Playing for Keeps

I have one job between the pipes as the rookie goalie for the Pittsburgh Fury: keep my eye on the puck and prove I belong in the pros.

Amid my doubts about living up to my family’s hockey legacy, Vegas happens. 

A pre-season game leads to a wild night with a stunning cellist searching for her own sound. One drunken wedding later, we're headline news—and not the good kind.

My new wife moves to Pittsburgh to help maintain my image, but there's nothing fake about the way her music breaks down my defenses or how perfectly she fits with my rowdy family. While I fight for my spot on the ice, she's discovering her path away from her controlling family.

But when her father starts feeding rumors to the press and my career hangs in the balance, we'll have to decide if what started as a reckless gamble could become our biggest win.

Playing for Keeps is a sizzling sports romance by the USA Today bestselling author of the Stag Brothers series.

There’s a boob in my hand. I’m pretty sure of it. My head is absolutely killing me and I know opening my eyes will mean agony, but there’s a warm globe of jiggly goodness in my hand. I give it a squeeze to double check. Yes, definitely a boob. 

But that means … there’s a woman in my bed with me. I open my eyes. Sun streams through the sheer inner curtains of the hotel room, which means I fell into bed without the wherewithal to close the heavy drapes. 

I recover from the sun blindness and tilt my head just enough to see the lush, white body sprawled over mine. A thick thigh straddles my hairy legs—hers is smooth and bright in comparison. She isn’t wearing pants but appears to have panties on. Okay, so we probably didn’t bone. That’s good.

Good lord, look at that ass, though. Why isn’t my hand squeezing that? 

I work my eyes up her body further to the long tank top, rounded swell of belly pressed against mine. And then the boob, which has escaped over the neck of her tank top, into my palm. I can’t see this woman’s face because it’s buried in my armpit, but a mess of brown curls slides along her back, my side, the entire bed. 

My left arm is tucked under her, and I realize it’s asleep. Way, way asleep. I can’t even move my fingers. 

I groan and disentangle myself, reluctantly letting go of the boob. It’s an amazing boob. I’d pat it in appreciation if my brain weren’t coming on board and reminding me that I have no idea where the hell I am, what happened, or who is in this bed with me. 

Once I’m free from this goddess beside me, I sit up and manually work the fingers of my left hand, with my right. Blood starts to flow again and it hurts as the sensation returns to my fingers and wrist. This better not mess up my game—wait. I had a game yesterday. 

Shit. Yesterday was my professional debut. Preseason. Vegas. I groan. We lost by three.

The groan wakes the goddess and she rolls over, then notices her boob flapping in the air conditioning and yelps, tucking it inside the tank top. I stare as she sits up. This woman is flawless. Absolutely captivating. She has huge, brown eyes, long lashes, bright pink pouty lips, and a round face flushed from sleeping against my furnace of a body. I know her…I think.

“What happened?” She blinks at me and rubs her eyes, like maybe I’m imaginary. We stare at one another for a few beats. I’m assuming she, too, is hungover from whatever happened after the Fury lost. I bring my hands up to rub my eyes and something catches my eye on my left hand. 

I’m wearing a black rubber ring on a very significant finger. I glance at the goddess. She’s got a bright purple ring on the same digit. 

Fully awake now, I leap out of bed, looking around for my pants—I apparently slept in just a pair of boxers. I spy all my clothes in a heap on the floor beside the round table inside the door to the room. There are all the usual things on a hotel table—weird lamp with switches that take forever to figure out, alarm clock, note pad. But … there’s also a pile of paperwork and a small bouquet of flowers. 

My partner in apparent crime is also on her feet, tugging on dark jeans that hug her curves almost enough to distract me from the situation at hand. She pulls a sweater over her head and leans toward the paper. Squinting, she reads and looks up at me. “Gunnar Stag?”

I nod. 

“Um … I think maybe we got married?”

I’m across the room in one leap, snatching the paper from her hand. Sure enough, she holds a marriage certificate, uniting me in legally binding matrimony to Emerson Saltzer. I stand frozen in place, trying to wrap my hungover brain around all of this when I hear a persistent buzzing. My phone.

I groan, bend over, and pick it up from under a pile of socks. It’s my agent. I wince and press the green icon to answer. Brian’s voice shrieks through the phone, as loud as if I were broadcasting him on arena speakers. “G Stag, where the hell are you? We were supposed to have breakfast with the brand reps. Do you or do you not want me to make you rich?”

Emerson…my apparent wife…purses her lips as I stare at the phone in my hand. Brian continues, yelling, “Do you know what hoops I jumped through to get you on the list as an ambassador for that Children’s Hospital? What did I tell you—kids and puppies, Gunnar. Oy vey, I hate Vegas. G Stag, are you there? Can you hear me?”

I clear my throat. “Loud and clear, Brian.”

“Then why the fuck are you not in your hotel room? Why am I standing in a pile of hockey tape by a G Stag duffel bag and an empty bed?”

I scratch at the back of my neck, trying to figure out what to say to Brian. He represents a lot of the athletes in my family. He can’t just call us by our last name, and I used to like how my brothers and I were G Stag, A Stag, and T Stag. Today it sounds ominous. 

“Hello? Gunnar? Talk to me, kid. What did you do?”

“Well, here’s the thing.” I sit in the chair by the table with the damning paperwork. 

“Aw hell.” I hear Brian shake a bottle of something—probably ibuprofen or antacid. I wonder if he’d bring me some. “Out with it. I’m calling my clean-up crew the instant we hang up. What did you do?”

I glance at Emerson, who is now fully dressed, including socks and Chucks, standing by the table with her hand on a giant black case of some sort. An instrument? I shake my head. “Brian, I think I got married last night.”