Puck Bear Brides: Complete Series (BBW Werebear Paranormal Sport Romance Boxed Set) (26 page)

All eyes were on the puck and Jax knew that the first offensive player who it made his way would be targeted by every damn opposing player on the ice. He broke through the barrier of two defensive players who weren’t quite as fast as the polar bear shifter was and put himself between Trove Hamisch and Heath, assuming correctly that Trove would try to plow through Heath like a wrecking ball if given the chance.

The puck moved like a blur and slowly, in the background of his hearing, Jax could hear the crowd begin to stand up and roar their cheers or jeers as the Shovelers descended on the goal like a plague of bears on the search for honey. Again, a true enough comparison, ignoring the wolves and the big cats on the team, that was.

The puck was getting passed so fast that it took superhuman reflexes and attention just to keep up with it. If hockey regularly was a fast, no-holds-barred kind of game then it was only amplified with shifters in the mix, what with the players being stronger, faster, bigger and more vicious than ever. Jax snarled under his breath as the puck was stolen from Logan, Leo’s brother, but Memphis was at the right place at the right time, the big polar bear defender managing to disorient the Mountain Lions player enough to get the puck off of his stick and passed to Cannon.

Jax’s stomach clenched and his eyes immediately went to Trove. Cannon was their playmaker but Heath had one of the steadiest hands in the league, and the sniper was usually the one entrusted with shots at times like these. There was an opening and Jax caught it in time, seeing Trove move at the last possible moment to try and lunge for Heath as the puck was passed to the grizzly shifter with dizzying speed.

It made sense for Trove to go hard like that. If he got penalized for it but he took out Heath, the game would still go to a shootout and this would be in the Colorado team’s favor. Jax reached out with his stick just enough to make Trove fumble his step and that little snippet of time was enough for Jax to cram himself between Heath and Trove and plow the man into the nearest partition while Heath took the shot.

Somewhere in the distance, through the pounding of adrenaline, the roar of his bear and the fact that a very large, very pissed-off Norwegian bear was trying to beat the shit out of him for ruining his play, Jax Darmuth could hear the Shifter Grove section going wild. They were chanting Heath’s name and the team’s almost in unison. The guy who made the goal always got the damn honor but Jax didn’t care. They’d won.

Now he just needed to get this damn Colorado bastard off his back before his polar bear snapped and shifted right on the ice. It wouldn’t be the first time.

***

This can’t be good,
Jax thought wryly, sinking into the wide, plush leather seat offered to him by his father after they shook hands.

“Fine game, son,” Jordan Darmuth said with a dry smile that implied neither truthfulness nor joy, two things that Jax had long ago stopped expecting from his parents. “Your mother and I are very proud of all that you have accomplished.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Jax responded, stifling a sigh as he let his arms rest awkwardly on the armrests. A waitress in a fancy, black and skintight outfit with red lips appeared to place two glasses of scotch in front of both Jax and Jordan on the table.

She was dressed like money and frankly, the whole place reeked of it. It was a small lounge tucked away on the top floor of one of the highest buildings in Boulder and for the life of Jax, he couldn’t figure out how his father could always find the snootiest cigar and whiskey lounge in any town he went to. It was like the man must have had some kind of internal GPS aimed right at the location where the drinks would cost an arm and a leg, minimum.

“So what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked cautiously, picking up his glass and feeling the sports jacket he was wearing strain a little over his wide back.

He’d been in Shifter Grove too long. The big, burly polar bear was starting forget how it felt to dress befitting from the vast Darmuth fortune, the presence of which he had often been reminded by both his family and his agent while the Shovelers had still been the Chicago Bluehawks. Now, however, with so much distance between his New Hampshire-based kin and the team, Jax—or Jasper, but don’t let anyone know that!—Darmuth had happily begun to block out everything that didn’t strictly relate to hockey or his desire to play it.

“Can’t a father come and see a son without there being a ‘reason’ for it? Or is this continental cup of yours not reason enough?” Jordan queried, quirking a brow at Jax as he took a sip.

“Regional finals, Dad. And no, I haven’t known you or Mom to come to any game of mine unless the President’s in attendance,” Jax said, sloshing the scotch around in the glass.

It tasted sort of bitter. Probably meant it cost a thousand bucks a glass, then.

His gray eyes flicked to his father once more, the man before him the perfect representation of what Jax would look like in thirty years’ time. He was tall and powerfully built, with wide shoulders that were only slightly slimmer now than they must have been in his youth. Hard lines carved his face into a mask of dignified strength, and steely eyes and graying salt-and-pepper hair all came together to create the perfect visage of shifter “royalty.”

It was the closest thing to describe the Darmuths, really. Their fortune rivaled those of some of the Treasure Lane dragons and if Jordan Darmuth felt like it, he could buy up half the NSHL teams and not even feel the dent in his pocket. So it made sense that whenever the Darmuth patriarch would look at his eldest son, his Alpha heir, the glint in his eyes would dim slightly with disappointment—an emotion Jax himself had become quite accustomed to.

“I do wish you’d give up on this nonsense,” Jordan started, prompting an eye roll from Jax.

Here we go.

“You have an MBA from Harvard of all places. You could work for any law firm in the world. And instead you choose to waste your life away chasing a puck on the ice.”

Jordan’s lips thinned in disapproval, which he tried to hide behind the glass of scotch, but Jax simply shrugged his shoulders. Nothing new; he’d heard this before. And his father was rather mild compared to his mother, really, who if she got going could not be reasoned with to stop spewing hate until a Prada sale came around in her general vicinity.

“We’ve talked about this. I’m not going to quit. I have three years left on my contract with the Shovelers and I’m staying where I am. With my team.”

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.”