Prologue
Nova
Reading romance novels was a little like writing letters to Santa as a kid.
All the smarter, more grown-up people would give you a pitying smile for it.
You learned to have completely unrealistic expectations of men—in the case of Santa, a very bearded one with a thing for the color red.
You were fed hope for something wonderful that ultimately turned out to be a bold-faced lie. You got labeled a naive dreamer.
Only one thing was worse than reading romance novels: writing them.
I spoke from experience.
“So you want to write a romance novel about… hockey? What’s the story, the puck falls in love with the stick?” Jackson LeBlanc, the coach of the Boston Badgers, smirked at his own joke.
I suppressed a sigh and fiddled with my plastic cup. “About a hockey player.”
“Which one?”
“A fictional one.”
“Right.” He leaned back in his office chair, skeptical. “Yeah? And you make money with that?”
Wow. Wasn’t this guy Canadian? Weren’t they supposed to be polite? I narrowed my eyes and took a calming sip of iced coffee. He taught grown men how to whack a piece of rubber with a stick and he thought my job was weird?
“No, I get paid in candy. It’s all I need to survive,” I said flatly.
I failed to mention that the only reason I was even considering writing a spicy hockey romance was for the stupid money.
A lot of my current assets were frozen because of a ridiculous lawsuit, and legally, I wasn’t allowed to write in my actual genre, Regency romance.
So, instead of a duke or a viscount, I had to play matchmaker for someone else, and my best friend, Serena, had suggested hockey players.
Since she was a sports agent, it wasn’t exactly a huge leap for her.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “Serena Laurent set up this research meeting for me. I’m supposed to talk to your keeper, Tero Nieminen. She said he’d answer my questions. Do you know where he is?”
“Goalie.”
“What?”
“He's a goalie, not a keeper,” LeBlanc grumbled. “But it’s fine. Just had to make sure you’re not some groupie looking to jump Nieminen’s bones. A groupie would’ve known it’s called a goalie.” My ignorance seemed to please him. “He’s waiting for you down by the ice. You can’t miss him.”
“Wonderful.” I stood up quickly.
“I don’t know how wonderful it’ll be. You’ll see,” he said with a faint smile. “Good luck.”
Confused, I left his office and took the stairs down to the ice, which the coach could see clearly through a thick pane of glass.
The concrete block known as the Adam Wilson Center, where the Boston Badgers practiced and played their home games, was a lot more impressive on the inside than the outside.
The place housed a gigantic arena, and its countless rows of seats and high ceiling made me feel like I was about to compete in the Hunger Games.
I’d never been here before, no matter how many times Serena had tried to drag me to a game.
I found ice hockey about as interesting as a museum dedicated to the hundred uses of dust, or any discussion about the size of an engine.
As long as the engine worked, I wasn’t going to body-shame it, thank you very much.
Maybe this was a stupid idea. Maybe I should try my hand at a billionaire romance or a small-town romance instead. But Serena had rightly reminded me that moving out of my comfort zone always helped my creative process and I was desperate enough to try it.
I snapped a few photos in case I ever needed to describe a stadium and the internet was down – but mostly to feel like I was doing something productive – then took the last few steps and prayed to the writing gods that Nieminen would tell me something, anything, that would inspire a new story.
My fingers were itching to finally take notes and start a new project, but for weeks, I’d just been staring at a blank document, unable to form a single coherent sentence.
Randy’s damn voice kept creeping into my head, whispering in my ear: You’re nothing without me, Nova. Without my ideas and my connections, your career is worthless.
Bile rose in my throat, and I nearly crushed the to-go cup in my hand. God, I wanted to prove that bastard wrong. I needed inspiration, an idea, a character, a scene, a conflict – I needed something to pull me out of the damn hole I’d been hiding in for the last six months and…
I stopped dead.
My heart leaped into my throat and my stomach did a series of violent flutters. Heat flooded my cheeks and stubbornly stayed there.
LeBlanc had been right. Tero Nieminen was impossible to miss. He was simply too tall and too muscular.
Oh, shit. He was definitely no duke in a Regency romance.
With dark blond hair curling over his ears, a full beard, and a stormy expression, he looked like a Viking, ready to plunder a city, or at the very least, the panties of one lucky captive.
He wasn’t wearing skates or the gigantic hockey gear, but even in simple jeans and a black-and-white T-shirt bearing the Badgers logo – a snarling badger – he looked like he could effortlessly throw me over his shoulder and carry me back to his ship.
And I was not light! I loved chocolate almost more than books, and my body insisted on showing it.
While Nieminen’s T-shirt could barely contain his biceps, my baggy hoodie draped over me like a sheet on a ghost with a cookie problem.
Yep. This guy could easily be the hero of a romance novel.
Excitement and adrenaline tingled through me, and my breath quickened. Maybe Serena’s idea wasn’t so stupid after all. Maybe this interview would be pure inspiration!
Just then, Nieminen turned his head, and his ice-blue eyes met mine. He was originally from Finland, I remembered that much. Shit, if all Finnish men looked like this, with jaws so sharp they could cut bread in their spare time, I knew where I was booking my next vacation.
“Hey,” I said, a little breathlessly – breathless from the stairs, from the man, who could tell? – and held out my hand. “You must be Tero Nieminen. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this.” I smiled warmly. “This is a huge help. I’m Nova.”
The goalie’s eyes slowly traveled down my body and back up again before settling on my outstretched hand, which he pointedly ignored. “Ah, yes,” he replied, his voice so dark and smooth it made the hair on my arms stand up. “You this author.”
He spoke with a heavy accent, and even though the language enthusiast in me couldn’t approve of the missing verb, I kept the smile plastered on my face.
English wasn’t his first language, and he clearly hadn’t been in the US for long.
Of course, he had to be in his late twenties, and athletes were usually recruited young… whatever.
I let my hand drop and took a nervous sip of my iced coffee.
“Yeah, that’s me. I wanted to ask you a few questions about life as a professional hockey player.
Could we sit down?” I gestured toward the stands to my right, wishing I were wearing a coat.
It was a warm spring day outside, but the arena was a veritable icebox.
Nieminen, however, didn’t seem to mind. There were no goosebumps on his sinewy forearms, just muscle and veins.
He dropped onto one of the plastic seats, and I sat right next to him.
I placed my cup on the floor, pulled my notebook from my purse.
I wasn’t old-fashioned when it came to sex in books, but I definitely was when it came to my writing process.
I pulled the pen from my hair, which then fell to my shoulders.
I just always liked to have a pen handy. “So, ready to start?”
Nieminen said nothing.
I took that as a yes. “My first question: what does a typical day look like for you?”
“Wake up. Play hockey. Sleep.”
“Um, could you maybe be a little more specific?”
He furrowed his brow – and stayed silent.
Oookay. Did he not understand the word, or did he just not want to talk about it? “Could you… elaborate a little?” I asked carefully.
“Ah.” He nodded. “Wake up. Eat. Play hockey. Eat. Sleep.”
I stared at him, my lips parted. How many sticks had this guy taken to the head?
“Right,” I said anyway, scribbling a note – Hockey players eat a lot?
– in my little book. As a professional, I would not be deterred.
“Let’s try something else. I’ve heard that a lot of players are superstitious and follow a strict set of self-imposed rules during the season to ward off bad luck.
What are some of your superstitions, for example? ”
“What superstition?”
“Um…” I puffed out my cheeks and scratched the back of my neck with my pen. “Well, being superstitious means you think certain things or actions can influence fate and bring good or bad luck.”
His expression remained blank.
Oh, boy. Why the hell did Serena send me to the one NHL player who apparently didn't speak English? Yeah, he was hot, which didn’t hurt my inspiration, but I’d been hoping for some insider info.
Instead, I was racking my brain for an example to illustrate the word superstition.
“Okay,” I said finally. “So, for example, if you see a black cat…”
“Cat?”
For the love of God, the guy had to know the word cat! “Cat,” I repeated, curling my fingers into claws and giving a half-hearted hiss, followed by a lonely “Meow?”
“Ah.” He nodded. “Fluffy.”
He knew fluffy but not cat? Who was his English teacher, and could I leave them a bad review on Google?
“So, cat bad?” he deduced.
“No, no. Not all cats are bad. But if a black cat crosses your path, then…” I made a horrified face, wrapped a hand around my throat, and pretended to choke to death. The rasping sound hurt my throat, but it was in the name of research.
Nieminen frowned… but his lips twitched.
I leaned back slowly, having to crane my neck to see his face. Was he making fun of me? He’d been living here for years and didn’t know what a cat was!
I decided to drop the superstition angle.