True Love and Other Disasters

Chapter 16

Early-morning sun shone through the windows like oval spotlights as the BAC-111 punched through the cloud cover and headed east.

Faith opened the latest copy of Hockey News and tried to ignore Ty seated directly in front of her. Like the rest of the players, he wore a dark-blue suit jacket, and his big shoulder filled the crack in the seats. In his hands he held the Seattle Times sports page. No doubt reading about the 4–1 trouncing the Chinooks had given Detroit the night before at the Key, and loving himself. Ty had been unstoppable on the ice last night. The Detroit defense had failed to contain him, and he’d scored early in the first period and followed it with up two assists in the second and third.

After last night, he had nine goals so far in the playoff season, with fourteen assists, for a total of twenty-three points. It was the highest game-point average on his team and third-highest in the NHL.

This morning as she’d boarded the plane, he’d hardly looked at her. In her head she knew that everyone was supposed to believe they didn’t like each other. After the last time they’d been together, she wasn’t sure it was an act on his part.

The other players had acknowledged her. A quick hello wouldn’t have killed Ty. Unless she’d made him so angry he didn’t want to be with her anymore.

She took one of the high-protein bran muffins from the tray being passed around and handed one to Jules sitting next to her. “Where is the real butter?” she asked as she gave him a pad of Promise Buttery Spread. And why did the thought of never being with Ty again make her want to cry even as it made her want to kick the back of his seat? Hard. “I read that hockey players are supposed to eat an obscene thirty-five hundred calories a day,” she rambled. “Can you imagine trying to eat that many calories? Gee, you’d think they’d have butter around.” She lowered her tray and put her muffin on it. Had she done something? Other than not wanting to have dinner with him in public? “If I could have that many calories,

you’d better believe my muffin would have butter. And chocolate chips in it. Or better yet, I’d have a banana-walnut muffin.” Ty’s newspaper rustled and something in her chest pinched. How was she going to face him now if he didn’t want to be with her? “Oh, and I’d wash it all down with a real latte. No more fat-free, sugar-free skinny lattes with no whip, either.”

Jules looked at her. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” She wished she’d stayed home. “Why?”

“You seem irrationally upset about a muffin.”

Faith tore off a piece and shoved it into her mouth. No, she wasn’t irrationally upset about a muffin. She was irrationally upset because the man sitting in front of her, flipping through the paper, hadn’t talked to her since he’d dumped her in her parking garage wearing nothing but her raincoat. Yeah, okay. So she’d kind of made it plain that she only wanted sex, but he still should have called. He could have said hello this morning.

“I was just trying to be nice. Now I don’t have to worry about it,” he’d said, and she guessed he was serious. She was irrationally angry because, while she was extremely aware of Ty, aware of the texture of his suit and the back of his dark head, she wasn’t sure he even knew she existed.

As she chewed her muffin, she tore the top off a little bottle of organic orange juice. She shouldn’t have let Jules talk her into accompanying the team to Detroit. Although in fairness, he hadn’t had to do much talking.

The rustle of newspaper in front of her drew her attention to the aisle and Ty’s elbow on the armrest. She raised the plastic bottle to her lips and took a drink. The excitement of last night’s game had gone straight to her head. The Chinooks’ smack-down of Detroit had sent an electric buzz through the arena that had raised the hair on Faith’s arms. Instead of watching organized chaos, she saw the skill and training. The perfectly executed plays and precision. The control that looked so out of control. For the first time, she understood Virgil’s love of the game.

Last night, as the clock had run out and the arena went wild, Jules had mentioned that she’d only traveled with the team once and that she should consider traveling more.

Now in the light of day, sitting behind Ty while he ignored her completely, it didn’t seem like one of her better ideas. More rash than thought out. Kind of like running out of her penthouse at three in the morning wearing nothing but a slick raincoat.

She set the juice back on the tray and the light above her head caught on her wedding ring. The three brilliant diamonds sparkled on her hand. The ring had always made her feel important, classy, rich. Now as she looked at it, she just felt conflicted. Like she was being pulled in several different directions and didn’t know which way to go. She wasn’t the same person she had been two months ago. Her life was completely different. It was filled with more than dinner plans and taking care of her elderly husband’s needs. She was actually beginning to understand how the Chinooks organization worked and even how the game was played. She was looking forward to working with the charitable foundations.

While parts of her life were feeling more stable, other parts were completely out of control, and she had a pink love bite in the crease of her thigh to prove it. If she hadn’t just turned thirty, she’d think she was having a midlife crisis. Layla was in control of her sex life. Which was insane. Faith felt as guilty as hell about even having a sex life. But apparently not enough to stop, because she was freaked out at the thought of never being with Ty again.

The movie screens in the jet’s ceiling lowered and the latest James Bond movie started. In front of her, Ty folded his newspaper, and Faith took a drink of her organic juice. Having sex with Ty had always been a bad idea. She’d known that from the beginning. If they were discovered, she would suffer huge embarrassment. The team would also suffer, but it had the potential to ruin Ty’s career. The fallout would be horrible for him. In her head she knew that it would be best if Ty wanted to end things with her. Best for her and him and the team. Too bad the rest of her body didn’t want what was best.

Faith closed the red frog buttons on the black cheongsam Virgil had bought for her when they’d visited China the first year of their marriage. A red dragon was embroidered on the back of the dress and she wore a pair of red Valentino peep toes with five-inch heels. She’d secured her hair with red jade sticks and lined her eyes in black. She grabbed a tissue and blotted her deep red lips. A chocolate-chip muffin sat next to the sink and she tore a piece off the top and stuck it into her mouth, careful not to smear her lipstick. When she’d returned to her hotel room after a day spent at a local spa getting a whole body massage, a facial, and a manicure and pedicure, the muffin had been waiting for her. It sat on the coffee table in a pink-and-white-striped box with the name of a local bakery on the top.

She smiled at the thought of Jules phoning around town for a muffin, thinking she’d been freaking out about bran versus chocolate chips when she’d really been freaking out for a totally different reason.

She shoved the tube of Rogue Red lipstick into her little black purse as someone knocked on her door. She glanced at herself in the mirror, then moved through the sitting room.

“You look good,” Jules said as she opened the door and he took in her dress.

Jules wore a pair of black trousers and a red silk shirt. Tame, for him. “We match.” The two of them walked to the elevators and she asked, “Who’s going to be at dinner?”

“Most of the team.” Jules hit the up button and the two stepped inside. “The travel office reserved the private wine room inside the Coach Insignia.”

The Coach Insignia restaurant was located on top of the seventy-three-story Detroit Marriott. The restaurant had breath-stealing panoramic views of Detroit and its Canadian neighbors. By the time Faith and Jules arrived, most everyone was seated and munching on appetizers. They all wore designer suits and ties, and if not for the scruffy playoff beards and numerous cuts and black eyes, they would have looked like regular businessmen.

Ty stood at the far end of a long table, one hand on the back of Daniel’s chair, the other drawing invisible patterns on the white tablecloth as he talked to the younger man. He wore a blue-and-white-striped dress shirt, open at the throat. His gaze lifted to hers as he spoke and his finger stopped. His blue eyes watched her as she and Jules took their seats in the middle of the long table between Darby and Coach Nystrom and across from Sam and Blake.

“You look beautiful tonight, Mrs. Duffy.” Blake complimented her and she got another good look at his facial hair. He still wore the unfortunate Hitler mustache with the matching stripe on his chin.

“Thank you, Mr. Conte.” She smiled and opened the wine list. Out of the corners of her eyes, she watched Ty straighten and move to the last empty seat a few chairs down from Sam. “I spent the day getting a whole-body massage. The masseuse had the hands of a god. He used hot oil and warmed stones on me. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I was so relaxed, I was practically drooling.” Her gaze lifted and she looked at the faces staring back at her. “Are we going to order a red and a white wine?”

Coach Nystrom adjusted his tie. “Sure.”

“Most of the players don’t drink the night before a game,” Darby told her, which Faith knew for a fact wasn’t true.

“Whole-grain muffins. Organic orange juice. You boys don’t live dangerously.” She placed her hand on Jules’s arm. “Oh, I forgot to thank you for the muffin.”

“What muffin?”

“The chocolate-chip muffin in my room. That was really sweet. Thanks.”

Jules opened his menu. “I set you up at the day spa. I don’t know anything about a muffin. Maybe the hotel gave it to you. Kind of like getting a cookie at a Doubletree.”

Faith sat back and glanced down the table at Ty. He absently raised a glass of ice water to his lips as he read his menu.

“I didn’t get a muffin,” Blake said as the waitress took his order. “Did you, Sam?”

Sam shook his head and ordered chop-chop salad and pan-seared sea bass. “No.”

“Did you send me a chocolate-chip muffin?” she asked Darby.

“I didn’t know you wanted one.”

“That’s weird.” For a split second she thought of Ty but quickly dismissed the idea of the muffin coming from him. He’d been so wrapped up in his newspaper, she doubted he’d even known she was sitting behind him, let alone paying the slightest attention to anything she said. She pushed the mystery from her head and ordered a Caesar salad, chicken, and a 1987 German chablis.

Tomorrow night’s game dominated the conversation around Faith. The coaches and players talked about containing Zetterberg and Datsyuk, the dual threat that had proved lethal to the Penguins in the final playoffs the year before. Faith ate her chicken and drank her wine and answered an occasional question. Several times during dinner, she caught herself watching Ty. The way he talked and joked with the other men around him, and his hands as he cut into his huge steak or reached for his water.

“What are you going to do before the game?” Darby asked her.

She tore her gaze from Ty’s fingers, which were brushing beads of condensation on his glass. “I don’t know. I’m sure there’s some great shopping around here. Although I’m kind of shopped out.”

“There’s a new casino,” Daniel suggested.

“When you are born and raised in Nevada, gambling kind of loses its appeal.”

“I saw some people Rollerblading along the Riverwalk,” Coach Nystrom said.

Faith shook her head. “I don’t skate.” Twenty-two stunned faces stared at her as if she’d just said something unimaginable. Like she was putting salary caps at fifty grand. “Right now. I plan to take lessons,” she lied before things got ugly. “Maybe I’ll go swimming tomorrow.”

“When are you going swimming?” Sam wanted to know. “I always try and hit the pool in the morning. I was on my high-school swim team and took state in the butterfly.”

“Last year you injured your rotator cuff showing off and were out half the season,” Coach Nystrom reminded him. “Stay out of the pool.”

Sam smiled. “That’s because I was freestyling.”

“That’s your problem on the ice, too,” someone down the table commented in a slight Swedish accent. “Too much freestyling and you end up in the penalty box.”

“At least I have style, Karlsson.”

Faith glanced down the table at Johan Karlsson, who was dressed worse than Jules, in a bumblebee-yellow-and-black-striped shirt. He had a thick blond beard and an unfortunate Will Ferrell ’fro.

“Yeah, an eggbeater style,” Logan Dumont joined in the razzing.

“Shut your donut, rookie. You’re barely out of the shinny league.”

Faith had no idea what an eggbeater or a shinny league was, but apparently it wasn’t good.

“Not here, guys,” the assistant coach warned.

“Logan’s just got his equipment in a tangle because he can only manage to grow a scraggly patch of hair on his chin,” Blake told Sam.

Faith wondered if Logan’s “equipment” was a euphemism for something else. Knowing the guys at the table, she would bet it did. She took one last bite of her chicken and set her fork across the edge of her plate.

“At least my patch doesn’t look like Jenna Jameson’s crotch,” Logan fired back.

Faith felt her eyes round and she raised her napkin to her mouth to hide her inappropriate smile.

“Jesus, Dumont. Mrs. Duffy is sitting here,” the coach admonished.

“I beg your pardon,” the rookie apologized.

Faith lowered her napkin. “Apology accepted,” she said, and as she glanced away from Logan, her gaze met Ty’s. From the length of half the table he simply looked at her. His blue eyes gave nothing away. Not the anger she’d seen in them the last time they’d been together, nor the lust. Nothing, and she felt a little pinch near her heart.

They weren’t a couple. They weren’t even dating. Their relationship, if it wasn’t over, was purely physical. So why did it bother her that he looked at her as if she meant nothing to him?

Faith reached for her purse next to her plate. “I’m tired,” she told Jules. “I’m going to skip dessert.”

Jules looked at her across his shoulder and put his cloth napkin next to his plate. “I’ll walk you to your room.”

“No. You stay.” She stood. “Good night, gentlemen. I had a lovely time. I’ll see you all tomorrow night at the arena.” She left the restaurant and forced herself not to look back. Within a few minutes, she was back in her suite and tossed her bag on the table. She turned on the television and pushed the UP button on the remote until she stopped on TCM and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Virgil had been a big fan of classic movies and starlets like Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren.

Faith had never really been all that interested in old movies and continued flipping the channels.

There was a knock on the door and she tossed the remote on the couch. She expected to see Jules, but wasn’t all that surprised that Ty stood on the other side.

“Who is it?” she called out as she stared at him through the peephole.

He raised a brow and folded his arms across his chest.

She was irritated with him. Maybe irrationally so, but she was still annoyed and didn’t feel like letting him in right away.

“I know you’re staring at me. You might as well open up,” he said.

“What?” she asked as she opened the door.

Instead of answering, he stepped inside and forced her to move backward.

“I’m tired and not—” His mouth on her stopped her flow of words as he brought his hands to the sides of her face. The door shut behind him with a soft click, and his thumbs brushed her cheeks. His lips slid over hers with the promise of passion rather than a full-out kiss.

“No skating with Sam,” he said against her lips. “I’ll teach you.”

She hadn’t been serious about learning to skate. “I don’t want to fall and hurt myself.”

“I won’t let that happen. And the next time you need a whole-body massage,” he said as he kissed the corner of her mouth, “call me.”

She almost smiled. “How? When you’re so good at pretending I don’t even exist.”

He brushed his lips across hers. “I should get an award for that.”

She put her hands on his chest and pushed. “You could at least say hello.”

“No, I couldn’t.” He dropped his hands and leaned his back against the door. “I can’t risk it.”

Faith moved across the room and turned off the television. “What does that mean?”

“It means that when I look at you, I’m afraid everyone within ten miles can see that I have sex with you.”

She tossed the remote on the table. “Oh.”

“And it means,” he continued as he moved toward her, “that I’m afraid everyone within ten miles can see that I’m remembering the last time I saw you naked. That I got a little rough with you and I wish I was truly sorry about that, but it was so good I’m not. Every time with you is good, and I’m afraid that anyone within ten miles will look at me and know I’m thinking about how to get you naked again.”

She bit the side of her lip. All he had to do was show up and she’d be more than willing to get naked. “You took a big risk in coming here.”

He reached for her hands and brushed his thumb over the backs of her knuckles. “Everyone is still in the restaurant. Besides, none of us are on this floor.” He pulled her toward him. “So you got the muffin.”

“You sent me the muffin?”

“Can’t have you wasting away on bran and Promise spread. I need you full of energy.”

She owned a penthouse in downtown Seattle and an elite hockey team. She had more money than she knew what to do with, yet she couldn’t help smiling like a fool over a two-dollar muffin. “Thank you.”

He reached for the frog buttons closing her dress. “I have an ulterior motive.”

Faith reached up and pulled the jade sticks from her hair. “Shocking.”

“Monday, I played some of the best hockey of my life. I’m not usually superstitious, but I gotta believe it had something to do with the night before.”

She tossed the sticks on the table and her hair fell down her back.

“You have to have lucky sex with me before each game or I could be jinxed.” He popped the buttons closing the dress over her breasts. “I know you want to do the right thing.”

“Take one for the team?” She pulled the tails of his shirt from his waistband.

“It’s your turn.”

“Yeah, but what if…” she raised one hand. “And I’m not saying this is going to happen, but what if we have sex and you lose? Then you’re not lucky.”

He looked up from the frog buttons as if he hadn’t thought of that. “Honey, having sex with you makes me one lucky son of a bitch.”

“Thank you. I think.”

He shrugged and continued with the buttons. “If we lose, it just means that someone else on the team fucked up. Not our fault. We did our part.”

She laughed. “And we have to do ‘our part’ before each game?”

He nodded. “At least once.” He pushed the dress down her arms and it pooled at her feet.

She pushed at his chest as she took a step back and kicked her dress aside. “Don’t go anywhere.” Wearing nothing but her black lace bra, matching thong, and red Valentino pumps, she left the room, only to return a moment later with an armless vanity chair. She set it in the middle of the room and said, “Sit down, Mr. Savage.”

“What are you planning?”

“My part to make sure the captain of my hockey team isn’t jinxed.” She walked to the sound system and tuned the radio to a hard rock station. A perennial favorite of every strip club across the country poured from the speakers. Faith had danced to “Pour Some Sugar on Me” more times than she could recall. This time, she didn’t have to slip into character. She wanted to please him and herself. She wanted to spin his head around and leaving him gasping for breath. Just as he’d done to her. She turned to look across the room at Ty, still standing by the chair, watching her.

“I told you to sit.” She ran one hand behind her neck and lifted her hair as she slid her other hand across her stomach. It had been years since she’d danced for a man, but she hadn’t forgotten. She moved toward him,

step step pause…step step pause, touching her body as she looked him up and down, and letting her gaze turn all hot and sensual.

His gaze slid down her body, stopping at her hands before continuing to her feet. “I like the shoes.”

“Thank you.”

Step step pause…step step pause. “I’m sure you are well aware of the rules.”

“There are no rules,” he said as he sat.

A sexy smile touched her lips. “No touching,” she informed him as her fingers slid upward and she cupped her breasts. “I can touch you. You can’t touch me.”

His brilliant blue eyes stared up at her. “Ah. Those rules.”

She grinned as she walked around him, trailing a hand across his shoulders. From behind, she leaned forward and ran her hands down his chest. “I’m hot. Sticky sweet,” she whispered along with the words of the song into his ear. “From my head, to my feet.” She continued around him, then straddled his lap, facing him.

He ran his hands up the backs of her legs to her bare behind and pressed his face into her cleavage.

“No touching,” she reminded him and removed his hands from her behind. She sat with the skimpy crotch of her G-string inches away from the zipper of his pants. She ran her hands over his chest, rocking her hips, coming close to touching the bulge in the front of his pants, but always pulling back.

He groaned deep in his chest and sucked in an agonizing breath. “Touch me, Faith.”

“I am.”

“Lower.”

Instead of doing as he asked, she stood and teased him with her hands and body. She took off his tie and shirt and rubbed against him, turning up the heat and turning them both on, her hard nipples grazing his chest through the thin lace of her bra.

He reached for her and she danced out of his grasp. “This is killing me,” he said, his voice a lusty gravel. “Come slide your little hand into my pants, and I’ll slide my hand into yours.”

“That’s real tempting, but I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules.” She turned with her back to him and sat, grinding her bare behind into him. His palms slipped up her back and he unhooked her bra.

“That’s definitely against the rules.”

“Fuck the rules.” He kissed her spine and slid his hand up her stomach to cover her naked breasts. “We don’t play by the rules.”