Frost Bite

Royal Claws Book 2
***Standalone Romance***

Piper Flammia knows two things: she is the best park ranger in all of Alaska, and Colin Relik is a jerk. All she has to do is stay away from the man and focus on her dream job. So what if her one-night stand with Colin was amazing; she hasn’t heard from him in months. Who cares if she keeps running into him? She can definitely stay away from him. Even if her body has other ideas.

Colin Relik has a secret. He found his mate, but he’s doing everything in his power to avoid her. Too bad for the alpha polar bear shifter, fate has other plans. Or so it would seem. How else can he explain running into her three times in his first twenty-four hours in Anchorage? All he has to do is keep his paws to himself. Easier said than done.

But when a distress call comes from deep within the Alaskan wilderness, their paths are irrevocably linked. A snowmobile crash. A secluded cabin. A meddling town. The two will be so focused on saving Winterland, they might just stop fighting their fated mate connection.

Reader's Note: This is an ice-melting romance. Be sure to raise your air conditioner and enjoy.

Chapter 1

Piper

Some people out there had faces you just wanted to punch.

Dumb faces with perfect squared jaws that always had just a hint of facial hair, gorgeous huge chocolate eyes, perfect noses, and lips that had no place being on a man’s face.

Okay. So maybe it wasn’t so much that some people had dumb faces and more that some men had dumb faces.

And maybe not even some men.

Just one man.

Colin Relik had a dumb face. But even that wasn’t true. The issue with Colin’s face was that it made her dumb. Real dumb. One-night-stand dumb. Not that there was anything wrong with a quick roll in the snow. It simply wasn’t Piper’s style.

She was more of a forever-alone type of woman. She liked it that way. It didn’t matter how many men her well-meaning and excessively annoying best friend, Grace, tried to set her up with online. Piper hadn’t found anyone who could keep up with her. 

Men were terrified of her once they learned what she did for a living, or they tried to outdo her. Not one of them was her match, an equal who believed she was capable of getting shit done. She had enough of that at work; she didn’t need it in the bedroom.

Colin Relik had given her false hope for about a minute, and she would never forgive him for taking it all away. Him and his dumb face.

“You live in Anchorage, Alaska, for fuck’s sake," Grace said. "Piper, get real. You basically live in a sausage factory.” Grace wasn’t wrong. She wasn’t right either. Anchorage was equally populated between genders with loads of families. Grace’s answer to this? “Well, you’re a Park Ranger! Have a go at one of the tourists. A hunky mountain man who goes for a hike or whatever it is people do up there.”

If Grace knew about Colin, she would probably hop on a plane to fly there, jump up and down in victory then leave. Grace wasn’t exactly a fan of wide-open spaces. Or nature. Or anything in the real world. As much as Grace pushed Piper to go out there and live, the woman was practically a hermit living with a horde of books.

Yup. Piper had to keep Colin Relik a secret.

That wasn’t even the worst thing about Colin and his dumb, handsome face.

He ruined her favorite bar, Dusty’s. She hadn’t gone back in almost three months in fear of running into him again. Her... a Park Ranger who could survive in the wilderness alone for a week. She was hiding from a man. It was frustrating. 

“I just want a burger,” Piper said to her jeep’s steering wheel. She had tried other joints around Anchorage, but they weren’t the same. Either the hamburger bun was wrong, or the fries weren’t right. Or the brand of ketchup wasn’t the one she liked. “You are a grown woman,” she told herself, glancing into the rearview mirror.

Piper turned the jeep toward the center of town with all of the resolve and courage she could muster. She was going to have a burger and fries, damn it. And no man would ever stop her from going to Dusty’s ever again. Nope.

As soon as Piper walked into the diner, Dusty, a woman in her early seventies wearing a pair of worn blue jean overalls paired with a plaid shirt, waved at her with a warm smile.

“Well, well, well. Look at what the cat dragged in. You haven’t been in for so long. I thought you didn’t love my burgers anymore.” Dusty motioned to the corner booth that Piper preferred.

“Oh, you know you are the best, Dusty. I’ve just been busy.”

The woman threw her head back and laughed, her braided white hair moving with her. “If that isn’t the most creative way of saying, I don’t want to see an old hook up, I don’t know what is?”

Piper gasped. “Dusty!”

“What? I am old. Not dead. I get around. Life isn’t life without some good sex, even if it’s from a battery-operated toy.”

Piper shook her head. “I will never get used to your scandalous ways.”

“It’s the only way to live, Piper. The only way to live. The usual?”

“Yeah,” Piper smiled. “And if you want to throw on some extra fries, I won’t say no.”

Dusty winked at her before disappearing into the kitchen. Piper eased into her seat with a happy sigh. The booth was a faded red. A long time ago, the red must have been shiny. Now, it was full of scuff marks, just like the cracked leather seats and the black and white tiled floor.

Dusty’s felt like home. It reminded Piper of the diner where she and Grace used to spend their afternoons back in Hawkins, the small New York town where they grew up. That diner had the best milkshakes but shitty burgers. There really was nothing like Dusty’s. Piper pulled out her phone and took a picture of her surroundings, and sent it to Grace with the message, thinking of you.

In the four years that Piper had lived in Alaska, Grace had never visited her. Not once. Grace refused to leave Hawkins. She would probably buy her parents’ house and die in the same small town where she was born.

Piper couldn’t do that. She wholeheartedly agreed with Dusty. Life was meant to be lived. It didn’t mean having more sex with Colin Relik, but it did mean living out here in Anchorage. Piper loved her job as a Park Ranger. She loved even more that she had been posted right where she wanted to be.

Her mother, Sandra, was from Alaska, and it was nice to be in the place that reminded her of her mother. Piper had grown up going on long camping trips with her parents. Real camping. The kind where you had a backpack with your supplies, and you pitched your tent before the sun went down. Her parents were survivalists who owned a chain of mountain gear stores. They were based in New York, but Anchorage had a Flammia Warehouse. From her booth, she could see the shop out the window.

She snapped another picture and sent it to her mother. Sandra hadn’t quite mastered the art of texting yet. The only thing that was hard about being so far from her family was missing them, but Piper wanted to be as close to nature as possible. This was the dream. On her days off, Grace wanted her to do more girly things, like get a pedicure or whatever.

Piper packed up her stuff and went camping on the same lands she was hired to protect.

It was just who she was.

“Here you go, Piper.” Dusty placed a large plate in front of her. The burger was almost as big as her head. It smelled so good Piper could have cried. The mountain of fries was all golden and perfect. She knew they were crispy on the outside but would be tender on the inside.

“You are a beautiful creature,” Piper sighed happily.

“I know you’re talking to the burger,” Dusty laughed. “But I’ll pretend the compliment was for me.”

Piper mumbled something through a full mouth. There was no way she was staying away for another three months. If she ran into Colin again, it would just have to be an awkward situation that she forgot all about after a couple of bites of Dusty’s food. 

Almost better than sex, she thought. Just not sex with Colin. Nothing was as good as that.

With another bite of her burger, Piper rolled her eyes. The man had really done a number on her if she was sitting here, still thinking about him after only one night. That was hardly a normal thing to do. Grace said it had something to do with science or some shit. Piper tended to tune Grace out when she talked too much about love and science.

The woman was a walking-talking encyclopedia about all things love, which was funny since Grace was so shy, she could barely speak to a man without passing out. To this day, Piper blamed Johnny Drummond, Grace’s crush, all through grade school.

For her part, Piper never had crushes in school. She was always too busy planning her next camping trip. Besides, Hawkins's boys didn’t appreciate that she was better at all things survival than they were.

She laughed to herself as she thought of the fragile male ego. She played with the idea of running into Colin again. She’d walk right by him and pretend she didn’t remember him. Then he would spend the rest of his life wondering what he had done wrong in the sack.

That is so mean. He didn’t do anything wrong.

Well, no. He hadn’t. He hadn’t called her or texted her. He left the next morning without so much as a goodbye.

It had hurt.

Well, fine. Lesson learned. She wasn’t going to give in to the likes of Colin Relik ever again. He could crawl on his knees and promise all of the orgasms he wanted. She wouldn’t fall for it.

“Nope,” she said to her burger before taking another enormous bite.

She rolled her eyes and laid her head back onto the booth savoring her burger. A whoosh of cold wind surprised her, and she bolted up in her seat, only to see him.

Colin Fucking Relik.