Meet Gideon King & Poppy Monroe

 Meet Gideon & Poppy: The Couple Behind Breaking the Ice

There are some characters who politely introduce themselves while you're writing.

And then there are characters like Gideon King and Poppy Monroe, who show up, start arguing, make questionable decisions, and apparently expect you to keep up.

Guess which kind I got with Breaking the Ice. 😂

Since we're getting closer to release, I thought it was time to properly introduce the two people at the center of this story.

And trust me, "properly" is doing a lot of work here.

Meet Gideon King

Gideon King is one of the NHL's premier goalies, known as the "Brick Wall."

He's private. Protective. Stubborn. Controlled.

And if you ask certain people, his emotional range occasionally resembles that of a goalpost—which, frankly, isn't entirely inaccurate. The people closest to him know there's considerably more happening beneath the surface than Gideon lets anyone see. 

He's spent years learning how to handle pressure. On the ice, hesitation isn't an option. You see the puck, track it, and move.

People are a little more complicated.

Especially when one very determined reporter walks into his life already convinced she knows exactly who he is.

Gideon's used to people seeing the hockey player. The reputation. The headlines. The Wall.

Poppy doesn't just challenge the image.

She wants to tear it apart.

And Gideon?

He decides to let her try.

Meet Poppy Monroe

Poppy Monroe is a reporter who asks questions people would probably prefer she didn't.

She's determined, fearless, curious, stubborn, and extremely difficult to intimidate.

Which is useful when the man standing on the other side of those questions is a very large NHL goalie who isn't particularly thrilled to see you. 

Poppy enters Gideon's world believing she already knows the truth about him.

She has reasons for believing it, too.

As far as she's concerned, Gideon King isn't the beloved hockey star everyone thinks he is, and she's prepared to expose what she believes is hiding underneath the carefully controlled public image.

There's just one problem.

The closer she gets to the real Gideon, the harder it becomes to make what she's discovering fit the story she thought she knew.

And Poppy is a reporter.

When the pieces don't fit, she can't leave them alone.

Forty-Eight Hours. No PR. No Scripts. No Masks.

This is where writing these two became ridiculously fun.

Gideon doesn't convince Poppy to trust him.

Instead, he gives her access.

Forty-eight hours.

She can watch him. Question him. Dig into his life and decide for herself whether the man standing in front of her matches the one she's already convicted in her mind.

Which is obviously an excellent idea when two people already have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever.

Ahem.

Moving on.

What starts as confrontation becomes something much more complicated as Poppy begins asking different questions and Gideon realizes the reporter trying to dismantle his reputation might also be one of the few people willing to look beyond it.

And neither one of them is particularly happy about the attraction developing along the way.

Naturally. 

Why I Love Them Together

What I love most about Gideon and Poppy isn't simply that they clash.

It's why they clash.

Poppy wants the truth.

Gideon wants her to stop deciding what that truth is before she has all the facts.

She pushes.

He pushes back.

They're both stubborn enough to make everything approximately 700% more difficult than necessary.

But underneath all of that friction are two people who have their own reasons for being careful about who they trust.

That's what made their relationship so much fun for me to write.

The attraction is there, obviously. This is a spicy romance. I'm not going to pretend everyone keeps their hands politely to themselves. 

But I wanted more than physical chemistry between them.

I wanted the questions.

The suspicion.

The moments when one of them realizes something about the other doesn't fit the version they've created in their head.

And that uncomfortable little moment when "I know exactly who you are" starts becoming "Maybe I don't know you at all."

That's where Gideon and Poppy really came alive for me.

And Then There's the Mystery...

Because Breaking the Ice isn't only about whether Poppy and Gideon can stop arguing long enough to admit what's happening between them.

There's a question sitting underneath their entire relationship:

What if the story Poppy believes isn't the real story?

Gideon insists she's wrong.

Poppy has every reason to believe she's right.

And finding the truth means pulling on a thread that becomes much bigger than either of them expected.

That's about as much as I'm saying.

I know things.

You don't.

And I intend to keep it that way until you read the book. 

Meet Them November 30

Breaking the Ice releases November 30, and I am getting dangerously close to the point where keeping everything to myself becomes impossible.

Gideon and Poppy have been living in my head for a very long time.

Now you finally get to meet them.

A stubborn reporter. A guarded NHL goalie.

Forty-eight hours of access.

One very inconvenient attraction.

And a truth neither of them is prepared for.

Welcome to Breaking the Ice. 🏒🔥