Part of Wildcat Hockey
First published 2023
Three days before her wedding, Lily gets dumped. She shows up to work anyway, because what else do you do when your whole life just fell apart in public. The problem is her job is tied to the wedding, and without it, she's out. Enter the Wildcats' newest long-term signing, a hockey player who sees a mutual exit from both their problems. He proposes a deal: they get married on paper, she keeps her position, and he gets the clean public image his agent has been pushing for. It works on paper. It works at press events. It even works around the rink. What it is not supposed to do is feel real. He knows the rules. She wrote half of them. But she is driven, sharp, and the kind of person he cannot stop thinking about, and he just signed a seven-year contract that has him wondering what his life looks like when hockey ends. She is also his coach's daughter's best friend, which makes every complication worse. Rebecca Jenshak builds the tension slowly, through proximity and small choices that add up fast. The emotional core is simple: two people who agreed not to fall in love are losing that argument one day at a time.
Genres: romance, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, contemporary-romance, sports-romance
Vibes: emotional, intimate, slow-burn, tension-filled, witty
Tropes: fake-dating, forced-proximity, friends-to-lovers, slow-burn
Setting: the rink
392 pages · Paperback · Rebecca Jenshak