Showing results by author "Joan Amanda Raymond" in All Categories

Cole MacKinnon-Briggs was born to play hockey. First-overall draft pick. Nashville Predators. A rookie season that made good on every promise scouts had been making about him since he was fifteen. Then a Rangers enforcer's cheap shot ends his night in a New York training room, counting ceiling tiles and reaching for hours he'll never find. The gap in his memory is permanent. The concussion protocol is relentless. And the apartment in The Gulch is very, very quiet. Walking is on the approved list. So Cole walks — south, toward a city he's lived in for two years without seeing. He finds a ...

She almost destroyed everything. Now she has to fight to keep it. Carmen Anatov has always known exactly who she is: a hockey player, a competitor, a woman who goes after what she wants. At nineteen, she's the leading scorer on Wisconsin's women's hockey team and deeply in love with Larry Reynolds, the charming center who made her feel like the only person in any room. But something has changed. Larry cancels plans constantly. He's physically present but emotionally absent. The man who used to look at her like she hung the moon now stares through her like she's made of glass. Carmen tells ...

Margaret "Margi" Kasey has everything figured out—a steady boyfriend since high school, a spot on her college hockey team, and a future that looks exactly like everyone expects. Then a late-night scroll through Reddit tears a hole in the life she thought she knew. Suddenly she can't stop noticing things she's spent years not seeing: the curve of a teammate's shoulder during warm-ups, the way sweat traces down bare arms in the locker room. She's not just curious. She's hungry. When her secret is exposed in the locker room, Margi's careful world starts crumbling. But it's Charlie Greene—...

She's the star defenseman who doesn't need anyone. He's the guy in the stands wearing her jersey. Caroline Smith has spent her whole life proving she's enough—on the ice, in the classroom, and everywhere else. After her dad walked out, she learned the hard way that people leave. So she stopped letting anyone get close enough to hurt her. Then Robby Chen shows up at her 5 AM practices. He's a computer science major who's never watched hockey before, but something about Caroline makes him want to learn her whole world. He buys a jersey with her name on it. He makes a spreadsheet of her ...

She's climbing the corporate ladder. He's chasing an NHL dream. Falling for each other wasn't in either game plan. Emily Rogers has one goal: prove she's the best ticket sales rep the Tucson Roadrunners have ever seen. She doesn't have time for distractions—especially not the kind that come with hockey players' reputations. But when a quiet forward with blue-gray eyes approaches her in Section 112 with the worst pickup line she's ever heard, Emily finds herself breaking every rule she's made for herself. Jake Morrison knows better than to pursue anyone connected to the organization. At ...

She had three rules: No feelings. No sleepovers. No falling for the rich boy from Boston. Maria Santos didn't come to Northfield College to find love. She came to play hockey, prove herself, and build a future that doesn't depend on anyone else. Growing up in Duluth, she watched her mother disappear into her father's life, losing herself one compromise at a time. Maria swore she'd never make the same mistake. Then she meets Chuck Morrison. He's everything she should avoid—privileged, polished, and running from a legacy she can't begin to understand. But when a party hookup turns into an ...

She's spent years telling herself she's too ordinary for someone like him. He's spent just as long waiting for someone real. Lisa Hampton is a high school English teacher who loves Milwaukee's AHL hockey team for all the right reasons — her late father's spirit is in every game. She doesn't expect to end up at a charity dinner talking to the most grounded man she's ever met. She definitely doesn't expect him to call. Marcus Cole is a defenseman who made peace with the AHL after an injury ended his NHL career. He's seen enough of the hockey world's spotlight-chasers to know exactly what he...

She came to the arena to hide. He came to survive. Neither expected to find each other. Beth Callahan has spent three years perfecting the art of being alone. After a marriage that left her feeling invisible, she's built a life that doesn't require anyone—her job, her gym, her season tickets to Milwaukee Admirals hockey. The arena is her sanctuary, the one place she can exist without pretending to be fine. Mike Dvorak knows what it's like to stay too long with the wrong person. Four years after his divorce, he's stopped believing in second chances. He goes to hockey games because the ...

When time runs out, love is the only thing left to hold onto. Maya Chen has spent seventeen years building a life with her two partners—Jordan, her college sweetheart, and Eve, the immortal vampire sheriff who protects Charlotte's supernatural community. Together they've raised a daughter, navigated vampire politics, and created a family that defies every conventional boundary. But at thirty-eight, Maya receives a diagnosis that no amount of vampire power can fix: stage four pancreatic cancer. Metastatic. Terminal. And Eve's ancient abilities—speed, strength, three centuries of ...

Two years ago, vampire sheriff Eve Ashford broke every rule to claim Maya and Jordan as her own. Now, as political enemies circle and time marks its passage on the humans she loves, Eve faces an impossible choice: cling to power or fight for the family she never expected to want. Maya is twenty-four, and her body is already changing—gray hairs appearing, knees aching, mortality announcing itself in ways she can't ignore. She's researched conversion, knows the terrifying odds, and has questions Eve has been avoiding for three centuries. Jordan is caught between two worlds: the vampire ...

After twenty-two years of marriage, Lisa and Tom Bergstrom have built a good life — a paid-off house in Maple Grove, two kids they're proud of, season tickets to the Minnesota Wild. But with the last child off to college, the comfortable routine they've depended on suddenly feels a lot like silence. They love each other. That was never the question. The question is whether love is enough to bridge the distance that's quietly grown between them — the unspoken frustrations, the missed moments, the feeling of being two people sharing a house rather than a life. When Lisa stumbles across an...

Eve Ashford has survived three hundred years as a vampire. She's survived losing the love of her life, Maya, to cancer. She thought she'd learned how to keep living. Then her partner Jordan dies suddenly of a heart attack, leaving Eve and their daughter Elana to navigate grief alone. Twenty-five-year-old Elana has always known the truth about her vampire mother. She's watched Eve age not at all while Jordan grew older year by year. She's understood the weight of immortality her entire life. And now, the day after her father's funeral, Elana makes an impossible request: "I want you to ...

Some secrets don't stay buried. Especially the ones we're most ashamed of. Marci Dumont didn't move to Winnipeg to fall for a hockey player. She came to sell tractors, escape her family's expectations, and build a life on her own terms. But when a blind date puts her across the table from Tim Shockley—the Jets' intensely private backup goalie—she finds herself drawn to his quiet strength and the shadows she can sense hiding behind his dark eyes. Tim has spent five years building walls. A devastating back injury left him with more than chronic pain—it left him with a secret he's never ...

He's hidden his whole life. Now the people who see him want everything. Dmitri Volkov has spent twenty years burying who he really is. As a Russian hockey player climbing toward the NHL, he learned early that some secrets could destroy a career—and a life. His marriage to Maija is real, their love is solid, and their private arrangement works: what happens outside stays outside. No strings. No feelings. No risk. Then he gets called up to the Minnesota North Stars. And then the team's billionaire owner invites him to dinner. Warren Lindqvist is powerful, silver-haired, and absolutely ...

For three hundred years, Eve Ashford ruled Charlotte's vampire community with an iron will and an empty heart. Then Maya Chen and Jordan Rivers crashed into her existence—two humans who refused to fear her, who saw past the predator to the woman beneath, who offered her something she'd forgotten how to want. Love. Six months later, their unconventional relationship has become the center of Eve's world. But in vampire society, attachment is weakness, and Eve's enemies are watching. The Banking Faction believes her judgment has been compromised. They want reform—or they want her gone. ...

After seven years together, Eve Ashford has everything she never believed possible: two humans who love her without reservation, a hard-won alliance with her former enemies, and a life that proves vampires and humans can be more than predator and prey. Now Maya and Jordan want something more. They want a child. Eve has watched countless human generations rise and fall across three centuries. She knows exactly what it means to love something mortal—and to lose it. But when Maya looks at her with hope in her eyes, Eve finds herself saying yes to a future that terrifies her. Then the threats...

She's held absolute power for two centuries. Now she has to choose: her authority—or her heart. Five years into her relationship with Maya and Jordan, vampire sheriff Eve Ashford faces an impossible reckoning. The humans she loves are aging. Gray threads in Jordan's hair. New lines on Maya's face. Every day brings them closer to an end Eve will have to witness—unless she converts them. But conversion carries a price Eve can't pay. The bond between maker and convert would reshape who they are, and Eve would rather lose them to time than replace them with echoes of the people she loves. ...

She didn't know he was Nashville's hottest hockey star. He wanted to keep it that way. Maggie Callahan isn't waiting for a fairy tale. At twenty-one, she's got a job she's good at, an apartment she can almost afford, and a car that's one breakdown away from the junkyard. She doesn't have time for dreams—she's too busy surviving. Then a quiet, impossibly tall Finnish man starts showing up at her restaurant. He orders what she recommends, tips like he means it, and looks at her like she's the most interesting person in the room. He says he works "behind the scenes" in sports. She doesn't ...

The Zamboni driver. The hockey star. The question that changes everything. Jeana Fishman is an elite defenseman with a decade of dating women behind her. Carl Heater is a former NHL player hiding from his past on an ice resurfacer. Neither is looking for love—especially not with each other. But 5:30 AM has a way of breaking down walls. When their connection becomes impossible to ignore, Jeana faces a choice: protect the identity she's built, or expand it for the man who sees her more clearly than anyone ever has. Her ex calls it betrayal. Her teammates call it confusion. Jeana calls it ...

The league took everything. She built something better. Sloane Eriksen was a two-time All-Star, one of the best forwards in women's professional hockey—until a devastating knee injury ended her career overnight. With a $45,000 salary, no savings, and a league that offered nothing to its broken athletes, she faced an impossible choice. She chose survival. Now, two years later, Sloane has built something no one expected: a thriving OnlyFans career under the name "Harlow," a house paid for in cash, and complete financial independence. She's not ashamed of the work. She's proud of what she ...