Wolfe: Colorado Crush Hockey Series, #2

About the Book

Wolfe

As one of the grittiest, most talented hockey players in the NHL, my take-no-prisoners approach on the ice helped me to not only survive, but conquer. And I had, or have, plenty to conquer. I don’t have time for frivolous things like relationships or expressing feelings that are nobody’s business.

So why does a boss cupcake baker seem to have me wound tighter than the apron strings around her narrow waist? I don’t even eat sweets, and yet I find myself in her bakery just as often as I am at the rink.

Something’s gotta give in this push and pull between Aspen and me. Something’s gotta break. And I can guarantee it won’t be me.

Wolfe is the second book in the Colorado Crush Hockey series filled with a tattoo-covered alpha male and a red-headed siren who helps him discover a world outside of grief and pain.

Hockey, happy endings and lots of steam await you now in Wolfe.

Before You Get Started

For those of you who’ve read Rookie, the first couple of chapters will seem a bit familiar. Okay, very familiar. Stay with me, as these chapters are important to Wolfe’s story. Really important. While there are crossover chapters from book one to book two, the perspectives of the characters are different.

For those of you who haven’t read Rookie, please consider checking it out in the future. I tried to stay true to the copy from book one, which may lead some of my most intuitive readers to question if they’ve read this book before, but, alas, it’s different!

Wolfe’s story is so close to my heart. Many thanks to the readers who’ve told me they cannot wait for his story. Honestly, I can’t either. I really hope you like how his journey came together and the incredible woman who helped him truly live again.

Happy reading, and most importantly, please let me know what you think! One of my goals this year is to leave the confines of my shy-shell and engage more with the amazing readers who have brought so much joy to my heart by buying books from the Colorado Crush Hockey Series.

Hugs,

Susan

SusanRossiniBooks@gmail.com

Twitter

Facebook

Dedication

My sweet editor.

Thank you for being on this incredible journey wit me.

I treasure our Saturday morning chats, the Twitterverse, and of course your edits that have helped me become a much better writer.

You are a gift.

Title

Copyright

About the Book

Before You Get Started

Dedication

Chapter 1—Wolfe

Chapter 2—Aspen

Chapter 3—Wolfe

Chapter 4—Aspen

Chapter 5—Wolfe

Chapter 6—Aspen

Chapter 7—Wolfe

Chapter 8—Aspen

Chapter 9—Wolfe

Chapter 10—Aspen

Chapter 11—Wolfe

Chapter 12—Aspen

Chapter 13—Wolfe

Chapter 14—Aspen 

Chapter 15—Wolfe

Chapter 16—Aspen

Chapter 17—Wolfe

Chapter 18—Aspen

Chapter 19—Wolfe

Chapter 20—Aspen

Chapter 21—Wolfe

Chapter 22—Aspen

Chapter 23—Wolfe

Chapter 24—Aspen

Epilogue

Bonus Epilogue!

Acknowledgements

A Chat with my Editor (A tease for Dante, book 3 of the Colorado Crush series)

Books by Susan Rossini

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Chapter 1—Wolfe

"I t’s time, Wolfe."

That’s all he needed to hear.

His cue.

His ritual.

Sliding his wireless headphones onto his head and over his ears, the opening strains of the "1812 Overture" washed over Wolfe’s body, mind and soul, just as it did before every single game.

In exactly fifteen minutes and thirty-two seconds, Wolfe — clad in his Colorado Crush navy and gold uniform — would make his way to the ice for game seven of the Stanley Cup Final.

The ice was his safe haven. His calm. No thoughts of the past, no shredding of his soul. Wolfe’s one constant, his peace, was the frozen water that called to him like no other.

According to the arena’s score clock, Wolfe and his teammates were sixty minutes away from winning the cup with one single victory. Wolfe couldn’t envision any alternative other than holding that perfectly cumbersome, blessedly silver trophy high over his head in the arena following the battle in which they were about to embark.

It didn’t matter that Wolfe found himself in the enemy’s den. Wolfe could be standing in the flames of hell, the devil breathing down his neck for eternity, but as long as his name lived among the others engraved on Lord Stanley’s cup, the location of the game was a moot point.

To everyone in the league, Wolfe was a badass motherfucker who took no prisoners. His heavy slapshot had been compared to a rocket. His bone-rattling hits matched the power of a semitruck. Wolfe was both feared and revered by every man in the League.

He also had a salty personality to match and didn’t give a flying fuck what anyone thought of him. Not the management, not the opponents’ fans that abhorred him because of his hockey domination, and certainly not his father. His father... don’t go there, Wolfe. Focus on the game.

Wolfe took a deep and cleansing breath to shake off the dregs of the worst day of his childhood... of his life, and let the building crescendo of Tchaikovsky’s renowned overture work to fill his mind and rev his hockey engine.

Classical music, Tchaikovsky in particular, pulsed through his earphones prior to every game. That tradition wasn’t changing now just because this night featured the final contest of the year’s National Hockey League season.

Wolfe was pulled from his concentration when team captain, Dante Ricco, walked by his stall and smacked Wolfe’s shins with his hockey stick, indicating the time neared for the team to take the ice.

Waiting until all of his teammates shuffled by him on their skates, their jerseys swishing and swaying as they walked, Wolfe stood at the back of the pack to make his own way to the rink.

The music playing in his ears became increasingly bolder with each step he took. Wolfe could literally hear Tchaikovsky yelling at him to get his ass in gear and dominate on the ice through each measure of the powerful piece.  

Sixty minutes. Victory. Nothing less.

With massive bells tolling, chimes ringing and cannons booming in the finale of the greatest classical piece of all time (and screw you if you disagreed), Wolfe could feel his heart pound with excitement to play the game he loved.

To win playing the game he loved.

Catching his helmet tossed to him by a Crush trainer standing near the opening of the rink, Wolfe pulled off his headphones. His mess of blonde hair framed his sharply angled face and brushed against his shoulders. His golden locks caught in his playoff beard, especially scraggily due to a month of growth that was a far cry from the patented stubbled trim he maintained.

At this moment, Wolfe appeared more like a biker from the Sons of Anarchy television show instead of a professional hockey player. With a shake of his head to shift his hair away from his face, Wolfe plunked his bucket on his nugget. He then tossed his headphones to the trainer seconds before stepping onto the ice.

Feeling the endless energy course through his body with each powerful glide of his skates on the ice, he let it feed his soul along with the bright lights and jeers from the fans of the enemy. All of it came together to prepare him for battle.

A battle he would win.  

Wolfe planned to win the whole fucking thing.

LOSING FUCKING SUCKED.

The dark sentiment shrouding him echoed among his teammates, as the locker room was quieter than a mouse pissing on a cotton ball.

There was nothing worse than losing. Nothing.

After sixty minutes of gritty play, the Crush fell to the Dallas Firestorm, 4-2. Wolfe did his part with a goal and solid D, but that was little consolation since the Crush couldn’t catch any breaks and ultimately fell in the season-ending game on an empty-netter that sealed their fate.

Boys, I’d like to say it was a great season, but it wasn’t, Dante stood and moved to the center of the room, where the eyes of the Crush team found him preparing for a powerful speech. Dante rested his hands against his hips, sweat drenching his compression shirt tucked into his breezers, the hockey pants worn by the players. A glimmer of disappointment and anger flickered in his deep-brown eyes shared with many of his fellow Italians. "I want you to remember this feeling. Let the anger... the pain... drive you this off-season. But know one thing; there isn’t going to be any fucking off-season. Our road to the cup starts now."

Dante remained in the middle of the room, surrounded by his Crush teammates sitting on the benches in the visitor’s locker room. Dante’s piercing gaze swept to each player, demanding their commitment for the quest on which they were about to embark.

When Dante’s stare met Wolfe’s, a silent conversation passed between the two teammates and best friends.

Let’s do this.

I’m with you, brother.

Wolfe took a few minutes following Dante’s decree to let the loss on the ice and the resonating pain of defeat wash over him so he remembered just how shitty this moment felt when he trained his ass off in the coming months.

And train he would. How else would Wolfe keep memories of the past at bay and away from that hole in his chest that used to house his heart?

Chapter 2—Aspen

"S uh guhd," Aspen’s employee-come-friend, Mia, sighed and even moaned with pleasure around a mouthful of a triple-chocolate muffin. This definitely pleased Aspen as she had been baking long before the sun welcomed the day that morning.  

"I take it the ‘Godiva This is Good muffin hit the spot? Aspen quizzed Mia in a serious tone, but couldn’t keep the smile from dancing across her lips.

Aspen would take Mia’s passionate response as high praise for her latest recipe. Especially since she focused on feeding the wants and needs of the most addicted chocoholics who visited her shop.  

But alas, Aspen couldn’t savor the moment too long. She began working on another batch of batter showcasing her own spin on carrot cake cupcakes. The treats featured perfectly pulsed carrots in her food processor, crushed pineapple and rich spices that made her ‘What’s up Doc?’ cupcakes topped with cream cheese frosting a customer favorite in her bakery.  

Mia had only worked with Aspen a short time, and only part-time at that, but what had started as a desperate need for an early-morning barista so Aspen could focus on her baking and business side of things had shifted to a wonderful friendship with the cute-as-a-button-come-sassy grad student. Mia may be several years her junior but was wise beyond her age right down to the tips of her glorious mane of mahogany hair.

Mia performed lifesaver duties on so many levels, both professionally and personally. In fact she became one of Aspen’s closest friends in a short period of time.

On the business side of the house, Mia’s meager salary, along with two other part-timers, prevented Aspen from fixing some of the many, many things in need of repair around the shop. However, she required the small staff to help elevate the bakery from struggling to successful. There just weren’t enough hours in the day to perform the things on Aspen’s to-do list to run the business solo.

And there wasn’t much left after paying her small staff to return capital back into the bakery. That, combined with a hit to her bottom line when a national coffee chain recently opened up down the block, presented even more challenges to Aspen’s skimpy profits in recent months.

Aspen did have a plan to expand the bakery by forging into catering for meetings and small events, all while preserving her loyal customer base.  She’d then have the money to slowly invest into the business. Something her parents probably should have done when they owned the business before moving to Florida a few years ago, but never got around to. And although they continually told her, er, guided her, in how they thought she should run the bakery, the reality was they failed to invest in the bones of the small shop in all those years. Aspen paid the price for their procrastination as the building showed its age and wear from the battered flooring to an oven on its last leg.

Aspen’s plan to expand into catering was solid since she had far too much debt to qualify for any more money due to covering much of her parents’ own debt when she assumed their loan. She figured she should have enough capital to inject into her business by the time she turned... sixty.

So, while most of Aspen’s pennies headed toward whittling away the debt her folks amassed who were now forging ahead with a meager retirement in Florida, she’d limp her way through some of the worn – heck, who was she kidding – broken parts of the bakery like the handle she had to jiggle on her oven to ensure the interior light turned off.

Shifting her mind away from those depressing thoughts, Aspen looked up from the cupcake batter to see a dreamy expression crossing Mia’s face.

My muffins are good but, damn, girl, whatever fantasy flight you were on must have been a hella journey.

Mia gave her head a shake that caused her dark ponytail to flutter across her back in sleek waves.

Mia was (literally) saved by the bell from further questioning about her faraway look when the tinkling of the cascading chimes over the front door signaled a customer. Or customers as was the case. And, hot damn, the trio of men entering the shop with their movie-star-quality-looks couldn’t have been any different if they tried.

The oldest looking of the three, maybe in his early thirties, had dark hair trimmed in a stylish, short cut and had perfectly sun-kissed olive skin. Guy two seemed pretty young, but had the muscles of a man and an impish look in his denim-blue eyes that she was certain caused girls of all ages to swoon. Aspen couldn’t linger on the young buck because guy three caused a shiver of anticipation to zing through her system when she spied the blonde behemoth of a man with his shoulder-length golden hair paired with a perfectly stubbled beard a few shades of darker blonde, and the most-piercing blue eyes she’d ever seen. The blue replicated the winter sky across the snow-covered Siberian expanse, or at least what she’d thought a Siberian sky would look like.

And tall. He was so freaking tall. Aspen was no slouch at five-nine, but the beast towered over her. He was by far the biggest of the three men. Speaking of big, his muscles literally  bulged beneath a vintage rock band t-shirt with Aerosmith’s logo stretched across his chest as broad as a bus.

Aspen gave herself a mental jolt to return to reality.

No time for a man, girl.

She silently admonished herself and offered the sex-starved part of her brain a reminder that the bakery was her lover. A lover that demanded her sole attention until she made a dent in the loan and could invest back into her future.

In a few decades. Ugh.  

And yet Aspen couldn’t take her eyes off of the beast’s tattoos. She never gave much thought to tattoos in the past, but the colored ink tracking down his arms in intricate patterns and designs had her itching to trace her fingers and tongue across the permanent pigment.

Hey sis. What’s shaking? the suave looking, dark-haired hottie asked Mia and sauntered up to the counter where she stood at the espresso machine.

Ahhhh. Recognition donned on Aspen that the hunky guy with an uncanny resemblance to Mia was her brother. He was a professional hockey player and part of the hometown team. Aspen could only assume the other two well-built Adonis-like men were his teammates.

Speaking of teammates, Aspen couldn’t linger too long on Mia’s brother because she again focused her attention on the sexy blonde who took a deep inhale through his nose, a slight smile tugging up one side of his mouth.

Damn, even his lips were sexy in their fullness accentuated by his beard.  

Sensing he was enjoying the rich scents the bakery offered, Aspen’s traitorous mind wandered to a vision of her placing a bit of icing on the thick cords of his neck and further down the rippling muscles of his chest and licking off the confection one dart of her tongue at a time.

Where in the hell did that thought come from?

Aspen was losing it.

Meanwhile, the Viking-like blonde ended his indulgent inhale and levelled a glare at the guy Aspen assumed was Mia’s brother.

"Seriously, old man, you’ve gotta claw your way into the twenty-first century. Next, you’re going to be saying groovy or Daddy-o, for fuck’s sake."

Aspen used the redirection of the moment to anchor herself in the present and not some erotic fantasyland concocted by her mind to ease her loneliness and sexual drought.

And what exactly was the present?  Aspen lost all focus as she spied the blues and silvers