“Not married.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Not exactly.”
Friend with benefits?
It had been a long time since she’d had a friend with benefits or a boyfriend or even a one-night stand. Being here with Ty, surrounded by his toxic testosterone, reminded her exactly how long it had been. Just the deeper timbre of his voice brushed across her skin and reminded her how much she missed being held and touched by a strong, healthy man.
“Lean forward just a tiny bit, Faith. More aggressive, like you’re the boss.”
“Do you want my hands on my hips?” Faith leaned and the skirt of the dress slid up her thigh.
“Yep, that’s great. And Ty, just continue to look pissed off.”
Ty turned his gaze of doom on the photographer. “I’m not pissed off.” The intense glare usually reserved to intimidate opponents didn’t work on the photographer.
“Perfect. That’s exactly what I’m looking for.” He snapped a few more photos. “Faith, lean in just a bit and turn your shoulders toward me just a little more.”
Click
. “Yeah, toss your hair. That’s it. Beautiful.”
Ty could not recall a time when he’d been so turned on. Not even as a horny sixteen-year-old rolling around in the backseat of his dad’s Plymouth with a semi-naked girl named Brigit.
Christ. He stood in the shower in the Chinooks locker room and let the cold water run down his neck, his back and behind. He’d had to wait for half an hour for everyone to clear out of the locker room before stripping out of his gear and walking into the shower. If anyone thought it was odd that he took a shower tonight, no one mentioned it.
He turned and the cold water hit his chest and ran down his stomach to his groin. He hadn’t been in this much throbbing pain since he’d broken his
thumb on Hedican’s helmet last season. Only this time the throbbing pain was lower and hadn’t been caused by an aggressive defenseman trying to get at his puck. It had been caused by a living, breathing centerfold trying to drive him insane with her pouty mouth, soft hands, and sizzling-hot body.
The whole thing had been a bad idea. He’d known it going in. Despite what they thought of him, he wasn’t a hard-ass, and he’d let them talk him into the promotion for the good of the team. To get fans into the seats.
He placed his palms on the wall and shoved his head under the shower. He’d been doing a pretty good job of ignoring Mrs. Duffy. He’d ignored the scent of perfume on warm skin, the sound of her laugher, and her red, red lips. Then she’d touched him. The weight of her hand and her fingers sliding across his shoulder had sent fire down his spine and straight between his legs.
Rubbing her hand on his shoulder had been bad, but touching his hair and face had made his gut clench, and he’d had to fight like hell to keep from turning his mouth into her palm and sucking her skin. Then she’d put her foot in his crotch, leaned forward, and stuck her breasts in his face. After that, all he’d been able to think about was sliding his palm up the back of her smooth thigh and grabbing a handful of her ass. Pulling her closer
and burying his face in the front of her dress. While she’d been smiling and tossing her hair for the camera, he’d been having some wild fantasies about what he wanted to do to her. Things that involved pulling her down on his lap and kissing her red lips. Tangling his fingers in her hair while she rode him like Smarty Jones in the long stretch. And yeah, he’d been royally pissed off about that. The last thing he wanted and needed in his life was a hard-on for the owner of the hockey team, but for some inexplicable reason, his body didn’t care what he wanted and needed.
Ty straightened and rubbed his hands over his face. It wasn’t as if she was all that beautiful. He cleared the water from his eyes and shook his head. Okay, that wasn’t true. Everything about her was hot as hell, but it wasn’t as if he’d never been around beautiful women. He was a hockey player. He’d had his share of beautiful women.
Faith. You can call me Faith
, she’d said, like that was a good idea or ever going to happen. He needed a constant reminder of who she was and what she was to him. A reminder that she held his fate in her hands. Even if she was willing, he needed to remember that sex with the owner of the Chinooks was an appallingly bad idea.
Gooseflesh rose on his skin as he tried to clear his head of Faith Duffy. There were a few places he could go before he headed home. A few clubs
where there were women who would be happy to share a little one-on-one time with him.
He stayed in the shower a few more minutes, until he was in control and could breathe again. He turned off the water and wrapped a towel around his waist. He grabbed a second towel and dried his hair. His dad was still hanging out at his place. Maybe he’d just go home and see what the old man had going on.
Jules Garcia stood in the middle of the locker room waiting for him. “What do you want?” he asked Faith’s assistant.
“To ask you to stop giving Faith such a hard time.” He had his arms folded across his big chest like he was big, bad trouble.
Ty kind of respected him for that. “Who says I give Mrs. Duffy a hard time?” As he moved to his locker, he dried his face and wondered if this was a case of an employee sticking up for his employer, or something else. Some of the guys wondered if Jules might be gay. Ty wasn’t convinced.
“I do.”
Ty sighed and sat down on the bench. He didn’t want to give her a hard time. He just wanted to be around her as little as possible, and her relationship with her assistant wasn’t his business.
“She’s not just some blonde off the street. She’s the owner of the team.”
“That’s right,” Ty agreed and ran the towel over
his head. “And she knows nothing about hockey. I was hired by Virgil to win the cup. I’m the captain of the Chinooks and my ultimate responsibility is to get us into the last final round. But I have major concerns about how I’m going to do that with a former Playboy playmate holding our fate in her hands and making us look like idiots in interviews.”
“Are you talking about
Sports Illustrated
?”
“Yep.”
“Are you jealous because they want to put her on the cover?”
Ty folded his arms over his bare chest. He hadn’t known about the cover. “I’ve been on the cover three times, and I don’t give a flying fuck about the cover. What I do give a fuck about is picking up the magazine and reading softball questions that she can’t answer. Or picking up the magazine and reading a recap of her
Playboy
years that makes us all look ridiculous.”
“That’s understandable. Everyone is concerned about the team’s image. Especially Faith.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “I admit that when she first called and set up a meeting with me, I was more curious about seeing her than wanting to take the job. Virgil fired me five years ago for talking shit about her.”
“What did you say that got you fired?”
Jules looked him in the eye and answered. “He
overheard me telling the head scouts that he’d married a stripper young enough to be his granddaughter.”
Ty dropped the towel on the bench beside him. “Doesn’t sound like something to get fired over.”
“It wasn’t, and if I’d stopped with that, I would have kept my job. But I’d seen her layout and I described her in detail for the guys. Everything from her big boobs to her bald…you know.”
Yeah, he did know.
He shrugged a shoulder. “Anyway, I resented her for a lot of years, but it wasn’t her fault I was fired. Any more than Virgil dying and leaving her the team is her fault. It landed in her lap and she’s trying hard to deal with it the best she can.”
“I am aware that it’s not her fault.” He reached behind him into his locker and pulled out his sports bag. It wasn’t her fault she’d inherited the team, and his hard-on wasn’t her fault either. The former was Virgil’s doing and the latter was his horny imagination. He had to figure out a better way to deal with both. “I’ll try to be…”
“Nicer? Make her happy.”
“More respectful. It’s your job to make her happy. Maybe you two can go shopping, buy matching sweaters, and have a girls’ night.”
“What?” Jules folded his arms over his big chest, again looking like he was big, bad trouble. “I’m not gay.”
Ty stood and dropped his towel. “I don’t give a shit if you’re gay or straight or somewhere in between.” He knew several gay players who hit like freight trains.
“Why do you think I’m ‘gay or straight or somewhere in between?’” Jules looked truly baffled. “Do the other guys think I’m gay?”
Ty shrugged.
“Because I use hair product?”
“No.” He stepped into his underwear. “Because you
say
‘hair product.’”
A
discordant wave of cheers and cowbells rose from the arena below and clashed with the clinking of wineglasses within the skybox inside the Key Arena in Seattle. Faith leaned forward, her fingers gripping the arm of her chair as she gazed down at the scrum in front of the Chinooks net. Sticks and elbows flew in the crease, and of course Ty Savage was right in the center of the action. Goalie Marty Darche went down in a butterfly, stacking his pads while the players on both teams battled it out in the second period.
“Clear the puck,” she whispered, just as the blue light at the back of the cage spun, tying the score at two.
“Shit,” Jules swore as a small contingent of loyal
Sharks fans went wild in the stadium below. “Who Let the Dogs Out” blasted from the speakers, and Faith put a hand over her eyes. Now that she was so invested in the game, it was painful to watch. It made her nerves jump and her stomach knot and had her wishing for something stronger than the Diet Coke she had sitting next to her right foot.
As if she’d read her mind, Valerie took Faith’s hand from her eyes and pressed a glass of wine into her palm. “This will help.” Then she went back to the buffet set up in the box to entertain her girl friend, Sandy, up for a few days from Vegas. Valerie hadn’t even asked if Sandy could stay before she’d invited her. Faith had known and liked Sandy all her life and didn’t mind, she just wished her mother had asked.
After the game, her mom and Sandy planned to hit some bars and “raise hell.” Faith wasn’t sure who was the most pathetic. Them, for wearing spandex and “raising hell” at their age, or her, for going home and going to bed early.
Faith took a drink of her Chardonnay as the goal was replayed over and over on the sports timer suspended in the center of the arena.
On the ice at the other end, Marty Darche rose to his feet and grabbed a water bottle from the top of his net. Ty stood in front of him while the goalie shot water into his mouth. Marty nodded and Ty
patted the top of the goalie’s helmet with his big gloved hand before skating toward the bench.
On the big sports screen, the camera zoomed in on the back of Ty’s broad shoulders and the white letters spelling out
SAVAGE
across his blue jersey. The San Jose Fans booed. The Chinooks fans cheered and Ty moved across the ice with his head down; the hair at the back of his neck curled up around his helmet. Last night in the Chinooks locker room, she’d run her fingers through his hair and a warm little flutter had tickled her stomach. The kind she hadn’t felt in years. But later that night after she’d returned home, the little flutter had turned into a burning stab of guilt. Virgil had been dead less than a month and she shouldn’t be feeling warm little
any things
with any man, let alone the captain of Virgil’s hockey team. Correction:
her
hockey team.
Ty stopped in front of the bench and glanced up over his shoulder. His blue eyes looked out from the sports screen. One corner of his mouth kicked up into a half-assed smile as if he enjoyed both the booing and cheering fans, and that traitorous, horrible warm flutter settled in the middle of her stomach once more. It had been a long time since she’d felt little flutters and tingles for any man. Why Ty Savage? Yeah, he was beautiful and confident and comfortable with his
virility. He wore it like an irresistible aura of hotness, but he didn’t like her. She wasn’t especially fond of him.
The camera switched to the crowd and scanned the rows of Chinooks fans. It stopped on two men with their faces painted green and blue and the little flutter calmed. From her position high above the arena, Faith turned her gaze to the Chinooks bench and the players who’d stopped shaving for the playoffs. Their facial hair ranged from fuzzy and patchy to Miami Vice scruff. Ty was one in only a handful of NHL players who chose to ignore the tradition and shaved.
Ty took a seat next to Vlad Fetisov. He grabbed a bottle from a waiting trainer and sprayed a stream of water into his mouth. He spit it out between his feet, then wiped his face with a towel.
“Do you need anything?” Jules asked as he stood.
She shook her head and looked up at her assistant, who wore a red-and-white argyle sweater that was so tight, it hugged his big muscles like a second skin. “No thanks.”
Faith settled back into her seat and thought about tomorrow’s flight and the game against San Jose the following night. Faith had never planned to travel with the team, but just that morning Jules had convinced her that it was a good idea and it showed support. He’d said it was a good way
for her to get to know the twenty-four men who played for her. If they saw her more, they might feel more at ease with her as the new owner. She wasn’t sure if her assistant had her best interest in mind, or if he just wanted to catch the second game.
When his health had permitted, Virgil had sometimes traveled with the Chinooks, often catching a game or two before returning home, but Faith had never traveled with him. Never had the urge to live and breathe the game. And although she was just beginning to understand a little about what “points against” and “averages” meant, she wondered if she would ever understand it completely. The kind of understanding that came with living and breathing and loving hockey for years.
Jules returned with a Corona and a taquito and sat next to her. “Tell me something,” he said in a voice just loud enough for her to hear. “Do you automatically think a guy is gay because he says ‘hair product’?”
Faith looked into Jules’s dark green eyes. “No,” she answered carefully. “Did my mother or Sandy say you were gay?”
“No.” He took a bite of his taquito. “I know you’ll find this surprising, but some of the guys on the team think I’m gay.”
“Really?” She kept her face blank. “Why?”
He shrugged one big shoulder and raised the bottle to his mouth. “Because I care about my appearance.” He took a drink, then added, “And apparently straight men don’t say ‘hair product.’”
“That’s ridiculous.” They suspected he was gay for the way he dressed and his dubious color choices. She turned her attention to the ice as Walker Brookes skated to the face-off circle while Ty watched from the sidelines. The camera panned the Chinooks bench. Some of them were relaxed and watchful like Ty, while others yelled at opposing players as they moved past.
Walker entered the playoffs circle, stopped in the middle, and waited with his stick down. The puck dropped. Game on. “Who says you can’t say ‘hair product’?” she asked.
“Ty Savage.”
She looked back at Jules. “Don’t listen to Ty.” He had too much testosterone to be any sort of judge. “Straight men say ‘hair product’ all the time.”
“Name one.”
She had to think about it for a few moments. She snapped her fingers and said, “That
Blow Out
guy, Jonathan Antin.” Jules winced as if she’d just proven Ty’s point.
“I don’t think that’s even on TV anymore,” Jules grumbled. “That guy was kinda gay. I’m not gay.” Something in her face must have betrayed her because his gaze pinched. “You think so too!”
She shook her head and rounded her eyes.
“Yes, you do.” He made a motion with his hand. “Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me.”
She shrugged. On the ice below, the whistle blew and Sam Leclaire automatically skated to the sin bin. Sam might not be a great fighter, but that didn’t keep him from throwing his gloves and sitting out an average of seven penalty minutes a game.
“It’s the way you dress. You wear everything really tight and your color choices are a bit bold for a straight man.”
Jules frowned and folded his arms across his bulky chest. “At least I’m not afraid of color. You dress in beige and black all the time.” He glanced at the rink below, then back at her. “A few years ago, I was fat. I got really tired of wearing a size forty-six, so I decided to change my life. I work hard on my body. So why not show it off?”
“Because sometimes less is better,” she answered. As in showing less skin, and she should know. “And sometimes loose is more flattering.”
He shrugged. “Maybe, but everything you wear is so loose it looks like you’re trying to hide something under your clothes.”
Faith looked down at her black turtleneck and black pants. Before Virgil, she’d worn tight clothes
with cutouts over her cleavage. She’d gone from one extreme to the other to try and fit into his world. Now, she no longer fit in either.
“But I guess it doesn’t matter what
you
wear. You’re beautiful and don’t have to worry about it. Sometimes I worry that some guy is going to think I’m your bodyguard and try and start something with me.”
Faith figured Jules was being weird and just a tad dramatic. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. You might dress like you’re experiencing some kind of metrosexual meltdown, but I need to keep you around. Plus,” she said through a smile, “your hair’s
bangin’
.”
He looked at her a moment as “Are You Ready To Rock?” blasted from the arena speakers. “That’s the first genuine smile I’ve seen out of you,” he said.
“I smile all the time.”
He raised his beer. “Yes, but you don’t mean it.”
Faith turned her attention to the sports timer and the action below. Long before she’d met Virgil, she’d learned to smile when she didn’t mean it. Long before she’d stepped her first acrylic heel onstage and transformed herself into Layla, she’d learned to mask her true feelings with a smile. Life was sometimes easier that way.
But life had a weird way of throwing curve
balls, or curved pucks, rather. Never in a million years would she have thought she’d someday own a hockey team. It would never have even occurred to her in a wild fantasy, but here she was, watching her team shoot pucks and throw punches. She wondered what they were going to think when she boarded the jet with them tomorrow.
The next morning she found out as she followed Coach Nystrom into the BAC-111. She couldn’t see beyond his wide shoulders, but a low hum of male voices filled the forty-passenger craft. It was seven thirty, and they were still keyed up from their win against the Sharks the night before.
From the back of the plane, someone complained loud enough for everyone to hear, “The son of a bitch tried to shove his stick up my ass.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time you walked around with a stick up your ass,” someone else said. This triggered a lot of deep manly laughter followed by numerous “up your ass” commentaries and speculations.
“Listen up,” Coach Nystrom said from the front of the plane. “Mrs. Duffy is traveling with us to San Jose.” As if someone pushed a
PAUSE
button, all laughter and butt jokes abruptly stopped. “So keep it clean.”
The coach took his seat and Faith was suddenly the focus of several dozen startled male faces.
From one row back, Ty Savage looked up from the
USA Today
sports section he held in his hands. The light above his head shined in his dark hair, and his eyes locked with her for several long seconds before he lowered his gaze to the paper once more.
Jules waited for her in the third-row window seat and she took her place beside him. “How long is the flight?” she asked.
“Less than an hour.”
Behind her she heard a few low whispers and a couple of deep chuckles. She buckled herself in and, except for a few bits of conversation too low for Faith to hear, and the rustle of Ty’s newspaper, the fuselage remained quiet as they taxied to the runway and took off. Once they punched through the thick, gray clouds, the stabbing rays of morning sun flooded the oval windows. Almost as one, the shades were all pulled down.
Faith wondered if they were quiet because they’d played a grueling game the night before that had ended in a 3–4 win in overtime and it was suddenly catching up to them, or if it was because she was sitting in the front of the jet.
Once the snow-covered summit of Mount Rainier was behind them, Darby Hogue leaned across the aisle and asked, “How are you doing?”
“Okay. Are they usually this quiet?”
Darby smiled. “No.”
“Are they uncomfortable flying with me?”
“They’re just a little superstitious about traveling with a woman. A few years ago, a female reporter traveled with the team. They didn’t like it at first, but they got used to her. They’ll get used to you, too.” He turned and looked into the seat behind him. “Got that tape, Dan?”
He was handed a DVD that he plugged into his laptop. Then he turned the screen for Faith to see. “This is Jaroslav Kobasew. We’re looking at him to fill the hole in our second-line defense. We need more size in the back, and he’s six five and two thirty-five.”
She hadn’t known they had a hole in the second line or anywhere else. “I thought we couldn’t make any trades.”
“Not until after the season ends, but we’re always scouting new talent,” Darby told her.
She looked into the screen across the aisle as a huge man in a red jersey battled for a puck in the corner. The huge guy won by knocking the other player off his skates. “Good Lord.”
Jules leaned over her. “How does he hit?”
“Like he has cement in his gloves,” Darby answered.
“How does he skate?”
“Like he has cement in his shorts.”
Normally, Faith would have thought cement in shorts was a bad thing. But this was hockey and she didn’t know. Maybe that meant he could take a hit. “And that’s bad. Right?”
Jules nodded and sat back.
“He’s just one of the players we’re considering,” Darby said and turned the screen to face him. “When I narrow it down, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay.” She turned to Jules and asked out of one corner of her mouth, “Do they have to discuss trades with me?”
He nodded and set his briefcase on his lap. “Did I forget to tell you that?”
“Yeah. You did.” And it was kind of important, although she couldn’t complain. If not for Jules, she’d be lost. Well, even more than she already was lost.
He pulled out a stack of
Hockey News
magazines and handed them to her. “Dig in.”
She flipped past various copies and settled on the February issue, with Ty Savage on the cover, his face beaded with sweat as his vivid blue eyes looked at the camera from beneath his white helmet. He looked intimidating and intense. The caption on the left read “Can Ty Savage Deliver Lord Stanley to Seattle?”