Overtime

She left him once to keep from being a burden. He almost left her to keep from being a weight. Now they have one summer, one bakery, and one last chance to learn the thing neither of them ever could - how to stay.

Marcus Becket is the captain who takes care of everyone and lets no one take care of him. He runs the room, carries the team, fills every silence, and never once asks for anything. It is a talent. It is also a wall, and he built it so young he mistook it for a personality.

Charlotte Wilde left Ashford two years ago for a Paris apprenticeship and a fresh start, and she left a green lamp behind, unplugged, on purpose. Now she is back on Cross Street, flour under her nails, opening a bakery in the old bookshop and swearing she came home only for the cheap rent. Then Marcus walks into a wedding she nearly skipped, and the wall she spent two years building comes down in one look.

What follows is not a slow burn so much as a slow unlearning: a dead four-o'clock text thread brought back to life, four hundred miles that refuse to shrink, a proposal that arrives from the wrong direction, and two people who each have to put down the same weapon at the same time. Because the disease is identical and the cure is not - one of them never leaves and never needs, the other left first and called it mercy. Loving each other was never the hard part. Staying is.

Told in strict dual POV and set against the last season of Marcus's career, Overtime is the fourth and final book in the Wolves of Ashford series - a full-circle, found-family finale that brings all four couples home. Steamy, funny, emotional, and low on angst but high on feelings. Standalone-readable, best enjoyed after Cross Check, Off the Record, and Last Line.

Perfect for readers who love their hockey romance with a blunt-funny heroine, a cinnamon-roll captain, forced proximity, second-chance love, and a happily-ever-after worth the wait.