Caroline:

I loved him, but he wasn’t the love of my life.

My husband died too young, too suddenly, too tragically. I was unprepared with no education, no job skills, and no future plans. When a DNA test reveals my twins' true parentage, I have no choice but to do the right thing. I turn to the one man who’d turned his back on me all those years ago.

I'd been shut out from his life, and I'd shut him out from mine. Can two strangers make a family? Do we have what it takes to forgive and move on?

To Tera, my fabulous editor, who always does her best to make my books better.

While starting a new series is exhilarating and motivating, it’s also daunting and scary. An author never truly knows how a series will be received by their readers. All we can do is write the best book we can and hope and pray it hits the mark.

“The Scoring Series” is a continuation of the Seattle Sockeyes®. Shutout takes place the season following the team’s championship season. These are the young guys on the team, many of them rookies. I hope you’ll follow their stories as they fight to score in professional hockey, life, and love.

Thank you for following me on this journey. It’s been an incredible ride so far, and I hope we’ll be together for many years to come.

Prologue

Two Years Prior

~~Easton~~

Being a stalker was new to me, but I was a quick learner.

I wasn’t able to find her on social media. Either she didn’t have a profile or she’d locked it down, which wouldn’t be unusual for a cautious single woman who always thought stuff through rather than flying by the seat of her pants like I had the tendency to do.

Once I’d made my decision, I’d tracked Caroline down via an online service and paid forty dollars to get her address.

I hadn’t seen her in years.

I’d never been a huge hookup guy. More of a guy who dated a woman exclusively. I’d been dating the same woman all through my first few years of college, and we’d recently broken up. The split had been mutual. The relationship had run its course. I found myself looking for something I’d lost, something I’d walked away from, and wondering what could have been.

I guess I was feeling melancholy.

Hockey had always been enough for me, but lately it wasn’t. I was searching for that elusive thing called happiness, and eventually I turned to Caroline.

Chalk it all up to loneliness.

Caroline and I had enjoyed each other for a couple months when we were both teens. I’d been in Chicago for a summer hockey program taught by a well-known, highly respected former professional player. She’d just finished high school one year early and was working at the rink where I was skating.

I’d ended it and most likely broken her heart. I hadn’t given her much thought until lately. Oh, there’d been moments when she’d invaded my sleep or crept into my daydreams. We were both older, hopefully wiser, and I was curious what’d happened to her.