The Long Way Round

The Long Way RoundA Road-Epic, Slow-Burn RomanceAfter a late-summer wildfire, radio meteorologist Mira Kline is assigned to ride a county relief route-live hits from gym shelters, fairgrounds PODs, and backroad drop sites. Her driver is Rowan Ashbrook, a smokejumper on light duty whose steadiness makes chaos feel solvable. Mile by mile, pallet by pallet, their forced-proximity truce turns into something gentler as Rowan keeps a promise: one true "Ash Story" for every leg of the drive-first jumps and hard landings, quiet rescues, the teammate he still carries.
When a Red Flag week ignites new starts, Rowan is called back to the line and Mira becomes the voice holding Cinder Bend together-translating weather into calm, grief into community. Their parallel routes-his on the ridges, hers on the air-braid the same vow: do the next right thing, and leave people steadier than you found them. Containment brings Rowan home to the very gym that became a town. Under café lights strung where pallets once stood, the long way around becomes the shortest path to HEA.
For fans of Emily Henry's sincerity, Katherine Center's big-hearted resilience, and the quiet heroism of disaster-response romances. After wildfire, a relief route becomes slow-burn love.