Penalty for Falling: A Grumpy Single Dad Hockey Player and Nanny Romance

My name is Poppy Lane. I am a twenty-six-year-old former figure skater with a rescued hamster, a broken suitcase wheel, and a secret mission that could burn everything to the ground.Eight years ago, a powerful skating coach named Dmitri Vanek destroyed my career, my confidence, and my seventeen-year-old sense of self. Now he is walking into a Chicago skating academy where children train five days a week, carrying his warm smile and his spotless reputation like weapons. Nobody is stopping him.So I stopped him myself. I took a nanny job in the home of Cole Mercer, NHL defenseman, grumpy single father, and the most infuriatingly private man in professional hockey, specifically because his seven-year-old daughter was enrolled in that academy. Six weeks. Gather evidence. Protect the children. Leave quietly.That was the plan.The plan did not include Maisie, who held my hand in the dark on night three and made my mission suddenly, devastatingly personal. It did not include Cole, who argued with me about contract clauses, bought my tea brand without telling me, and moved over on a couch without asking why I needed the space.It did not include falling."e;I can't promise I'll be easy,"e; he told me."e;I know,"e; I said.What I did not say: I was keeping secrets that could make him send me away. What I did not know: he was already keeping one of his own, folded inside his late wife's scrapbook on a high shelf, with my name circled in her handwriting.The clock was running. The enemy was watching. The man I was not supposed to love was two walls away every night.Penalty for falling? You have to decide if staying is worth the risk.This is me deciding.