Sneak Peek: Dropping Gloves

We're a little less than a month away from release for DROPPING GLOVES, so how about a look at the first chapter to whet your appetites and tide you over?

She left to follow her dreams; she’s back to follow her heart.

Katie Weber left her heart in Portland to chase a career in Hollywood. Now she has returned to sing the national anthem for the Portland Storm for their annual Hockey Fights Cancer night. Her longtime crush, Jamie Babcock, is hurting just as much as she is. One look in his eyes is all it takes to know that. She's done the Hollywood thing, though, and she's over it, but it might be too late to dig herself out of the hole she’s dug with him.

Jamie’s already done everything humanly possible to let go of Katie, but she keeps coming back, and she keeps crushing him all over again every time she leaves. His heart has been trampled on more than enough already. At some point, he has to draw the line. Doesn't he? Only, when it's Katie, he's not sure that's even possible. She's in Portland again right now, but he can’t be sure for how long.

Katie knows she has a fight on her hands, in more ways than one, if she’s going to convince Jamie she deserves another chance, but she’s willing to drop her gloves this time. Because in the game of love, all bets are off.

DROPPING GLOVES releases on April 23, 2015. You can preorder it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, and Kobo. Here's the Goodreads page so you can add it to your bookshelf.

All right...without further ado, here's the first chapter of DROPPING GLOVES.

KATIE

Cancer sucks donkey balls. Great big, ginormous, hairy ones. There’s not really a better way of saying it, and I’d long since stopped trying to come up with one.

If anyone should know how bad cancer sucks, it was me. I was diagnosed with leukemia when I was a senior in high school. That was why I was here, at the Moda Center, where the Portland Storm played, staring out the end of the tunnel at the crowd gathered for their annual Hockey Fights Cancer night. If I could do anything to help even one person not have to go through all the crap I’d had to go through, then you could bet I was going to do it.

It might not seem like much, singing the national anthem at a hockey game, but for me it wasn’t about the singing or the game. It was about awareness. It was about raising money for research and treatments. It was about being sure everyone in this building right now knew how important finding a cure was.

The teams had already skated out for all of the pregame ceremonies, and the arena crew had gone through all of their music and video programming to get the crowd pumped up for the game. Not that they really needed to do much for that. The Storm had finally made it all the way to the Western Conference Finals last season before falling to the Chicago Blackhawks in seven games, and most of last year’s key players had returned for this season. Expectations surrounding the Storm were high, regardless of the rough start they’d had. Tonight they were playing the LA Kings, one of their biggest divisional rivals for the last few seasons. With all that going on, the crowd didn’t need any extra pumping up. They were raring and ready to go, whether the team was or not.

But now, the lights dimmed and the music became more subdued, and a video started playing on the Jumbotron. Mom reached over and took my free hand, squeezing. The thing was, this video was about me.

It showed home footage and photographs that my parents and some of the Storm’s players had taken over the years, images of me at various Storm events I’d been part of, video of me skating at the team’s annual Christmas party, and other things like that.

A song by The End of All Things—a local band that had made it big, not to mention my favorite band of all time—played over the montage. I hadn’t heard this one before. It must have been from their upcoming album, which made me wonder how Tim Whitlock, the Storm’s in-arena entertainment director, had managed to get hold of it. Then again, there were connections between the team and the band. Brie Burns, one of the players’ wives, was a ballroom dancer who had worked with The End of All Things in the past.

The lyrics spoke of holding on to the best parts of life. That, combined with the images that represented some of the best parts of my life, had me getting teary-eyed. Not a good thing when I was about to have to get out there and sing in front of a crowd of eighteen thousand or so. Crying and talking was hard enough. Crying and singing? Pretty much impossible.

Now the video started getting to the point where my cancer came in. Me, bald-headed, wearing various scarves to hide the physical evidence of my chemo. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. This was why I was here. This was why they’d asked me to sing the anthem tonight instead of having the in-house singer do it. Looking away wouldn’t change anything I had been through. I’d already tried that in multiple areas of my life, and it hadn’t worked yet.

Dad put his hands on the backs of my shoulders and started to knead away some of my anxiety. Normally, at this point of the night, he would be behind the bench with the team. Dad was one of the Storm’s assistant coaches. He had been since the season after he’d retired as a player. He was my connection to the team, or at least he had been my first connection. But tonight was different. Tonight, he was with me. He’d take his spot behind the bench after this was over.

Just as he started rubbing my shoulders, an image flashed on the screen that choked me up like crazy and caused the whole crowd to ooh and aah. It was one of my prom pictures. There I was, in my ice-blue dress without anything covering my head, crying while Jamie Babcock kissed me.

I hadn’t intended to go to my prom. Not until Jamie asked me.

He hadn’t even been one of my classmates. He was one of my dad’s teammates at that point, a guy who I’d had a crush on since the first moment I’d seen him. But Jamie had asked to take me, and I would have done anything to be with him, and he’d made it perfect for me even if I was bald and felt like an alien. When I was with him, I’d felt like a princess.

But I’d beat cancer, and I’d moved on with my life—going off to Hollywood to star in an ensemble Glee-knockoff TV show called The Cool Kids—and he’d moved on with his. I’d broken my own heart when I’d left, and seeing that picture right now brought a torrent of memories and emotions flooding back to life.

“Why did you give them that one?” I hissed at my mom, trying to hold back the massive wave that was threatening to turn to tears.

She arched a brow and shrugged. “I didn’t.”

“Oh, sure you didn’t,” I said. I even rolled my eyes. My sarcasm knew no bounds. No one but my mother would have given the Storm that photo. Other than me, only Jamie and my family had copies of it. I definitely hadn’t given it to the entertainment people, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that Jamie would have done it. I’d broken his heart, too, not just my own. Why would he want a reminder of that flashed in front of his eyes right before he had a game to play?

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” she insisted. “Not about something like that. I wouldn’t have given them any of those pictures. They’re too personal.”

Which was precisely my point. My mouth was open to argue with her again when Dad squeezed my upper arms from behind. “She didn’t. Your mom’s telling you the truth.”

“Then who did?” I demanded.

“I gave it to them.”

“What?” Mom and I said in shocked unison. I spun around to glare at him. Dad had been opposed to every guy I’d ever dated, some of them more than others. He’d just about blown a gasket when Jamie had asked me to prom. Why would he put that memory, that relationship, right up at the forefront of my mind at a time like this?

Dad shrugged. “Tim asked us for pictures that meant something, that would have an impact on the crowd.” He nodded his head toward the open end of the tunnel, indicating all the people out there who were watching in rapt silence. “That one meant the most to me, so I thought it would get the biggest reaction from them.”

I swallowed hard.

The song finished, the video came to a close, and Tim’s familiar voice echoed over the PA system in the cavernous arena. He introduced the Storm’s starters for the night, who each skated out to take their positions. The Kings’ starting line went out, as well. Then he introduced the Little Starter of the game before taking a moment to talk about the military veteran being honored tonight. Both the Little Starter and the vet were also cancer survivors. They headed out on cue, and the vet stood on his mark. The boy skated over to stand next to Jamie, who patted him on the head and said something that no one could hear but the two of them.

Then Tim introduced me. “Katie Weber has been a member of the Portland Storm family for close to a decade now. Her father, David Weber, played for the Storm for a number of years before becoming one of our assistant coaches. Katie spent her teen years here, and it was here that she was diagnosed with—and beat—leukemia. Our organization was given the task of seeing her through her own personal storm. We watched her grow up, and we watched her leave to become a star bright enough to shine over a much bigger world than Portland. She will always be part of our family, no matter how far away life takes her. Now she’s returned, at least for this one very special night. Storm fans, please join me in giving Katie Weber a big welcome back to Portland.”

That was my cue. I white-knuckled my microphone with both hands and headed out of the tunnel to the purple carpet that had been laid on the ice. The entire arena was on its feet, applauding and screaming. I’d always loved being in front of a crowd, but I still got stage fright. Being on The Cool Kids hadn’t helped with that at all. If anything, it had made it worse. For the last four years, I’d been doing all of my acting and singing in front of cameras and crew. But these days when I did something in public, the audiences were bigger, and everyone seemed to think they knew me, not the character I’d played. That was clear enough from the number of people in the stands wiping tears from their eyes.

Most of the people in the audience wore the typical purple-and-silver Storm jerseys I’d come to expect during my years here, but a few people had the road whites on, and a smattering had on Kings black and silver. It was easy to spot the pink Hockey Fights Cancer version of the Storm’s jerseys in the crowd, like the one I was wearing. The whole crowd was holding up signs they’d been given when they’d come in tonight, bearing the names of people they loved who had cancer, or maybe people they’d lost to cancer.

Mom and Dad followed me to the carpet. Both of their signs had my name on them.

I smiled and waved, trying not to let the turbulence of my emotions swallow me whole, but it seemed like a daunting—maybe impossible—prospect. I felt as if I would fall to pieces the moment I opened my mouth to sing, but this was different from my usual stage fright. It was bigger and more confusing, like a giant ball made up of rubber bands, each one representing a new, massive, devastating emotion, and the bands were contracting in on themselves. It was squeezing the life out of me.

“Please rise and remove your caps,” Tim said, not that there was any need for his reminder. Everyone was already on their feet. The rest of his words were drowned out in the unending applause. He was in the scorer’s box, the small space across the ice from the team benches that separated the two penalty boxes. I caught his eye across the distance, and he gave me a nod.

Nerves or not, it was time. I took out my pitch pipe, blew into it to find my key, shoved it back into my pocket, and did what I’d come to do. Somehow I got through the anthem without completely shattering, which I considered an absolute coup. Now that I was done, though, all I wanted was to run off the ice and find somewhere I could break down for a minute. But it wasn’t time for that yet.

Tonight, the Storm had planned a ceremonial puck drop to go along with all of the other special events, and they’d asked me to do it. Dad took the mic and pressed the puck into my hands. He kissed my cheek before taking his spot behind the bench. Mom hugged me and headed down the tunnel. I wanted to go with her. I wanted to be anywhere but here, doing anything but what I was about to do.

Because it meant I would be inches away from Jamie.

Dustin Brown, the Kings’ captain, came out and took his spot on one side of me. He said something, looking right at me, but my head was filled with the buzzing of a horde of bees, and I couldn’t make his words out. I couldn’t pay attention to him with Jamie skating over to stand across from him on my opposite side. All my attention focused in on Jamie like a laser beam.

In his skates, he was even taller than normal, towering over me despite my Jimmy Choos. His hockey pads only emphasized his muscle, making him seem larger than life. Even with a bit of distance between us, I could see the creases in his cheeks where his dimples always came through. With every year that passed, he looked less like a boy and more like a man, but I hoped he would never lose those dimples.

If this had happened last season, it would have been Eric Zellinger coming out for the ceremonial face-off. He’d been the Storm’s captain for over a decade, but there had been an expansion draft over the summer, and both Zee and goaltender Hunter Fielding had been claimed by the league’s new team, the Tulsa Thunderbirds. That had left the Storm with an opening for a new captain.

Just before the start of the season, they’d held a press conference to announce that Jamie was it. I’d been in a meeting with my agent, Derek Hatch, in LA when it was all going down. We’d been discussing various auditions he wanted to send me on, the direction he thought my career should take after the end of The Cool Kids, but I hadn’t been able to focus on anything Derek had said. My phone had kept buzzing with updates about Jamie and the Storm until, eventually, Derek had sent me on my way and told me to get my head straightened out so we could make a plan.

Easier said than done.

So now, here Jamie was, looking at me with that same hurt look in his eyes that I’d seen every time I’d come back to Portland in the last four years.

The look I’d put in his eyes.

The look that ripped me apart.

The pain in his gaze might even be more intense than usual right now. Probably because of that damn prom picture Dad had given them for the montage.

Jamie glanced over his shoulder toward center ice, then looked back at me with a wink. “They’re ready, Katie,” he said, indicating the slew of photographers and videographers who had lined up opposite us.

I nodded, swallowing down my feelings, and dropped the puck.

He gathered it up while Brown shook my hand and gave me a friendly, cursory pat on the shoulder. Then Jamie handed the puck back to me and wrapped me up in his arms.

I almost let out a sob. Almost. He’d hugged me countless times before, but this was different. He had all of his hockey gear on, the pads and whatnot, and I could hardly feel him underneath it all. We were touching, but it felt distant. Cold. I shivered, wishing I could draw closer to him and feel the warmth of his heart.

He pecked me on the cheek, causing an excited titter to run through the crowd, but it was ice that skittered through my veins. I wasn’t sure if the coldness was from him or from me, or simply because of the mountain range that stood between us these days.

“I’m glad you’re here, Katie,” he said, his voice all rough like gravel crunching under Cam Johnson’s pickup truck. His words were so quiet I could barely hear him over all the arena noise. He sounded completely unlike what I was used to. He gave me a grin, just enough to make his dimples pop out momentarily, and then he skated away.

“Me too,” I murmured to his retreating form, only I wasn’t entirely convinced that he’d meant it. None of this would have felt so detached if he really wanted me here. I was pretty sure—almost positive—he hoped I would be on a plane tomorrow, flying back to LA or maybe to New York like Derek wanted. It had to be easier for Jamie if I wasn’t here. I knew that, for me, it didn’t hurt as much without the constant, daily reminders of what I didn’t have. It was easier when we were apart.

My cheek tingled where he’d kissed me. I locked that up in my mind as tightly as I held the puck he’d handed me, while I walked across that purple carpet and back toward the tunnel. Several of the guys on the team skated over to shake my hand or kiss my cheek as I left, and Dad caught my eye and winked. I didn’t hear anything they said to me, though. My head was too filled with fading memories and a confused outlook on the future.

Derek hadn’t wanted me to come here at all. You’re bigger than this, he’d told me as he passed over a stack of scripts and another pile of travel arrangements. He expected me to get on a plane tomorrow, fly to New York, and make my mark on Broadway. To go to all the auditions he’d arranged for me. To follow the path he’d laid out for me, just like I’d done every step of the way for the last four years, despite that I’d hated so many of the things he’d asked of me that and I was still uncertain what I wanted.

       Coming here might not have lined up with my agent’s plans for my future, but it had accomplished one thing: I was more confused now than I’d been in a long time, and that could only mean that there was something here worth sticking around for, even if I’d end up heartbroken again.

JAMIE

Katie spun around and flew past her mom like a flash, racing away from the ice like a winger on a breakaway. I was pretty sure that picture from her prom had hit her as hard as it had hit me, so it didn’t surprise me that she was running off like that. There was a chunk of me that wished I could do the same. I didn’t have that kind of freedom, though. I had a game to play, so I had to get my head screwed back on straight.

Not such a simple thing to do with the knowledge that Katie Weber was still somewhere in the building. She was close enough I could still feel her essence lingering around me and only hoped that she wouldn’t stick around too long on this visit. The longer she stayed, the more of me she would take with her when she eventually left again.

Because she would. Leave. She always left.

I’d told her years ago that she should go and chase her dreams, so I couldn’t really blame her for doing the very thing I’d suggested. But fuck if it didn’t hurt like a son of a bitch every time she showed up and smiled at me like nothing had changed.

She wanted us to be friends. There was a part of me that wanted that, too—being her friend would be better than not having her in my life at all, or so I thought—but it was hard to do when I saw the way she let her boyfriends treat her.

At the moment, she might not be dating one of the shitheads she’d hooked up with in Hollywood, but it didn’t matter. That didn’t mean she was kicking them to the curb and making room for me, for the way I really wanted things to be between us. The fact was, Katie wasn’t going to stay in Portland. She was an It Girl now, a Hollywood starlet with people clamoring for her attention, and that meant she needed to get back to Hollywood so they could keep fawning over her. Her show had been cancelled, but it was only a matter of time before she got cast in something else, and then she would be gone again. Out of my life. Probably dating some new asswipe. Leaving me to be the brooding bastard I’d become.

Enough years had passed that, as long as she was away from Portland and not on the news too much, I was able to push her from my mind. I hadn’t watched The Cool Kids because that was a wound I didn’t want to open, and sometimes TMZ left her alone for a stretch. As long as she didn’t hit the mainstream news too often, I could almost pretend she had only been a dream. It wasn’t too bad, then. Without having her around, I could be the same guy I’d always been instead of the miserable grump I turned into when she was here but I couldn’t have her.

Like now.

I tried not to be that guy, but it was hard to brush things off when it felt like someone was stomping on all the broken pieces of me to be sure they were a puzzle I would never be able to put back together.

“Hey,” my brother Levi said. He was a couple of years younger than my twenty-four—he and Katie were the same age—a defenseman in his second year with the Storm. He tapped his stick on my shins harder than necessary to get my attention. “Earth to Jamie. Game’s about to start. Stop chasing after her in your fucking head.”

I gave him a terse nod and took a quick lap around our end of the ice to refocus. We were only a couple of weeks into the new season, my first as the captain of the team, and things had started off badly for us. There wasn’t any good reason for it, either.

We’d had some turnover in personnel on the ice from last year, but not too much. Zee and Hunter were with the Thunderbirds now. A couple of guys had changed in free agency, and there’d been a trade involving a few of the younger guys who hadn’t fully found their spots on the team. But the core that Jim Sutter, our general manager, was building around was all still intact, the coaches hadn’t changed, the systems were exactly the same… Essentially, there was no good excuse for why we’d taken a slide in play to start the year. Tonight, we needed to get back on track, and as the captain, it was up to me to set the tone for the rest of the team.

It was time. The carpet had been removed from the ice, and all the photographers were gone. The officials were in place, and my linemates, Riley Jezek and Aaron Ludwiczak, were already skating to center ice for the opening face-off. I headed over to join them, pushing aside all thoughts not relevant to the game at hand.

The puck dropped, and the Kings won it cleanly back to Matt Greene, one of their defensemen. I was closest to Greene, so I went straight for him and laid a bruising check on him, dislodging the puck so that either RJ or Luddy could grab it and we could get to work.

The crowd went wild as Greene went down hard. He was a big body. Hitting him like that had been enough to rattle the teeth in my head, so I knew he’d felt it more than he’d been prepared for. Luddy stole the puck and cycled it with RJ. I shook off the impact and skated in to join them. After a hit like that, my head was fully in the game. I couldn’t afford to think about Katie Weber right now.

I had work to do.

“That’s a bad fucking call,” Mattias “Bergy” Bergstrom, the Storm’s head coach, shouted as the ref who’d blown his whistle skated by our bench. “You fucking know it, too. Brown was diving.”

The ref turned his head and shouted a few choice expletives back in Bergy’s direction, neither backing down nor admitting he might have made a mistake. It was a mistake, though. We’d been guilty plenty of times tonight, but in this instance, it wasn’t our fault. Levi just happened to be near Brown when the guy lost an edge and went down. Guilty by proximity.

The basic gist of the ref’s response was that Bergy needed to stop complaining and get his team to play a clean game, or else. There were a lot of implications at play in the or else part of that equation. The team could be issued a bench minor and we would have to kill off yet another penalty. Bergy could get fined by the league for abuse of officials. They could probably kick Bergy out of the game if it came down to it. There were lots of ways for this to escalate, and none of them would be good.

“Fucking dive,” Bergy said under his breath, but at least he stopped there. He wasn’t the sort of coach to lose his cool with the officials, not like our former coach, Scotty Thomas, had always been. Scotty had been more than a little hotheaded. Bergy was the type who tended to calmly let everyone know what he thought, setting the example he wanted us to follow.

He usually reserved his yelling for specific moments and specific individuals. Zee had been on the receiving end of it a lot, but Bergy didn’t usually yell at me. He got his point across in other ways, like keeping my ass planted on the bench when I fucked up.

Regardless of all that, right now it didn’t matter if the other guy had dived or fallen or what. The only thing that really mattered was that Levi was on his way to the box for a phantom tripping minor, and we had to kill our seventh penalty of the game—a game that we were trailing by a goal. We were only halfway through the game, but we’d already been penalized more times than we should have been in a full sixty minutes, at least if we wanted to keep Bergy happy. Still, there was a lot of time left on the game clock, which meant there was a lot of time for us to either fuck up some more or get our collective act together.

“Keep your fucking head in it, 501,” Andrew Jensen shouted across the ice to Levi. “We’ve got this.” Jens clearly thought we were going to be able to straighten up and pull ourselves out of the hole we’d been digging. Or maybe that was just the impression he wanted to give off.

At times like this, there was a part of me that wondered if Bergy and Jim had made the right choice in naming me the Storm’s next captain. I never knew what to say to help the boys out. Guys like Jens and Keith Burns were a lot more vocal. They always knew the right thing to say, and Burnzie had even been an assistant captain already for a long time. Shouldn’t he have been the new captain? Or maybe Soupy, who had been the other assistant captain for the last few years. Any one of those guys would have made more sense than me, along with at least a half a dozen other players on the team.

None of them were wearing the C on their chests, though. I was, and I didn’t have the first fucking clue how to lead this team.

We went to a TV timeout, and I made the mistake of looking up at the Jumbotron. Through the whole game, every time there had been a break, they’d been making more tributes to cancer survivors and doing things to draw attention to the warning signs someone needed to be aware of when it came to their own health. This time, they had a camera on Katie up in the owner’s box. She was sitting with her mom and several of the guys’ wives, each of them holding up a sign with a symptom of leukemia printed on it. Katie looked like she was a lot more relaxed than she had been when she’d left the ice, but the last thing I needed was to start thinking about her again. Not right now.

I turned my head away to stare at the ice in front of me.

“You dated her?” Grant Wheelan asked me. Wheels was a guy Jim had brought in over the summer to mentor me. I wasn’t sure he could teach me how to lead this team any better than Zee had in all the years I’d been watching him, but maybe he would surprise me. Mainly Wheels just talked to me a lot. So far, the biggest thing I’d learned was to do things the way I wanted everyone else to do them. Lead by example. Wheels had drilled those three words into my head every chance he got. He also liked to remind me I was supposed to be having fun, not taking everything so seriously all the time. I wasn’t so good at that one.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. Then I shrugged. “Kind of. I guess so.” We’d never really technically been a couple, even though I’d taken her to her prom. I’d wanted to, but she’d been so young and had cancer, and then she’d left.

He made a grunting sound next to me. “Bet Webs would be happier if she was dating you instead of the guys she’s been all over the news with.”

“Fucking right, I would,” Webs said from behind us before he moved on to talk to Blake Kozlow about something.

That was definitely a change from all those years ago. I wasn’t sure I would agree with that assessment. I’d changed a lot in that time, and I wasn’t sure it was for the better. “Doesn’t matter what Webs would be happier with,” I grumbled. It pissed me off that Wheels was trying to make me talk about this right now when all I wanted to do was pretend Katie wasn’t even in the state, let alone in the building. “We aren’t together, and that’s not going to change any time soon.”

“That’s too bad,” he said.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that, if I were you,” Soupy put in. His name was really Brenden Campbell, but everyone except his wife and the Storm’s GM called him Soupy—even his two adopted kids. I glared at him, and he shrugged and looked back at the ice. “Just telling you what I see, is all. Up to you to figure out what to do with it.”

He had always had a bad habit of doing that—telling me things I didn’t want to hear.

The TV timeout came to an end. It was about time. At Bergy’s signal, Wheels and Cam Johnson headed over the boards to take the face-off.

“Soupy, Babs,” Bergy said once they were gone, his tone returning to normal. “Be ready to go.”

I nodded, but I kept my focus on the ice.

“I’ve got Jonny,” Soupy said to me. At least he was back to talking about the game instead of trying to tell me how to handle my personal life.

The Kings had a potent power play this year, always dangerous. They moved the puck well, changing up the point of attack in an effort to get a clear shot in on our goaltender.

Our boys moved as a unit—one guy shifted to block a passing lane, and the other three adjusted their positions accordingly. Jonny dropped down to block a shot from the point, and our D managed to get their sticks in the way and clear bodies out from in front of the net so Nicky could see where the puck was coming from. Finally, after almost a full minute of being hemmed into our zone, Wheels poke-checked the puck and sent it flying down the ice, and those guys were able to get off for a change.

Soupy and I piled over the boards as soon as they came off—me about a second behind him since Wheels moved about as fast as molasses in a Canadian winter—and we headed into position.

The Kings switched to their second power play unit and got set up in our zone. They moved the puck back to the point on my side. I dropped to a knee, ready to block a shot, but he passed it to the other point. Soupy tried to get into position to block the shooting lane, but his knee buckled under him, and he went down with an agonized shout.

The shot got past him. Jens got just enough of his stick on it to deflect it away from Nicky’s net. I let myself glance over long enough to see that, no matter how hard he tried, Soupy couldn’t get himself up.

The Kings cycled the puck back to the point again. I did my best to cover two guys who both had bombs for shots, but there was only so much I could do. One of them pulled his stick back to load up. I went down. A shot blew past my ear and went in the net.

I skated over to Soupy, pissed at myself even though I couldn’t figure out why. “You going to be all right?”

“Can’t put any fucking weight on it,” he said.

“Broken?”

He shook his head. “Felt something snap, but not bone.”

That made me think it was something like a ligament. Ken Archer, our head trainer, came over and talked to him for a minute before deciding it was safe to move him, at least. I gave Soupy a hand and helped him up, draping his arm over my shoulder while Archie did the same on the other side so we could assist him off the ice. The whole time, I was thinking I might have just witnessed the injury that would end his career. I hoped I was wrong.

Wheels clapped a hand on my shoulder as soon as I took a seat next to him on the bench. “You know,” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen. Watching what just went down with Soupy is proof enough of that. If you want something, you should go for it.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I groused, more agitated than confused.

“You know what I’m talking about.”

I did. Apparently, I still couldn’t hide what I was feeling. Not only that, but I was just as messed up over Katie Weber as I’d ever been. What the fuck could I do about it, though? If she was going to leave, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop her…and I knew she would leave.

       She always did.

Comeback is Available Now

The wait is over!

Get your tissues. Comeback, the sixth novel in the Portland Storm series, is available now. Early readers all say one thing--Comeback is a tearjerker.

Nicklas Ericsson is an addict. He’s also a star goaltender with the NHL’s Portland Storm, or he was until his addiction changed everything. Now he’s throwing himself into doing all the necessary things to pave his path to a comeback, both in his personal life and on the ice. Nicky’s run out of options, and now his sister and her children are in Portland. They need help he has no clue how to provide, though, and figuring it out might derail all the progress he’s made.

For a few years now, Jessica Lynch has been running the Portland office for the Light the Lamp Foundation. Between her work and several people from her past, she knows more than she’d like about addicts. One lesson she’s learned is that even when addicts try to turn their lives around, more often than not, they fail. That’s why she takes a hands off approach, keeping her heart well away from the addicts she works with, like Nicky Ericsson.

Nicky’s recovery efforts put him directly in Jessica’s path, and she can’t ignore his very real need for help. Where Nicky is concerned, she can’t separate her emotions. His niece and nephews further complicate her efforts to guard her heart. The attraction between Nicky and Jessica is instant and mutual, but she’s misplaced her trust too many times before. Can he prove that he won't fall back into old habits in time to complete the perfect comeback?

Purchase it today from Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, All Romance eBooks, and Smashwords

Sneak Peek - Comeback

It's that time again! Time for me to share the opening chapter of COMEBACK to whet your appetites.

The release is just over two weeks away on February 19. Have you preordered it yet? You can do so now at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo.

Without further ado, here's the first chapter. Enjoy!




NICKY

It was impossible to do almost anything at this time of year without thinking about my father. I never thought of him the way he’d been right at the end. That hadn’t really been him. It had just been the shell of the man he once was, nothing more than a body barely holding on. Instead, I remembered him as he’d been when I was a boy learning to play goal. Big. Strong. Unbreakable. Seemingly immortal. Much like the Japanese cherry blossom trees scattered all around me in this garden right now.

Actually, the cherry blossoms were really fitting, come to think of it. For centuries, they’ve been a symbol of life and death, of transience and mortality. Watching the multi-colored leaves fall to the ground and thinking of how fleeting life could be was a morbid way to spend my day, though, and it would only lead me into dangerous territory better left in the past. I forced my eyes away from the brilliant orange of the cherry blossom leaves and shuffled along the trail, moving on. That was all I could do, after all. Move on. Maybe find a new path. It had been more than long enough since he died for me to do that, after all, and a lot had happened in the interim.

When I was a boy, my father had spent countless hours tirelessly shooting pucks at me and correcting my stance, my push-off, and other bits and pieces of my technique. There was no one I’d trusted more to teach me back then, and not just because I’d thought him to be indestructible. Dad had played goal for a few years in the National Hockey League and for many more than that in the Swedish Elite League. He’d been a backup goaltender for Sweden in the Olympics a couple of times, too. He knew a lot about proper goaltending skills and what it took to make it as a professional goaltender—definitely more than the coaches of the teams I’d played for in those days—and so I’d soaked up as much as I could. I had wanted to be just like him…only better.

He hadn’t wanted that for me, though. He’d wanted me to make my own path. Instead of playing like he did or any of the other goalies I’d idolized as a kid, he’d encouraged me to play like myself, whatever that meant. To create my own style. To become my own man.

I was still working on that last part, but I had definitely followed his advice in terms of goaltending style. Most coaches didn’t quite know what to do with me.

The NHL’s new season was set to start in less than a week. My team—the Portland Storm—had already finished all our pre-season exhibition games. We were due to head out of town for a few days for a team-bonding event that leadership had planned, but today was dedicated to the fans.

The entire team was at the Portland Japanese Gardens for our annual Ice Breaker event, a day when the fans could come out and meet the players and coaches, get some autographs, and generally have a good time. The Storm Foundation and the Light the Lamp Foundation had representatives here, too, jointly hosting a private event for the team’s season ticket holders and hoping to raise a little money for their causes while they were at it.

In all my years with the Storm—closing in on a decade now—I’d never come to the Japanese Gardens before. I tended to spend my time off with the boys, and this wasn’t exactly at the top of most of their lists in terms of places to go for a good time. The more I saw of the gardens, though, the more I wanted to come back another time. Alone. Sometime when I could just sit and breathe and take it all in without being surrounded by dozens of acquaintances and strangers, or even friends.

The world felt peaceful here. Fall was in full bloom, and all the leaves were changing colors—oranges, reds, yellows, and greens creating a vivid landscape where it seemed impossible to feel anything but serenity. That was something I needed more of in my life. I needed a place I could meditate, clear my thoughts, and focus on the positive. I needed somewhere I could be alone with myself and not give in to the urge to take a pill, have a drink, or bury all my negativity in oblivion. Sometimes I felt as though everything was falling down and crushing me, but here, I felt light and free.

I’d just finished my turn signing autographs for the fans—actually, I’d just finished sitting at a table, watching the long lines in front of the rest of the guys, and wishing a few more people would come over and ask for my autograph—and now had some free time before the season ticket holder fundraiser. Several of the boys had gone off together to explore, and others had broken off with groups of fans to talk. I needed some time to myself, though, and few of them really wanted to spend time with me anyway. They would, but that didn’t mean they wanted to. Anyway, that made it easier to wander off alone.

That was something I’d been learning about myself over the last few years, since my addiction started and my father died—I needed time to be alone and just think. So I headed out in the opposite direction from the rest of the guys, trying to find somewhere away from the crush. Somewhere quiet and hopefully secluded.

I had been walking along the path for a couple of minutes when I saw the perfect spot below. Most of the gardens here had a theme, I’d noticed. This one wasn’t filled with plant life, though. It was a big, rectangular area, with white-gray rocks covering the surface and a few larger, moss-covered boulders placed strategically throughout. A stone wall surrounded it, with a few benches along one side. Someone had traced lines through the rocks, it seemed, making patterns within the uniformity.

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind; this was where I needed to be.

I bounded down the stairs built into the landscape, moving away from the hubbub of voices filling the rest of the gardens and into the privacy of this rock garden. The bench was slightly damp from the morning rain, but I didn’t mind it. I took a seat and stared, studying everything about the view before me.

Trees lined the other side of the stone wall. There was another cherry blossom, its leaves as orange as the others had been, but it was solitary. Like me. A single tree wasn’t enough to overwhelm me with the same morbid thoughts as earlier. It was just enough to help ease me into meditation.

Before long, I’d forgotten why I was here and how many other people were in the gardens today. No one had come down to pull me from my pensive tranquility, so I had been able to shut everything out and just be.

God, grant me the serenity… Somehow, I fell into reciting the Serenity Prayer silently in my mind. I’d never been a religious person. I believed there was something bigger than me out there, but I didn’t know who or what that “something” was, and I wasn’t inclined to figure it out. Still, saying the prayer had refocused my mind enough to get me through some rough times, particularly in the months after Dad’s death.

I’d learned to use the prayer during one of my numerous visits to rehab. I repeated it now as a reminder that I was not in control of everything, and that it was all right to let go. In fact, recent years had taught me that most of the time it was better that I wasn’t the one in control. Things seemed to fall apart when I was in charge.

A cool breeze blew over me, not enough to make me cold despite the fact that a shiver raced up my spine. I closed my eyes, breathing in the fresh, slightly damp scent on the air, and started the Serenity Prayer again.

“Oh! I’m so sorry.”

The interruption startled me, and I jumped. It was a female voice. I popped my eyes open and swiveled my head toward the sound coming from slightly behind me.

Jessica Lynch stood just at the base of the stone steps, alternating between staring at me and turning her gaze up to where she’d just come from. She tucked a strand of her brown hair behind her ear and shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “I didn’t realize anyone was down here until I heard your voice,” she said. “I don’t meant to interrupt—”

“You’re not interrupting anything,” I assured her. I might not want to be surrounded by bodies on every side, but having a single companion wouldn’t be the end of the world. Besides, I had always liked Jessica in the years that I’d known her.

She was the Portland director of the Light the Lamp Foundation, a charity started by Liam Kallen before he’d become one of my teammates a few years ago. It was an organization that I’d spent a lot of time working with in recent years, primarily because I had a keen interest in their mission. Due to my involvement, I had seen Jessica fairly regularly over the years.

Kally was retired now, but he still spent half the year with his wife, Noelle, here in Portland working in the Storm’s front office. The rest of the year, they lived in Sweden. He did some scouting for the team in Europe while he was there. Kally put a lot of his energy into Light the Lamp, though. When a drunk driver had killed his first wife, he’d decided it was best to channel his grief so something good come out of the bad. Light the Lamp’s mission was to help addicts make something positive from their lives.

That was something I strove to do every day in my own life. Some days were harder than others, but I couldn’t worry about tomorrow until I’d dealt with today. I was trying to put that into my goaltending, too, taking on a more Zen approach to the game than I had before.

I smiled and scooted over on the bench, patting my hand beside me in invitation. “Really,” I said. “I don’t mind.”

She hesitated for a moment, but then she came over and sat next to me. “Trying to eke out a bit of quiet?”

“Something like that.”

She nodded, not looking at me. Her gaze was focused on the rocks, much as mine had been before she’d arrived. “I could use a little quiet, too,” she said. “The season ticket holder event later is bound to be insane.” A small smile curled her lips, and she pressed her palms flat on the bench on either side of her, curving her fingers down around the edge of it.

“I thought you lived for those moments, getting them to fork over money for your cause,” I teased.

“Hardly. It’s just a necessary part of the business.”

The business being helping people like me. I knew that, and I shouldn’t have made light of it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t joke about what you do.”

“You don’t need to apologize, Nicky.”

But I did need to. Maybe not for her sake, but for my own. I went back to staring at the lines drawn in the rocks, focusing on the patterns and details. It was a combination of straight lines and perfect circles, hard edges and rounded curves. Juxtaposition in everything. Yin and yang, or something like that.

Jessica fell silent, too. That was one of many things I appreciated about her. It couldn’t be easy, working with addicts as much as she did. Being an addict myself, I understood all too well how fucked up we could be, how easily we could hurt the people in our lives, especially the ones who were trying to help us, whether we intended to or not. But somehow she didn’t seem to let it get to her. She understood the needs we had—for contemplation, for self-awareness, for so many things that the general population often took for granted.

“Did you have a good summer?” she asked after a few minutes.

There wasn’t really any need for her to ask. I’d stayed here, in Portland, instead of going home to Sweden. My support group was here, and the rehab facility that had finally helped me to get clean and stay clean was here, too. I’d stuck around and had been right by her side for a few of the community service events the foundation had hosted. She knew exactly what my summer had been like.

Asking questions she knew the answers to meant one thing: no matter how much time we might have spent around each other, she saw me as one of the addicts she helped every day and nothing more. This was all business.

“Pretty good,” I said evenly, taking her cue. “And yours?”

“Busy. Really busy.” She shifted her feet beneath her. “You’re still clean? No issues heading into the new season?”

“One year, four months, and seventeen days.” And counting. I’d spent all last season playing for the Storm’s minor-league affiliate, the Seattle Storm, because of how badly I’d screwed things up in the playoffs the previous season, for myself and for my teammates. I had been so dependent on sleeping pills and pain pills and alcohol it was a wonder that I’d made it out of bed to go in the net, but I had played like shit and let everyone down. I hadn’t been able to focus on the puck or the play around me. I kept letting in goals that I would have been able to stop when I was twelve.

I had been an absolute wreck. When our season had come to an end, the coach and the general manager had pulled me aside.

I can’t put you in the net next year, Nicky, the head coach, Mattias Bergstrom, had told me. I can’t trust you to be what the team needs you to be. Too many times, you’ve promised you had your shit together, and too many times you’ve failed to keep it together.

Then it had been Jim Sutter’s turn. He was the GM. You’ve got two choices. You can go back to rehab this summer and then play next season in the AHL to prove that you’re willing to make the changes you need to make in your life, or we will have to begin the proceedings to void your contract on the basis that you aren’t fulfilling your obligations. It’s your call.

I’d already been to rehab three times at that point, typically going to a center in Stockholm so I would be close to my family in case my father’s health deteriorated rapidly. Not once in any of those rehab stints had I talked about Dad. Not once had I admitted I was an addict, not to the counselors or to the people involved with the Storm. I’d skirted around all of it, avoiding telling anyone that my father had ALS and never saying anything more than, It’s tough, when one of the guys on the team asked me how things were going. So after we’d fallen out of the playoffs, I’d told Jim that I’d think it over. Then I’d headed back to Sweden and watched my father die in one of the most horrifying ways imaginable.

It had taken losing my spot on the team and then losing my father in the span of less than a month to convince me I had to change, to show me that maybe I was less in control of things than I told myself I was.

After my sister, Emma, and I had buried my father, I had returned to Portland and asked Jim for help. He’d gotten me set up with the Players’ Association and their substance abuse program, and I’d gone into rehab to set about the tedious and seemingly impossible task of putting my life back on the right course.

I hadn’t been back to Sweden since. Hadn’t seen my sister and her kids in all that time. I emailed Emma and talked on the phone with the munchkins as often as we could manage, but they all understood I had to turn things around. They knew I had to make myself into the man I should have been all along. Especially now that we didn’t have Dad to fill that role.

And now was my opportunity to win my job back. It wasn’t going to be easy. I had no delusions about that. Jim told me he believed in me, that he was sure I was ready. The coaches and my teammates were another story, though. And then there were the fans. Not to mention the media and their never-ending questions: What was going on? Why were you demoted to Seattle? Aren’t you washed-up? Maybe you should think about retirement, huh?

After I got through all the questions and expectations, I was still going to have a fight on my hands to try to win my starting spot back from Hunter Fielding. Of course, I shouldn’t even be able to fight. Not now. I was supposed to spend this season in Seattle again because the people who could make these decisions still didn’t believe that I had my shit together.

I’d lost the coaches’ trust. I’d lost my teammates’ trust. I’d lost the fans’ trust.

But this was my opportunity to do something about it. Jim had come to me when Hunter’s backup from last season, Sean “Bobby” Roberts, had suffered a torn ligament in the last game of the preseason. He’d told me it could be my comeback. God only knew why he still believed in me, especially when no one else did. I wasn’t sure I believed in myself much, these, days, but I was trying to earn back what trust I could.

Hunter wasn’t going to just step aside and give me the net, though. Not a chance in hell that would happen. This season was going to be all I could handle and then some. But I was determined. I was clean. I was focused. I was as ready as I could be. And Jessica’s question, her curiosity about my sobriety, was to be expected, I supposed. She was far from the last person I would have to convince.

She reached over and put one hand on top of mine, patting it like she would a child’s. “Good to hear, Nicky. I’m proud of you.”

Proud of me. Her response seemed rote, the sort she would give any of the dozens of addicts who came in and out of her office every day. It was the type of reaction that made me believe I might never prove to her that I could keep it up, that she might never think my issues were in the past.

But then again, there was no cure for addiction. Once an addict, always an addict. There would always be the lure, always the desire to reach for a bottle and let its contents ease the ache while creating new and more potent pains in its place.

        Maybe she was right to doubt me.

JESSICA

In my experience, there are few things in life more agonizing than loving an addict. Pills, alcohol, hard drugs—it doesn’t really matter what the specific addiction is because it always wins in the end.

If there was anyone in the world who understood that, it was me. My dad had been an alcoholic since before I was born. My brother got into drugs in middle school. I lost a best friend and a husband to their addictions—my best friend died as a direct result of hers, and my husband had become a different person when he started using, wanting nothing to do with me anymore because I encouraged him to get help. And so what had I chosen as my profession? I worked for a charity that put me in close contact with countless addicts daily.

I might not be an addict myself, but I intimately knew the beast better known as Addiction on an entirely too personal level.

Because of the pain involved in loving addicts, I’d tried to put some distance between me and the men and women I worked with through Light the Lamp. It wasn’t always easy, particularly when it came to men like Nicklas Ericsson. He was a player for the Storm, and since Liam had started the foundation, the players had all been involved in various fundraisers over the years. Nicky hadn’t taken part in as many last year as before because he’d been in Seattle instead of Portland, but he’d still made an effort to show up to help when he could. But it went further than that with Nicky. He didn’t just try to raise money and awareness for Light the Lamp—he was dealing with his own addictions was involved in nearly everything we did, attempting to turn his own life around through the programs we offered.

Since he was around all the time, I was able to see the man he was when he was clean and sober, and damn it all if I didn’t really like that man. He had a big heart. He was genuine, he was incredibly funny in a self-deprecating way, and he never let his fame go to his head. For that matter, he didn’t let it get him down when that very fame turned on him and allowed the world to see things he might rather keep hidden. It was easy to forget that he was an addict.

Too easy.

Being friends with him would be one of the simplest things I could ever do, but it was something I couldn’t allow. Not for my own sanity, at least. Right now, I had to consciously bring his disease back to mind again and again, or else I was liable to let my walls down. I had to keep this professional, to maintain the boundaries I’d built to protect myself. I could be friendly toward him without being his friend, couldn’t I? So I’d asked how long he’d been clean and I’d told him I was proud of him, establishing a typical addict-counselor relationship. I wasn’t exactly a counselor, and I definitely wasn’t his, but it seemed easier to take that tack.

I just didn’t have it in me to care—to really, truly care—for another addict beyond the scope of my job. One more might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Nicky shifted on the bench next to me, an almost unnoticeable movement. I doubted I would have recognized it if it wasn’t so still and silent in the rock garden. When I turned, it was to find him staring at me in a way that left me unnerved. His eyes were on me intently, making me feel as though he could see straight inside my head and hear every thought. I couldn’t tell what was going on inside his head, only that there was a lot of it, whatever it was.

“Have a good time signing?” I asked, trying to shake the odd sensation.

“Huh,” he said, giving an ironic nod of his head with his brow raised. But then he only said, “It was fine.”

Fine. It hadn’t really been, and I knew it. Torturous might be more apt, and if I’d taken even half a second to think before speaking, I would have asked him any number of things that would have less obvious answers. I’d dropped in a couple of times during the signing, and every other table had had long lines of fans waiting to get a jersey or a shirt or a hat or an arm signed. Even the rookies and the guys new to the Storm this year had been kept fairly busy. But not Nicky. There had only been a few bodies in front of him at any point in time. But at least he’d made good use of that by having a real conversation with the few who came to see him.

I decided to shut my trap at that point from here on out. Lately, he always seemed to seek out the quiet, anyway, so I doubted he would mind much.

But then he shifted again, and his right pinky finger brushed against my left pinky finger.

He jerked his hand away. “Sorry,” he said, shrugging and giving me a sheepish expression.

“Something on your mind?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking.”

From what I’d noticed, he was always thinking. Nicky was maybe the most cerebral man I’d ever met. Even when he was just staring off into nothing, it was easy to see the wheels turning behind his eyes. No matter how still his body might be, I never doubted there was a tennis match going on in his brain.

“Thinking?” I prodded after a moment, since he’d just left it hanging there.

“Thinking about what I can do,” he said, clearing up absolutely nothing.

“I think you’ve proven there are a lot of things you can do,” I noted.

“No, I…” He laughed, dropping his head in a way that made it seem self-effacing. Then he brought his gaze back up to mine, those brown eyes that seemed to always be laughing, even in the most difficult times, boring into me again. “I meant what I can do for Light the Lamp.”

Nicky Ericsson already did more for Light the Lamp than any of the volunteers. I couldn’t imagine what else he thought he needed to do.

“You already do a lot.”

“I know, I just— Maybe I don’t mean what I can do for Light the Lamp. Maybe I mean what I can do through Light the Lamp. To make a difference.”

“I’m listening.” I was always open to new ideas, and having worked for charitable organizations my entire career, I knew better than to turn anything down out of hand. There was always a greater need than supply, no matter the cause or the efforts put into effecting change.

“I may not have the celebrity status I had a few years ago, but I still have some. Especially around Portland. I thought maybe I could…” His voice trailed off.

I looked over to find him staring out at the rocks again, only now his smile was gone.

“Maybe you could what?”

“Nothing. It’s stupid.”

“I doubt that.” Everything I knew about him screamed just the opposite. “Maybe you could what?” I prodded again.

“Maybe I could talk to people,” he finally said after hemming and hawing around it for several moments. “You know, tell them about my experiences. Use what little status I have for something good.”

I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting him to say, but it definitely wasn’t this. “That would mean you’d have to admit to the world that you’re an addict, Nicky.” I’d lowered my voice, even though no one was anywhere near us to overhear.

There was so much shame involved in addiction, so much secrecy. The NHL, the Storm—they’d never come out and said what was going on with him over the last several years. They couldn’t. Players were granted privacy when it came to issues like this. Healthcare workers couldn’t talk about it. Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and other programs like them kept their membership rolls private. Even at Light the Lamp, we insisted on confidentiality.

People—fans and media—might suspect that Nicky had an addiction, and there was certainly a lot of speculation running rampant about him, but no one could come out and say that he did.

No one but him.

What he was suggesting was enormous.

“I know that,” he said, shifting on the bench again. “I know what it would mean.”

“People would look at you differently.”

“You’re not telling me anything earth-shattering here, you know.” He was laughing again. I definitely preferred it when he laughed. That was the Nicky I knew, not this anxious, antsy man beside me. But the truth was he was probably all of the above and so much more. I thought I knew pretty him well, but based on what he’d just suggested, I knew there was a heck of a lot more to him that I didn’t have the first clue about.

I wasn’t sure what to do with him at the moment. He wasn’t making it easy to keep him in any boxes, that was for sure.

“Why?” I finally asked. I wasn’t opposed to the idea of Nicky becoming a public speaker, of sorts—at least not at first blush. But if he wanted it for the wrong reasons then allowing him to go ahead with it might cause more harm than good, at least for him. He hadn’t been clean all that long in the grand scheme of things. If he was looking for more fame, for adulation for the wrong reasons, it could come back to bite him in the butt. Not that Nicky seemed like the sort to do that, but experience had taught me to be wary of anyone with a history of addiction.

I might not want to be close enough to let him in as a good friend, but I didn’t want him to cause himself a setback.

Nicky took his time answering, staring at the bright burst of orange leaves coming from the cherry blossom across from us. But then his shoulders lifted in an infinitesimal shrug and he turned his head to me, looking directly in my eyes in that fervent way he had. “I just think there’s a reason for everything. I’ve been given a lot of gifts in terms of athletic ability and my career, and I’ve struggled with addiction. I think there’s a reason for all of that, and I think I should use it everything I’ve been given.”

There wasn’t even the slightest hint of irony in his words. No sense that he was hoping to further himself or make a spectacle of himself.

I took a breath, the crisp fall air flirting with my senses. “Have you run any of this by Jim Sutter yet?”

“Not yet. I thought I’d talk to you about it first.”

Jim wouldn’t try to dissuade him, anyway. He’d encourage it. The same as I should. There wasn’t any good reason for me to be hesitant about this, beyond the possibility that it would test the strength of my protective walls. He wasn’t just asking me if I thought he should become a motivational speaker. Nicky was asking to do it through my foundation, to be even more intricately involved in the work I did than he already was. But this wasn’t an opportunity I could pass up. It had the potential to do a world of good.

“Talk to Jim,” I said, digging my fingernails into the underside of the bench so hard it was painful—a reminder to myself that I had to keep my distance. “Once you get the go-ahead, let me know and we’ll figure something out.”

He nodded, and he moved slightly toward me. There was a glimmer in his eye that made me think he was going to try to pull me into a hug. I thrust out my hand to shake. That glimmer fled as fast as it had come, and he shook my hand as I stood.

“I should—” I started. I should calm the heck down is what I should do. I felt breathless and panicky, and there was no good reason for it. None at all. I dusted my hands over my slacks, brushing away any bits of the outdoors that might have found a home there. “I should head back and get ready for the…the event.”

Ever polite, Nicky didn’t say anything about how flustered I suddenly was. He just nodded and smiled, and made me wish that the glimmer would come back into his eyes. Because that glimmer meant life. It meant hope. It meant there was something worth fighting for to keep him clean. The ones who had that bit of life in their eyes were the ones I didn’t worry about so much. They were the ones who had a chance.

His smile wasn’t enough to bring that brightness back, though. It didn’t reach his eyes. “You should go, then. I’ll see you after a while.”

        I nodded and turned to leave. Halfway up the stone steps, I looked back over my shoulder to find him looking at the rocks exactly as he had been when I’d first come upon him. Or maybe not exactly the same way. Because I’d just taken one of the bricks from my protective wall and placed it on his. I hadn’t even handed it to him to let him do as he would with it. I’d just placed it there, helping him close himself off when I should be doing the opposite.

Holiday Hat Trick and Portland Storm: The First Period

Two new releases! That's right--TWO of them.

First up, we have HOLIDAY HAT TRICK.

Mitchell “Q” Quincey, a journeyman playing for the Portland Storm, has three goals for his three-day Christmas break.

1.      Move the rest of his gym equipment out of his ex-wife Mia’s house.

2.      Get his lawyer to file a petition for joint custody.

3.      Spend every last minute he can with his baby girl.

When he arrives on Mia’s doorstep, things don’t go as planned. With her whole family gathered for the holiday, the only way he can spend time with their daughter is to spend time with the whole clan. The compromise is doable, if not ideal, because he’s still in love with Mia and she won’t take him back.

Having her ex-husband show up completely unannounced at Christmas throws Mia off her game. The least Mitch could have done is called so she could have emotionally prepared herself to face him. Instead, the love and attraction she still feels for him combine to leave her fumbling for excuses. He’s always been able to leave her flustered, but now that he’s making himself part of the family again, she’s afraid she’ll lose her nerve and fall back into old patterns.

Things heat up on a snowy Christmas Eve, and Mitch decides to change his goals on the fly. With assists from Mia’s family and a bit of mistletoe, he might end up with a Holiday Hat Trick.

Buy it now at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, All Romance eBooks, and Smashwords.

Then we have PORTLAND STORM: THE FIRST PERIOD. It's a box set of BREAKAWAY, ON THE FLY, TAKING A SHOT, and LIGHT THE LAMP.

BREAKAWAY

She’s reaching for a breakaway pass.

Dana Campbell has spent the past seven years in self-imposed isolation for a crime she didn’t commit. The danger is well in the past, but her panic attacks make it impossible to have a normal, healthy relationship with a man. Even her counselor has given up on her. She has to find someone she trusts to help her fight through the panic, or her seven-year ordeal will become a lifetime sentence. There’s only one man she feels safe enough to ask.

He got caught with his head down.

As the captain of the NHL’s once elite but now fading Portland Storm, Eric Zellinger knows a thing or two about keeping his focus on the job. Questions are flying about his ability to lead the team back to the playoffs. If they don’t make it, he might be shipped out of town. It’s the worst time possible for his best friend’s kid sister to divide his focus. How can he give her what she needs without jeopardizing both the Storm’s playoff hopes and his future with the team?

It’s her only chance, but it’s his last shot.



ON THE FLY

Injury after injury has put Brenden Campbell’s NHL career on hold for years. Now he’s playing for the Portland Storm and determined to make it stick. Few things in life drive him more than being told he can’t have something he wants, and what he wants most is to prove he belongs. Brenden also wants Rachel Shaw, the cute, little redhead who just got hired as the general manager’s new assistant. But then she went and made herself off-limits, telling him: “I don’t date.” Those three words pretty much guarantee that he’ll do everything he can to change her mind.

Rachel is changing things up on the fly for her family, moving them somewhere she can be the kind of mom her kids deserve. Allowing anyone else to be in their lives is out of the question, at least until her instincts get back on track. How else can she be sure who to steer the kids clear of? Right now she trusts no one, including herself, and especially not a man like Brenden Campbell. He’s way too handsome and a little bit cocky. Falling for a guy like him is a mistake she can’t afford to make twice.



TAKING A SHOT

Katie Weber has had a crush on Jamie Babcock for almost two years, since he joined her father’s pro hockey team, the Portland Storm as an eighteen-year-old rookie. When cancer takes her health, her hair, and even her friends, she can’t bear to go to senior prom…until Jamie intervenes.



LIGHT THE LAMP

Life’s been rough lately for Noelle Payne, but she’s not one to let negativity rule. So, she lost her job? She’ll find another one. The bank foreclosed on the house? Well, she can live out of her car for a while. There’s always an upside to be found…but now Noelle needs to find something to give her life meaning. She owes it to the universe to figure it out, too, because a stranger just saved her life..

When Liam Kallen’s wife died, his goal-scoring ability died with her. After a trade from the only pro hockey team he’s ever played for, he’s now playing for the NHL’s Portland Storm. Everyone said he needed a change of scenery, but nothing changes until he rescues Noelle. All of a sudden, the world once again looks bright and he’s lighting the lamp like he used to.

Noelle’s cheerful disposition is just the bit of sunlight Liam needs in his life. He wants to give her everything she needs because she’s everything he wants. The problem? She doesn’t believe she needs anything…at least nothing material. The one thing they both know she truly needs—a real purpose—also happens to be the one thing he doesn’t know how to give her. If he can’t help her find that, she might walk away and take all her sunshine with her.

Buy it now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, Kobo, All Romance eBooks, and Smashwords.

Not only that, but you can pre-order COMEBACK at several ebook retailers.

Nicky Ericsson has had a long fight with addiction, and because of it he lost his spot as the Portland Storm's top goaltender. He's on the road to a comeback--both in his personal life and on the ice. He's throwing himself into charity work, recovery group meetings, training...all the things he needs to do to become the best version of himself he can be, and to keep himself clean. He has no other choice. 

Jessica Lynch has been running the Portland office for the Light the Lamp Foundation for a few years, so she knows a thing or two about addicts. One of the main things she's learned is that even when they try to turn their lives around, sometimes the addictions get the better of them. Because of that, she takes a hands off approach, keeping her heart out of things. 

Nicky's attempts to better himself puts him in directly Jessica's path more often than not, and their attraction is instant and mutual. Can he prove that he won't fall back into old habits, and complete the perfect comeback?

COMEBACK releases on February 19, 2015, and you can preorder it at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo.