Playing Dirty

The first time Colt Lane walks into her bakery, he’s supposed to smile for photos, sign a few jerseys, and get out before the sugar crash hits.

Instead, the Snow Leopards’ most arrogant forward leans against Piper’s counter, eyes on her flour-dusted hands, and murmurs that he’d happily spend hours on his knees just to make her fall apart.

Piper laughs it off. She has to. She’s thirty-four, a single mom, and her body has been on silent mode for years—ever since sex became another task squeezed between nap schedules and the fear of waking a light-sleeping toddler. She’s built a life where the only things that rise on command are her sourdough loaves, and she’s convinced herself that’s enough.

Then the team slaps Colt with concussion protocol and a new job: official face of the Snow Leopards’ partnership with her bakery. Now he’s in her kitchen every morning, trading chirps with the oven timer, sneaking extra cookies to her ten-year-old, and watching Piper like she’s the only thing in the room worth wanting.

Colt talks dirty and worships cleaner. He takes his time. He listens. He praises every gasp and shiver until Piper realizes how badly she’s missed the sound of her own, uninhibited need.

But the rink is waiting for him, bright and loud and hungry. Piper’s world is smaller—school runs, payroll, a daughter who’s already halfway in love with the man who was meant to be temporary.

When the future she ordered collides with the future she never let herself imagine, Piper has to choose which rules to keep, which to shatter, and whether one reckless hockey player is worth burning down the careful life she baked from scratch.

Playing Dirty is a filthy-sweet, high-heat small-town sports romance packed with praise, patience, bakery mishaps, a scene-stealing ten-year-old, and a love that proves some risks are worth every last crumb of chaos.