Small Town Hockey Romance: Sumner's Landing

VIVIAN
I’ve learned the sad reality that being the daughter of an NHL legend comes with a cost. Men don’t want me; they want an in with a legend. It’s why I moved out in a tiny New Hampshire town and bought a quaint cottage where nobody knows who I am.
If I never saw the male species again, it would be too soon.
Until one literally falls off my horse and looks up at me from the dirt with ridiculously green eyes, and I make the catastrophic mistake of finding him attractive. He’s exactly the kind of infuriatingly ruggedly handsome that should send me walking the other direction. Broad shoulders, easy smile, and charm that’s almost impossible to turn down.
Almost.
I just can’t seem to remember why I’m supposed to when he looks at me like I’m a meal, and not a meal ticket.
BRODY
Twenty-nine and still in the AHL. Still hearing my father’s voice. Not enough. Never enough.

I came back to New Hampshire to get my head straight. Not to fall off a horse in front of a woman who stops the air in my lungs before she says a single word. With her brown hair, warm chocolate eyes, and jaw-dropping smile, she has the effortless kind of beauty that makes me forget the pressure and conditional love from my father.
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But Vivian wants nothing to do with men like me: hockey players. She makes that perfectly, devastatingly clear. So I let her believe I’m just a guy doing construction for the summer. She thinks she knows who I am, and she does, more than any other person in my life. But she doesn’t know the half of it.

And if the truth comes out, I’m terrified that the one person who finally makes me feel like I am enough will decide I’m anything but.

TEAGAN:
I am not immune to Knox Sterling. No one with eyes would be.
Six foot three, broad shoulders that strain every seam, forearms that deserve their own zip code, and a jaw that should be illegal in all fifty states. He's the most beautiful, maddening man I've ever met.
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He communicates in grunts, holds his daughter like he's afraid of her, and looks at the world from behind eyes so closed off I wonder if anyone's ever gotten through. It irritates me. It breaks my heart. Somehow, both at once.

I tell myself I keep coming back for Briar.
That's what I tell myself, anyway.

KNOX
Teagan fills every room she walks into. Loud and warm and relentless, like she hasn't learned yet that the world doesn't always give back what you put into it.

She looks at me like she hasn't decided whether to throat punch me or kiss me. Not that I can blame her.

Every reserve I have goes to Briar, hockey, and getting through the day without thinking about everything I lost and everything I owe. A woman like Teagan deserves someone whole. Someone who still has words.

What I don't count on is her staying anyway.

Or what it does to me when she does.