[Love of the Game 02] • Breaking the Ice

This erotic romance contains explicit language and explicit sexual situations. Please do not read this book if these things offend you.

Diesel LeBlanc notices MacKenzie Rhodes ice-skating on a pond in their hometown and decides he has to have her. He makes no secret of his desire – or the casual nature of it. He finally gets what he wants…on her terms…and heads off to live the fabulous life of a professional hockey player.

Years later, a chance meeting brings them together again and Diesel realizes she’s the one woman he was never able to forget. He’s ready to prove that he can be a man worthy of her heart.

Is she ready to trust him with the life she’s built?

Diesel and Kenzie’s story is the first novella in my collection “Love of the Game” – a four-part series of stand-alone novellas that feature a lead character involved in professional sports.

These are not “sports stories” with an erotic romance twist. They are erotic romances with a character who happens to be an athlete. I hope you like reading them because they were a lot of fun to write!

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter Two:

Two nights before Diesel was due to head back to school, he was leaving the bar…frustrated again. MacKenzie had slipped out again, waiting until he was distracted. He was thinking he’d never been so tense for a woman in his life when he saw her truck on the side of the road with the hood up.

He pulled up alongside and watched her go over the engine with a flashlight.

Placing her palms on the front of the truck, her eyes came up slowly, and she shook her head. He watched her take a deep breath as she approached the passenger window.

“Yes, Diesel?” Her expression made it impossible to tell what she was thinking.

“What happened?”

“Looks like a broken distributor cap.” She looked at her feet with her hands on her hips. “I don’t suppose you have an extra one in your truck?” He shook his head. “Of course not.”

“If I did, could you change it?” he asked jokingly.

“Who the hell do you think made sure my brothers and sisters got to school every damn day? Yeah, I could change it out. Alright, well, thanks for stopping. Later.”

Kenzie stepped back from Diesel’s vehicle, climbed into the cab of hers, closed the door, and put the hazards on. As he watched, she laid down on the seat.

What the hell was she doing?

He got out and knocked on her window. She yelled, “I’m fine. Go away, Diesel.”

He opened the door and bodily pulled her from the cab. “If you think I’m leaving you stranded on the side of the road in the middle of the fucking night, you have another thing coming, MacKenzie.”

He set her on her feet and asked her what she needed out of the cab. With gritted teeth, she reached past him and grabbed a backpack and her jacket.

Diesel locked her doors and opened his passenger door, motioning for her to get in.

She stared at him for a long moment and he could see her frustration. “Damn it, Diesel.”

MacKenzie got in and buckled up. She tracked him in the headlights as he walked around the front of his truck. Torn, as she always was when it came to this particular man.

When he climbed in, he smiled gently. “Where to?”

She waited a long time to answer him, considering so many things he wouldn’t understand.