Play Me : a Grumpy Sports Hero, Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Play Me Series Book 1)

Babysitting a brooding rugby star sounds simple enough—until that rugby star is Gray Adler, and "simple" becomes the most laughable word in the English language.

When Nora accepts what should be a straightforward job keeping the Royals' newest hotshot on schedule and out of trouble, she's prepared for a difficult personality. She is not prepared for a man who weaponizes his truck horn, delivers every sentence like it personally offended him first, and somehow got blessed with the body of an actual Greek god beneath all that tattoo ink and bad attitude. The universe has a cruel sense of humor.

This grumpy-sunshine sports romance crackles with the kind of sharp-tongued banter that makes you root for conflict just to watch these two strike sparks off each other. Nora is sunshine and stubbornness; Gray is walls and growl and something achingly guarded underneath. Every interaction is a battle of wills, and every battle chips away a little more of the armor they're both desperately clinging to.

Just when Nora convinces herself that hatred is a perfectly sustainable emotion, Gray does something that rearranges everything she thought she knew about him—and about herself.

Play Me is the addictive first installment in Adriana Locke's Play Me series, and it delivers on every delicious promise of the enemies-to-lovers formula. The real question isn't whether they'll fall for each other. It's whether either of them will survive it.