Brick Wall #30

The league called him the Brick Wall.
Tina Pappas knew better.
The dangerous part was not how hard he was to get past.
It was how safe he made it feel to stay.

Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Kristen Hope Mazzola returns to the ice with the next installment in her Shots on Goal: MN Frosthawks series - where love does not erase the past, and moving forward might be the bravest play of all.

Harry Vestergaard has built an entire career out of being impossible to get through.

The Minnesota Frosthawks' veteran goalie is calm in the crease, brutal under pressure, and stubborn enough to make the whole league regret taking a shot at him. But his body is starting to betray him. His career is closer to the end than the beginning. And for the first time in his life, Harry is not sure what comes next when the game stops loving him back.

Then he meets Konstantina Pappas.

A second-grade teacher. A widow. A single mom doing her best to raise a little boy who is terrified that moving forward means forgetting the father he lost.

Tina is not looking for a love story.
She already had one.
She had the husband. The family. The forever.

But Harry is not easy to dismiss. He is steady when he should be intimidating. Gentle when no one is watching. Patient with Tina's heart and careful with her son's. And when seven-year-old Theo starts letting Harry into his small, carefully built world of LEGOs, firehouse patches, and memories he is scared to lose, Tina realizes the most dangerous thing about Harry Vestergaard is not how hard he is to get past.

It is how safe he makes it feel to stay.

Harry knows he cannot replace the man Tina loved.
He would never try.

But loving Tina means learning there might be life after loss.
Loving Theo means understanding some saves do not happen on the ice.
And loving them both might be the one thing that finally teaches the Frosthawks' brick wall how to let something in.

Brick Wall #30 features:
Widowed single mom romance
Aging goalie hero
Second-grade teacher heroine
Instant attraction with emotional depth
Found family
Soft, steady love after loss
A little boy who slowly trusts
A hero who never tries to replace the man who came before him
And one elderly profanity parrot who absolutely should not be trusted in public