About this book:

At 4:45 AM, the ice rink belongs to the dead—and to Ben Vance, the man who drives the Zamboni. He knows every dip in the concrete, every temperamental quirk of the slab, and exactly how hot the floodwater needs to be to heal the previous night's damage. Then Maya arrives: a twenty-three-year-old figure skater with sectionals in six weeks, a coach who just quit on her, and a blade-sharp instinct for ice that matches Ben's own. She spots the difference between his warm-water cut and the lazy cold skim of his coworker. He tells her which corners hold an edge. In the freezing dark before dawn, two people who thought they were done chasing dreams find a rhythm neither expected.

*The Ice Resurfacer's Romance* is a love letter to the quiet mastery of craft—to the smell of LPG exhaust and wet rubber, the hypnotic *shhhk* of a perfect edge, the satisfaction of laying down a sheet of glass at 5 AM. Ben and Maya are both veterans of burnout: he from a shattered hockey future, she from a sport that discards women at twenty-three. Their connection builds not on grand gestures but on shared fluency in a language most people never hear: the physics of frozen water, the patience of cure time, the respect due a surface that can break bones or launch flight.

With the precision of a skate blade and the warmth of a thermos shared on a player's bench, this novel traces a season of early mornings, missed landings, recalibrated expectations, and the terrifying, exhilarating risk of trusting someone else with your footing. For readers who love *The Simple Wild* or *The Friend Zone*—anyone who's ever woken before sunrise for something they love—*The Ice Resurfacer's Romance* delivers a fresh, deeply textured rivals-to-lovers story where the ice is never just ice, and the perfect sheet is always worth the wait.