Puck Bear Brides: Complete Series (BBW Werebear Paranormal Sport Romance Boxed Set) (11 page)

There was no love lost between Tarley Events and April, that much was true, but the thought of getting fired still sent bile creeping up in her throat. Coming from a wealthy family, she’d made it her life’s goal to manage her own finances and get by on her own merits now as an adult, and Tarley Events had been a big part of that.

After picking up an English Literature degree, back when she had less qualms about living off of her parents’ fortune, it had become abundantly clear that there simply weren’t that many options out there for someone with her passion for writing and a lack of desire to ruin people’s lives. Journalism seemed to be more about screwing everyone else over than it was about getting a good story and writing books… well, that too was an uphill battle against agents and publishers and finding what spoke to her enough to try. So she never really had given it a fair shot, more preoccupied with her own doubts to make an honest go of it.

“Stop it, I’m not firing you,” Sally said with a roll of her eyes, lifting up her hand.

“Oh,” April sighed, letting out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.

“But I will put you on extended leave until the busy season starts again. You’ve been with me the longest so you have tons of vacation days saved up that you need to put into good use. I’ll pay you seventy percent of your usual wages past those. I think you really need to take some time off and figure out how you’re going to work with me, because
this,
” Stella said, holding up her reports again as if they were something dead and fermenting, “is unacceptable.”

When April finally walked out of Stella’s office, after hashing out the details of her newfound free time, she was in something she could only describe as a haze of confusion. On one hand, she suddenly found herself with far too much free time and nothing to do with it. And on the other hand, her own boss had just told her what April herself already knew—that she wasn’t happy where she was.

So what was a girl to do?

“I need a drink,” she said and thought at the same time, her eyes meeting Nicky’s when she was only two paces from Sally’s door.

“I’m game!” Nicky quipped with a wide, happy grin, scooping up her purse and jacket before April could even make it back to her desk.

***

It was the fourth shot of something that included far too much vodka and not enough of anything else that did April in. Her phone had been sitting on the table and when Memphis pinged her on SassyDate and the alert showed as a notification on the screen, she hadn’t been fast enough to stop Nicky from snatching it up and reading the text.

“Memphis Corley is messaging you!?” Nicky asked, half-gasping, half-sputtering as she braced herself with one hand on the table. “And you’re here talking about what you’re going to do with your vacation? Woman, we have far more interesting things to discuss.”

Nicky shoved the phone in April’s face as if April wasn’t aware of the man hitting her up on the dating site, leaving her a tiny bit more sullen as she took her phone and read the notification quickly. It was a little pun about their names and how he thought Memphis in April was a fine place to be.

That bastard,
she thought with a grin and a shake of her head, but some of the amusement dissipated as she looked up into the brown, intense eyes of Nicky Volley, a woman not exactly known for her sense of decorum.

“Yeah, I guess I sort of… forgot to tell you about the fact that I met him,” April said, cringing as she reached for another shot on the tray they’d bought after the first round of beers.

One thing was for sure, she was going to feel this in the morning.

“You forgot to tell me that you met
Memphis Corley
?! Only my number one, most favorite hockey player of all time?! Oh, I know when this was,” Nicky said, leaning back in her seat with her mouth gaping. “It was that night, wasn’t it! When I thought I smelled Calvin Klein and SEX in the apartment! Did you make him climb down the fire escape? You did, didn’t you?”

April was nodding before she could even attempt to stop herself, and then throwing back another shot just to make herself stop giving Nicky more ammunition. The “but you don’t even watch hockey” died on her lips along with any denial she might have been formerly ready to rattle out.

“I can’t believe you,” Nicky said with a shake of her head, her expression tight but her smile wide. “You should have at least introduced us!”

“I was embarrassed, honestly. I mean, we met at a bar and we ended up hitting it off and one thing led to another and then he was in the cab and in the apartment and… God, I’m such an idiot,” April said, letting her head fall on her arms with a thunk, the loud music in the bar one block down from the office drowning it out well enough.

“Why? I mean, I’m not mad,” Nicky said, making April glance up.

Nicky’s eyes seemed a little cold and distant, but her smile was genuine enough now. Nicky reached out her hand and put it on April’s, rousing her from the fit of self-pity she’d been trying to disappear into all night.

“Honestly?” April asked.

“Cross my heart and hope to d… well, not die, but at least meet the rest of the Bluehawks if I can’t get my claws into Memphis,” Nicky said with a giggle. “I swear, I won’t touch him. I don’t steal from friends!”

That last part was said a
bit
too lightly and with maybe a tiny
bit
of undertone that April was quick to dismiss as Nicky clinked the shot glasses together with her and they both swallowed another bitter mouthful.

“That’s good to hear. I’m really sorry Nicky. I just don’t really follow hockey that much and even when he said his name, it sounded familiar but I didn’t put two and two together and—”

“Say no more, I get it! But tell me, what are you going to do now? Is he hitting you up a lot on SassyDate? Have you seen him again?”

April shook her head, fighting the desire to pick up the phone and scroll through their old messages again like she’d been doing far too often lately. He was sweet and a bit raunchy just like he was in person, but she never felt uncomfortable chatting with him. Quite the contrary. Putting the phone down every night was hard as hell because she just wanted to keep going!

“I haven’t,” April admitted. “He’s in Idaho for practice games. Though I understand their rink is about to go up so they’re going to start playing in an official capacity again.”

“Ooh! Do they have a name yet?” Nicky asked, obviously more up to date on the whole world of NSHL and hockey in general than April was.

“I think they’re calling themselves the Shovelers or something. Not sure.”

“Ew. Okay. Has he maybe invited you to a game or something…” Nicky asked, trailing off, obviously fishing for information.

“He has,” April admitted, feeling the corners of her mouth tug up a little. “He has a training camp and a practice game next week that’s supposed to be low-pressure and he and the team would have time to hang out. There’s even some kind of an inn or something near town, but I was supposed to be working and I didn’t really want to go alone.”

April pursed her lips in thought, shaking her head a moment later as Nicky visibly perked up.

It’s a stupid idea. You just hung out with him for a few hours, there’s nothing there! And he’s a hockey player, they’re all players… it’s in the title!

“You know, Sally has been pushing me to grab some time off too. I could
totally
come with you! Then you wouldn’t be alone, and you have free time now too!”

“You’d do that?” April asked, surprised.

“Hell yes! A week of hockey bear hotness? Sign me up!” Nicky hooted, throwing her hands up.

April couldn’t help but smile. Was she drunk or did that sound like a really good idea? Well, she was definitely a little bit drunk, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t a good idea, right?

“Are you sure?” April asked again, trying to find all the reasons why it would be a horrible idea and coming up annoyingly short.

“I’m
sure
! Now pick up the damn phone and text your lover-bear so we can plan the trip!” Nicky yelled, shoving the phone into April’s hands.

Before she could chicken out, April was tapping out a hurried reply that may or may not have had a few typos in it, asking Memphis if the invite still stood. The “Hell YES!” she got in response about a minute later confirmed it.

“Guess we’re going to Idaho then,” April said, feeling a little drunk on excitement.

And vodka.

CHAPTER THREE

April

“I can’t believe this is happening,” April muttered as she shifted around in her seat, having changed with Nicky a few hours ago.

“Oh, it’s definitely happening,” Nicky said with a beaming grin as another sign post read “Shifter Grove” and the impossible was starting to seem like the probable.

Nicky had taken up the brunt of the organizing, finding the flight to Idaho, booking the rental car from Idaho Falls so they would have some mobility since Shifter Grove didn’t have any rentals, all the way to talking to the one family in Shifter Grove who ran a quasi-bed and breakfast. April was grateful for the help because frankly, she was far too busy freaking out about both her future and the fact that she was going to see Memphis Corley again.

She wasn’t entirely sure what she was expecting from this trip, but among warm clothes and one too many pairs of sexy lingerie—just in case, obviously—she’d also tucked a fresh new lined notebook in her bag with a couple of pens, hoping against hope that maybe she could sit down and write again. Just for herself, no one else. While she’d kept a diary for years, it didn’t really feel like it was enough. Now with more time on her hands than she knew what to do with, it almost felt like she owed it to herself to give it another shot.

You won’t live forever, after all,
April thought, gnawing on her bottom lip.

“What if he changes his mind?” April asked, voicing a fear that she’d had since she’d woken up the morning after the night at the bar, with a killer hangover and an ecstatic polar bear shifter asking her on SassyDate when she’d be arriving.

“Then we get to party with a bunch of hockey players and get over your heartache. Or, you know, I can snatch him up. Kidding, kidding!” Nicky said, waving her hand dismissively at April before she could say a thing. “Ooh, that’s the parking lot, I think!”

And so it was. The team’s bus was parked there, along with the Detroit Coyotes’ one. The parking lot was packed with cars, with people streaming toward Wolf’s Eye Lake. Nicky parked the car and April got out on shaky legs, grabbing her purse and pulling on her hat low over her forehead.

While she’d never been particularly shy, there was this inexplicable nervousness that took over her when she thought of speaking with Memphis face-to-face. There was just something about him, a sort of animal magnetism that made her a little starry-eyed and far less rational than she thought she should be. And as far as April Whitaker was concerned, she figured she was far too old to have starry-eyed crushes anymore, or to let boys have such an effect on her.

“Come on, slowpoke! We’re missing it,” Nicky hissed, already pushing through the crowd to make it to the stand in time for the face-off.

“Now or never,” April muttered to herself, catching up with Nicky, who was easy enough to spot in the crowd with her wild mess of curly hair and chocolate skin.

They found decent seats not too far from the Shovelers’ bench, the former Chicago pro team having recently relocated to Shifter Grove and had yet to pick a new name—or had one assigned to them as was usually the case with wealthy backers. It was going to be a friendly match, both teams made up of some of the best and hardest players in the league. The lake upon which the Shifter Grove team held their practice matches at the moment had gathered some notoriety after both the Grizzlies and the Timberwolves had been beaten on it by a less-than-perfectly-manned Shifter Grove team.

Everybody wanted to see it now and to play on it to make sure it really was as difficult as the Montana and Seattle boys claimed it to be.

“There’s Memphis!” Nicky squealed as the teams took up their positions, the wide, hulking form of the gray-eyed devil who made April’s core throb with longing standing as one of the tallest men on the ice. “Memphis!” Nicky screamed, standing up from her seat before April could get a grip on her and pull her back down.

“Shhhhh! Nicky!” April gasped, tugging her friend down, who was beaming happily. “He’ll see us!”

“Isn’t that the point?” Nicky scoffed.

“I don’t want to mess up his game,” April murmured in response, though it was only half the truth.

Actually, she just wanted to watch him for a little while without him knowing she was there, just to get a feel for him again. She hadn’t had that much to drink the night they’d spent together, but the over-worrying nit inside of her kept wondering if she’d maybe imagined something that hadn’t been there and maybe all of it was some elaborate hoax! But the two screaming orgasms she’d had couldn’t have been a figment of her imagination, right?

And neither could the man who’d straightened up, leaning slightly on his hockey stick, and giving her a toothy grin and a wave.

It was a good thing she was sitting down, because the odds were in favor of her knees buckling underneath her if she’d spotted that smile while she was standing up. She couldn’t see his scraggly mop of blond hair underneath the helmet very well and the padding made him look even bigger than he was—not that he needed any help—but she definitely remembered him in all his HD glory. And God was he hot!

“I think he saw us,” Nicky said, jabbing an elbow into April’s ribs just as the puck was dropped on the ice and the game started.

For the next two hours, April watched with bated breath as the men went blade to blade with one another, snarling and giving no quarter without it being beaten out of them. Memphis was constantly on the ice, barely being given rest, but that seemed to be because he didn’t need any.