Hot & Cold

What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay there in this cute contemporary from Phillips (Melting for You). Star NHL player Aiden Anders, captain of the Seattle Spears, wakes up in Sin City next to Lyndsey Stone, best friend to his teammate’s fiancée, and discovers that they drunkenly married the night before. Given the stipulation in Aiden’s father’s will that he can claim his inheritance once he’s married, he asks Lyndsey, who is dodging messages from an obsessive ex-girlfriend, to postpone the inevitable divorce and pretend to be happily married on a trip to Texas to see his family. Faking a relationship soon leads to real intimacy, and after the press and the public learn of the marriage, Aiden’s determined to protect Lyndsey from the fallout. Readers expecting a sports romance will find very little hockey. Instead, Phillips focuses on slowly peeling back the layers of Aiden’s and Lyndsey’s backstories to reveal their vulnerabilities. It’s a sweet enough take on a familiar trope. (May)