Taking the Shot Books in Order

Taking the Shot brings Shannon Richard's contemporary romance into the world of professional hockey. The series follows members of the Jacksonville Stampede, a team whose players may be comfortable on the ice but are much less certain when love, family loyalty, and old feelings get involved. Sports are part of the setting, not the whole point. The real focus is the people who challenge these players' careful rules about relationships.

The series begins with An Unexpected Christmas, a holiday romance built around Adele James and Jace Kilpatrick. Adele loves Christmas, but she has had a brutal run-up to the holiday after discovering that her famous actor boyfriend cheated on her. With unwanted attention following her, she retreats to her family's cabin hoping for privacy and a little time to recover.

Jace has exactly the same idea.

A Stampede player dealing with an NHL lockout, he borrows the cabin to get away from the noise of his own life. Instead, he finds Adele there. They have spent years avoiding the attraction between them because she is his best friend's sister, a line Jace has told himself he should not cross. A snowstorm and a power outage make keeping their distance much harder.

That closed-in setting gives the story a cozy, high-chemistry feel. Adele is angry, embarrassed, and tired of seeing her private heartbreak turned into public spectacle. Jace is protective but wary of the consequences of letting himself want what he wants. Their conflict is not just whether they are attracted to each other. It is whether a temporary escape can become something honest once the weather clears and normal life returns.

The series sits in the same broader fictional space as Richard's Florida romances, with Undressed serving as a useful bridge through hockey player Logan James and publicist Abby Fields. Still, Taking the Shot has its own tone. Expect professional-athlete pressure, friendship circles that overlap, off-limits chemistry, and romance that moves quickly when two people finally stop pretending there is nothing between them.

Start with An Unexpected Christmas. It is a compact, seasonal entry point for readers who like snowed-in cabins, best-friend's-sister tension, and hockey players who discover that a quiet holiday can become much more complicated than planned.