My Best Bet by S.C. Kate

Exiting professional figure skating after a decade of touring, Meredith Bennett settles in Chicago to start a coaching career… and to start a life, one with a future.

At her new rink, she’s required to give trial lessons before taking on students. But after her first lesson with a little girl named Lucy, she gets off the ice to talk to the parents, just to get a sucker punch from the past.
Because the man that Lucy just ran up to… the man that she just called “dad”…
Is the only guy she ever loved.
And now he’s clenching his jaw and handing her a crisp $100 bill.
Looking down at it, her heart sinks through the lobby’s rubber floor at the realization of what it means… And now she’s not quite sure she picked the right place to start over.

_____

NHL player Colt Conover didn’t want his 5-year-old daughter, Lucy, anywhere near a rink.
But after a couple run-ins with elementary school bullies leaves her confidence in tatters, he needs to do something.
And then he remembers the way an old flame used to talk about figure skating, the way she’d light up when explaining it to him. She said it was the only place she felt strong, and special, and fully herself… And he wants that for his daughter.
It’s just ironic that the person who said that about figure skating, the person Colt was thinking of when he signed Lucy up for the lesson… is the same person currently standing on the ice with her, giving her instruction.
It’s the girl he swore that he’d marry one day– they even made a bet on it. He could still hear his young self saying it– 100 bucks says I marry Meredith Bennett.
It was a real bet.
A bet he lost, and he’s still not quite sure how…
But one sure thing about Colt Conover is that he’s never been good at losing.