Tending Tara (Alaska Blizzard Book 8)

by Kat Mizera

  “We were too mad,” Miikka rumbled.

  “And focused on getting her out of there,” Ryder said, scowling.

  “I appreciate what you guys did for her, and for me, more than you know,” Donovan said. “I hated being so far away, but you guys really stepped up to the plate.”

  “That’s what friends—and family—do,” Miikka said.

  “So what’s next for you and Tara?” Aaron asked.

  “We’re going to start house-hunting and buy something up there once this place sells. Realtor thinks it’ll be quick since the market’s good right now. Beyond that, I’d like to take a little time to help her get acclimated. For me, it’s easy because I’ll have the team and it’s hockey, you know? That’s what I do and it’s familiar, no matter what setting it’s in. For her, I think it’ll be harder, so I’m hoping I’ll have a little time to be with her while she navigates everything.”

  “Tara is smart, strong, and independent,” Miikka said. “She’ll be fine.”

  “I know, but I want to make sure. I already screwed one marriage; I refuse to do it again.”

  “When you love someone, you find a way to make time for what’s important.”

  “Amen to that.” They clinked beer bottles together and talk turned to other things.

  Tara, Charli, Sara, Dani, and Hailey gathered in the great room as they chit-chatted and ate dinner. Gage’s house was so big it was easy to separate in different rooms, and though it hadn’t been intentional, they seemed to have split up by gender. Jake and Whitney had gone to Hawaii for the long weekend, so they were the only ones missing from their inner circle, and Tara’s friends all wanted to know the details of her marriage to Donovan.

  “I think maybe I was embarrassed to tell everyone,” she admitted as they talked. “Like I had to use the greatest guy I knew to get a green card and it felt…wrong somehow.”

  “Probably because you were already falling in love with him,” Hailey pointed out. “When I found out I’d gotten pregnant during one of my weekends with Kane, I didn’t want to tell him because it felt wrong to pressure him into a relationship. I already had feelings for him, so I didn’t want him to want me just because I was pregnant. Luckily, he felt the same way. It just took us a while to figure it out.”

  “Sergei sent me back to Vegas to avoid what we were feeling in the beginning,” Dani said, laughing. “It looks like all of us had to fight to find love.”

  “So what are you going to do once you’re officially settled in Buffalo?” Charli asked.

  Tara smiled and bit her lip. “I have to see if Donovan’s on board, but I think this might be the perfect time to get pregnant.”

  “Yes!” Charli pumped her fist. “Our babies will be first cousins, so they need to be close in age.”

  Tara grinned. “I was thinking that, too.”

  “And we’re all just a flight away if you get lonely or need something when Donovan is on the road,” Dani said.

  “I think I’ll be okay,” Tara responded. “I make friends easily, and anyway, I’m sure if I’m pregnant my mother will come to help if I need it. But I think maybe next year. We need time to get settled, buy a house, that kind of thing. I have to talk to him anyway—I don’t know if he’s ready.”

  “I think he’ll be ready if you want him to be ready,” Charli said, giggling.

  “True,” Sara agreed. “I told Aaron he was ready, and boom, we were pregnant.”

  The ladies all collapsed with laughter.

  “When is everyone due?” Tara asked.

  “Max is two and a half months,” Dani said. “I’m not due for at least a year.”

  “July sixteenth,” Charli said, grinning.

  “June twenty-fourth,” Sara said.

  “Whitney’s due date is August tenth, I think,” Hailey said.

  “And Laurel is due August twentieth,” Laurel said, coming in to join them after putting Matthew to bed.

  “Yay!” They all clapped and hugged her, congratulating her and Gage.

  “I’m not getting any younger,” she said. “So it was now or never. And I wanted to have the baby in summer so it would impact my ability to get back to work as little as possible. We’d been trying since summer, but it took a while this time.”

  “That’s still so exciting.”

  They talked babies and due dates as they ate, and Tara sat back with a content smile. These were her friends, and family, but she’d find new friends in Buffalo, and Charli would always be family. Having Donovan made up for what she’d lose in moving, and he was more than worth it.

  After putting her dish in the dishwasher, she got up and went in search of her husband, suddenly missing him. She found him in the hallway, as if headed in her direction.

  “Were you looking for me?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his neck.

  “I missed you,” he said, holding her against him.

  “Me too.”

  He lowered his head and brushed his lips across hers. “If we miss each other when we’re in the same building, what the hell are we going to do when I’m on road trips?”

  “Video sex?”

  “Mmm, fun.” They smiled at each other.

  “Ready to go back to Buffalo day after tomorrow?”

  “As long as you’re with me, I’m ready to go anywhere.”

  “I love you, Tara. Thanks for being mine.”

  “I love you, too.” She’d just leaned up for a kiss when Logan’s voice rang out in the hallway.

  “Skinny dipping! Who’s in?”

  “Dude, what is this dire need of yours to constantly be naked?” Donovan asked, turning to him with a laugh.

  “I dunno,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t like clothes that much.”

  “There are no single women here,” Tara pointed out.

  Logan made a face, as if completely caught off guard by that statement.

  “Well, shit,” he said.

  “Go have a beer,” Donovan told him, patting him on the shoulder.

  “I do like the idea of skinny dipping with you,” Tara whispered in his ear once Logan was gone.

  “You wanna?”

  She wiggled her eyebrows. “Logan’s gonna be so mad.”

  “He’ll get over it.” His eyes danced with mischief. “Pool’s heated.”

  She grabbed his hand, and they ran for the pool house.

  Thank you for reading Donovan and Tara’s story. Want more hockey? Check out my Sidewinders: Generations series—there’s an excerpt from book one on the next page.

  Excerpt from “ZAAN”

  Lexi

  Music was my favorite mind-numbing distraction, but sometimes it didn’t help. Sitting in my sectioned off portion of the tour bus, even with noise-cancelling headphones and music playing through my laptop, I still felt the bouncing of the seat on the other side of my bunk, someone jumping up and down. Another night on tour. Another night of hell. I was so tired of this. So tired of them.

  Someone yanked open the curtain and Tayla’s hottie-of-the-night wiggled his flaccid penis in my direction. With an exasperated sigh, I jerked the curtain closed again. Boy toy stuck his pecker through the seam and I resisted the urge to swat it; I simply refused to touch something so vile.

  “Come play with us, Lexi!” Marj opened the curtain again and I read her lips.

  I shook my head, reaching for the curtain. “No, thanks. I’m working.”

  “You’re always working,” Marj whined.

  “Working to make the rest of us look bad,” Tayla hissed, peering over Marj’s shoulder. “Thinks she’s hot shit.”

  I could only partially hear them but after more than three years on the road together, I knew what they were saying, what they thought of me. But I didn’t care anymore. I was done with this bullshit. Contract or no contract, I was catching a flight home as soon as I could get to an airport. I’d already spoken to my lawyer about it and he’d said he potentially had enough proof to show they were breaking multiple stipulations of our c
ontract, so I could get out of finishing the tour. At this point, I didn’t care about the money or my reputation. I just needed to get the hell away from them. There was no doubt in my mind why the last Kay had turned to heroin and suicide; these bitches were enough to drive anyone insane.

  “Come on, you sweet blond pussy.” Tayla and Pam joined Marj and the two guys they’d picked up, who were now stark naked, sneering down at me. She snatched the headphones off of my head and I shot to my feet. I wasn’t suicidal like Kay, but I was on the verge of being homicidal, my hands clenched into fists at my sides.

  “Give me the fucking headphones,” I snapped.

  “What are you gonna do? Take them?” Tayla tossed them on the ground and stomped on them, laughing.

  I arched my brows. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

  “You’re not better than us, you know,” Tayla responded, her bloodshot eyes cloudy from alcohol and who knows what else.

  “Never said I was.”

  “But you sit in there like the queen of fucking England, always working. You’re the only one who writes songs… Why can’t you use the ones they write for us like Kay did?”

  “Because I like to write songs.”

  “You wanna fuck my boyfriend?” Tayla changed tactics, pulling her flavor of the month forward and beginning to stroke his dick.

  “No thanks.” I tried to sit down again but Tayla yanked me back up by the hair.

  I let out a yelp of pain and surprise, pulling myself free of the other woman’s grasp as I stumbled back into my seat. “What. The. Fuck.” I stood up again, scowling. “You want to go, Tayla? Huh? You and your drunk ass think you can take me?” I’d never been in a fistfight in my twenty-two years on earth, but I was ready tonight.

  “Fuck you!” Tayla started laughing, which turned into a deep, guttural cough that led her to her own bunk.

  “What did you do to her?” Pam growled at me.

  I raised my hands. “I never touched her. Maybe if she’d stop smoking and shooting up, she wouldn’t sound like that all the time.”

  “Maybe if you weren’t so holier-than-thou, we’d be a group again instead of Lexi’s backup singers.”

  “Again, if you spent more time on the music instead of the drugs and dickless wonders, it wouldn’t be that way.”

  “We don’t want you here,” Tayla rasped. “We fucking hate you.”

  “Good. I hate you too and I’ll be out of here the next time we stop.”

  “You can’t leave the group. There’s another year on your contract.” Tayla tried to keep talking but succumbed to another coughing fit.

  “I’d rather go broke than spend another year on tour with you bitches.” I pulled the curtain closed and sat down. Though I’d learned quickly not to back down with them, the fighting and insults still bothered me. My hands were shaking and I was a little nauseated, but I’d be okay. Opening up my phone to distract myself, a notification caught my eye.

  Las Vegas loses to Florida, 5-4.

  The Sidewinders had played Florida? In Fort Lauderdale? Tonight? I quickly looked up the team’s schedule and, sure enough, the game against Florida had ended only a few minutes ago. Holy shit. This might be my lucky night.

  I hauled my ass out of my bunk and rushed to the front of the bus. Lula Mae Hammond had been our bus driver for two years and she was a sweet, smart lady; we’d gotten close over the last couple of years. Lula Mae was one of the only people keeping me sane on this tour.

  “Lula, where are we?” I whispered.

  Lula glanced at me in surprise. “Passing through a western suburb of Fort Lauderdale, Lex. What’s up?”

  “Are we anywhere near Sawgrass Mills? The Sawgrass Expressway?”

  “Sugar, what’s going on?”

  “Tell me, Lula. It’s important.”

  “We’re on the Sawgrass, sugar, but—”

  “Don’t pass the exit for the mall!” I ran back to my bunk and threw my laptop, external hard drive and chargers into my backpack. Grabbing my Keds, I slid my feet into them, put my phone in my pocket and slipped on my denim jacket. I took one last look around and then hurried back to the front of the bus.

  “Honey bunch, what are you doing?” Lula looked concerned.

  “I need to get out of here,” I whispered. “My dad’s team is here, right now, and if we hurry, I can get on the plane with them if you can drop me near the arena.”

  “The girls won’t like it,” she whispered back.

  “By the time they figure out what’s going on, I’ll be gone.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Lula got off the highway at the next exit and headed toward the arena. “Be careful, sweet girl—text Lula Mae and let me know you’re okay.”

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and weighed my options. My father was the team’s goalie coach now that he’d retired from playing professional hockey, but he had the flu and wasn’t on this road trip. I knew lots of the players but there was only one I wanted to call. Without overthinking it, I dialed his number and prayed he would pick up. We hadn’t spoken in months, but he was still my friend.

  My soulmate.

  My love.

  My Zaan.

  “Hey, we’re about to get on the bus. Can I call you back?”

  “I need help,” I said quickly. “Where are you?”

  “We’re in Fort Lauderdale,” he countered. “Where are you? What’s going on?”

  “I’m by the mall, just a few blocks away…” I told him exactly where we were.

  “We’re around back, literally getting ready to walk out to the bus in a few minutes.”

  “Oh, god, don’t leave without me! Please tell them to wait. I can have the driver drop me off at the player’s exit if you can call someone to get us through the gate. The game let out not that long ago, so there’s a ton of traffic, but if you get me in…”

  “I’ll talk to Coach right now. Call you back.” He disconnected.

  Lula turned the bus toward the arena, slowing down as she went against the postgame traffic, but I was so ramped up on adrenaline, I was bouncing on my toes as I waited for word from Zaan.

  A minute later he called back.

  “Gate Z,” he told me. “And then I’ll meet you outside.”

  “Thank you.” I relayed the message to Lula and we followed signs toward the correct gate.

  “Have her just pull over by the guard,” Zaan was saying in the phone. “I can walk you in. That’s easier than her trying to turn around in this parking lot.”

  “Okay.” I pointed. “Let me off there, Lula.”

  “You sure, sugar?” Lula gave me a dubious glance.

  “It’s the team my dad works for. I’ll be fine.”

  She slowed the bus to a stop and I leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I’ll text you tomorrow! Thank you.”

  “Go get ‘em, girl. You know you love that boy.”

  I gave her a rueful smile. “I don’t think it’s mutual anymore, but you never know.”

  I jumped off the bus and as I turned, I saw him. Tall and broad-shouldered, his dirty blond hair falling over his forehead, it was still Zaan. He’d changed some, gotten bigger and stronger, but not that much, not enough that I wouldn’t recognize him. I couldn’t help myself and ran straight to his arms, throwing myself at him as if I was grabbing a lifeline.

  “Hey.” He hugged me tightly. “You okay, babe?”

  He called me babe. I nearly melted.

  “Could you just hold me for a minute? Please.”

  “Of course.” He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me against his chest as the tour bus pulled away.

  I breathed in his aftershave, his masculine scent, and emotion burned through me. God, I’d missed him so fucking much.

  “What’s going on?” he whispered after a few seconds. “The guys are already on the bus and we’re going to have to walk over there.”

  “Can I fly home with you?”

  He grimaced. “Lex
, you know that’s against the rules.”

  “This is an emergency. I couldn’t spend another minute on that bus and…if I get on a commercial flight the press will recognize me. I’ll talk to Jared.” Jared Wylde was the head coach of the professional hockey team Zaan and my father both worked for, the Las Vegas Sidewinders.

  “There’s the bus.” He motioned with his head. “Come on.” He took his arm from around me but kept a hand at the small of my back as we walked to where the bus was parked.

  Jared came out, a frown creasing his face as he recognized me. “Sweetheart, what are you doing here?”

  “Hey, Jared. I know it’s not usually allowed, but I can’t get on a commercial flight tonight. I literally had the tour bus stop and let me off on the side of the road… I couldn’t take it another minute. There’s a shit ton of crazy going on with the band. Please, please let me fly back to Vegas with you.”

  Jared shifted, taking a deep breath. “If people find out about this…”

  “The only way anyone will know is if the guys talk or we keep standing here. Please. I’ll explain on the bus.”

  “Come on, then.” He motioned with his head and I hurried up the steps.

  “Thank you.”

  “Where’s your stuff?” He looked down in confusion.

  “I told you, I had the driver drop me off. This is all I took. I’m done. I’m not going back. I don’t care if they sue me or if I spend every dime I’ve made getting out of my contract, but I’m done.”

  “Jesus, sweetheart. Come sit down.”

  I sank into the seat next to Jared and closed my eyes in relief. Zaan sat in the seat behind me, one big hand reaching forward to lightly stroke my arm through my jacket.

  “Lexi.” Cody Armstrong, the team captain and a good friend of the family, sat across from me. “What’s going on, beautiful?”

  I shook my head, suddenly emotional all over again.

  “Here.” Zaan passed a bottle of water forward and I accepted it, drinking deeply.

  Some things never change, I thought. He might not love me anymore, but he still knew exactly what I needed, when I needed it.