NHL goalie Sebastian Voss can stop a hundred-mile-an-hour slapshot. Convincing a judge he deserves custody of his daughter?
That’s proving considerably harder.
His solution? A fake marriage to the woman he’s already falling for.
For three years, Sebastian has fought to keep the little girl who means everything to him. But a steady stream of headlines portraying him as hockey’s favorite womanizing disaster has left his reputation in tatters and his custody case hanging by a thread.
If Sebastian wants to prove he can offer his daughter the stable home she deserves, he needs to change the narrative.
And Kat Morrison might be his best chance.
She’s smart, beautiful, inexplicably unimpressed by his charm, and the first woman in years who makes Sebastian want something for himself. Asking a woman he barely knows to become his wife is probably insane. Falling for her before she ever says yes is definitely worse.
But if putting a ring on Kat’s finger gives Sebastian a better chance at keeping his daughter, he’ll risk his heart without hesitation.
Kat knows saying yes is a mistake.
Not because she doesn’t love him.
Because she does.
For three years, Kat has been forced to write the lies destroying Sebastian’s reputation, blackmailed into obedience by the one man who holds her brother’s future in his hands.
But now Kat is living in his house, wearing his ring, loving his daughter, and falling deeper for the family she was supposed to help destroy. Somewhere between stolen kisses, tangled sheets, and building a life together, their fake marriage starts feeling dangerously like forever.
Except forever has an expiration date when it’s built on a secret.
And Kat knows that when Sebastian discovers the truth, she may lose the only man she’s ever loved.
Guarded is a spicy contemporary hockey romance featuring fake marriage, a devoted single dad, a morally gray heroine, found family, secret betrayal, and a hero who falls first and hard.
