Bear No Defeat (2 page)

Speaking of which, he was
supposed
to be in downtown Boulder, partying it up right now instead of arguing with his father about things both of them knew were facts. But despite all of the bad blood between the strict, sour Darmuth clan and the rebellious—if understatedly so—oldest son, Jax still couldn’t resist showing up whenever his father asked it of him.

It was ingrained in his DNA, it seemed, even if that DNA came with a fourteen-carat diamond on top of it. Jax had grown up despising everything about their vast, ridiculous wealth that was only ever used to breed more money. It was a shifter thing as much as it was a father-and-son thing. No son wanted to disappoint his father, and Jax was damn sure that he’d be falling for his father’s tricks and requests until the end of days, unless something drastic happened.

The Darmuths were, ironically enough, in the oil business, drilling in Alaska and northern Canada. As polar bears, they had no issues with the cold, but at the same time, one would assume that they would care more about the environmental impact of the means they used to acquire their billions. Jax thought so. The rest of them didn’t seem to quite be on the same page.

“I could buy the contract out,” Jordan started with a sigh, but he held up his hand before Jax could interject with all the reasons why he wouldn’t let that happen. “But fine, have your way. But I must ask one thing of you, Jasper. You are aware of the fact that you’re getting rather… old, yes?”

“Whoa, low blow there. Even my agent doesn’t say that to me,” Jax said with a chuckle, choosing to ignore the way he wanted to cringe at hearing his given name. “But sure, yes, twenty-nine can be considered on the older side in my business. Why?”

He said “business” specifically to see the twinge of disgust on his father’s face. Jordan did not disappoint and Jax hid his private smile behind the rim of his glass.

“It has come to my attention that my health is… waning,” Jordan said, almost absently.

Jax frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I have cancer. Stage four. It’s in the liver, lung, and kidneys at this point. They think I might have a year on account of the bear fighting it as hard as he is, but it’s a matter of time now.”

Jax’s world ground to a halt. He had to put the glass down quickly in order to avoid dropping it and a sudden coldness spread through him, something that polar bears usually enjoyed, but this time, it seemed to knock the air out of his lungs. He leaned forward in his seat, confusion written on the hard lines of his face.

“Seriously? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I could have—”

“There’s nothing to do here anymore,” Jordan said with a wave of his hand, dismissing the notion like a gnat buzzing about him. “I’ve been to all the best specialists in the world. If there was anything to do here, I would have done it, trust me. I don’t need your pity, Jasper. But I do need the family name to continue.”

That knocked Jax right back in his seat again. The look in Jordan’s eyes bore no confusion, and no missed meanings. Jax knew
exactly
where this conversation was going and while he had been punched in the gut by the realization that the man he loved to loathe would soon no longer be around, the hits were still coming.

He pulled a hand through his short-cropped blond hair, dropping his forehead in his wide palm for a moment before looking up.

“And I assume you have the perfect candidate in mind?” he asked, his voice flatter than he intended.

He couldn’t force any sarcasm into his words. Not now. Not when the steel beam of a father he’d known all his life as the kind of man who would never admit defeat, or that he was wrong, was dying right in front of him.

I can’t believe it… He looks so… so… So like him,
Jax thought, his hands rolling into fists for a passing second.

“I do,” Jordan said with an easy smile. “She’s not my first choice, but her family has shown to produce plenty of boys and her father owes a debt of gratitude toward me.”

“You make it sound like we’re in the Middle Ages. Does she get a choice in this?” Jax asked, taken aback.

Do I?

“Why?” Jordan asked, a callous note in his tone. “Your mother and I were arranged to marry. Your sister Janice’s husband was chosen for her when she was still a teen. We’ve given you leeway for years now as you’re the only son, but it’s clear now that I do not have time to waste. You know any choice I have made is in your best interests, and in hers as well. I don’t see any reason why sentiment should be involved in this.”

You wouldn’t,
Jax thought grimly, grabbing his drink and drowning it.

He was not the marrying kind of guy. In fact, seeing his friends and teammates slowly find women who they claimed to be their mates only put him off of it more. So what did it matter if he was saddled with a wife to appease his parents? If it would make his father’s last year easier and if it meant getting the Darmuth clan off his back…

Half of the polar bear marriages are still arranged anyway,
he thought finally, shrugging his shoulders at both his father and the ease with which he’d come to accept this ludicrous notion.

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

For once in his life though, Jax Darmuth did not know what he was getting himself into.

CHAPTER TWO

Alice

“You can’t be serious,” Sari said, gasping and falling back in the worn leather couch so fast she almost doused herself in wine.

Alice simply shrugged, shaking her head and poking at the rim of her rum-and-Coke glass, trying to make herself busy with anything other than meeting her friend’s gaze. How was she supposed to respond to that? “Yes, I am totally serious and completely on the lookout to screw myself over?” That wouldn’t go over well.

“What am I supposed to do? My dad needs this. Needs it so bad that if I
don’t
do it, he might suddenly just disappear like they do in the movies,” Alice replied, cringing at the thought.

“Okay, now
that
you’re definitely making up,” Sari said, pursing her lips. “No one can be that bad. You said your dad’s been working for them for years, right? Don’t they have some sort of a personal-professional trust thing going on at this point?”

Alice snorted with wry bemusement, taking a sip of her drink.

Trust. Right. Now that’s a word I haven’t heard in a while!

“That’s exactly the reason why we need to do this. He’s apparently been stealing from them. For the last five or so years,” Alice said, flicking her gaze up to Sari, imploring her to understand. “I thought he’d gotten some sort of massive raise from the Darmuths for decades of service. But nope, he decided to make his own fortune, as it were. He started pinching from minor accounts first and then when he didn’t get caught he apparently got more brazen by the day.”

“Oh my god, Alice… that’s horrible,” Sari said, leaning forward to put her hand on Alice’s.

Alice looked at Sari’s hand with a tinge of appreciation, her pale blue eyes absently considering the manicure Sari had. On point as usual, while Alice herself hadn’t been to a manicurist in months and just wore a clear coat on them now. Who was she trying to impress, after all?

Shaking her head, she forced the morose thoughts away. She’d have plenty of time to wallow once she packed her bags and arrived in Idaho, after all.

“My dad even bought this apartment for me when I was starting out. I mean, I’m working as a junior accountant for the same people! I should have caught it, should have realized what he was doing. Maybe I could have stopped him or made it right in time… but he hid the whole thing very well. Gambling addiction, apparently. Horses, of all things.”

Despite her best efforts, a pout rolled over her plush lips and Alice busied herself with another sip of her drink. There wasn’t enough rum in the world, but she was dedicated to testing that theory.

The news had come straight out of nowhere. One day, Alice Wilcox was minding her own business, waiting for the clock to tick to five so she could run home, get dressed, and hit the town with Sari, and the next moment her father, Andrew Wilcox, and the owner of Darmuth Incorporated, Jordan Darmuth, were showing her into a meeting room and destroying her world from the very foundation up.

Losing her mother had been no easy pill to swallow six years ago, when Alice had been in her second year of college, eventually getting her degree in accounting and finance. Since then, it had just been her, her father, and her four brothers, all self-sufficient now but obviously somewhat at a loss after losing the anchor of their family. They’d all known it was coming, obviously, with Adelaide Wilcox’s leukemia having been a long, arduous battle, but no one’s ever ready for the end.

Since then, Alice had been picking up the pieces of her life as best as she could and putting them together into something new and hopefully almost as good. She thought she had it down fairly well, other than the whole finding a man who isn’t a complete jerk part, but apparently that too had to be questioned.

Over the course of an hour, Jordan Darmuth had done most of the talking. He’d exposed Alice’s father for what he had done, as Andrew listened like a dog who had gotten kicked and not saying a word in protest, and then laying forth a plan that would allow Alice and her father to make it up to the Darmuths. The plot, of course, was ludicrous. But at the end of it all, Alice hadn’t even been that surprised. Just numb.

And that feeling didn’t seem to pass no matter how many cocktails she inhaled, much to her chagrin.

“Okay, okay, so, tell me all of this again. This time, I promise I’ll listen and pretend to think that you’re not crazy, okay?”

“Fine,” Alice said with a shadow of a smile, completely devoid of emotion as it was. “Jordan Darmuth is the father of Jax Darmuth,” she began, only to be interrupted.

“
This
Jax Darmuth,” Sari asked, holding up her phone showing a shirtless, utterly delicious picture of the Shifter Grove Shovelers enforcer.

The sight of him almost made Alice stutter.
Almost.
He was one of those hellishly tall, broadly built guys who resembled a wall of muscle and strength rather than any ordinary man. Greek gods would have been jealous of his pecs, and while the theory of grating cheese off of someone’s abs sounded entirely ludicrous to Alice, his certainly looked like they could fit the bill.

And he’s going to be my…

Alice bit her lower lip, taking a deep breath. Focus was really difficult to achieve when she had to stare into the soulful gray eyes of the cuddliest damn goon in the whole NSHL. And she’d had her fair share of bad boy bastards so honestly, when the rational part of her mind told her to completely ignore the way he looked, she was almost,
almost
on board.

Almost.

“That Jax Darmuth, yes,” Alice confirmed. “Apparently, Daddy Darmuth wants his son and heir to get married to a nice, respectable girl and to pop out a couple of boys to carry on the family legacy, or whatever. His daughters are both married off already but Jax has been avoiding the sacred ‘duty’ to the best of his abilities. Can’t say I blame him,” Alice said, grumbling as she sipped at her ever-depleting stores of rum.

“And
you’re
supposed to be the nice, respectable girl?” Sari asked, blinking like someone had thrown glitter in her eyes and she was having a hard time telling fiction from fact.

“Seems so,” Alice said, a small smirk playing on her lips now.

She pushed a lock of her strawberry-blonde hair out of her face, glancing around her cramped living room. Most of the furniture was second-hand and the space was small, but cozy. She’d expected to stay in Concord, work for Darmuth for a few more years, before branching out somewhere and seeing the world when she felt like she had enough money for it.

Family had been her first choice, but if the last few years of dating had taught her anything, then it was that men were, by and large, jerks, or at least the ones she seemed to attract. Romance as a whole had sort of lost its luster by that point.

Guess I’ll be finding my “adventure” sooner than I thought,
she mused, however dark it was.

“It still sounds made up to me,” Sari said, shaking her head and draining half a glass of wine in one gulp.

Alice could understand. She’d gone through the denial phase already and was well on her way to acceptance, two nights of consuming rum and inhaling ice cream later.

“Oh, trust me, that doesn’t change,” Alice assured her. “But the deal is that Jax and I get married, quietly, and I keep my mouth shut. The prenup said two years of marriage at a minimum to not be in breach of contract, but they can’t force me to have a baby. I’m simply… encouraged,” Alice said, her tongue barely twisting to say it.

“Encouraged how?” Sari asked.

“With a couple of million bucks and my father’s debt in front of the Darmuths swept under the rug. Right now, if I get married to Jax, my dad will retain his job, but not his position. Although he’s going to have to try and pay back what he took over the years. It’s impossible. He’d have to live to be three hundred and even then, he’d have to forego eating and sleeping and all those other troublesome details. But if I have a baby, a boy in particular…”