A chance meeting. A hunky hockey player. A fake romance. Hardly an ordinary day in the life of Poppy Hart. My days usually consist of agonizing over my failing restaurant, worrying about my mountain of debt and nursing my broken heart. Everything changes when I bump into a man in the coffee shop and claim him as my new boyfriend. To my absolute horror, he turns out to be hockey’s most renowned bad boy, Dallas Burke. To my absolute delight, he goes along with my story. When his no\-nonsense manager and meddling grandmother jump in the picture, they see a win\-win solution for my failing restaurant and Dallas’s less\-than\-stellar reputation. A full\-fledged fake romance complete with contract negotiations, pretend dates and phony PDA. But as I get to know the real Dallas Burke, who is not the man the press says he is, it becomes clear that if this isn’t real. . . someone better tell it to my heart.

A humiliating break\-up leads to an impulsive New Year’s Kiss with a complete stranger. What could possibly go wrong? It’s no secret that I love life. And Dr Pepper. But also, I love a challenge. . . So when the coach of the Chicago Comets gives me the opportunity to help their star player, newly traded to their team, acclimate to life in Chicago, I'm all in. I have to be. After my last job went up in flames, I have something to prove. It turns out that the player, Grayson Hawke, is the rudest, most off\-putting, reclusive guy I’ve ever met. It also turns out that he is the beautiful stranger I kissed on New Year’s Eve. I can do this job. I can do this job. I can do this job. And I can. Really well. I can make Gray’s life easier, show him all the reasons to fall in love with this city, and in the process, hopefully completely forget that the amazing kiss ever happened. How hard can it be? We’re total opposites anyway. I love people . . . and all their stories. Gray loves hockey . . . and nothing else. I love to talk. Gray only stares. I’m happy\-go\-lucky. Gray’s all work and no play. There’s just one problem. The more time I spend with Grayson Hawke, the more I start to see that underneath his bristly, standoffish exterior, he’s nothing like the man everyone thinks he is. And suddenly, all the reasons for keeping my distance, staying professional, and not falling for someone again. . . are impossible to remember.

Sometimes the perfect gift is standing right in front of you. . . You're just too stubborn to see it. I don’t like to make mistakes. Ever. Especially when those mistakes are witnessed by the same person—flirty Finn Holbrook—who can’t seem to leave me alone. Can I really trust him not to tell anyone that the night we met, I tried to kiss him? Or that I fell apart after I got fired from a job I loved? Or that I’m not as strong as I want everyone to think I am? The simple fact that he’s boomeranged back into my orbit after all these years feels like a great, big cosmic joke. Only now he’s a professional hockey player, and while he doesn’t look like the goofy college bartender I met all those years ago, he still acts like one—immature, flirty, and unable to take anything seriously. Which is why I never, ever fall for his game. I know better than to get swept up in romance. I don’t have time. I’m busy making myself irreplaceable in my new job with the Chicago Comets. Work isn’t just something I do, it’s who I am. And while my sisters are constantly on me to slow down and take breaks, those things aren’t on my schedule, so . . . I push on. Do more. Load up my schedule. Overcommit. Until eventually, my stress lands me in the emergency room. The prescription? A month off. No emails. No work. No distractions. Unless you count Finn Holbrook, who keeps showing up at my door, determined to leverage his positive, golden retriever energy to show me there's a great, big world outside that I haven't bothered to explore, most of it covered with white twinkle lights and Christmas decorations. I begrudgingly go along with his grand plans, and little by little, I start to see there really is more to life than work—and more to Finn than flirting. Which makes me wonder . . . how can someone so obviously wrong for me start to feel completely right? And more importantly . . . how do I make those feelings go away? My Merry Mistake is an opposites attract hockey romance with all of the sizzle but none of the steam. It's the third book in the Holidays with Hart series, but can be read as a stand alone.