My contract is up with the Carolina Comets this year, and I need to get it together if I want to stay with the team. I need relaxation, not a relationship. But when I’m scrolling on a dating app and stumble across the pretty girl who almost ran me over, I know I can’t let her walk away this time. Harper is funny, smart, and doesn’t care about hockey. I’m not supposed to be focusing on anything other than my career, yet I can’t get Harper off my mind. I know I shouldn’t fall for her…but I think I already have.

I got the dreaded phone call, the one every baseball player hopes and prays never comes. I was traded - yeah, that phone call - traded from my longtime team of over 10 years to not just any team...to my childhood rivals, the Chicago Rebels. I was completely and utterly screwed, right? Wrong. The trade was the least of my concerns. I met a girl, Natalie. She was perfect, but I swore I would never get involved with anyone during the season. It was too complicated. But can you believe I had zero restraint when it came to this girl?

Breaking news: The bad boy of baseball, Maddox Paige, is totally and utterly whipped. Okay, that might not be the headline in the newspaper this morning, but it's the reality of my current situation. It all started a month ago when I received a call from my best friend, Kinsley. She’d gotten a new job in Chicago and needed a place to stay. I've known the girl since I was five, so I figured there wouldn't be any harm in having her stay at my place for a while. Ha! Total disaster.

Six weeks. That's how long my editor gave me to change my book from a baseball romance to one about hockey. A complete rewrite. Which is how I find myself in Montana, a thousand miles from home, researching hockey, and preparing to meet a local expert. There's one small problem. Or rather a big one. A big, grumpy problem. My expert is none other than Nick Galaxy—the single dad and hockey captain I ran into minutes after landing in Montana and made a… well, let's just say I didn't make the best first impression. Neither did he, for that matter.

I’ve recently become the pawn of a meddling mom. Yes...a meddling mom - who's been trying to set me up all summer. Now, I understand it’s not a crime for a mother to want her child to fall in love, but when she makes it her relentless mission, the heinous act should be classified as a misdemeanor at least. Of course, my mom, the evil matriarch in the devil’s leggings, made her final stab at finding a girl for me days before I went back to college.