The Enforcer Emergency

The most hated man in hockey just walked into her ER.

Three in the morning in a July ER is a sorting problem, and Hazel Bloom has a category for everything: the drunks, the abdominal pains, the regulars greeted by name. Once or twice a summer she gets the one she privately charts as Male, Stoic, Self-Wrecked. This one is the size of infrastructure, bleeding through a kitchen towel taped on in a spiral, with corners.

Caleb "Bear" Brandt arrives in Austin with twelve stitches' worth of DIY damage, a villain's reputation he's never once bothered to correct, and a four-year-old secret he carries like a penalty he chose on purpose. Hazel stitches him up, roasts his life choices, and writes him discharge instructions instead of her number. She has a rule about hockey players. He keeps the paper anyway.

She has spent her whole life as everyone's emergency contact. He has spent four years as everyone's villain. Between a children's-hospital reading chair neither of them mentions and a crossword filled out in pen, both of them are quietly about to update their forms.

Austin didn't ask for a hated hockey enforcer moving into town, and Caleb didn't ask to end up stitched, roasted, and quietly obsessed with his own discharge paperwork before he's even played a home game.

The internet has decided who Caleb Brandt is. Hazel is the only person in Austin with the chart that says otherwise.

Welcome to Moontower Arena, where the ice fights Texas for eight months a year, the mascot suit keeps secrets, one cat runs the building's morale, and everybody on this roster is one bad day away from falling in love in front of a few thousand witnesses.

Diagnosis: in love. Prognosis: excellent.

You'll love this book if you love:

• Hated hero, secretly soft villain
• Enemies-to-lovers hockey romance
• ER nurse heroine
• Grumpy hero meets his match
• One very gentle bear
• Big guy, gentle heart
• Hospital and hockey worlds collide
• Full happily-ever-after, no cliffhanger