Blazing Hot Mountain Man: Blaze Family Romance, #16

By Daria Blake

Fake it til you make it, right?

That's Holly Evans's motto this Christmas. Her latest romance has fallen apart, as they all do, she's not feeling her passion for her DIY social media platform any longer, and all she wants to do is run away from everything. When the chance to interview Kieran Blaze, a private and elusive carpenter in the mountains of Colorado falls into her lap, she jumps at the chance. Anything's better than what she's got right now.

 

Kieran Blaze wants nothing to do with the outside world. After years of war and loss, he's happy in his small mountain workshop nestled deep in the woods. His family keeps trying to pry him out, but everything in him resists. It's better that he keeps his distance; when you don't make connections, no one gets hurt. But when Holly Evans arrives, she's his opposite in almost every way. She threatens his safe little bubble and turns his entire world upside down.

 

If he's not careful, she'll carve a place in his heart.

 

Don't miss any of the Blaze Family Romance stories!

 

Blazing Hot Match

Blazing Hot Flyboy

Blazing Hot Irish

Blazing Hot Getaway

Blazing Hot Billionaire

Blazing Hot Cowboy

Blazing Hot Hero

Blazing Hot Chef

Blazing Hot Fighters

Blazing Hot Jock

Blazing Hot Second Chance

Blazing Hot Slopes

Blazing Hot Tidings

Blazing Hot Holiday

Blazing Hot Santa

Blazing Hot Mountain Man

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: FS Romance Press
• Release date: Nov 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215745748

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

HOLLY

December 18th

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I’ve never felt more like a fraud in my whole life. As someone who makes her living as a social media influencer, sharing pictures and stories of my life and my love of all things DIY, it’s really hard when the passion is gone. Really hard.

I started out like everyone else, sharing my Do-It-Yourself projects and ideas, growing my following over time, and eventually my platform went viral and I started hearing from people all over the world who were inspired and learning how to do their own projects based on my posts. Now I have a sponsor and I speak at events while traveling to amazing places… I’m living the so-called picture-perfect life.

Except not really. Not anymore.

It used to be true. In fact, I used to pride myself on the fact that I wasn’t just showing the highlight reel online; I was real and authentic about the highs and the lows in my business and in my life. I shared the successes as well as the failures, the ups and the downs as I grew my audience of like-minded folks seeking an authentic voice in the DIY space.

That all changed about six months ago when the bad things—why do they always seem to come in threes?—hit me hard. It all started when Heather, my business partner who has been my sidekick since we both started on our influencer journeys, fell in love with a guy who lives off the grid. They met at the farmer’s market and that was that. She dropped the internet life—and me—to go live on a ranch in the middle of nowhere.

She’s blissfully happy, and I am truly happy for her, but I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t sting that she just up-and-left, and never looked back. I get cards from her in the snail mail from time to time, and I always write back, but losing her has been so much harder than I expected.

About a month after that, my sponsor dropped me. It wasn’t a result of anything I had done; in fact, they cut their entire social media marketing arm. My contact at their marketing department confided that they thought it was a terrible mistake, but the family-owned business was at the center of a family dispute, and the new guy in charge was calling the shots.

Even though they assured me with the whole It’s not you—it’s me thing, that felt like a gut punch. I was in the middle of several projects centered on their products and I could no longer feature them in my work. I know I’ll find a new sponsor, and I am ashamed to admit this, but the truth is I got comfortable where I was at and this setback rocked me.

I forced myself to reach out to other companies to see if they’d want to partner with me, only to find that many of the major players already have exclusive contracts with other influencers and television personalities. That’s when the doubt started to creep in and I wondered if I could still keep going with my channels.

Then, as if he was waiting for the timing to be just right, my fiancé, Nate, sat me down and actually said, It’s not you, it’s me. After three years together, eight of those months engaged, he’d come to the realization that he needed something else.

I thought we were happy together. We were so compatible in our likes and our goals, and very compatible in bed, but when he said he wanted to break up, I knew deep down that he was right. We didn’t fight. We had a frank conversation, with tears and lots of hand holding, where we both realized that we’d been coasting in our relationship. We’d been so focused on our work—my DIY platform and his hedge fund—we didn’t even notice that we’d let the fire go out.

Even though it wasn’t a dramatic breakup, it was heartbreaking nonetheless. Nate moved out the next day. In the five months since, I admit to sneaking a peek at his social media. A couple of weeks