The first time I saw Olivia Sullivan, I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and my heart fell straight at her feet.
Five minutes later I realized who she was.
My best friend's little sister.
A college student.
A woman ten years my junior who probably wants little to do with a sometimes lonely, football-obsessed gamer nerd in his thirties still looking for a place to call home.
For three years, my secret feelings for Olivia have only grown as our close family connections keep us in each other's proximity, even though she's never given me any sign that she wants what I do.
A life. A future. Everything. With her.
Except one night, an unexpected snowstorm and a middle of the night cookie baking kitchen rendezvous make me think that maybe my feelings for Olivia aren't so one-sided after all.
With a relationship we're keeping secret from Olivia's brother and Olivia about to leave the country for six months right after the holidays, we have a lot stacked against us.
But now that I know what it's like to have her by my side, nothing else matters but that we belong to each other, forever and until the end of time.
**Merrily Us is a Steel City Legacy prequel novella. It is a guaranteed HEA and can be read as a complete standalone**
Since my wife died ten years ago my life has revolved around two things: football and my kids.
Then I met a girl in a bar and one single night changed everything. For six hours I wasn't the veteran Pittsburgh Renegades offensive linemen or single dad of two. I was just a man, and it felt like she was the one I had been waiting for.
But when morning came I woke up to an empty bed, the girl of my literal dreams nowhere to be found.
Until I walk into work the next day and there she is.
Maddy Wright, Director of Sports Psychology for the Renegades and niece of the team's General Manager, is the last woman on earth I should want, but she's the one women I can't stay away from.
With my position on the team and her career on the line, a relationship is a terrible idea. But the draw to each other is too strong, the way she fits into my little family undeniable, our chemistry impossible to ignore.
We shouldn't need each other like this when being together could ruin everything we've both worked for. I shouldn't feel like I can't breathe without her when dating in secret is our only choice.
With our careers in the crosshairs, forever is the last word that should be on my mind. But with my heart utterly lost to Maddy, I'll stop at nothing to make sure that forever is exactly what we get. Together.
As starting quarterback of the Renegades, Pittsburgh’s NFL team, I have it all. The city I love. The game I love. A Super Bowl ring. Everything I’ve ever wanted.
But even with all that, I still feel like I’m missing someone to share it with.
On a mission to find my person, I join an anonymous dating app, hoping it will bring me the girl I can call mine. And it does. At least, I thought so.
But when my lifelong best friend Sophie Sullivan moves into my house temporarily, seeing her every morning and coming home to her every night has me feeling things I didn’t expect. Big things. Important things. Way more than friendship things. Maybe even…love things.
Falling for two women is confusing, until I realize that Sophie is the anonymous girl from the app, and I set out on a mission to make her fall for me – to show her that the only future that makes any sense at all is the one where we spend it by each other’s sides.
We may have started off as best friends, but loving Sophie is as easy as breathing and I’m determined to give her everything. To show her that we were always supposed to belong to each other. That she was always meant to be mine.