Excerpt!
“So much so that I can only blink up at him.”
“Sorry,” he says, easing me fully upright, then carefully letting go, like he's checking I actually want him to. “Didn't mean to startle you. You good?”
“I’m— yes. Thank you.”
He smiles, and my brain immediately stops working like a responsible adult’s.
“Donovan Reid. I'm starting with the team today—was told to swing by medical first for the intake stuff before training.”
“Tess. PT.”
He gives me an easy, unhurried handshake. “Don't apologize. Best part of my morning so far.”
Then, as if the universe is committed to chaos, Rafe appears on the field with that look—the one that says he’s noticed absolutely everything and hates at least one of those things already.
“Montgomery.” Rafe’s raspy voice comes from right behind me, and my heart leaps in my chest. I spin around to face him; he's looking down at me, eyes burning. “We’ve got that session.”
I swallow. “Session?”
“That routine check-up, you know.”
“Oh, right.” I glance at the time on my tablet. “That’s not scheduled for another forty minutes.”
“Coach moved some things around. Figured we'd get ahead of it.” His voice is easy and breezy, but his gaze is telling a very different story. He looks from me to Donovan, and a muscle flutters in his jaw. Is he... jealous?
I look from Rafe to Donovan and realize they are staring each other down, gazes locked, lips in matching thin smiles.
I am standing on a training field while two hot AF soccer stars glare at one another over my head in a blatantly territorial way. My brain is already twenty steps ahead of itself. One of them is steady, easy, and uncomplicated. One of them is reckless and electric and has already gotten hard for me twice in two days.
What would it even be like, that traitorous part of my brain wants to know, to just—
No.
“Sure,” I say, a little unsteady. “Let’s get ahead of it.”
Donovan looks between us, easy and unbothered. “Go ahead. I should find out where they're putting my cleats anyway.”
Rafe looks like he could spit fire. “Wasn’t aware luck was required.”
“It’s always required. Some of us just hide it better than others.”
Then Donovan jogs off, and I am left standing with a very angry-looking Rafe Calder.
My childhood crush is my injured captain… and I’m the physio secretly keeping him on the pitch.
Rafe Calder is everything I learned not to want: flashy, reckless, adored, and far too beautiful. He is also hurt, lying about it, and somehow mine to fix.
I catch the limp no one else sees, then make the dumbest deal of my life. Private rehab, locked rooms, my hands on him daily, and one rule I keep pretending still matters.
At first, he pushes because he hates being handled. Then he listens when pain scares him, lets me see the lonely man under the captain’s armband, and looks ready to break when Donovan Reid makes me smile.
Somewhere between treatment lights, late-night checkups, and one reckless after-hours mistake that turns into more, I fall. Not for the fantasy I used to worship, but for the man who finally stops performing.
Then his injury truth explodes, and protecting him could cost me everything.
Worst of all, loving him might end his career.
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Trading boardrooms for bedrooms (of the fictional kind!), Peyton Lux is now fully dedicated to writing steamy workplace romance that leaves readers utterly satisfied.
Her former life in marketing taught her how to craft compelling narratives – a skill she now devotes entirely to her steamy workplace romance novels.
Peyton lives and breathes romance, infusing her stories with undeniable heat and fiercely earned happily-ever-afters.
