Cruel Captain | Syracuse Centurions Hockey Romance Series Book #2 | FREE Chapter
Thank you for clicking on this link to Cruel Captain, the second book in my minor league hockey romance series featuring a Black female lead in every book. The “old money” nepo-baby athlete Mathieu Jardine has NOT been spared the increased tensions between Canada and the United States. His ability to play hockey in America has officially reached the end of the line and Mathieu MUST get married if he wants to keep playing for the Syracuse minor league team and remain in America.
His lawyer has a second cousin down on her luck in Buffalo, NY, willing to move to Syracuse to pay off her significant debts gained from a scamming roommate and a failed home-baking business that was tanked by a hateful competitor spreading misinformation on TikTok. Meet Cynthia.
But wait… We have met her before! Cynthia’s best friend Regina is the main character of Ruthless Rookie. And in this book, we will get to know Cynthia way more. She agrees to this marriage and when she meets Matty, she remembers.
He has hit on her before! The problem with that is… Cynthia doesn’t like overly hot guys who are too sexy and way too desirable to other women because of what the attention does to their massive ego. She doesn’t want to constantly feel like she’s in competition with other women and Matty always struck her as a playboy.
If you love a classic enemies-to-lovers plot line where he falls first and she is absolutely impossible to win over… This story will knock your thong off.
Matty is a deeply loyal alpha male who can’t help being built like a sexy statue. He is willing to beg, grovel, and plead for the Black woman of his dreams.
These hockey romance books are high-conflict, spicy, with lots of teasing and banter between the leads. I’ll share my first chapter here with you today and if you love what you see, I have JUST opened the signed copy pre-orders for this book. PREORDERS OPEN UNTIL SEPTEMBER 15th.
Click here to preorder a signed copy of this book directly from my shop.
*I left out the prologue so there would be a little something to look forward to when you open the book for the first time… and trust me you will not want to miss it. Enjoy the first chapter.
Cruel Captain | Chapter #1
Mathieu Jardine
“Matty”
Tabernac. I have to get married, and I can’t choose the bride according to my lawyer. He doesn’t want me to second guess the arrangement.
There’s no getting out of it. My parents stand on either side of me in the lawyers office while I lean all the way back, pretending not to care about the outcome of the meeting with my black Bose headphones placed over my ears, but not switched on. My hair is too long, it’s uncomfortable, but I have to grow it out until November for my brand deal.
I hope this stupid marriage doesn’t get in the way of any of my contracts. My mother and father are with me, and I remain calm and nonchalant as they discuss my fate. It’s easier to pretend not to care. Unfortunately, the negotiation tactics that make me the highest paid Canadian athlete in the AHL won’t work against the unforgiving American government. I knew this was coming when Marco had to get married, but he got lucky. Can my lawyer pull off a trick like what Kelly Reingold did?
I would trust my lawyer, Keith Bryant, a friend of mine from over a decade ago, with my life. He went to college with me in Toronto for the one semester I spent in college before a professional team in Nashville recruited me. Keith and I go way back, so when he says I’ll need to get married to keep my position in the AHL and everything I’ve worked for my entire career, I believe him.
There’s really no other choice and being in the professional league wouldn’t have saved me. Lots of guys I know had to take pay cuts and trades over to Canadian teams just to avoid problems with immigration. The whole league is in free fall and I thought staying out of the spotlight would keep my back-and-forth movements over the border — all part of the game – out of the limelight. I only care about hockey. If I wanted a wife, I would have one, but I find the needs of another woman too much to consider.
I like staying out of the spotlight. It’s a big reason that I’m in the minor leagues. That, and rookie season injury that brought me here in the first place, and contractual convenience – I get more time on the ice in this league which more than makes up for the slight pay cut. I have plenty of money.
I’ll have to fork some out to get out of this mess. My mother sits to my left in a navy blue Chanel shift dress with ¾ length sleeves and black tights. She crosses her legs at the ankles and clutches her teal Birkin bag in her lap, long coffin cut nails tapping against the leather.
My father rubs the bridge of his nose as he mutters the word I just thought – Tabernac. He fidgets with the gold buttons on his navy blue Brooks Brothers’ blazer, clearly worried about the thought of me walking down the aisle with anyone. My parents love each other, but my father had a long history of being unsettled before they could be in the same room with each other. Never divorced though, never them.
“Must he really get married? Matty has always been very distracted by women,” my father says to my lawyer with resigned frustration. “He can’t have a woman in the house right before the next season. Did you see how that rookie from Serbia stole the show?”
Ouch. My father never lets me forget that my career is inadequate in comparison to his and worse compared to my sister, the breakout star of the PWHL who was more than happy to publicly announce her marriage to her partner and grow the enormous spotlight around her even wider.
My father’s Quebecois accent exposes all of his emotions and Keith nods along affirmingly, with the manipulative perpetual agreement lawyers display even while fucking your life up. I glance over at my mother for her response, especially considering her fingernails anxiously tapping at her last Christmas present.
“It depends on who he marries,” she says.
“That was easy. I had a list of candidates once I realized the government crackdown might extend to our corner of the world. Marco Balasevic stole the show because his team found a brilliant way around the government’s immigration bullshit.”
I couldn’t agree with Keith more. I slide my headphones off of my head and everyone in the room visibly relaxes. I’ve never done well with meetings. My last girlfriend called it entitlement, but the one before that thought I had undiagnosed ADHD. I’m not hyperactive and I don’t struggle at all to focus on a puck sliding across the ice at sixty miles per hour. I just hate wasting my time.
“Who do you have in mind?” I ask him. Keith knows a lot of beautiful women. Before law school, he was a college basketball star with a roster of contacts that would make a hockey player jealous.
“Tabernac,” my dad mutters, giving me a dirty look. “Is that all you care about? Pussy? If you don’t get your ass out there this season and change things, Marco Balasevic will ruin your career without trying.”
Quebecoise are some of the most overdramatic people you will ever meet in your life. I don’t bother entertaining my father’s accusation. My lawyer has my attention. Keith and I both ignore my father because this is the first time I’ve taken my headphones off, so now that everyone has my attention, I have theirs.
“I have a friend down on her luck who we could put in a similar position to Regina Balasevic. In fact, she knows Regina Balasevic.”
I know Regina Balasevic. I was there the night of the big accident with Marco’s agent, and I think all the women Regina knows were at that party too. Could Keith be suggesting a woman that I’ve met before?
“Similar position?” I ask, leaning forward a little bit. “What kind of position? You don’t mean pregnant, right?”
Keith fights back a smirk. My eyes gleam with intrigue at the thought that I might have already met my future wife. I sit up straight and only my father and Keith notice. My mother has her own goals throughout this business meeting.
“Pregnant?” my mother asks. I can’t tell if she’s intrigued or horrified. It’s hard to tell with the French.
My father makes an awful sound between a grunt and a growl, the prospect of grandchildren horrifying him more than you would expect from a normal parent.
“He can’t become a father until he gets his career back in his hands,” my father says.
It’s like I’m not even in the room. My future has never really been up to me as far as my dad is concerned. I come from a hockey family where I sat on the shoulders of a famous father who I could never be half as good as, even if I tried. He’s a freak of nature, the type of once in a lifetime talent who casts a big shadow that I happen to live under.
“I don’t need to become a father. I don’t need to fall in love. I just need someone willing to sign some paperwork, right?”
“That is correct,” Keith says. He smiles as if pleased with my ability to get to the point. It’s not so much that as a desire to stop my parents before they become too involved in this. I would rather marry a random person than listen to their opinion.
“Do we know anything about this woman?” my father says. “If there is an accidental child, will this child have genetic defects? Natural athleticism?”
Keith laughs. “I can’t say for sure, but if I had to guess, maybe a little natural athleticism.”
I have to stop myself from licking my lips at the thought. If she’s my wife, I can technically knock her up. My mother and father might not like it, but this might get them off my back for a while about my career. The thought of having any type of emotions for my future family never crosses my mind. Like I said, I only think about hockey. There hasn’t been a woman or situation alive capable of distracting me from my goals on the ice. A change in immigration law won’t change that.
“How athletic?” I ask. Everybody in the room ignores me. My mother reaches over and gives my thigh a supportive squeeze.
My dad shrugs. “Ironclad prenup. I don’t want to hear anything about a divorce.”
“Non,” my mother says, horrified. She turns to me with a sharp glare as if I have already done enough to embarrass her. “No divorce.”
“I didn’t even say anything,” I mutter.
Keith gives me a sympathetic look. “Do you want to know more about the woman you’re going to marry?”
“So I don’t have a choice?”
“You can say no,” Keith says. “But that might throw up some delays in your status.”
“There will be no more delays,” my father interjects crankily. We should send him outside for a cigarette but with this big marriage revelation from Keith Bryant, I doubt he’ll leave until he sees my name on a contract.
Is there a point to that? I have no intentions of getting to know this woman, spending any time with her, or entertaining this marriage beyond its positive influences on my career.
“It truly doesn’t matter.”
“Okay,” he says. “But I wouldn’t screw you over, Matty. She’s one of the smartest women in Western, New York. You might want to get to know her.”
My father shakes his head. “Non. He has no time for women when his career is in utter peril.”
“Thanks, Keith.”
“No problem. If you put your signature right here… I’ll take care of the rest.”
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