Pucks and Prose

He had everything. He lit it on fire in one televised night.

Luca Moretti — NHL star, tabloid fixture, Moretti heir — loses the contract, the reputation, and most of his dignity along with a very expensive chandelier. The sentence: fifty hours of community service in a small Vermont library, mopping floors for a woman who looks at him like something she scraped off her shoe.

Lauren Gray has a reason. Three years ago, Luca ended her little brother's hockey career with one cruel sentence on live TV, and she has never forgotten a word of it. She runs the library her mother left her, counts every book and every grudge, and has no intention of forgiving the most hated man in hockey.

But penance isn't a press release. It's a wet floor and a five-year-old who wants to know if he can skate faster than a dog. It's red sauce at midnight and book club under string lights her mother hung years ago. It's learning to stay.

The longer Luca stays, the more he wants the one thing he has no right to ask her for. And the more Lauren has to decide whether some men can be forgiven — or only forgotten.

A sweet, closed-door small-town hockey romance about earned redemption, second chances, and the courage it takes to risk your heart again.

Pucks & Prose is a sweet, closed-door romance with a happy ending, but it touches on some difficult subjects. Please read with care if you're affected by: the death of both parents in a drunk-driving accident and on-page grief; public humiliation and online bullying; an emotionally controlling, estranged parent; mild profanity; and brief depictions of heavy drinking. Intimacy is fade-to-black, with no on-page sexual content.