Sapphire Falls: Going Gets Hot (Kindle Worlds Novella) (My Country Heart Book 4) Read online

  Text copyright ©2017 by the Author.

  This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Erin Nicholas. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Sapphire Falls remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Erin Nicholas, or their affiliates or licensors.

  For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds

  Going Gets Hot

  My Country Heart, Book Four

  A Sapphire Falls Kindle World Novella

  Rachelle Ayala

  >>><<<

  My Country Heart Series

  Going Haywire, Honey & Max, #1

  Going Toe to Mistletoe, Candi & Troy, #2

  Going Hearts Over Heels, Ginger & Marsh, #3

  Going Gets Hot, Amber & Chad, #4

  Description

  Summers are hotter in Sapphire Falls!

  Amber Myers is book smart and people stupid, and she’s tired of being invisible and dateless. Luckily her sister is a hairdresser and works at a beauty salon—in Sapphire Falls.

  Chad Powers would rather look into a microscope than approach the only woman he’s ever crushed on.

  He follows her to Sapphire Falls, and his farm boy cousins turn him into a hunk in time for the Summer Festival.

  The going gets hot when both Amber and Chad get more attention than they bargained for—especially when they’re voted the Festival King and Queen.

  ---

  Full of twists and unexpected surprises, Going Gets Hot is a fun and romantic romp by Rachelle Ayala, writing in Erin Nicholas’ Sapphire Falls Kindle World. It is a standalone story, but can better be enjoyed after reading Going Haywire, Going Toe to Mistletoe, and Going Hearts Over Heels, the stories of Amber’s sisters, Honey, Candi, and Ginger.

  ---

  List of Characters:

  Original Erin Nicholas Characters: Mason Riley, Adrianne Scott Riley, Peyton Wells, Phoebe, Derek, Kate (auctioneer), Ellen Anderson (owner of hair salon)

  Rachelle Ayala Characters:

  Myers Family: Candi, Honey Wolff, Ginger, Amber Myers, Mattie (Honey’s son), Sara (Honey’s daughter)

  Wolff Family (Chad’s uncle/aunt/cousins): Uncle Carl, Aunt Anne, Max (Honey’s husband), Marsh (Ginger’s boyfriend), Mike, Millie, Megan

  Powers Family: Doug (Chad’s father), Grace (Chad’s mother), Chad

  Troy Caine (Candi’s fiancé)

  Penny Barnes (Mike’s girlfriend)

  Amber and Chad’s coworkers: Dr. Vic Forster, Samantha, Harrison, Kiran

  Helen Klitz, (ex-cheerleader, Class of 2009)

  Dedication

  To Amber McCallister and her husband, Chad. May you always be blessed with happiness and good fortune.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  Also by Rachelle Ayala

  Summers are Hot in Sapphire Falls

  Chapter One

  “What a k-klutz—ah—um,” a male voice accused.

  Amber Myers wasn’t a klutz.

  She was determined, goal-oriented, and focused.

  But she was definitely not a klutz.

  “A-a-are y-you o-okay?” the same male voice stuttered among the shards of broken Petri dishes and splatter of lab notes she found herself sprawled on the floor with.

  She lifted her eyes and encountered the blurry image of him! Chad Powers. The guy who had the potential to look like Clark Kent but acted like a Poindexter and was the top student in her biology department—besides herself.

  Too bad, he seemed to hate her—always avoiding her and not letting her into his lab group.

  And now, he called her a klutz? Her heart stuttered worse than his voice while she patted the hard vinyl lab floor for her glasses.

  “Ouch.” A shard of broken glass pricked her finger.

  “C-careful there.” Chad grabbed her hand and dropped it immediately, as if touching a warm pile of dog poo. “Your glasses.”

  He dangled them in front of her face, and she grabbed them, putting them on.

  For a brief moment, their eyes met, both behind thick lenses.

  He looked away quickly and cleared his throat. “Y-you knocked down m-my anti-Salmonella b-bacteria.”

  “Me?” She brushed pieces of glass from her sweatpants and attempted to get back on her feet. “You’re the one barreling around the corner not watching where you’re going.”

  “T-that’s m-my senior p-project.” He threw up his hands awkwardly. “I-I’m n-not going to gra-graduate.”

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “But you should watch where you’re going.”

  Chad might be a genius, but he was rude and devoid of social skills.

  Same as her, but at least she wasn’t a klutz.

  Since he wasn’t going to help her up—dropped hand, remember? Amber gathered her lab notes together, shaking off the yucky microbe-stained water and Petri dish gel, and scrambled to her feet. Her sweatpants were wet and soaked with germs, and she had a tiny cut on her palm where the glass had nicked her.

  No time for the first aid kit. She had to get her genetics thesis reviewed and passed through her committee before she could graduate, and she, too, was in a rush.

  “W-wait,” Chad muttered from behind her, but she kept walking. She wasn’t going to stick around and take the blame or feel sorry for him, no matter how cute she imagined he could be without his glasses, scraggly beard, shaggy hair, and mismatched clothes.

  For four years, she’d visualized stripping Chad Powers naked and redressing him in nice clothes, shaving his scruff and getting him a haircut, basically giving him a full makeover, but it was time to move on.

  He’d never given her the time of day, never smiled, never asked her how the weather was, never acknowledged her as anything other than a rival in the lab and a fellow curve-breaker on the exams.

  Graduation was around the corner, and Amber had her senior project ready to be turned in. Sequencing DNA with a computer was much cleaner than mucking around the dirt for microbes and mixing them with harmful pathogens the way a certain caveman preferred.

  “W-wait.” Heavy footsteps pounded behind her. “Y-you need t-to guh-get that hand l-looked at.”

  “Why?” She whipped around, and he barreled into her, tripping over her shoe.

  Chad’s large body smashed Amber against the wall of the biological building and he stepped on her toe, shooting pain through her body.

  “W-what a klutz I-I am,” he vocalized. “T-the Paenibacillus sample is con-contaminated w-with Salmonella.”

  Strange how he stuttered over regular words, but enunciated his bacteria names clearly.

  “Am I going to die?” Amber felt the blood rush from her head as she leaned against the wall, trapped by the self-admitted klutz.

  Okay, so he ha
dn’t called her a klutz, but still, he owed her an apology.

  “N-No, just go to student health.” He pushed himself back from crowding her and stood there, blinking like a lost puppy.

  No offer to walk her there. No apology. No offering her a cup of coffee for her inconvenience. Nothing.

  Amber recorded his features for the last time, ran the image processing in her mind, stripped the beard, the hair, the lab coat, the vintage clothes, and the glasses, and came up with tall, dark, and possibly hot.

  No, make that, definitely hot.

  Maybe in another life she’d get lucky, but right now, she had to turn in her thesis, go to student health, pick up her cap and gown, and get out of New York City.

  She’d held a torch for Chad Powers long enough, and in all the time she’d known him, he’d never been nice to her—ever. Never flirted with her. Never dropped a hint. Never asked her out.

  She might be book smart and socially stupid, but she was turning a new leaf after graduation. Here, in academia, men didn’t like smart women, especially ones who could claim valedictorian. But once she was in Sapphire Falls, they didn’t need to know her GPA or whether she was Phi Beta Kappa or Summa Cum Laude.

  All they’d care about would be her long brown hair, her kickass figure, and the makeover her beautician sister, Ginger, would give her.

  There was the entire town of sweet and hot country boys, who didn’t give a rat’s ass about plant genomes, transcriptomes, proteomes, and how expression affected crop viability.

  * * *

  Chad Powers could kick his own butt.

  Amber Myers left him tongue-tied and stammering like an idiot whenever she was in the same room with him. All he could do was gape as the only woman he’d ever loved stomped away from him.

  Okay, so love was too strong an emotion, but ever since he met Amber, back when her father and sister moved into his neighborhood, he’d imprinted on her and no one else.

  She was brilliant, smart, and gorgeous. Long, dark brown hair, big doe-like chocolate-brown eyes, and the bone structure of a model which she hid underneath baggy clothes and a lab coat.

  He took a broom and swept away the last remaining shards of his genetically-altered bacteria and shuffled back to the lab to culture more. He didn’t need this setback—not with the job offer hanging.

  Mason Riley, owner of Integrated Agriculture Solutions, in Sapphire Falls was interested in his research in using bacteria to counter pathogens, but the job offer was contingent on his degree, and if he didn’t get his thesis finished by midnight, he was toast.

  He’d overheard Amber telling her advisor that she’d landed a job with Mason Riley, and he’d hurried to apply afterward, snagging the last available opening the agricultural research company had.

  True, his study of how disease-inducing pathogens could be countered by harmless microbes introduced into the soil would be helpful at the company’s location in Haiti, but being headquartered at Sapphire Falls meant he would never lose track of his precious Amber Myers.

  As students, they competed with each other for lab resources, grades, and advisors, but as coworkers, they could work together and collaborate—write research papers and go on field studies.

  Chad allowed himself one last fantasy of Amber smiling at him and telling him how much she looked up to him and his research, before diving back into his refrigerated unit to pipette another sample of Salmonella.

  Chapter Two

  “First stop is The Bang and Blow, where I work.” Amber’s sister, Ginger, picked her up from the bus station and drove down Sapphire Falls’ colorful business district. Blue planters filled with blue flowers lined the street, and every shop sported a blue and white striped awning.

  “Bang and Blow?” Amber stuttered. “What exactly do you do there?”

  “Good. You’re starting to get a naughty mind.” Ginger smirked as she pulled into a parking spot in front of the shop. “Let’s just say I make people glow.”

  Amber rolled her eyes and stared at the hand-painted sign on the salon window. It showed a strand of hair being clipped above a blow-dryer with a fat, stubby handle.

  “I notice the town’s full of innuendo,” she retorted. “The bar is the Come Again. Let me guess, the bed and breakfast is the Sleep and Eat?”

  Ginger snorted. “Actually, it’s Rise, get it? And Shine—as in that afterglow.”

  “Got me there.” Amber took off her glasses to clean them. “I’m not that imaginative.”

  “That’s all going to change.” Ginger shut off the engine. “Flirting is all about the innuendo and double meaning. Oh, put those glasses away. Didn’t you get contacts?”

  “Got them before I left New York, but haven’t had time to acclimatize my eyes yet.”

  “Let’s get in there and see what magic we can do.” Ginger flipped the car door open so fast, she narrowly missed getting hit by a speeding pickup truck still wearing dealer plates. Brand new and bright red.

  “Whoa, watch out.” Amber yanked her sister’s arm, but the danger had already passed. “I thought you said everyone drives slowly around here.”

  Ginger peered down the street, but the spanking new pickup had already turned the corner. “Must be a newcomer. I tell you, the way this town’s growing, you’d think we struck the mother lode.”

  “Well, you’re pretty new, too.” Amber reminded her sister that she was also a carpetbagger, having relocated to Sapphire Falls shortly after Valentine’s Day.

  “I’m an old-timer by now.” Ginger flipped her bright red hair over her shoulder and stepped from her car, waving at a car driving by on the opposite side of the street.

  Even before she unlocked The Bang and Blow, she’d already greeted several townspeople: a man walking his dog, two young mothers pushing baby strollers, and a couple of old guys driving by slowly in their vintage pickup trucks.

  A young woman jogged down the street and stopped in front of the hair salon, staring at Amber like she was a curiosity.

  “You must be the sister,” the jogger said, still running in place.

  “Yes, Amber’s the baby of our clan,” Ginger replied. “Amber, this is Peyton Wells. She works at the best bakery in town, and she throws the best parties.”

  The pretty brunette grinned and extended her hand to shake. “I heard you’re pretty square, and we’re supposed to loosen you up.”

  “I’m square?” Amber exclaimed, unsure how to respond. Were people here all so direct? If so, had her sisters already painted her as the big nerd even before she arrived?

  “Don’t worry.” Ginger put a consoling hand on her shoulder. “You hang with Peyton, and you’re going to be one of the cool girls.”

  “Hey, don’t give me a reputation I don’t have,” Peyton said, still jogging in place. “I may be called Trouble, but—”

  “But she’s dating the town cop, and he’s really a square,” Ginger finished for her. “Scott the Square.”

  “O-okay,” Amber said. “Square peg, round hole. I get it.”

  A gale of laughter burst from both Peyton and Ginger.

  Amber blinked, unsure if there’d been a joke tossed around. It certainly wasn’t from her. Were they laughing at her or with her?

  “Good one,” Ginger patted her back. “You’re starting to learn that innuendo.”

  “Yep, let me know when you’re done with her, and I’ll show her around.” Peyton gave Ginger an exaggerated wink and jogged off, still chuckling under her breath.

  “Don’t worry about what she just said,” Ginger reassured. “She has no filter and she means well.”

  “Like she’s the queen of party and cool, and I’m the bookworm nerd?” Amber couldn’t help the grumpy tone in her voice. Actually, Ginger had also laughed at her, so condescending. “Look, I know I’m a work in progress, but can you stop reminding me how dorky I am?”

  “Ah, I’m sorry, baby sister.” Ginger picked up a strand of Amber’s lanky brown hair. “What color? We have all shades of blond, red, a
uburn, and everything in between.”

  Ginger pulled open the door and switched on the “Open” sign. After turning on the lights, she went around the barber chairs and draped aprons and haircutting capes on the coat racks.

  Amber gazed at the beautiful pictures on the wall: wholesome looking country girls with luscious hair, bright eyes, and genuine smiles. Were these models or townsfolk?

  Gulp. Amber had underestimated this small town. After all, her sisters had made falling in love sound so easy here. What she hadn’t counted on was the competition. If Cornhusker boys were hunky and to die for, the women born and bred with them were naturally gorgeous and wholesome, too.

  “Did you decide on the color?” Ginger put on her stylist’s apron and stood next to her, admiring the wall of fame. “I can make you a blonde like Candi, but then you’d have to touch up frequently, or maybe a chestnut color, lighten your hair with red highlights. I’m not sure you can pull off redhead without looking phony.”

  “I don’t want to dye my eyebrows.” Amber twirled her fingers around her very dark and very brown hair.

  She glanced at herself in the mirror and darted her gaze at her sister standing behind her. Growing up, Ginger always had the attention, the compliments, the catcalls, and the harassment.

  Flashy red hair was a double-edged sword. Her father called Ginger a hothead and she got into trouble, even when both sisters were guilty. Amber’s nondescript hair and coloring allowed her to fly under the radar and keep her nose in a book. She was the good one and the one who was expected to get straight A’s. And she’d made both parents proud with her biology degree and job right out of college.

  “I’m not sure I can handle being a blond or a redhead.” Amber saw herself frown in the mirror. “It’s not a hair color, but an attitude.”

  “Ah, but you’ll get more confidence when guys start paying attention to you,” Ginger said, pointing to the row of blondes. “You think all of them are naturally blond?”