Played (Paperback)

USA Today bestselling author Naima Simone heats up the page with intensity and wit in this romance between a pro hockey player and a firefighter, both struggling to move on from the past.

Being a firefighter isn’t easy. Especially for a Black woman. Working with family helps a little. But when somebody from your company doesn’t come back from a call, it’s brutal―as in, “How’m I supposed to go on?” brutal.

And one death took me to a really dark place.

A year later, I’m at the Pirates’ hockey training facility. Just another day on the job. Until I find a charred journal. I look inside for the owner’s name, but the words on the page punch me in the gut. It’s like reading my own thoughts. Reliving my own pain.

The journal belongs to Solomon Young, left-winger for the Pirates―a father and widower. When I return it, I’m racked with guilt for the invasion of privacy. The look Solomon gives me is cold as ice.

But damn if that man isn’t hot as hell.

Now he’s stuck in my brain. And fate seems intent on making us face off.

First published in 2009, USA Today bestselling author Naima Simone loves writing sizzling romances with heart, a touch of humor, and snark. Her books have been featured in the Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly, and her style has been described as balancing “crackling, electric love scenes with exquisitely rendered characters caught in emotional turmoil.”

Naima is wife to Superman―or his non-Kryptonian, less bulletproof equivalent―and mother to the most awesome kids ever. They all live in perfect, sometimes domestically challenged bliss in the southern United States.