Ellie had lost one husband already, and Jesse would do his damned best to make sure she wasn’t widowed a second time.
Joaquin Ramirez removedthe lawnmower’s dirty air filter and took the new one out of its packaging. “I like Matías.”
“What about Alejandro?” Mia sat on a reclining patio chair, scrolling through baby names on her smartphone and looking sexy as hell—and very round—in a bikini top and sarong, her red hair piled on top of her head.
“Nah, man. My cousin would think we named the baby after him.”
Mia was thirty-six weeks pregnant now, so it was time for them to get serious about this naming business. They’d known it was a boy since their 20-weeks scan, and they still hadn’t settled on a name. Then again, Joaquin still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that he was about to become a father.
He’d met Mia almost a year and a half ago while shooting a crime scene. She’d been a person of interest in the case, but he’d looked into her angry blue eyes and had known she was innocent. He’d been in over his head from that moment, and now…
A wife who loved him, a son—that was something that happened to other guys.
“But IlikeAlejandro.”
“The name or my cousin?”
Mia laughed. “Both.”
Joaquin fit the new air filter into its cover, slipped the tabs into place, and screwed the cover back on. “Now try to stall on me,cabrón.”
“How about Rafael?”
Rafael Ramirez.
“It has a ring to it, but it makes me think of ninja turtles.” Joaquin put away his tools and got to his feet.
“Sebastián?”
“Maybe.” He pushed the lawnmower out to the spot on the lawn where it had stalled on him and yanked on the starter cord, gratified when it started.
“Oh, come on! Sebastián is a nice name.”
He finished the back yard, which Mia had transformed from a big rectangle of shitty soil to a lush garden. Okay, so Joaquin had helped, but she was the horticulturalist in the family. She had forgotten more about plants and flowers than Joaquin would ever know.
That chore done, he pushed the mower into the shed and had just locked the door when he heard Mia call for him. He turned to find her holding up his cell phone.
“It’s Tom.”
Shit.
So much for a relaxing weekend.
He walked back to the patio and took his phone from Mia, who had that “I’m going to kill your boss” look on her face. “Ramirez here.”
“Hey, I need you in the field today.” Tom Trent, the editor-in-chief of the Denver Independent, was the best editor Joaquin had ever known.
He was also a pain in the ass.
“What’s up?” As the paper’s senior photographer, Joaquin was no longer expected to be on call on weekends—unless something major happened.
“There’s a wildfire burning out of control west of Scarlet Springs. There’s a mandatory evacuation in effect for the ski resort and the mountains up to the highway. I need someone up there—now. This might be the fire that burns Scarlet Springs off the map.”
“Who are you assigning to the story?”
“I tried reaching Alton and James. They share the environmental beat. James isn’t answering, and Alton has her kids. I guess her husband is already up there doing some kind of damned police exercise.”
Alton was Sophie’s maiden name, but Tom still used it as if she’d never married. As for Kat James, she and Gabe often went to visit Kat’s family on the Navajo Reservation.