Today is the release date for Going Up In Flames, my contribution to the Sapphire Falls Kindle World collection of novellas. Sapphire Falls is Erin Nicholas’s long-running series about a small town in central Nebraska. Several months ago, Erin asked me to be part of a Kindle World series centering around the Sapphire Falls summer town festival. I jumped at the chance to revisit some Konigsburg characters that I hadn’t been able to work into the full-length Konigsburg novels and to visit Erin’s lovely little town.

In particular, I wanted to do something with Jorge Delgado, line cook extraordinaire, who was first glimpsed in Don’t Forget Me, and then went on to play small roles in Fearless Love and Hungry Heart. Jorge is one of those characters who’s always in the background, tickling your curiosity (or tickling mine, anyway). Brooding, mercurial, obviously someone with a temper. But also obviously someone who knows what he’s doing when it comes to cooking.

The idea of taking a purely Texas character (Jorge’s been known to wear a cowboy hat while cooking) and placing him in a purely Midwestern setting (Sapphire Falls is nothing if not Nebraska to the core) was just too good to pass up. I wanted Jorge to interact with someone who was similar to him in some ways but his total opposite in others. Enter my heroine, Kirsten Engstrom. She’s Sapphire Falls born and bred, but she’s also a cook with a longing to see the world beyond the borders of Nebraska. Here’s the blurb:

The chef is hotter than the barbecue sauce.

Jorge Delgado can cook anything, and this time around it’s barbecue. Running the Barbecue King’s food truck for the Sapphire Falls Town Festival should be a no-brainer, but his new assistant is a major distraction. She’s got him feeling some heat that doesn’t come from the firebox. And as if that weren’t enough, someone’s trying to sabotage his smoker and keep the people of Sapphire Falls from discovering the delights of Texas barbecue.

Kirsten Engstrom thought she was taking a temporary kitchen assistant job at her hometown festival. She didn’t know Texas barbecue came with a heaping helping of tasty chef. Now she’s dreaming of a future with a hot cook after the festival closes down—a future that can’t happen with one of them in Omaha and the other in the Texas Hill Country.

Can a couple of cooks beat the odds and stir up something sweet together? Maybe. But for now they’ve got a vandal to catch—and barbecue to cook.

And here’s a quick excerpt, what happens when you cross a couple of chefs with a hot Nebraska night:

She turned a corner toward an open field where some cars were parked, not the street where she’d been parked before.

He raised an eyebrow. “City parking lot?”

“Sapphire Falls style.” She paused next to her compact that had more than a few years and a few dents. “Here we are.”

He turned to face her. Reflected light from the street highlighted the slope of her cheekbones, the elegant shape of her nose. The rounded crescent of her lips. They edged up ever so slightly at the ends, like the shadow of a smile.

Almost without thinking about it, he leaned forward at the same time that she rose up on her toes.

Her lips were soft, yielding beneath his. He ran his tongue along the seam, then nibbled lightly. She opened for him on a sigh, and he let his tongue slide in, touching, tasting, enjoying. His hands moved to her hips, feeling the slight curves against his palms. He slowly pulled her closer until their bodies touched, knees to shoulders. Soft breasts caressed his chest. The swell of his arousal was achingly obvious.

Her hands moved along his arms to his shoulders and then looped behind his neck. Her hips moved against his, and heat flowed through his muscles like molten steel. He let his lips drift to the side of her throat, following the beat of her pulse to the dip at the center of her collarbones. She moaned, the sound moving through his body like quicksilver. Even the air around him seemed to vibrate with the sounds of arousal.

His body was on fire. His brain was mush. All he could think of was finding a horizontal surface as soon as possible. He pulled back slightly, eyes dazed, ready to go to the next level as soon as they could find a flat space.

And heard the sound of laughter coming from the street nearby. Very nearby.

Fuck. Just fuck. He moved back a step, catching his breath.

Kirsten stared up at him. Her eyes were slightly dazed too, but like him she was coming back to her senses. Quickly. “Wow,” she murmured.

He nodded. Wow summed it up nicely. Still want to go home? Want to hear some alternatives? He couldn’t for the life of him think of a way to ask that didn’t make him sound as scummy as the guy in the funnel cake stand.

“Well, I guess I’d better get home.” She gave him a quick, slightly nervous smile.

He leaned forward, sliding one arm around her waist, and kissed her again, putting everything he had into it—all the passion he could give. And then he pulled back. “Good night, Kirsten.”

She stared up at him again, touching her lips with her fingertips as she caught her breath. “Good night, Jorge,” she whispered. “See you tomorrow.” She turned and unlocked her car, sliding into the driver’s seat.

He watched her drive away, trying to decide if he’d been an idiot or not. On the whole, he thought not. Good night, Kirsten. And yeah, you most definitely will see me tomorrow.

Going Up In Flames, along with eleven other Sapphire Falls novellas by some wonderful authors, is now available on the Sapphire Falls Kindle World page.