Throw Him My Way

You can read Throw Him My Way free below.

Blurb:

A fireman, BWWM romance book.

Dog walker and trainer Heidi can’t complain too much about her job.

She has always had a soft spot for dogs, after all.

Yet her real passion lies in singing, and she doesn’t hesitate to hit up every open mic night around, pouring her soul into every performance.

Heidi’s routine is upended after accidentally starting a fire with a candle at a client’s home!

Dashing firefighter Christian Sanders swoops in to extinguish the fire, only to have Heidi ignite something within him.

Quickly, he becomes a regular at her performances, igniting an intense romance that blazes fiercely between them, growing stronger each time they’re together.

He even connects her with a contract in the music industry, promising to elevate her singing career.

However, when Christian misses her debut major performance, Heidi senses trouble.

Deep trouble.

Is this the end of their burning romance?

Or will they find a way to reignite their love and keep the fire burning strong?

Find out in this contemporary fireman romance story by Ellie Etienne.

Chapter 1

“Come on, Apple. Go on, go have a pee.”

Heidi Richards knew it was very unfair to blame the dog for having a name like that. Heaven knew people seemed to name their kids the most ridiculous things.

Why, wasn’t Gwyneth Paltrow’s kid’s name Apple? Celebrities seemed to lose all common sense when it came to names. Well, the kid should have plenty of money to pay for the therapy she’d need to get over the trauma of being called Apple during alphabet classes.

Or apple picking season.

But her client was no celebrity. She might think she’s one because she had a yoga studio, and it was a fraud of a yoga studio, anyway.

Really, Drawing the Moonlight was not a part of yoga, as far as Heidi knew. And what Heidi knew was a damn sight more than her client, Zoe the Ditz, knew.

Even Apple, her unfortunately named poodle, knew more than Zoe the Ditz.

“Oh, there you are, who’s a good dog, then? Have a treat for a good dog, for doing a good pee. That’s a good girl, Apple. Yes, you’re a good dog…”

Heidi went off happily into the babble reserved only for dogs.

She liked people just fine. She got along with them.

But dogs were perfection, as far as she was concerned. Since she planned to be a successful singer – she was already a singer, but hoped the successful part would follow sooner rather than later – she couldn’t have a dog of her own yet. Her hours were too irregular, and her apartment, pre-success as she called it, too small for a dog.

But her day job as a dog walker gave her that necessary woof-fix six days a week. Sometimes, she pulled an extra shift on Sundays, too.

Morning and afternoon, she would walk her dogs, who she thought of as her real clients. At the moment, Heidi had seven clients, and Apple was prickly with other dogs, so she needed a solo run.

After Apple had had her time in the sun, she would go back to Zoe’s ditzy apartment, say goodbye to Apple, and go on to the rest of the pack.

Heidi loved them all.

The afternoon walk was the best, because they were all so happy to see her. In a secret part of her, she considered all of them a little bit hers.

She judged the people who asked her to walk the dogs in the morning so that they could sleep in, too. Perhaps once in a while, that made sense. But if you could never bother to drag yourself out of bed and take your dog for a walk, what was the point?

Especially poor Timothy, the Great Dane. He already had a bit of a mournful face, but he really looked towards his silly person beseechingly every morning before giving up and making do with Heidi.

Heidi was more than happy to give the poor boy what attention she could.

“All right, Apple, shall we go home, then? Home? Home to Zoe? She should be done welcoming the sun now. Home to Zoe?”

Apple did a little prancing dance that Heidi took to mean a resounding yes.

Really, the dog was beyond adorable.

“Let’s go home to Zoe! Come on, cupcake.”

They were in perfect harmony, the kind that couldn’t be found through any amount of any asana, by the time they got back.

Heidi nodded to strangers, and smiled, because that’s what she did. They smiled back because nobody could seem to resist Apple.

The door was open when they got back.

“Was Apple a good dog today?”

Heidi’s opinion of Zoe went up a few notches, as it always did, when she saw how Apple and Zoe greeted each other. They really did love each other.

“Oh, wonderful, as usual. Apple is amazing. Strikes me every day, how lucky you are. Both of you.”

Zoe beamed.

She was a perky blonde. She was probably sweet and pretty, too, but perky was the first word that occurred to most people when they saw Zoe.

Heidi wasn’t perky. She was tall, languid and statuesque. The fact that she had enough energy and drive for two was usually quite neatly hidden away, until she needed to use it.

She knew she was good-looking, and used that when she could. She had the pipes to make it big as a singer, and she was marketable.

She just needed a break, and it would come, any minute. Soon, she assured herself quite often, but the ‘soon’ wasn’t happening quite soon enough.

“Stay for breakfast?”

Heidi shook her head a little too fast. Zoe put bran in everything.

Heidi didn’t have anything against it, but she didn’t like bran pancakes. With kale and agave syrup. Who the hell even thought of such an atrocity? It was just a kale smoothie, and that was atrocity enough, anyway.

She still wasn’t sure if that kale syrup was supposed to be a joke of some sort.

“I’ve got another round to go. Have a good day, Zoe. Bye, Apple, you be a good girl, now. Yes, you’re a good girl.”

A couple of sloppy kisses more, and Heidi left for her big batch of dogs.

She had her timing right to avoid crowds. It wasn’t a good idea at all, trying to get through the sidewalk with six dogs, three of them quite big.

So she needed to get both the timing and the route perfect, and she could get to the beach where they all often decided to go for a run.

As she collected the dogs, she got exuberant greetings. The feeling was always mutual.

Timothy did his usual pleading look before taking things in his rather long stride and greeting the others.

In twenty minutes, they were all at the beach, and all of them, including Heidi, wished there could be off-leash time for them to run as much as their hearts desired. Sometimes, she loved the fact that she lived on Coney Island.

Heidi had always loved running, the speed and thrill of it. Heidi never wanted to run away, though. She always wanted to run towards something.

But she could let them have some fun. So, with much whooping and laughing, they all ran, tumbling happily, until they got to the park where they could get some off-leash time.