When a city fire marshal's ironclad rulebook collides with a wildfire analyst's risk models, the sparks that follow threaten to rewrite Mira Ruiz's precise equations for how to live. In Los Alamos, Mira trusts code, sensors, and tidy forecasts—not people. But when her sister begs her to help stage Fuego + Flora, a candlelit pop-up in Santa Fe's Railyard that could rescue their family's food truck and secure a coveted lease on Agua Fria Street, Mira agrees to audit flame tables and airflow like a favor that won't touch the heart. Enter Javier Cortez, a moody marshal with ember-dark eyes, a Dietz lantern clipped to his belt, and a history of shuttering venues the instant the risk needle twitches. He doesn't do soft edges. She doesn't do improvisation. Chemistry, inconveniently, does both.
When a dry lightning storm ignites brush near Tesuque and air quality nosedives, Mira's field demo for a soot-sensor grant is thrown onto the same burner as her sister's future. Between sand buckets and CO monitors, duct-taped aluminum heat shields and a battered copper blowtorch, she and Javier jury-rig safety into art. Beneath a Nomex jacket that smells faintly of piñon smoke, confessions flicker: a warehouse fire he still dreams about; the charred recipe card she keeps folded in her wallet. Rumors surface that Javier bent the code for Mira, threatening both their careers. To save the night—and each other—Mira must decide whether the cleanest model is worth losing the messy, incandescent thing that refuses to be forecast.
As a romance with technical texture, this mostly sings, but I had a few quibbles.
If Mia Hopkins wrote about wildfire modeling and Rebekah Weatherspoon threaded in quiet grief and sturdy joy, you would get the smoky, tender precision of Flicker of Desires.
What stayed with me are the micro-choices these two make when no one is watching. Mira's interiority is cool and exacting at first, then pricks with little admissions she barely lets herself think. Javier is more guarded, but his tells are physical, the way he checks exits or pauses over a rumor like it is a live wire.
Their conversations are sometimes sparring, sometimes a shared blueprint, and that balance sells the attraction. Even when the plot pushes them into the same space, the story lets each of them hold their own competence without turning either into a savior.
La ambientación es impecable y se siente vivida: el Railyard de Santa Fe, el rumor del tren, el aire seco que baja de Tesuque, el olor a piñón en la chaqueta de Nomex. Los detalles de código y normativa no son decoración, sostienen la tensión romántica y el riesgo real de un pop-up con fuego y familia de por medio. Me encantó cómo la ciudad se convierte en cómplice y juez a la vez, y cómo la ciencia de Mira conversa con la experiencia de Javier hasta volverlo todo ritual.
Craft note: Ruiz narrates in close third that mirrors her analyst brain, then loosens as the story heats up. The early chapters snap with clipped, precise diction, while later scenes let the sentences breathe and accumulate heat. Chapters toggle between event prep and field work in a rhythm that feels engineered, with only one mid-book lull when logistics crowd the page. Dialogue is tight, and the recurring object work with blowtorches and heat shields gives the prose a steady hum.
I read this with my pulse in my throat, not from cliffhangers but from the way risk and tenderness move in step. The air in Santa Fe hums here, full of soot counts and whispered rules, and somehow the math of desire keeps outgrowing the spreadsheet.
What dazzled me is the motif work: sensors vs senses, code vs code-switching, flame tables vs family tables. Mira keeps trying to simulate her life until the model breaks in the best way, and Javier carries a quiet gravity that makes every scene feel oxygen-starved and then suddenly generous.
The book keeps circling one idea, and it is devastatingly beautiful, that love can be a controlled burn. When they talk about "turning safety into art," it lands like a thesis for both the pop-up and their trust.
Even the rumor mill feels purposeful, testing their integrity without undercutting their competence. I cared about their careers as much as their kiss because the stakes were woven into practice, into buckets and monitors and that Nomex jacket that still smells like last season's worries.
By the end, the choice Mira faces is not between science and feeling, but between distance and presence. I closed the book warm, smoky, and very sure that sometimes the cleanest line on a graph misses the blaze right in front of you.
