Same Time Next Year

Britta waits tables at Sluggers, the Bridgeport bar where the Bandits, the local hockey team, spend their nights. Her half brother plays for them, so she keeps one firm rule: she never dates a player.

Sumner Mayfield is a Canadian defenseman who is close to reaching the NHL. His work visa runs out, and the only way to stay in Bridgeport is to marry an American. On New Year's Eve the team leans on Britta to take that role.

The marriage is a sham that lasts a full year, and keeping up the act gets harder as the months pass. Sumner has reasons of his own for wanting to stay. Britta has to decide whether she can share a life with him for twelve months and keep her heart out of it.

A short Amazon Original Stories novella of about 144 pages, it pairs a fake-marriage romance with a hockey setting and a comic, steamy tone, and it reads easily in one sitting. The question it turns on is whether a rule made to protect Britta can survive a year at Sumner's side.