Puck Bear Brides: Complete Series (BBW Werebear Paranormal Sport Romance Boxed Set) (21 page)

Right?

“Oh man, they got it good this time,” Jacob from Billing was saying as everybody gathered their stuff. “I hear this place only has like one bar. I don’t know how they intend to fit everyone.”

“Most of the crowd was made up of Shifter Grove locals, and they only opened a few stands for this game,” Sable said with a shrug. “They’re banking on cable broadcasting because there aren’t enough amenities to house or service the fans around here. As far as I understand it the owner intends to keep it that way with the Shifter Grove games. Why do you think we were up in the nosebleed section of the two stands they opened up to begin with?”

“Weird. Why move a team out in the middle of nowhere?” Jacob asked, putting his jacket on.

“Eccentricity usually answers all of those questions,” Sable said, snaking her phone out of her pocket as she began trudging down the steps and toward the exit in her tall friend’s wake.

She idly scrolled through her recent apps until she found SassyDate. Without thinking about it too long, she opened up the contact requests page and tapped on recent contacts until she found Heath again, a big, red Ignore label behind him. She hit Accept quickly and shoved the phone back in her pocket.

Screw it. I’m here anyway.

***

At this point in her life, there were very few things that could really surprise Sable. A blizzard in Hawaii in July, reasonable choices in domestic politics, and Heath Locklear showing up at her doorstep with hot chocolate and a confused and apologetic look in his eyes were three things really high up in her list of “never going to happen, ever.”

And yet here Heath was, offering her a hot chocolate and looking like someone had beaten him up recently. Emotionally, that is. Physically, he sort of looked like shit too, but she could mostly thank her brothers for that one.

“Thanks for seeing me,” he said as the two of them sat on the tailgate of his big red Ford truck, dangling their feet over the edge and looking at the dark tree line off of the Hamilton compound.

Sable and the rest of the Predators had been settled in at the Hamiltons, a family of firefighter werebears and their wives and kids. They happened to be the only ones in the near vicinity with enough land and houses to put up out-of-towners for a little while. Though they weren’t running a hotel, it could roughly be called a bed and breakfast, and the food was better than anything Sable had eaten in any five-star restaurant.

“No problem,” Sable said lightly, throwing a glance over her shoulder at the house in the distance.

She’d snuck out without anyone noticing, or at least she hoped so. Considering how violently pissed off her brothers were at Heath lately, it wouldn’t have been a good idea for them to know that their arch nemesis was on the premises, flirting with their stepsister. 

“I know they’re not your brothers, you know,” Heath said mildly, sipping his hot chocolate.

Even in the darkness, she could see the clever spark burning in his eyes. The one that pissed her off and sort of enthralled her at the same time.

“Oh? You’ve been stalking me?” she asked with a grin, though she’d intended to scowl at him.

“Didn’t the flowers and the gifts say as much?” he asked pointedly.

“I never received them,” Sable said half-heartedly, suddenly feeling very guilty about sending everything back.

“Yeah, I heard about that,” Heath responded, nodding.

Sable’s mother and Cayman’s and Caleb’s father had gotten married a few years back. It was one of those magical moments where a werewolf who’d lost his mate twenty years ago and another widower find each other and everything’s suddenly peaches and rainbows. While Sable was happy to see her mother on the top of the world suddenly, feeling better than she had in a long time, she wasn’t exactly the closest friends with her stepbrothers.

They were classic Alphaholes, not big enough for their own egos, and while they had their moments, they seemed to mostly run off of steam and self-satisfaction. Even the way they pretended to “protect” Sable from any guy they didn’t like seemed sort of far-fetched. No surprise that they’d been really big fans of her and Mackey Aldren together, though.

“Any particular reason for that?” Heath asked after a while.

Sable looked at him, opening her mouth and closing it again a moment later. What was she supposed to say? “Sorry, I figured fucking in a utility closet was as intimate as we were going to get and I didn’t want to be led on? You’re a manwhore and I don’t need that?” Both? Neither?

“I… well, we fucked in a broom closet, Heath. It’s not exactly the beginning to many torrid love-affairs, is it? I’ve heard about your style and how you fuck around like someone’s after your dick and if you’re not shoving it in someone it might get forcefully removed from you. I didn’t want any part of it.”

“You mean any
more
part of it,” he muttered wryly, receiving a snort from Sable in response.

“Right.”

“Fair enough,” he said with a sigh and a gulp of the hot chocolate, which was surprisingly good.

Something about the Shifter Grove local cuisine was hitting all the right notes with Sable, and that was saying something for a San Diego foodie. She clunked the heels of her snowy boots against the car with a low thud, twiddling the cardboard cup in her hands.

The hell are we doing here?

“I was surprised you added me on SassyDate finally,” Heath said. “What made you change your mind?”

“Oh, I figured with the loss under your belt, it was the least I could do,” she said with a chuckle. “Wouldn’t want you to get too depressed now, right?”

“I didn’t know the Predators’ supply team cared so much.”

“Only for the special cases.”

“So you’re calling me special?”

“You’re
special
all right,” she said with a sigh, shaking her head. “So why’d you get in touch with me to begin with?”

The words felt heavy as hell, coming from her mouth. It was a thought that had kept plaguing her for days and days now—consuming her attention and her time—trying to figure out what the hell Heath was plotting by trying to get close to her. Was it just to piss off her brothers? To mock her in some way? To publicly humiliate her?

After Mackey, none of those options sounded too far-fetched. There was something to be said on the topic of remaining vigilant with these hockey bastards.

“I had fun with you,” Heath replied, sounding as earnest as she’d ever heard him. “I thought we could maybe have a repeat. Not of the broom closet fucking,” he hastened to add, “But just… you know. Getting to know one another. I’d like that.”

“Why?” she asked, deadpan as usual.

“Why?” Heath echoed as if needing to confirm that she’d really asked something that dumb. “Because you called me out on my shit and wouldn’t let me run my mouth. That’s rare in my line of work, though I guess you would know.”

She could see the way he shrugged his shoulders, and it was as if someone had disturbed a mountain next to her and it had suddenly shifted a little. He was no small man and even though the air was cold, she felt his presence keenly, his scent wafting into her nostrils and the heat of his body seeming to warm hers as well. It was an odd feeling, all in all, being so incredibly aware of someone like that.

Everything he did seemed to register immediately with Sable. Her mouth was dry trying to talk to him, so she kept sipping on the hot chocolate and not really feeling the taste anymore. Maybe it had burned her tongue. She had no way of being sure because her thoughts were swimming around and focusing on any one emotion seemed impossibly hard.

“I guess I would,” she agreed, feeling curiously tongue-tied.

Sable really wasn’t the kind of girl to run out of things to say, even at the weirdest of times. And definitely not in a situation where she was faced with some cocky hockey prick who thought he could have any woman he wanted just with a wink and a smile! Or at least that had been her take on the situation when she’d decided to take him up on the offer to sit and chat for a moment. She’d been meaning to tell him to leave her alone, and go bother someone else.

Yet now, sitting next to him, she felt more like a teenager nervous about whether he
liked her too
than anything else. And he wasn’t anything near his impossibly self-admiring self, behaving in a rather subdued fashion just as she had.

“It’s getting late. I should probably let you go. I have practice tomorrow and I imagine Coach is going to tear all of us a new one.”

“You’re welcome for that one,” Sable said with a grin, though she felt inexplicably sad at the realization that their little pow-wow would have to end so soon.

“Yeah, thanks,” Heath grumbled, hopping off the tailgate and helping her down as well, though the fact that he’d offered his hand and even more that she’d taken it seemed to be a surprise for both of them.

Sable froze for a moment, her hand still in his, realizing how very tall Heath was in comparison to her and how close they were. And how dark it was. And how much she wanted him to kiss her.

What?! No you don’t!

Sable recoiled from him, bumping into the truck for a moment before she could hop to the side and put a few paces between them.

“Guess I’ll see you at the game,” she called, rushing toward the house.

“Guess so,” Heath called back, and the silence that followed seemed deafening. “Hey, Sable?”

“Yeah?” she asked, too mortified by her own lack of decorum to stop and turn around.

“Think we could do this again sometime?”

“Sure!” she responded. “Have your people get in touch with my people!”

What the hell are you doing, Sable? Oh my God. Just shut up!

“I’ll get straight on that,” Heath said, chuckling as he opened the driver’s side door and slipped in.

Sable took the stairs to the guesthouse in twos, and when she put her hand on the handle of the front door, she turned to watch Heath flick on the high beams and pull out of the yard. She was as surprised as anyone to find herself grinning like a fool in love when she stepped into the house, shaking her head.

You’re so screwed.
 

CHAPTER SIX

Heath

“Keep up!” Heath roared, plowing through the pristine, fresh snow on the snowmobile, his voice carrying over the growl of the engine.

The grin he was wearing was the most genuine he’d had in a long, long time, and despite having to keep his eyes on where he was going, he kept glancing over his shoulder at the beautiful creature catching up to him with every twist and turn. Sable was only behind him by a couple of lengths now and if he didn’t speed it up, she was going to overtake him.

Can’t let her win that easy,
he thought, revving the engine harder and making a tight turn around a couple of thick pine trees, cutting Sable’s path off and giving himself a slightly more leisurely lead.

They’d been on the mountain for more than four hours now, riding around and seeing how hard they could make the adrenaline pump through their veins. Answer was—pretty damn hard! Heath whooped as Sable caught up to him again and they broke out of the stretch of forest they’d been going through neck and neck, snow billowing behind them like a thick carpet. He glanced at her and she grinned back, the safety goggles muddling her gorgeous eyes, but her lips still just as inviting as they had been that night at the bar.

Fuck, she’s gorgeous,
he thought, losing his concentration for a moment and causing him to make a hazardous turn to avoid hitting a large rock sticking out right in the middle of his path.

“Shit!” he hissed, going into a tailspin.

He managed to right his course just in time to avoid rolling over, but it killed the engine. Sable turned around and a moment later she was next to him, smiling like she’d just won the Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup together.

“I was telling you, man. If you can’t stand the heat…”

“Very funny,” Heath quipped back, brushing a hand through his hair as he peeled off the helmet and the goggles before relaxing on the seat, taking a deep breath.

It wasn’t just Sable who was gorgeous to look at. They were high up on one of the mountains surrounding Shifter Grove and from their vantage point, they could see Wolf’s Eye Lake, the ice arena in the distance, and even dots of the town itself, chimneys poking up out of the snow. The day was serene and though the sun was tipping low, the snow shimmered and caught every ray of sunshine it could, everything pristinely quiet around them now that the snowmobiles had been silenced.

“It’s beautiful up here,” Sable said, following Heath’s lead and taking off her helmet and goggles as well.

Her hair cascaded down around her shoulders and it took everything he had to keep from reaching out and curling a finger around one of those locks, or pulling her closer to kiss her. He wanted to, desperately, but he’d promised himself that he’d give her all the space she needed. It’d been difficult enough to get her to come out with him in the first place; he didn’t want to scare her off before things got anywhere near interesting.

“So are you,” he said, not an ounce of bravado in his voice.

She flicked a dubious look at him and he saw the moment when her eyebrows arched a little in surprise, reading the earnestness in his expression.

Heath shrugged his shoulders, looking into the distance in an effort to settle down both the man and the bear. His grizzly was attempting to convince him to basically tackle her, and despite clear interest in doing so, he didn’t think that would help his cause either. Restraint was such a bore.

“Thanks. Feeling a bit schmaltzy today, huh?” Sable said after a bout of silence, giving him a wink.

Heath breathed a bit easier. Banter he could do.

“Oh, well, the games always make me get
so
emotional. You know, everything on the line, all those children hoping to see me conquer and win so they could dream of becoming me one day, all that.”

“You’re telling me there’s a gaggle of kids somewhere, dreaming about being a misogynistic puck donkey?”