Accidentally Dating Hockey’s Ice King
Beatrix Holloway has always been the dependable one. For four long years, she stood beside her boyfriend, Julian, sacrificing everything to help him build his dream. When his company finally lands a massive sponsorship deal, she spends her last savings on an engagement ring, hoping to surprise him.
Instead, she catches him in bed with the investor's daughter.
Publicly humiliated and mocked for her plus-size figure, Beatrix runs away believing she's lost everything. But a chance encounter with eight-year-old Ivy Ashcombe changes her life forever.
"I want you to be my daddy's girlfriend."
Beatrix laughs it off—until Ivy announces to an entire crowd that she's found her new mommy.
Now the internet believes Beatrix is secretly involved with Nikolai Ashcombe, the billionaire owner of the country's biggest hockey team and the cold, intimidating man known as the Ice King. To protect his daughter and put an end to the rumors, Nikolai offers Beatrix a contract she never saw coming.
Beatrix thinks it's only a business deal.
She never expects Ivy to become a determined matchmaker, her cruel sister to set her sights on her fake billionaire boyfriend, or the terrifying Ice King to look at her plus-size body like she's the only woman he's ever wanted.
Baca
Chapter: Chapter 29 — An Offer for ArthurPOV: SERENAArthur Ashcombe kept an office downtown that looked more like a museum than a workplace, with dark wood, old paintings, and a silence so complete it made me want to whisper the moment I walked through the door.Everything in the room looked older than me, and probably older than my mother too: heavy furniture and framed photographs of men who all seemed to share the same cold, assessing eyes that Arthur himself was currently aiming at us.Julian had arranged the meeting through an old contact from his agency days, but it was clear the moment Arthur's assistant showed us in that we were the ones asking for a favor, not the other way around.We had waited nearly twenty minutes in a small anteroom before being called in, long enough for me to wonder whether he was making us wait simply to establish who held the power in this arrangement.Arthur didn’t stand when we entered. He merely gestured to the two chairs across from his desk and waited, unhurried, for one of us to expla
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-15
Chapter: Chapter 28 — The Access LogPOV: NIKOLAII didn’t have my security team pull the footage. I went straight to the server room myself, late at night, and sat down at the terminal to watch it with my own eyes.By 11 p.m., the building felt empty. Most residents were asleep; hallways quiet except for the occasional porter’s footsteps somewhere above.My head of security offered twice to handle it in the morning, spare me the trouble, and summarize the findings in a report I could read over coffee.I declined both times. Some things didn’t belong in a summary written by someone else. This was one of them.I had built my entire career on delegating whatever I could, trusting my team to handle problems so I could focus on the ones only I could solve. This did not feel like a problem I was willing to hand to anyone else, not with Beatrix sitting beside me, waiting for an answer.She kept her arms wrapped around herself against the chill of the server room, silent and focused like she always gets when she’s bracing for s
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-12
Chapter: Chapter 27 — A Drawer Not Quite ClosedPOV: BEATRIXThe comfort of being home did not last long.I noticed the pillow first. It sat on the couch at an angle that didn’t match how I’d left it that morning, propped against the armrest instead of centered where I always kept it.It was such a small thing that I almost did not notice it at all, the kind of detail a person sees without really deciding to. I picked it up and set it back the way I preferred, telling myself all the while that I was being foolish, that a pillow's position meant absolutely nothing in a household with staff coming and going throughout the week.After that, I walked slowly through the rest of the apartment, checking each room as I would after a storm, looking for anything else that seemed even slightly wrong.Nothing else caught my attention right away. Everything else looked exactly as I had left it that morning.Then I passed the office on my way to change out of my shoes, and something else caught my eye through the half-open door.The bottom drawe
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-09
Chapter: Chapter 26 — The Real EvictionPOV: BEATRIXThe café on Fifth hadn’t changed in years. The same chipped tables, the same bell above the door, and the same faint smell of burnt coffee that never quite faded, no matter how often they cleaned the machines.A different waitress was behind the counter now, someone I didn’t recognize, though the same faded photographs of the neighborhood still hung crooked on the wall beside the register.My mother and I used to come here when I was little, back before either of us knew what the other would become. I remembered sitting in this same booth once, maybe when I was eight, sharing a slice of cake because we could not afford two. That felt like a different lifetime now, a different version of both of us.She was already seated when I arrived, a folder pressed flat against the table in front of her, both hands resting on it as if she were afraid it might blow away. She looked smaller than I remembered, dressed plainly, without the careful styling she usually wore whenever she w
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-08
Chapter: Chapter 25 — The Unlocked DrawerPOV: SERENAThe penthouse was quieter than I expected. There was no staff moving through the halls, and the only sound was the low hum of the air conditioning and my own heartbeat, so loud I could feel it in my throat.I gave myself a mental countdown as I moved through the hallway. Thirty minutes, maybe forty if I was careful and lucky in equal measure. Long enough to find what I needed. Not long enough to relax, even slightly.I knew where his office was. Beatrix had mentioned it once, in passing, months ago, back when she still called me to complain about her new life instead of avoiding my calls.Down the hall, past the kitchen, second door on the left.I didn't let myself think too hard about why I still remembered a detail like that. I used to be the sister she called first about everything—boy trouble, work drama, whatever small crisis needed to be talked through before she could actually deal with it.Now she called Maya, some friend from her old job I'd never even met, or wor
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-04
Chapter: Chapter 24 — The Phone CallPOV: BEATRIXThe call came in at ten in the morning, while I was still finishing my coffee at the kitchen counter. Ivy was already at school, and the apartment had that particular quiet it only gets in the middle of a weekday, too big for the few of us actually there.I almost didn't answer. Seeing my mother's name on the screen usually meant bracing myself for something, a guilt trip, a demand, or some fresh performance designed to get exactly what she wanted from me.I let it ring twice before picking up, already tired. I answered anyway, because some childhood habits never fully go away, the reflex to pick up no matter how much you've told yourself you wouldn't."Beatrix." Her voice cracked on my name before she'd even finished saying it. "Beatrix, please, I need your help."This didn't sound like her usual crying. Her usual crying had a rhythm to it, practiced, building at exactly the right moments for maximum effect. This was messier. Ragged. The crying that happens when someone
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-03
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