Tamsin Trehearne had a plan: days translating fire science for the Rio Mora Wildfire Lab, nights pouring sage-and-smoke candles and dancing beneath papel picado on Canyon Road. Then a monsoon storm hit a burn scar, a flash flood cut through her adobe courtyard, and her closest friend, Luz Camacho, was gone. The report closed; grief did not. When new blazes echo that night, Tamsin steps into the investigation.
Rafael "Rafe" Sandoval, a grounded smokejumper with a mended leg and a wrecked reputation, now flies lidar drones for the state and throws micaceous clay in a Tesuque studio to quiet his hands. Offered a way back—help trace the fires and rebuild trust—he accepts, even if it means working with the woman who challenged him in a town hall and whose clear, steady voice keeps finding the softest parts of him.
As Tamsin and Rafe track ember trails from the Santa Fe Railyard to the Pecos—warped nails, resin beads, wind shifts on radar—they uncover a human spark: an art-forgery ring laundering cash, a water-rights hustle, a developer wielding fire maps to gut old courtyards. Heat closes in on their neighbors and on the fragile tomorrows they avoid naming. Juniper, a rescue mutt, shadows every step. The chemistry they try to ration catches anyway.
With unforgettable characters, slow-burn heat, and page-turning stakes, this grounded New Mexico romance explores loss, the price of second chances, and the risky, luminous choice to love as if tomorrow might not exist.
If you vibe with the wilderness-crime focus of Nevada Barr and the steady civic concerns of Julia Keller, this has familiar bones. For me the chemistry keeps getting sidelined by the fire-forgery-water tangle, and the reveals arrive tidy rather than tense, so the emotional stakes never fully combust.
This story keeps turning grief into attention: "love as if tomorrow might not exist" reads as a dare more than a slogan. The water-rights angle and the forgery scheme echo the central question of what we owe the places that hold us, and Tamsin and Rafe choose tenderness without pretending safety. Radiant and brave.
Santa Fe feels lived-in, from monsoon-slashed arroyos and burn scars to gallery nights on Canyon Road, with lidar traces and wind radar lending the investigation a realism that hums without drowning the romance.
My heart cracked open for Tamsin, and I loved how the book lets her grief breathe while still giving her a fierce, competent mind at work.
Rafe is the gentlest kind of stubborn, the man who learns clay again so his hands have something hopeful to do. When he and Tamsin share space, the air changes. Sparks, yes, but also humility.
Juniper padding through scenes made me weirdly teary. That dog is not a prop; she is the steady witness these two deserve.
The trust-building ravished me. Small courtyards, a kiln's hush, the whirr of a drone at dusk, and two people choosing to speak carefully instead of hiding.
And that kiss after the investigation pivots. I swear I stopped breathing. Tender, earned, incandescent!
The prose is tactile without excess; resin beads, warped nails, and lidar scans recur like motifs. Dual POV serves the romance and the investigation, though the middle third drifts as scenes linger in the studio when the fires pick up. Transitions between fieldwork and home life are clean, and the final chapters earn their quiet.
Droge hitte, rook in de lucht, en een onderzoek dat steeds gevaarlijker wordt. De romance gloeit rustig terwijl Tamsin en Rafe de vlammen en leugens volgen.
