Virgil was gone. She still couldn’t believe it. Just a week ago he’d been telling her stories about all the amazing things he’d done in his long life, and now…
Now he was gone and she felt horribly alone. She was raw and drained from burying her husband and the best friend she’d ever known. She knew that some people hadn’t liked Virgil. In his eighty-one years, he’d made a lot of enemies. But he’d been good to her, especially at a time when she hadn’t always been good to herself.
Even after his death, he was still being good to her. Virgil had endowed his various charities, and the bulk of his billion-dollar estate had gone to his only child, Landon, and Landon’s three children and eight grandchildren. But he’d left Faith the penthouse in Seattle, fifty million dollars in the bank, and his hockey team. A smile lifted her lips as she thought about how much that had pissed off his family. She was sure they all thought she’d schemed and connived to get her hands on all that money. That she’d traded twisted sexual favors for the hockey team, but the truth was that Virgil had known she hadn’t cared about the team. She wasn’t into sports and had been as shocked as everyone else that Virgil had left the Chinooks to her. She suspected Virgil had done it because Landon had never made any secret of the fact that he expected to inherit the team. Once he owned the Chinooks, Faith knew she’d be banned from the skybox. Which, really, would have been no hardship for her. She had no interest in hockey. Sure, she’d gone to some of the games with her husband, but she hadn’t really paid much attention to the action down on the ice. She’d spent her time up there tuning out the contentious Duffys and looking through binoculars for hideous outfits and idiot drunks in the seats below. On a good night at the Key Arena, she might spot an idiot drunk
wearing
a hideous outfit.
Unlike Faith, Landon had more interest in the games and had been counting down the days until he could get his hands on the team. Owning a professional sports team was a sign of extreme wealth. A membership in an exclusive club that Landon had wanted badly. A membership his father had now denied him.
Landon might have been Virgil’s only son, but they’d despised each other. Landon had never attempted to conceal his disapproval of Virgil’s life or his hatred for Virgil’s fifth wife, Faith.
She moved down the long carpeting in the upstairs hall and into the bedroom suite she’d shared with Virgil. Several men from a moving company were packing her clothes into boxes while one of Landon’s lawyers hovered in the background, making sure Faith didn’t take anything that they didn’t feel belonged to her. She ignored the movers and brushed her hand across the back of Virgil’s worn leather chair. The seat was indented from years of use and Virgil’s reading glasses sat on the table on top of the book he’d been reading the night he’d died. Dickens, because Virgil had an affinity to David Copperfield.
That night, five days ago, she’d been lounging in the chair next to her husband and watching a rerun of
Top Chef
. On the television, as Padma judged the best
amuse-bouche
, Virgil had sucked in
a sharp breath. She’d looked over at him. “Are you okay?” she’d asked.
“I’m not feeling well.” He’d set his glasses and book aside and raised a hand to his sternum. “I think I’ll go to bed.”
Faith put down the remote, but before she could rise to help him, he slumped forward and gasped, his age-spotted hand falling to his lap.
The rest of the night was a blur. She remembered yelling his name and cradling his head in her lap while she talked to the 911 operator. She couldn’t recall how he came to lie on the floor, only looking down into his face as his soul slipped from his body. She remembered crying and telling him not to die. She’d pleaded with him to hang on, but he hadn’t been able to.
It had all happened so fast. By the time the paramedics had arrived, Virgil was gone. And instead of his family being grateful that he hadn’t died alone, they hated her even more for being there at the end.
Faith walked into the bedroom and grabbed the Louis Vuitton suitcase she’d packed with a few changes of clothes and the jewelry Virgil had bought her throughout their five years of marriage.
“I’ll need to search that,” Landon’s lawyer said as he stepped into the room.
Faith had a few lawyers of her own. “You’ll need a warrant,” she said as she brushed past him, and he didn’t try to stop her. Faith had been around too many truly scary men to be intimidated by one of Landon’s bullies. On her way out of the sitting room, she grabbed her black Valentino coat. She slipped Virgil’s copy of
David Copperfield
into her Hermès bag and headed toward the front of the house. She could have left by the back entrance, the servants’ stairs, and save herself from running into Virgil’s family, but she wasn’t about to do that. She wasn’t about to sneak away like she’d done something wrong. At the top of the stairs, she shoved her arms through the sleeves of her coat and smiled as she remembered her continual argument with Virgil. He’d always wanted her to wear mink or silver fox, but she’d never felt comfortable wearing fur. Not even after he’d pointed out that she was a hypocrite because she wore leather. Which was true. She loved leather. Although these days, she exercised taste and moderation. Something her mother had yet to discover.
As she moved down the long, winding staircase, she forced a smile in place. She said goodbye to a few of Virgil’s friends who’d been kind to her, and then slipped out the front door.
Her future was wide open. She was thirty years old and could do anything she wanted. She could
go to school or take a year off to lie around on a warm beach somewhere.
She looked back at the three-story brick mansion where she’d lived with Virgil for the five years of their marriage. She’d had a good life with Virgil. He’d taken care of her, and for the first time in her life, she hadn’t had to take care of herself. She’d been able to relax. To breathe and have fun and not worry about survival.
“Good-bye,” she whispered, and pointed the toes of her red leather pumps toward her future. The heels of her shoes clicked down the steps and toward the garage around the back as she made her way to her Bentley Continental GT. Virgil had given her the car for her thirtieth birthday last September. She tossed the suitcase in the trunk then hopped inside and drove from the estate. If she hurried, she could just make the six-thirty ferry to Seattle.
As she drove through the gates, she again wondered what she was going to do with her life. Other than the few charities she helped chair, there was no one who needed her. While it was true that Virgil had taken care of her, she’d taken care of him, too.
She took her sunglasses from her purse and slid them onto the bridge of her nose.
And what in the heck was she going to do with his hockey team and all those tough, brutal play
ers? She’d met some of them at the yearly Christmas party she always attended with Virgil. She especially remembered meeting the big Russian, Vlad, the young Swede, Daniel, and the guy with the perpetually bruised face, Sam, but she didn’t know them. To her, they were just members of the twenty-some-odd men who, as far as she could tell, liked to fight and spit a lot.
It was best that she sell the team. Really, it was. She knew what they thought of her. She wasn’t a fool. They thought she was a bimbo. A trophy wife. Virgil’s arm candy. They’d probably passed around her
Playboy
layout. Not that she cared about that. She wasn’t ashamed of the pictures. She’d been twenty-four years old and had needed the money. It had beat the hell out of stripping, introduced her to new people, and provided new options. One of those options had been Virgil.
She slowed the Bentley at a stop sign, looked both ways, then blew through the intersection.
Faith was used to men staring at her. She was used to men judging her by the size of her breasts and assuming she was dumb or easy or both. She was used to people judging her by her profession or because she’d married a man fifty-one years older than herself. And really, she didn’t care what the world thought. She’d stopped caring a long time ago, when the world had walked past her as she’d sat outside the Lucky Lady or the Kit
Kat Topless Lounge waiting for her mama to get off work.
The only thing she’d been born into this world with was her face and body, and she’d used them. Caring what people thought about that gave them the power to hurt her. And Faith never gave anyone that kind of power. No one except Virgil. For all his faults, he’d never treated her like a bimbo. Never treated her as if she were nothing. Sure, she’d been his trophy wife. There was no denying that. He’d used her to prop up his enormous ego. Like Virgil’s hockey team, she was something he owned to make the world envious. She hadn’t minded. Not at all. He’d treated her with kindness and respect, and he’d provided her with what she wanted most. Security. The kind she’d never known, and for five years she’d lived in a nice, safe bubble. And even though her bubble had burst and it felt like she was free-falling, Virgil had made sure she would have as soft a landing as possible.
She thought of Ty Savage, with his deep, rich voice and his slight accent. “I enjoyed our long talks
aboat
hockey,” he’d said, referring to Virgil.
Faith had been around a lot of good-looking men in her life. She’d dated a lot of them too. Men like Ty whose looks could steal your breath, hit you like a club, and turn your head completely around. His dark blue eyes were lighter blue in the center, like
tiny bursts of color. A lock of his dark hair touched his forehead, while fine strands curled about the tops of his ears and the back of his neck. He was tall and built like a Hummer, but he was a little too volatile for Faith’s tastes. Perhaps it was the hetero-juices pounding through the man’s system and rolling off him like toxic vapors. Perhaps it was the scar on his chin that made him look a little dangerous. Little more than a thin, silvery line, the scar looked scarier than Sam’s black eye.
She thought of her hand in his warm, firm palm as he offered his help. Like a lot of men, Ty Savage said all the right things but he hadn’t meant them. Men seldom did. Virgil had been the only man she’d ever known who had kept his promises. He’d never lied to her, even when it would have been easier. He’d shown her a different way to live her life, other than the way she’d been living. With Virgil she’d been safe and happy. And for that, she would love and miss him forever.
T
housands of booing fans marked Ty’s return to the General Motors Place arena in Vancouver. Dozens of banners hung from the stands, the sentiments ranging from “Fallen Saint” and “Saint’s a Traitor” to Ty’s personal favorite, “SUCK IT, SAVAGE.”
For seven seasons he’d worn a Canucks jersey. For the past five there’d been a
C
just below his left shoulder, and he’d been treated like a conquering hero. Like a rock star. This season he still wore a
C
, only he’d traded a killer whale for a salmon swatting a puck with its tail. Players were traded all the time. At least he hadn’t waited until right before the deadline to accept the offer of more
money and—something infinitely more valuable than gold—a better shot at the cup.
For more than a season it had been known that he wasn’t happy with Vancouver management and the direction of their coaching staff. Then, shortly after Christmas, Seattle’s captain, Mark Bressler, had been involved in a horrible car wreck and the team was left without its leader. The Seattle organization had made Ty an offer he didn’t feel he could refuse and he’d made the trade. There were a lot of people in the press and the entire country of Canada, including his father, who thought he should feel bad—like a traitor. But he didn’t.
At least the fans weren’t throwing things at him tonight, which was a shock considering how betrayed they’d felt by his defection 120 miles south.
A smile twisted one corner of his mouth as he jammed his helmet on his head and skated toward center ice to face off with his former teammate, Markus Naslund. He skated past the face-off circle twice for good luck and then stopped in the middle.
“How’s it Nazzy, eh?” he asked.
“Suck it, Saint,” Markus said through a grin.
Ty laughed. He liked Nazzy. Respected his skills on the ice, but it was his job tonight to make him wish he’d stayed home. Ty knew the opposition better than he knew the players on his own team,
had played with them longer, but the Chinooks had the best 5-on-5 team in the league while their power play unit accounted for one quarter of the team’s extra-man goals. When the Chinooks were on fire, they dominated the ice with speed, brute strength, and hockey sense.
But that night in Vancouver, there was something weird in the air. Ty didn’t believe all that much in being jinxed. Sure, he always skated past the face-off circle twice before entering it, but he really wasn’t a superstitious guy. He believed in skill more than some intangible bad luck. He was one of only a handful of players who shaved during the playoffs.
There was definitely something hinky about this game though. From the drop of the first bouncing puck, things did not turn in the Chinooks’ favor. The defense had a hard time moving the puck up to the offense, and like the rest of the team, Ty couldn’t find a cohesive rhythm. He crashed the net but had difficulty getting the puck into scoring position.
Shots ricocheted off the pipes and the game deteriorated into old-time hockey by the middle of the second period. Sam Leclaire and enforcer Andre Courture spent most of their time in the penalty box for “innocently” tripping, elbowing, slashing, and roughing in the corners.
In the last seconds of the game, Ty finally felt
in his zone and tore across ice with the puck in the curve of his stick. He knew the Vancouver goalie caught left and he deked right. The
shh-shh
of his skate was drowned out by the pounding in his head and the screaming crowd. He brought his stick back and fired at Luongo’s five-hole. The blade slapped the ice and shattered. Ty watched in disbelief as the puck slid wide and the final buzzer sounded. The score: Seattle—1; Vancouver—2.
A half hour later, Ty sat in the guest locker room staring at the carpet between his bare feet. He had one towel wrapped around his waist and one around his neck. His teammates stood in front of their lockers, toweling off and getting dressed for the flight home. The only good thing to come out of that night was that Coach Nystrom had banned the press from the locker room.
“We’re going to put that game behind us,” Coach Nystrom said as he walked into the room. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his dress pants. “The other coaches and I will take a look at the game tapes and try to figure out what the hell happened tonight. When we meet Vancouver again Saturday, we’ll be better prepared.”
“Game waz jinx,” Vlad “The Impaler” Fetisov said as he stepped into his pants.
Forward rookie Logan Dumont crossed himself. “Felt like it to me, too.”
Ty stood up and pulled the towel from around
his neck. It was too early in the playoffs to get spooked. “One bad game doesn’t make a bad playoffs season, and it doesn’t mean we’re jinxed.” In practice they worked like a well-oiled, unbeatable machine. On game nights, they didn’t jell quite so well, and Ty could think of only one way to turn that around. “Poker night,” he said. “I’ll get back to you all on the time and place. Bring cash and be prepared to lose.” The Chinooks loved poker and there was nothing like their love of poker to inspire a little male bonding. When Ty was a rookie, the guys had taken him to a strip club to initiate him. When he was traded to Vancouver, they’d bonded at Mugs and Jugs. Ty had never particularly liked strip clubs. Ironic, given the current owner of the Chinooks.
He dropped the towel and ran his fingers through his damp hair. He had heard that morning that the Widow was planning to sell the team to Virgil’s son, Landon. The little Ty knew of Virgil’s son, he pretty much figured that Landon was a massive tool. But he also figured it was better to be owned by a tool than a clueless trophy wife.
“Who’s gonna bring the cigars?” defenseman Alexander Devereaux asked as he buttoned his dress shirt.
“Logan,” Ty answered and lowered his hands to the towel knotted at his waist. “And make ’em Cuban, eh?” The thick cotton fell to his feet and
he opened his sports bag sitting on the bench. He pushed aside an old issue of
Playboy
that Sam had given him and grabbed a pair of clean underwear. Even though he really didn’t have a burning urge to see Mrs. Duffy in the buff, he’d probably take a look at it when he got home.
“Me?” Logan shook his head. “Why me?”
“’Cause you’re a rookie,” Sam answered the obvious.
Ty pulled on his black boxer briefs and adjusted his junk. The Vancouver press would be waiting for him and he wasn’t looking forward to the walk from the locker room to the bus. The sportswriters had been brutal when he was traded. He didn’t expect that they’d go easier on him tonight.
And he was right. He got three steps out of the locker room before the first question was fired at him.
“The Chinooks only had sixteen shots on goal tonight. What happened to ’The Firing Squad’?” a reporter from the
Vancouver Sun
asked, referring to the forward line of Ty, Daniel Holstrom, and Walker Brookes.
Ty shook his head and kept on walking. “It wasn’t our night.”
“With the organization in so much turmoil and up for sale,” another reporter commented, “that has to affect your play and your chances at the cup.”
“It’s early in the playoffs season.” He shoved up
one corner of his mouth and didn’t miss a beat. “I’m not worried about it,” he lied.
“Savage! You traitor. How does it feel to be owned by a woman?”
He kept walking.
“I hear she’s going to paint your locker room pink.”
“No. Salmon,” another reporter added. “And put bunny ears on your fishy.”
“Does she sign your check wearing her tail?” That got them all laughing.
Even though they weren’t the least bit funny, Ty smiled and laughed along with the reporters. “I don’t care what Miss January wears when she signs my check. Just as long as she signs.”
“What about the announcement that she’s in talks to sell the team?”
“Don’t know anything about it.” Except that he hoped it was all wrapped up soon. Protracted negotiations would affect the team. He held up one hand and walked out the back door of the arena. “Good night, gentlemen.”
It was Miss July. She’d been Miss July.
“It wasn’t enough that you are a shameless gold digger. You’ve turned my father’s team into a laughingstock. You’re an embarrassment.”
Faith looked up from the sports section on the table in front of her. If Ty Savage was going to
make a derogatory comment about her, he could have at least gotten the month right. “Your father gave me the team,” she pointed out. “He wasn’t embarrassed by me.”
Landon Duffy frowned across the table from her. He looked so much like his father it was disconcerting, but while Virgil’s icy blue-gray eyes could be shrewd, Landon’s were cold. And today they were downright frozen over, letting her know just exactly how much he resented having to pay 170 million for a team he considered his. “He was a senile old man and easily manipulated.”
“Not so easily, or we wouldn’t be here. You’d already have the team instead of me.” Landon was one of the few people who intimidated her. A lot, but that didn’t mean she had to show it. She looked to the left at her attorney. She didn’t have to be here today. Her lawyers could have handled everything, but she didn’t want Landon to know he scared her. “Let’s get this over with.”
Her attorney slid a letter of intent across the table to Landon and his team of lawyers. As they looked it over, Faith thought about her own lawyer’s advice that they should entertain other offers. He’d said something about long-term tax advantages, operating-cost certainties, salary caps, and cross merchandising that would attract other potential owners and drive up the price.
Faith wasn’t interested in the money. Just that she end any future dealings with the Duffys.
If Landon had been a different man, a nicer man, she probably would have just given the team to him. The 50 million Virgil had left her was more than enough money. But, she supposed, if Landon had been a different man, a nice man, his father would have left him the Chinooks in the first place. And if Virgil had been a different man, a more forgiving man, he would not have seen to it that his son pay dearly for their contentious relationship.
Faith stood and smoothed the creases out of her camel hair skirt. “I’ll leave you gentlemen to discuss the details.” She grabbed her red wool coat from the chair beside her. She turned to her lawyer and said, “I’ll be at the Chinooks offices in a meeting with management to let them know of my decision.” She didn’t know the coaches or any of the management, but she figured they deserved to know what was going on. And she figured it was her place to tell them rather than let them hear it from her lawyers or from the media. She’d tell them how much the organization had meant to Virgil, and reassure them that they’d be in capable hands with Landon. As much as she hated Landon, that much was true. “Call me when you’re finished here.”
Landon signed his name with a flourish and then looked up. “Make sure you don’t take anything out of that building. Nothing there belongs to you.”
Lord, his continual insinuations that she was a thief were tiresome, but something she wouldn’t have to put up with for long.
“Everything there belongs to me until we sign the final papers and your check clears.”
“Just remember what I said,
Layla
,” he added, using her stage name.
She grabbed her clutch from the table and held it against the turmoil twisting a knot in her stomach. She’d dealt with men like Landon for most of her life. Demeaning men who were offended by her mere presence even as they undressed her with their hot eyes. No matter that she wore a sweater that covered her from her chin to her wrists, and her skirt hit just below her knees, to them she would always be a stripper who took her clothes off for money. No matter that they were the heads of philanthropic organizations that raised money for the less fortunate. They resented her for daring to breathe their exclusive air.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Landon what he could do with himself. She could feel Layla coming to the surface to kick ass and take names. But that’s what Landon wanted, and she could almost hear Virgil whispering in her ear.
Landon’s a piss ant. Don’t let him win. Don’t let him see that he gets to you.
Faith clamped her teeth shut and her mouth curved into a pleasant smile, a trick she’d learned since becoming Virgil’s wife. She shook her head as if to say he couldn’t bother her, and the end of her ponytail brushed the backs of her shoulders. She did not want to let Layla out. Layla was trouble, and Faith did not want Landon to win. “Good day, gentlemen.”
The heels of her Christian Louboutin leopard-print pumps tapped across the hardwood floors of the law office. She shut the door behind her and pulled a breath of clean air deep into her lungs. That had been close. She hadn’t let Layla out in a long time. Not since she’d had to pretend that she liked having men stuff money in her G-string. Layla was a fighter and a survivor, and she’d tell Landon to kiss her ass.
She pushed away from the door and threaded her arms through the sleeves of her coat. One of the benefits of selling the team was that she’d be free of Landon and his family. No more picking her way through that fractious web.
The drive to the Key Arena took twenty minutes and gave Faith a few extra minutes to tell herself she was doing the right thing. Virgil had left the Chinooks to her, not Landon, but it had probably been his intent that she sell the team to her stepson. Right? Or would he have been angered by her decision? She just didn’t know, and
she wished Virgil had talked to her about it before he’d died.
A cool drizzle wet the windshield of the Bentley as she pulled into the parking garage and into a reserved space. The business offices for the Chinooks were on the second level, and everyone was already seated when she walked into the room. She recognized most of the men sitting at the long table from Virgil’s funeral. “Hello,” she said as she made her way to a vacant chair in the middle. “I hope I haven’t kept you all waiting,” she added, even though she knew she was right on time.
“Not at all.” General manager Darby Hogue stood and offered his hand across the table. His brown eyes were as warm as his palm. “How are you doing?”