Spikes and Scalpels

Yuki Ishikawa is a volleyball genius, the stoic captain of the Japanese Men's Volleyball Team and the star outside hitter for Allianz Milano. Disciplined, strategic, and relentlessly focused, Yuki has only one goal: to lead his teams to victory in both the Italian league and the upcoming Olympics.

But when a persistent shoulder injury threatens to derail everything he's worked for, the club forces him into a decision he doesn't want to make, undergo rehab treatment under the care of a new team specialist, Alex Lacroix.

Alexandra Louise Lacroix Crèvecœur is not your average sports physician. A prodigy French orthopedic surgeon with a sharp mind, sharper tongue, and a royal name she refuses to use. Once revered at Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Italy's top hospital, Alex was cast out for saving a life the wrong way, defying protocol to operate on a VIP patient in an emergency situation. Now banished to a glorified rehab role, far from the operating rooms where she truly belongs, with Allianz Milano, she considers it the lowest point in her career.

Until she meets Yuki.

He's all control. She's all instinct. He hides pain behind discipline. She hides heartbreak behind defiance. What begins as clashing egos soon gives way to an undeniable connection, one that neither ambition nor legacy can contain.

But as the Olympics approach and the spotlight grows, so do the secrets they've buried. When the world demands the best of them both, will love be a luxury they can't afford?