Ice and Engines

Vera Cianci runs the garage her father left her and rides with the Lakehead Ravens, a motorcycle club that does charity runs and one annual disastrous camping trip. She is not looking for anything. Theo 'Pike' Pihlaja is a journeyman defenseman on his sixth team in nine years, one bad season away from the end of his career. He is not looking for anything either. Then the club hires him for a charity ride and he drops a borrowed bike in front of two hundred people. Four months later, Vera is pregnant, Theo is on a ten-day road trip, and a dispute with a rival outfit has escalated into a vandalized garage and a police report. Theo wants to buy a house and do the boring thing. Vera wants him to understand that the club wasn't a phase and the garage isn't a compromise. Neither of them is wrong and neither of them is listening. A surprise-baby hockey romance with engines in it — about a man whose career is ending, a woman whose life is already full, and the spreadsheet that saves them both.