press, then he straightened. Back to professional. He understood the job
wasn’t finished until they were off the mountain.
The hike out took just under an hour. Downhill, easier terrain, but slow work with the stretcher.
Shannon took a rotation on the carry, then dropped back to let fresher legs take over.
At the trailhead, they loaded Derek into the ambulance.
Shannon gathered the team while the EMTs worked.
“Ledge was narrower than the terrain file shows. I’ll update it tonight.” She pulled off her
gloves, tucked them into her pack. “And the forecast was off again. Wind shifted two hours
ahead of prediction. Third time this month.”
Colton grunted. “Fire season’s going to be fun.”
“Fire season’s going to require better data.” She shouldered her pack. “Good work today. See
you Saturday.”
The team dispersed to their vehicles. The clouds were building over the peaks to the north.
Colton drove. He had the sense not to talk. Kep sat in the back seat, nose pressing against the
window when something interested him.
At base, she helped unload gear. Ropes coiled and hung. Harnesses inspected and stored. Colton
and Martinez were talking about a barbecue someone was hosting. She heard her name
mentioned, an invitation, maybe, and didn’t respond.
They’d learned not to push.
“Heard it went smooth.” Jake Reiner appeared from the back office, coffee in hand. He was fifty-
six, had been volunteering since before Shannon took over, and had opinions about everything.
She’d learned which ones to listen to.
“Smooth enough.”

“Hiker okay?”
“Sprained ankle. Maybe bruised ego.” She hung the last coil of rope. “He was trying to get a
photo.”
Jake snorted. “They always are.”
“Trail’s not even that scenic from that angle. He’d have gotten a better shot from the overlook.”
“You going to tell him that?”
“I’m going to let his medical bill tell him that.”
Jake laughed. Shannon allowed herself a twitch at the corner of her mouth.
“You want me on the Saturday training?” Jake asked.
“If you’re available.”
“I’ll be here.” He raised his coffee cup in a half-salute and headed for the door. “See you
tomorrow, boss.”
“Tomorrow.”
Late afternoon light came through the high windows, catching the dust on the storage racks. She
checked the weather models on her phone. The system building over the Pacific had
strengthened. If it tracked inland, they’d see moisture by Wednesday. Good for fire risk. Bad for
high-altitude work.
Kep’s tags jingled as he stood and stretched.
“Ready?”
He walked to the door and waited.

She grabbed her jacket, turned off the lights. Outside, the parking lot was empty except for her
truck. The mountains rose behind the building, still touched with snow at the peaks even though
it was late July.
She unlocked the truck and let Kep jump into the back seat.
Tonight, she would eat standing at the counter while the jazz played low, and she would not ask
herself any questions she wasn’t prepared to answer.
She pulled out of the lot and pointed the truck toward home.

She has been hired to decide if Shannon’s job should exist.
She was not hired to fall in love with her.

What happens when two ice queens collide and neither one melts first?

Shannon McAllister runs search and rescue in the Colorado mountains with iron discipline and zero tolerance for small talk. She has not let anyone close in five years. Not because she does not feel things, but because she does, and that is worse. She has made herself untouchable. It has worked so far.

Tess Calder has been hired to decide whether Shannon’s job should exist. She is the consultant nobody wants and everybody underestimates. Analytical, guarded, and so tightly wound she colour-codes her panty drawer, Tess does not do feelings. She does data. Data does not let you down, does not leave, and does not look at you the way Shannon McAllister looks at her when she thinks no one is watching.

Two women who have perfected the art of keeping everyone at arm’s length.
One six-month audit that puts them in each other’s orbit.
Neither of them is prepared for what happens when distance stops working.

The pull between them is undeniable. Every professional interaction is charged with something neither will name. Every accidental collision, and there are collisions, leaves them both shaken. Shannon reads terrain like poetry and never wastes a word on something she does not mean. Tess notices everything, catalogues everything, and is running out of professional headings to file Shannon under.

But Shannon is haunted by a loss she has never forgiven herself for. Tess has spent a lifetime making sure she never becomes her mother, a woman who chased passion and left wreckage everywhere. Wanting someone this much feels like the first step towards exactly the kind of chaos Tess has spent forty-two years outrunning.

Then a wildfire tears through the mountains and through every certainty they have clung to. What happens on that mountain changes everything and forces both women to confront what they have been running from.

Now Tess has a report to write. A report that could save Shannon’s career or destroy her own. The data says one thing. Her conscience says another. And the commissioner who hired her wants an answer she is no longer willing to give.

Shannon, meanwhile, has done what she always does when someone gets too close. She pushes. Hard. The one woman brave enough to risk everything for her, and Shannon drove her away.

Meanwhile, Tess’s mother Colette arrives uninvited. Part chaos agent, part unwanted life coach, and entirely without boundaries, she unpacks her crystals, discovers Tess’s most private possession, and sets her sights on a captivating eighty-three-year-old grandmother named Yaya. You will either love her or want to lock her in a cupboard. Possibly both.

A career-ending report.
A woman who runs towards danger but cannot stop running from love.
A dog who knows exactly who belongs in his house.

And one question neither of them can answer alone.

What happens when the thing you are most afraid of is the only thing that can save you?