The Risk

**By Elle Kennedy**

**Estimated Reading Time:** 18 minutes

**What This Story Explores:** The collision between ambition and desire, the weight of family secrets, and the terrifying moment when pretending to feel nothing becomes impossible because you feel everything.

**Who This Book Is For:** Readers who love sharp banter, slow-burn chemistry, hockey romance with actual stakes, and heroines who refuse to shrink themselves to fit anyone's expectations.

Brenna Jensen has spent her entire life inside the world of hockey. Her father coaches the Briar University men's team. Her childhood was spent in rinks, locker rooms, and the particular silence of a house where grief and disappointment learned to share space. She knows the game better than most of the men who play it, and she wants a career in sports journalism, not as a sideline reporter who asks about feelings, but as an analyst who actually understands the sport. The problem is that the men who run sports media do not see her that way. Ed Mulder, an executive at HockeyNet, calls her the wrong name, browses fantasy hockey during her interview, and treats her ambition like a cute hobby. When he shows a flicker of interest, it is not in Brenna at all. It is in Jake Connelly, the captain of Harvard's hockey team, a future NHL draft pick, and the rival her father's team is about to face in the conference finals. So Brenna does something desperate. She tells Mulder that Jake Connelly is her boyfriend. The lie is absurd. Jake is arrogant, infuriating, and entirely too aware of his own effect on people. He is also the last person on earth who would agree to help her. Except he does agree, with a condition that makes her skin prickle: for every fake date she asks of him, he wants a real one. What follows is a story about two people who have built their identities around control, competition, and the refusal to need anyone. Brenna has spent five years hiding a secret that fractured her relationship with her father. Jake has spent his entire life preparing for a future that leaves no room for distraction. Neither of them is looking for love. Neither of them is prepared for what happens when the pretending stops. Elle Kennedy writes romance with a particular kind of energy: fast, funny, and unafraid of heat, but also willing to sit inside genuine pain. The Risk is the second book in the Briar U series, but it stands alone as a complete story. It is set in the same world as Kennedy's earlier Off-Campus series, a world of college hockey, fierce rivalries, and friendships that matter as much as romance. The tone is playful…