As her brothers’ best friend, Lucas Rhys has been a permanent fixture in Sophie Hayes’s life since she was a teen.  The easy friendship they had when they were younger dissolved into eight years of bitter avoidance the night of Sophie’s eighteenth birthday party where she made love with Lucas, believing him to be someone else.  Now Sophie’s family has had enough of the pair’s hostilities and suddenly Lucas and Sophie find themselves stranded together in the family’s mountain cabin.  Though tight quarters break down the couple’s physical barriers, passion isn’t enough to solve Lucas and Sophie’s problems.  Luckily for them just about everyone else can see what’s between the two.  When Sophie’s talked into taking the lead role in a film Lucas is directing – a film where she’ll be involved in intimate love scenes with another woman – the sexual tension between actress and director goes into overdrive.  But will an insatiable desire for one another be enough to force Lucas and Sophie to open up to one another about the love underneath the lust? 

Eva Keane fans the flames of unfulfilled longing into a blazing inferno in The Fire Within.  Lucas and Sophie are two of the most hard-headed protagonists I’ve read about in a long time.  Their feelings for each other are clear to all and sundry, but miscommunication and misconceptions on both their parts means their romance makes about as much progress as Sisyphus does with his boulder; at least until Sophie’s family takes action.  The problem for me is that I felt that Sophie and Lucas would never have made it to happily ever after on their own and the reasons for that were not big enough obstacles to warrant such obstinacy.  Do not, however, take this to mean the book was unpleasant.  I quite enjoyed The Fire Within.  Ms. Keane writes scorchingly hot love scenes and generally likeable characters.  While I wanted to give Lucas and Sophie a little kick every once in a while, I still finished The Fire Within feeling content in a way that comes from curling up with a good book for a few hours.