Double Bear Secret: Werebear BBW Menage Romance (Hockey Bear Season Book 2)

by Anya Nowlan

  “Okay, hold on,” Crash exclaimed, holding his hands out. “You’re not making any sense. Selling out our team?”

  “You can stop with the act,” Lily replied, narrowing her eyes at him. “I overheard Connor’s phone call last night. You won’t be able to convince me that was about your girlfriend or you were talking with your mom or whatever bullshit reason you were thinking of feeding me this time. You two are done.”

  Connor was starting to have trouble making sense of it all. Obviously more was going on here than he was aware of, but Lily wasn’t interested in explaining any of it to them. She seemed to think he and Crash already knew what was going on, but they had no clue.

  She thinks we’re traitors? What the fuck is that about?

  “Can you please take a break from branding us the scum of the earth and start making sense? What exactly are you accusing us of?” Connor asked.

  He knew that the call Lily said she’d overheard was shady, but how did she make the leap he was somehow selling out his team? Obviously she wasn’t aware of what was really going on with him, Connor and Alison, but she definitely knew something they didn’t.

  “It’s all over. Fiona has been on to your scheme for a while now. What I can’t figure out is, why would you do it? Were you that strapped for cash?” she carried on, eyes practically burning right through them as she stared the brothers down.

  “Wait, Fiona has something to do with this?” Crash muttered, rubbing his temple.

  The pieces were starting to fall together for Connor.

  “You’re not an assistant, are you?” he asked.

  “No, I’m not,” Lily admitted, finally giving him some information to work with.

  “You’re here to investigate us?” he continued on, seeing as he was seemingly on the right track.

  “And you think we have been hurting the team somehow?” Crash added, catching on as well. “Did Fiona send you to spy on us?”

  Lily didn’t answer, just stood among the chaos she’d created, spine straight and jaw squared. A thousand different thoughts passed through Connor’s head.

  Like did she sleep with them because she wanted to, or was it all part of her plan to get closer to them? And were he and Crash the focus of her investigation, or was everyone under suspicion?

  “I’m a private investigator, not a spy,” Lily corrected him.

  “Then you’re bad at your job, because we haven’t done anything to hurt this team and we haven’t sold anyone out,” Connor said.

  His mind was reeling. Was anything about Lily true? Was she actually the person he thought he was getting to know, or was it all a cover? Beneath the anger sweeping over him, there was hurt, and the sick feeling his trust had been violated yet again.

  The urge to rip something apart to relieve some of this tension winding him up like a rubber band that was about to snap became almost overwhelming.

  “You know us,” Crash chimed in, somehow keeping a lot more calm than Connor. “This team is like our family.”

  Lily looked like her outrage was slowly being replaced by annoyance. Clearly she had expected them to come clean by now, or at least admit to something. Letting her arms hang at her sides, she took a deep breath.

  “Someone on this team is leaking information. About game strategies, about players’ injuries, anything people would be willing to pay money for. I heard you, Connor. You must have thought I wasn’t in my room, but I was.

  “You were talking about exchanging money for information,” she said, cocking a brow at him, like she was daring him to try and deny it.

  Connor was stunned for a second. This was the first he’d heard of this. Someone leaking things about the team? He couldn’t believe it. But then again, a private investigator going through his things kind of made it a reality he couldn’t overlook.

  “No, that’s what you think you heard. I was talking to Alison, and it wasn’t about team secrets,” he replied.

  “Really?” Lily drew out, clearly not impressed by that explanation. “And why exactly were you talking about payments with your ex-girlfriend?” she asked, pursing her lips.

  “Because she’s fucking blackmailing us!” Connor blurted out, his voice coming out louder than he’d intended.

  The room fell silent after that. Lily was looking from him to Crash, opening her mouth and closing it again. They stood there for a good moment, the tension in the air thick enough to cut with a knife.

  All the cards were out there now. And everything Connor had thought he could have with Lily was gone.

  I can never trust her now. Not after this.

  Thirty-Four

  Lily

  Lily sat in the kitchen with Connor’s phone in her hand, reading one e-mail after another, all from Alison. One of them had an attachment, and she looked up at the brothers before tapping on it.

  “Go on. It’s not like you’re going to believe us, otherwise,” Connor urged bitterly, standing stiff behind her shoulder. “What’s our privacy to you anyway?”

  Her stomach sank, though she’d thought it didn’t have anywhere else to go. Her mouth tasted like ash.

  Crash was silent, leaning on a counter next to the back wall. He hadn’t said much after Connor had revealed their blackmail story, and she couldn’t help but wonder what was going on in his head.

  It was clear she had hurt them, and she couldn’t blame Connor for his harsh words. She probably disliked herself as much as they did at the moment.

  Her hand hovered over the screen. If she was a better, more trusting woman, she might have taken Connor’s word for it, and not opened the picture. But she was just her. Lily Decker, private investigator, always looking for the worst in people. Hell of a situation that had gotten her into.

  The image of Connor, Crash and a brunette she’d never seen before, together on a bed popped up, and she closed the picture as quickly as she could. Not only did looking at it feel wrong, she felt a twinge of jealousy, stronger than she would have expected.

  Blackmail and illicit material wasn’t exactly something she had never come into contact with. But this time, there were personal stakes. As it started to sink in that the brothers might actually be telling the truth, she felt appalled.

  Firstly, it was absolutely disgusting for Alison to even film them having sex without the twins knowing about it. Add to that the fact she was now extorting them for money, and Lily felt she could strangle that bitch with her bare hands. It was a primal anger like she’d never felt before, to the extent it scared her a little.

  Secondly, she felt awful for how she had treated Connor and Crash. In her defense, she couldn’t have possibly guessed what was actually going on with them. But she hadn’t given them the benefit of the doubt, either.

  No, she had jumped the gun on this one, and the damage she had caused could very well be irreversible.

  Handing the phone back to Connor and nervously running her hands down her jeans, she didn’t know what to say. An apology didn’t seem enough and trying to justify her actions just seemed distasteful. Her stomach was in knots and with so many alternating feelings rushing through her, she wasn’t sure she could put it all into words.

  “I didn’t know…” she started weakly, once the silence became unbearable.

  “You could have talked to us,” Connor replied, his voice cold and emotionless.

  “I would have tipped my hand… You have to understand, it was my job to blend in. If I came to you, I would have had to tell you who I really was,” she said.

  “We would have told you the truth and all of this could have been avoided,” Crash quietly said, not looking at her.

  “Even if I had believed that, I still couldn’t have risked it. I know how close you are to the other guys on the team. Would you have kept my real identity from them? Will you now?” Lily replied, searching their eyes for an answer.

  Now that their odd behavior had been explained, Lily thought back on everything the twins had said about the team. She had written it off as lies
when she was sure they were the traitors, but now it all rang too true.

  Would Connor and Crash keep her secret? Her investigation depended on it, and right now, the men didn’t owe her anything.

  How the hell did I manage to mess this up so badly?

  Crash sighed and stepped closer, looking like he was thoroughly disappointed in her.

  “I can understand why you did what you did, even though I hate it. You don’t know this team like we do. Everyone is a suspect to you. But to us, they’re brothers.

  “I’m more than angry that someone is selling sensitive information, but it can’t be anyone on the team. That’s the one thing I’m absolutely sure of,” he said, earning a surprised look from Connor.

  “Well put, brother,” he remarked, nodding at his Crash. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  “You don’t have to act so surprised,” Crash scoffed, while patting him on the shoulder. “Besides, I’m starting to wonder if this twin telepathy thing might be more real than we thought.”

  Lily enjoyed the reprieve from being looked at like she was a disloyal conspirator trying to tear the team apart and enjoyed seeing the brothers smile at each other. Even in this situation, they still managed to poke fun and lean on one another, and it was a nice thing to see.

  She began to wonder how she’d even considered them coldhearted traitors in the first place, when two pairs of accusing eyes returned to her, reminding her this wasn’t the time to ‘aww’ at her handsome lovers.

  Former lovers. They’ll never want to share a bed with me again.

  “I am sorry. I really am. I can’t change what I’ve done. But you have to know, I do care about this team, more with every day. And I did what I did to help, not to hurt. Don’t you want the person responsible caught?

  “I can assure you, all other suspects have been ruled out. It has to be someone from the team. You might not want to believe it, but I’ve seen the evidence. There’s no other explanation,” she said, almost pleading for them to believe her.

  It was suddenly overwhelmingly important for her for them to see the reasoning behind it all. She couldn’t stand them thinking she was here on some witch hunt, or that she didn’t care about them, or about Sal, Graham, Aiden or Eddie.

  I might be suspicious as fuck, and have trouble trusting anyone, but I’m not a monster. I never intended to hurt anyone. This was supposed to be just another job, and now…

  The twins’ expressions seemed to soften as they listened to her. They shared a glance she couldn’t decipher when she was finished, and Lily nearly held her breath waiting for them to respond.

  “As Crash said, I can see where you’re coming from,” Connor replied. “But I still think you’re wrong. There’s nothing you can say that can convince me my brothers are working against us,” he said, softly but firmly.

  It wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear, at all. The twins were unable to accept the truth, and the three of them could never move on from this until they could.

  “Then there’s nothing more to say,” she sighed. “There’s just one thing I need to know. Will you blow my cover or not?”

  The question hung in the air as she stayed seated, clutching the edge of the table anxiously. What they said would determine what happened next, and she had no idea what their reply might be.

  Thirty-Five

  Crash

  Standing in the kitchen, trying to absorb everything Lily was telling him, Crash didn’t know what to say. Everything he thought he knew was unraveling. Lily wasn’t who she said she was, and she was trying to convince them that it was someone on the team they should be distrustful of, and not her.

  That’s when it hit him.

  What if she was still lying about the whole thing? What if she was the one after information, and was lying to save her ass now that she was caught? She seemed sincere to him, and had acted like she genuinely thought the brothers were guilty, but how could he believe anything she said now?

  He hated that he had to be suspicious of her. It twisted him up like nothing else.

  “Wait. How do we even know you’re who you say you are after finding out Lily Douglas is a work of fiction?”

  She seemed taken aback by that for a moment, like she hadn’t even considered her story being called into question.

  “You can ask Ben,” she said after a second. “He has known from the start who I am and why I’m here. He’s the only one. Fiona had him cleared first, and she seems to have a great deal of respect for him. She thought he shouldn’t be kept in the dark, and that he would be helpful to the investigation.”

  That pretty much shot Crash’s suspicions down. She could be bluffing, but that would be pretty useless. Once Ben got back to the house, her lie would be revealed. Connor seemed to be thinking the same thing.

  “I can’t believe Ben went along with this,” he said, shaking his head at Crash.

  “I don’t think he had a choice,” Lily quickly commented. “And he made his unhappiness known.”

  It was sweet of her to stick up for Coach Landon, but that didn’t change Crash feeling betrayed. But it also put things into focus. If even Ben had been persuaded to let an investigator in their midst, he must have thought the evidence for someone not being on the up and up was compelling enough to not tell the team anything.

  And if even their coach could be convinced, then could they really blame Lily for believing the same thing? Ben had known the men for years, while Lily had only known them for a few days. It would be unfair to expect her to suddenly neglect her job, just because Crash and Connor were so sure she was wrong about the whole thing.

  “I need to talk to Connor alone,” he said, pointing his chin at his brother while looking at Lily.

  “Of course,” she replied, still sitting at the table, her shoulders slumped.

  Connor raised a brow at Crash but followed him into the living room nonetheless.

  “Maybe we’re being too hard on her,” Crash suggested as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “Do tell,” Connor remarked wryly. “You think we should ease up on someone who lied through her teeth to us even while we were in bed with her?”

  “I’m serious. Even Ben went along with this plan and we expect her to not do what she was hired to do just because she slept with us? Not exactly a compelling reason. And you have to admit, we were being shady as fuck the whole time she’s been here,” Crash explained.

  As hurt as he was at finding out Lily thought they were despicable enough to sell out their own team, he couldn’t act like there wasn’t logic behind it. And despite his growing feelings for her, he could understand that she couldn’t just throw her suspicions to the side because she became involved with the brothers.

  If anything, she should have investigated them more than anyone, to counteract the lack of objectivity that came along with having sex with someone you’re looking into.

  Some of the tenseness seemed to leave Connor’s body as he listened to Crash speak. His brow was still furrowed, but his face didn’t look quite as thunderous as before.

  “You have a point,” Connor finally conceded, looking over his shoulder towards the kitchen. “I guess I’m not good at thinking clearly when it comes to Lily.”

  “I know that feeling,” Crash chuckled. “And to be fair, we were the ones who approached her. So basically, this clusterfuck is as much on our heads as it is on hers.”

  “I suppose,” Connor sighed. “What do we do now?”

  “Beats me,” Crash shrugged. “But she’s here to expose someone hurting the team. Whether we think one of the guys is guilty or not, she’s got a job to do.”

  Connor seemed to know exactly what he was getting at.

  “And if we don’t let her finish her investigation, the team won’t be cleared of the accusations. If anything, we’ll look even more suspicious for interfering,” he said.

  “Exactly. And even after all of this, I’m not ready for her to leave. I want to get to know the real Lily, as
crazy as it sounds. I’m still drawn to her, despite the lies.”

  Connor looked relieved, of all things.

  “I thought I was insane to think it, but… I agree. Even when I was angry as hell, my bear was still pushing me towards her. That can’t be healthy, right?”

  “I don’t even know what’s normal anymore, man. This girl has us worked into knots,” Crash laughed in response, struck by the absurdity of it all.

  Their conversation was cut short when they heard cars approaching. They wouldn’t be alone for much longer, and Lily still needed an answer.

  “Um, guys?” she called out from the kitchen. “Would really like to know what you’ve decided.”

  Strolling back into the kitchen, they both stared at Lily. She still looked entirely too gorgeous, even as her face was scrunched with worry and anxiety. Crash found himself wanting to wrap her in his arms and comfort her, his anger almost totally evaporated by that point.

  “We’ll keep your secret,” he said, just as the front door was pushed open. “But you have to come to us first with any of your suspicions, before you go to Fiona or anyone else.”

  As footsteps got closer and closer to the kitchen, with different voices mixing and Sal’s laughter echoing over everything, Lily looked unsure of what to say. Crash knew that his stipulation was the only way he could feel alright about not telling the rest of the guys why Lily was really here.

  “Fine,” she whispered, just as Sal and Graham stepped into the kitchen.

  Now all Connor and I have to do is somehow prove to her the guys are innocent, Crash thought, trying to look casual.

  He had a feeling that would be a harder task than any he’d faced up until that point.

  Thirty-Six

  Lily

  “Hey, Lily. How are you feeling?” Graham asked when he walked into the kitchen.