the fake out

Hazel Hartley is the physiotherapist for the Vancouver Storm, and her ex-boyfriend just became one of her patients. He cheated on her, then got traded onto her team days later. To make sure he understands what he lost, she agrees to pretend to date team captain Rory Miller.

Rory has a reason of his own. Reporters keep painting him as the team's resident playboy, and a public relationship might fix that. He and Hazel already have history: she tutored him in high school, and neither one liked the other much back then. Now he shows up with takeout, teaches her to skate after hours, and remembers things about her she didn't think he'd noticed.

The arrangement is supposed to be simple: appear together, deny anything real, and go back to normal once the story dies down. It stops being simple once Rory starts acting like a man who means it. Hazel has spent years keeping hockey players at arm's length, and she is not prepared for one who won't take the hint.

The Fake Out is the second book in the Vancouver Storm series and reads fine without the first. It is a fake dating, forced proximity romance with a golden retriever hero and a steady build toward a happy ending, on the spicier end of the shelf.