Puck Bear Brides: Complete Series (BBW Werebear Paranormal Sport Romance Boxed Set) (29 page)

The players could come down to the bar, grab a beer, and have a few words with their local friends, and no media frenzy followed. They worked out, they prepared and they plotted, but it was all without the usual hysteria that followed games like that. The Shifter Grove natives had made it
very
clear that only a choice few reporters would be allowed into town at any one time and if anyone became a nuisance, they’d quickly find themselves on the receiving end of a trespassing violation.

It worked out in several ways. Not only were the Shovelers a bit of a shrouded enigma now because the town was so small that any stranger stuck out like a sore thumb, so the Carnivores couldn’t actually spy on what they were doing for prep, but it also kept the players calmer and more focused. With a group of Alpha shifter athletes, that was no small feat.

“Guess I’ll have to prove you wrong then,” Jax said with a chuckle, leaning back in his seat and taking a sip of his beer, though Alice could feel his gaze on her.

It still made her a little bit uncomfortable, but not strictly in a bad way. More like the “Oh my God, Jax Darmuth is looking at me like he wants to eat me up!” kind of way. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, being on the receiving end of his
that
kind of attention, and though she had pledged to keep her head squarely on her shoulders, it seemed to be getting more and more difficult to actually stick to that promise.

They’d been chatting over drinks for a few hours now and made some probing, slightly stumbling plans for spending some time together. Mostly, both of them still seemed to be trying to figure each other out, being cautions around one another, which was oddly comforting to Alice. She’d half-expected to get ravaged by the sex bear upon arrival—which sounded less and less horrible by the second—or get ignored by him completely. So far, neither assumption had turned out to be true.

“So if you think we’re so damn underprepared, how about we make it interesting, huh?” Jax started, cocking his brow in that teasing way that he had. “I’d like to propose a wager!”

“A wager?” Alice echoed. “What could you possibly wrangle out of me that your father already hasn’t?” she asked, keeping her tone light.

Jax smiled, thankfully enough not taking the jab at his family as one directed at him. She liked that about him, the slightly, but not overly self-deprecating sense of humor and the fact that despite the silver spoon that had been firmly placed in his mouth since birth, he made a valiant effort to be his own man. There was something very commendable about that, especially to the daughter of a man who seemed to have majored in how to mess with his kids’ lives in the negative way.

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Jax said with a wink that was bordering on lewd, which got Alice’s heart beating twice as fast.

She was about to shoot back with some sort of a clever remark that was only partially shrouded in a blush when her phone rang in her pocket. Alice frowned for a moment, as if that ringing couldn’t
possibly
come from her pocket.

It was almost true. She hadn’t gotten a call to come through since she arrived in Shifter Grove, the cell reception being legendarily bad, though the general assumption was that the founders kept it like that on purpose. Warren, the de facto leader, hadn’t said anything for or against it in ages, apparently.

“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.