Bar Down by Jamie K. Schmidt

Off the ice, Marcus Adeyemi plays defense with data. The Charm City Chill’s analytical blue-liner has built an ironclad system of player statistics that’s propelled them into playoff contention. Hockey makes sense. Numbers don’t lie. The ice doesn’t judge.
Then a hacker threatens to leak his confidential player analytics in 72 hours—a power play that would expose vulnerabilities in the team’s strategy and devastating personal secrets buried in the code.
Stephanie Ellis excels in the offensive zone of public relations. As the Chill’s razor-sharp PR director, she’s mastered the art of controlling the narrative, even when players go top shelf with their off-ice antics. Now she’s forced to partner with the one man who consistently puts her in the sin bin of frustration—the maddeningly logical, infuriatingly attractive defenseman who dismisses her carefully crafted media strategy as mere puck handling.
As the shot clock winds down, professional friction ignites into something that burns hotter than a post-whistle scrum. Late-night strategy sessions blur into heated touches and stolen kisses in equipment rooms. But when Marcus discovers the hacker has ties to Stephanie’s carefully buried past in Boston, the man who only trusts analytics faces the ultimate test: Can he risk his heart on a woman who controls stories for a living, or will he retreat to his defensive shell before their chemistry can develop into something game-changing?
Some plays can’t be predicted by any system—and sometimes the most beautiful goal is the one that goes bar down when you least expect it.