Faceoff at First Sight

Maggie Chen took the fall once, on live television, in front of all of hockey.

She swore she'd never let a player burn her again.

Then she met Derek Tremblay.

Maggie came to Vancouver for the one job no one else wanted: fix the franchise's most marketable, most impossible star before he walks and takes the whole team's future with him.

She knew the headlines.
The missed pressers. The cold interviews. The night he walked out of a charity gala mid-speech.

She did not know about the kid.

She did not know that the curt, infuriating man behind the jersey was a single dad keeping a secret bigger than any scandal - a hospital, a diagnosis, a file he'd burn before he'd let it leak.

So she did her job.

Road trips. Galas. A snowball fight that wasn't supposed to mean anything.

Slowly, the rival she was hired to manage became the one person who saw the woman under the spin - and the friends-to-lovers slow burn turned into something neither of them could put in a press release.

Then the truth she was hiding for him collided with the truth she was hiding from herself.

A leak. A cancellation. A cost that landed on the people they both loved.

She waited for him to shut her out the way he shut out everyone.

Instead he stood in the cold and said, "I don't need you to fix this, Maggie. I need you to stay."

That was the moment the game changed.

Not because he asked her to stay.

But because staying meant risking the one reputation she had left.

Now there's a surgery, a promise, and one faceoff that decides whether two people who rewrote their own stories get to share the next chapter. If Derek wants a second chance, he'll have to let her past the boards - and let the whole world see it.

Faceoff at First Sight is a tender, steamy single-dad hockey romance about a friends-to-lovers slow burn, forced proximity, a guarded single father, a holiday homecoming, a career on the line, and the second chance neither expected.

Perfect for readers who love single-dad hockey romance, grumpy-sunshine slow burn, workplace forced proximity, found family, and a heart-melting happy ending. A standalone romance with a happy-ever-after.