Hard in the Crease

An Ice Hockey Romance

By: Joan Amanda Raymond

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

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 told anyone. Not his teammates. Not his family. Not the women who've shared his bed. He's learned to hide, to deflect, to keep the most intimate parts of himself locked away where no one can see what he's really ashamed of.

But Marci sees him in ways no one else does. And as their connection deepens from cautious dates to whispered confessions to nights that leave them both breathless, Tim starts to believe he might finally have something real.

Then she discovers what he's been hiding.

Now Tim faces the hardest choice of his life: let her walk away, or trust her with the truth about his body and pray she doesn't see him as broken.

Hard in the Crease is a steamy contemporary romance about shame, intimacy, and what happens when the person you love sees the parts of yourself you never wanted anyone to find—and chooses to stay anyway.

This novel contains explicit sexual content, mature themes, and a hero who learns that vulnerability is the ultimate act of courage.