Stolen Shifts

Name: Stolen Shifts
Author: Reese Carrow

by Reese Carrow

Heat 4/5 21 chapters · 4.5 h read

Claire Donovan moved nine hundred miles for a job that was hers, in a city where nobody remembered the wedding that never happened.

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The story

Claire Donovan moved nine hundred miles for a job that was hers, in a city where nobody remembered the wedding that never happened. Two weeks in, she's rebuilding the Milwaukee Ironwoods' travel operation, under the watch of a goalie brother who's made one rule: nobody touches his sister.

Then she finds the captain taping his own shoulder in a hotel corridor at two in the morning, hiding an injury he's carried alone since November. Dane Marsden asks her to keep his secret until April. She says yes, and starts guarding a second secret: how much she likes being the only person he lets see him hurt.

When a sponsor corners her against a copier, Dane crosses the room, puts the man in his place, and tells her flatly it was never her brother's rule. It was her no. A month later, in a locked visitors' room, she tells him what she actually wants, and he stops being careful.

A steamy brother's-best-friend hockey romance about the man who hides everything, and the woman he finally lets in.

Spice map

Where it gets hot

Heat, chapter by chapter. No spoilers, just warning.

The world

Know your way around

Character

Brask: A rookie callup, recalled from the farm club when a winger's appendix forced a trade of one problem for another. His first road trip becomes Claire's first real test.
Claire Donovan: Twenty-nine, and one week into the job of Milwaukee Ironwoods travel coordinator, inherited from a binder with a coffee ring on it and a bus count that didn't add up. She moved nine hundred miles to have a life that's hers, and she means to keep this one without her brother's help.
Dane Marsden: The Ironwoods' captain, a defenseman built like a wall and just as quiet. He reviews Claire's first travel plan in near silence and signs off on it in one visit, which nobody on staff has ever managed.
Finn Donovan: Claire's older brother, the Ironwoods' goalie, and a man who announces his rules to a room full of teammates and means every syllable. Nobody touches my sister, he says once, with the captain standing ten feet away.
Hendricks: The Ironwoods' equipment manager, fifteen years in, and the first person in the building to notice that Dane signed off on a travel plan in a single visit.
Marla: The outgoing travel coordinator, working out six weeks of notice on envelope duty. She hands Claire a binder with half the tabs empty and a sticky note that says ask Hendricks.
Shoemaker: The assistant equipment manager, nine years driving the gear truck with a radio that's been broken for two years. Claire gives him company on the drive to Cleveland and calls the seating problem solved.

Place

Cleveland: The Ironwoods' next opponent, and a road trip nine days out when Claire takes over the binder. A farm-equipment convention has already claimed most of the city's hotel rooms.

Team

Milwaukee Ironwoods: Claire's new team, thirty games into the season when she takes over its travel binder, with a Cleveland road trip nine days out and a storm already forecast for the drive.

Term

The rule: Nobody touches my sister. Finn's one rule, delivered once, in the players' lounge, to the captain standing near enough to hear every word of it.

Spoiler-safe. Only what you learn in chapter 1.