Bear No Defeat (5 page)

“Do you need to take that?” Jax asked, giving her puppy dog eyes mixed with a smirk that made her almost want to ignore the call and just stay at the table.

“I think so,” she said, almost tipping over the chair as she got up, taking her phone out. “Just a sec.”

She excused herself, catching the phone on the fifth ring, though there was no caller ID. Alice frowned but accepted anyway, walking toward the front door and then stepping out into the snowy evening, though she kept glancing back at Jax almost without noticing that she was doing it.

“This is Alice,” she said, wrapping her free arm around herself for warmth.

“Hello, Alice. I’m a friend of your father’s. You can call me Joe,”
a voice responded, somewhat muddled, but the tone of it alone sent a quick chill down her spine that seemed to have nothing to do with the temperature.

“Hey, Joe. What can I do for you?” Alice asked, confusion setting in with a note of dread.

“You can listen and shut up,”
he snarled, making that very clear feeling of dread spread further in Alice’s veins.
“So, daddy’s little girl. Here’s the deal. Andrew owes us six hundred thousand dollars. He promised to pay up, but so far he hasn’t and we get the feeling that he doesn’t intend to. But a little birdie told me that you’re going to be Jax Darmuth’s new wifey and as far as I know, he has exactly the kind of cash we need.”

“I—” Alice started, only to get immediately cut off.

“Shut the fuck up and listen. You can get me the money your father owes, or you can say goodbye to Daddy. I’ll give you until that big game in Shifter Grove. Yeah, don’t think I don’t know where you are. Hell, I might be looking at you right now.”

The way he laughed made Alice’s breath catch in her throat and she looked to either side of herself quickly, seeing nothing but gloomy streets devoid of other people.

“I’ll come to Shifter Grove and bring a few of my boys. I’ll be waiting for that cash, honey. Or Daddy Dearest will be just an unpleasant, distant memory to you soon enough.”

Then, the line clicked and there was no one on anymore. Alice took the phone from her ear and looked at it numbly, trying to figure out what the hell she was supposed to feel like after something like
that
.

I could never gouge Jax like that,
she thought, pain welling in her chest.

She looked at her phone again, deciding to call her father and demand to know if he had any idea who those guys were or how they knew about her being in Shifter Grove, but there was no reception again. She crushed her fist around the damn cellphone and shoved it into her back pocket, turning around and heading back into the warmth of the packed bar.

Things had to go from bad to worse, didn’t they?

CHAPTER SIX

Jax

Jax couldn’t help himself. Whenever he got the chance, he would glance at the stands, if only to make sure that Alice was still there. Whenever she caught him staring at her, she’d make a face at him and it had gone from cute to awkward to super cute. He wouldn’t stop grinning and there was a damn pep in his step, or skate as it were, which made for some rather cheerful takedowns on the ice.

“The hell has gotten into you?” Heath Locklear queried, glowering at Jax as the polar bear helped the sniper up off the ground. “Some
delicacy
would be expected, all right? The Carnivores are going to pull me to pieces anyway. I’d like to make it to the last game without my own team mangling me, okay?”

“All right,” Jax said blithely, smirking at his friend and the number one goal hound the team had.

“You didn’t answer my question though,” Heath commented as they skated back to their spots, having been assigned to opposing practice teams for some drills that seemed to end up with a lot more guys on their backs on the ice now that the important game was so close.

The Shovelers hadn’t won a title in six years, despite all the infrastructure, the fanbase, and the insane support they’d gotten in Chicago when they were still the Chicago Bluehawks. But this season, having come to the middle of nowhere Idaho, also known as Shifter Grove, playing most of the season on a damn lake that was about as smooth as the surface of the moon, and barely having a support system in place, they’d soared. Despite even missing a couple of games in the middle of the season, they’d made it to the national playoffs and were one game away from bringing home the title.

In any world, that was insane. In the world of shifter hockey, it was unheard of.

“It’s nothing,” Jax commented, masterfully dodging Heath’s blazing gaze.

“It’s the girl, huh,” Heath commented, straightening up a bit in his position as they waited for Coach’s whistle.

“What girl?” Jax asked, trying to play dumb and knowing he was destined to fail.

“The hot blonde in the stands, staying away from the rest of the girlfriends like they’re the plague,” Heath said, motioning toward Alice sitting on the top of the stands by Wolf’s Eye Lake.

Even though the Shifter Grove Ice Arena had been built about a month ago now, Coach still preferred to do most of their practices on the lake ice. Jax thought he would never say anything quite so ludicrous, but he was sort of glad for it. Not knowing whether the stretch of ice you were skating on was going to be smooth or not had really improved his ice awareness, and being out in the fresh air made it double appealing.

“Alice, right? Saw you talking to her during drinks yesterday. Anything I should know?”

“Long story,” Jax huffed.

For once, it wasn’t a simple brush-off. It
was
a long story.

Heath and Jax got down low, clamoring over the puck and when the whistle sounded, they both tried to win the faceoff as quickly as possible. Heath grabbed the puck but Jax grabbed Heath and they got to go through the same song and dance one more time, with Heath’s bitching and moaning reaching untold heights. After a few more drills, Coach called them in for the evening and after a browbeating talk about how they were all barely good enough to wear their jerseys, they were excused.

Jax hadn’t thrown off his skates and pads so fast in his life. A minute after being released, he was in his hiking boots, with his gear bag over his shoulder, walking toward the stands with pep in his step and a grin on his lips. It wavered only a little when he caught the less than enthused expression Alice was wearing as she stared into the distance, her face going slack for a moment when she finally noticed Jax standing at the bottom of the stands.

“Hey. Catch you at a bad time?” he asked, grinning despite her perplexing mood.

He’d invited her to come watch them play so she’d come to understand his team dynamic a bit better, if for no other reason than to discourage her faith that the Carnivores were going to eat them alive, though Jax would be the last guy to claim that it was going to be an easy victory. Mostly though, he wanted her there because she was like honey to his bear, making the unruly beast complacent and happy to work with the man, as well as brightening up Jax’s day overall.

She was a surly little thing at times but that only added to her charm, he thought.

Damn, she looks good today.

“Oh, no, sorry! Must have gotten sidetracked with something,” she said, getting up and scaling down from the high perch she’d chosen.

As she fell into step with him, Jax’s hand found hers in a soft grip almost without thought, simply doing that which felt natural to him. Having her close felt like the most natural thing he could do, it seemed. He could feel the way she tensed a bit, but still, she let him take her hand and hold it, soon relaxing into the touch as they walked to Jax’s truck.

“So you really love hockey, hmm?” she asked after a small lull.

“I do,” Jax admitted with a grin. “Only thing that ever really made sense to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an intelligent guy and Harvard tells me I can do ‘whatever I want’ with my life. But honestly, all I want to do is skate and play.”

He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, giving her hand a slight squeeze.

“What about you? What makes you tick?”

Alice pursed her lips in thought and it was all Jax could do to keep from leaning in and kissing her right then and there.

“Well, for me, the one thing that always made sense were numbers. And math. No matter how muddled everything was in my life, when I sat down to chew through a math assignment or later financial sheets, everything seemed to fall into place, you know? Like me and the numbers had this little conversation amongst ourselves and everything would be fine because
we
got one another.”

From the corner of his eye, Jax could see her blushing slightly and it was incredibly sweet and vulnerable. Despite knowing that it was probably the worst idea he’d ever had, he felt himself becoming more and more attached to this enigmatic, sarcastic woman who could be at the same time feisty and exposed.

Yet the feeling that something wasn’t entirely right that day didn’t leave him. She seemed a bit distant, even if her words were all present. Something in her eyes told him that not everything was quite all right and he couldn’t keep himself from digging around to see if he could find the reason for this. His bear was very adamant about making sure that she was happy and at peace and at the moment, she didn’t quite look the part.

“Something wrong, Alice?” he asked, keeping his tone of voice as unobtrusive as he could.

She looked up at him, her lips slightly parted. They made it to the car, and she looked like she was going to say something. Jax stopped short at opening the door for her, giving her whatever time she needed, but finally, Alice looked down, biting her lip and shaking her head.

“No, there’s nothing. Must just be hung over a little from last night. So, what are we going to do now? Dinner?”

“Shower first,
then
dinner. I don’t think Cerise would let me in the diner in my current state.”

“Aw, come on, a little musk is
sexy
on a man,” she teased, hopping into the car as Jax deposited his bag on the back seat.

He grinned, shaking his head as she seemed to bounce out of her spell of sadness.

He was having far too much fun. Every fiber of his being was telling him that this was going to blow up in his face one way or another. But this time, he didn’t even care. If it meant more time with Alice, hell, he was ready for a bit of trouble. The risk was definitely worth the reward.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Alice

“So this is how billionaires live,” Alice mused out loud as she kicked off her boots and took off her jacket in the hallway of Jax’s house.

“Millionaires only,” Jax replied with some dryness, chuckling. “I haven’t been taking my father’s money for as long as I could avoid it. This is all me. You can still smell the fresh paint.”

Alice followed Jax into the wide halls of his home on the outskirts of Shifter Grove. He wasn’t lying; there was a very evident scent of newness to the whole place, which made sense since most of the homes built for the Shovelers had very recently been prepared and some of the guys were still bunking together from what Alice had heard.

“Nice,” she commented as he led them to the kitchen-living room, dropping his gear bag on the couch.

It was very earthy and manly, simple colors, with brick, wood, and hard tile. Cozy but masculine. Jax went to the fridge and grabbed two sports drinks, padding back almost soundlessly, which still freaked her out considering what a big man he was. Those bears could sneak up on a girl and she wouldn’t even know it.

He handed her a bottle and their hands brushed against one another for a moment. Instead of recoiling, Alice smiled. His touch felt good. Too good. Almost good enough to put all of the weirdness of the last few days out of her mind.

Her cell was blessedly getting
no
reception again and it might have been a fool’s hope, but she was clinging to the passing possibility that maybe they’d just… you know, leave her alone? Frankly, she wasn’t sure what she thought about the creepy guy who had called her the previous evening, but she
did
know that now was not the time to think about it. Not when she had much more pleasant options to fixate on.

“So, shower and then dinner, right?” Alice asked, as Jax seemed to have forgotten himself by staring at her, a soft look in his eyes.

“Right,” he said, shaking out of his stupor. “We should go get that shower, then.”

He smiled wide, a devilish glint in his eyes.

“
We?
” she echoed, quirking a brow. “Aren’t
we
being forward here.”

“Maybe,” Jax said with a shrug, taking a sip of his drink before putting it down on a nearby counter and turning to her again. “But I’m going to kiss you now and you’re not going to argue.”