ICED RHYTHMS: Marked By The Hockey Alpha's obsession
She gave him five years of her life.
Her education. Her passion. Her family name. Everything she had and everything she was — laid down piece by piece at the altar of a man and his ambitions, because she loved him and she believed in them.
But the moment he reached the top, he discarded her without a second glance and proposed to another woman on international live television.
So Mia did the only reasonable thing a heartbroken, furious woman could do.
She found a bar. She found a stranger. She found her way into a hotel room and completely out of her mind for one reckless, consequence-free night.
Then he tried to pay her afterward.
She paid him back. Every bill. Then she slapped him clean across the face and walked out without looking back.
She thought that was the end of it.
It wasn't even close.
Because the stranger she spent the night with turned out to be Cole Ashford — new captain of the Chicago Vortex, the most infuriating man she had ever encountered, and the person sitting behind the interview table when she walked in the very next morning with her whole future on the line.
He wants her. He said so plainly, across a professional table, without a single apology for the honesty of it.
She told him exactly where he could put that.
But Cole Ashford is not a man who lets go of what he wants. And somewhere between the fury and the history and the secret she has spent years running from, Mia is beginning to wonder if the universe placed him in her path for a reason.
Or if she is simply foolish enough to make the same mistake twice.