He was the man who helped send her brother to prison. Now the whole world thinks she’s in love with him.

Willa Serrano has spent two years hating Ronan Keane.

He’s Breakwater’s celebrated hockey star, the man whose testimony helped put her brother behind bars—and the man who never told her everything he knew about the night that changed her family forever.

She has every reason to keep her distance.

Unfortunately, Ronan wears number eleven, has a maddening habit of appearing wherever she works, and is far more difficult to ignore than she remembers.

When a charity event throws them together again, one unexpected kiss puts them both in the spotlight. Suddenly, the cameras are watching, sponsors are asking questions, and the community program they’re helping could lose the funding it desperately needs.

Ronan has a solution.

Pretend they’re dating.

Six weeks. Carefully managed appearances. Convincing smiles. No promises. No feelings.

Willa knows better than to trust a man whose silence helped destroy her family. But the arrangement could protect the program, keep the children on the ice, and give her a chance to uncover the truth behind the eleven missing seconds in the evidence that sent her brother away.

So she agrees—with rules of her own.

No controlling her. No rewriting the past. And absolutely no mistaking a staged kiss for something real.

Except Ronan is not the heartless witness she thought she knew. Beneath the captain’s composure is a man haunted by what he failed to question, a man willing to risk his reputation to find the answers he should have sought years ago.

The more they investigate, the more dangerous the truth becomes. Missing evidence. Suspicious financial dealings. Powerful people determined to keep old secrets buried.

And a growing attraction neither can explain away.

Every sharp exchange brings them closer. Every stolen moment makes their arrangement harder to maintain. And every new discovery forces Willa to confront the possibility that the man she blames may not be the only one who betrayed her.

But falling for Ronan could mean trusting the very person she swore never to forgive.

He wants a chance to prove himself. She wants the truth. Neither expected to lose their heart along the way.

A sharp-banter, enemies-to-lovers hockey romance featuring fake dating, forbidden attraction, a guarded hero, a fiercely determined heroine, and a mystery that threatens everything they thought they knew.

Because sometimes the hardest person to forgive is the one you never stopped wanting.

Santiel Merova

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