True Love and Other Disasters

Chapter 1

The night before Virgil Duffy’s funeral, a storm pounded the Puget Sound. But by the next morning, the gray clouds were gone, leaving in their place a view of Elliott Bay and the spectacular skyline of downtown Seattle.

Sunlight cut across the grounds of his Bain-bridge estate and in through the towering windows. Among the guests honoring him at his wake, there were those who wondered if he was up in heaven controlling the notoriously gray April weather. They wondered if he’d been able to control his young wife, but mostly they wondered what she was going to do with the pile of money and NHL hockey team she’d just inherited.

Tyson Savage wondered that himself. The voices pouring from the formal living room drowned out the sound of his Hugo Boss dress shoes as he moved across the parquet flooring of the entry way. He had a really bad feeling that the Widow Duffy was going to screw up his chance at the cup. The bad feeling bit the back of his neck and had him adjusting the tight knot of his tie.

Ty walked through the double doors and into a large room that reeked of polished wood and old money. He spotted several of his teammates, spit and polished and looking slightly uncomfortable amongst the Seattle elite. Defenseman Sam Leclaire sported a black eye from last week’s game against the Avalanche that had resulted in a five-minute penalty. Not that Ty held a muck-up in the corner against a guy. He also had a reputation for throwing the gloves, but unlike Sam, he wasn’t a hothead. With only three days to go before the first playoffs game, the bruises were bound to get a hell of a lot worse.

Ty stopped just inside the door, and his gaze moved across the room and landed on Virgil’s widow standing within the sunlight spilling through the windows. Even if the sun hadn’t been shining in her long blonde hair, Mrs. Duffy still would have stood out amongst the mourners surrounding her. She wore a black dress with sleeves that reached just below her elbows and a hem that touched just above her knees. It was just a plain dress that looked anything but plain as it poured over her incredible body.

Ty had never met Mrs. Duffy. A few hours earlier, at St. James Church, was the first time he’d seen her in person. He’d heard about her though. Everyone had heard about the billionaire and the playmate. He’d heard that several years before the Widow had snagged herself a rich, old man, she’d been working a stripper pole in Vegas. According to the gossip, one night while she’d been rocking her acrylic heels, Hugh Hefner himself had walked into the club and spotted her onstage. He’d put her in his magazine, and twelve months later, he’d made her his playmate of the year. Ty hadn’t heard how she’d met Virgil, but how the two had met didn’t matter. The old man dying and leaving his team to a gold digger did. One whole hell of a lot.

The talk in the locker room at the Key Arena was that Virgil had had a massive heart attack while trying to please his young wife in the sack. The rumor was that the old man had blown out a heart valve and died with a big ol’ grin on his face. The mortician hadn’t been able to remove it, and the old man had gone into the cremation oven wearing a hard-on and a smile.

Ty didn’t care about rumors, and he didn’t care what people did or whom they did it with. If it was good, bad, or somewhere in between. Until now. He’d just signed his contract with the Seattle Chinooks organization three months ago, partly because of the money the old man had offered him, but mostly for the captaincy and a shot at Lord Stanley’s cup. Both he and Virgil wanted that cup, but for different reasons. Virgil had wanted to prove something to his rich friends. Ty wanted to prove something to the world: he was better than his dad, the great Pavel Savage. The cup was the one thing that had eluded them both, but Ty was the only one who still had a shot at it. Or at least he’d had a good shot until Duffy croaked right before the playoffs and left the team to a tall, blonde playmate. Suddenly Ty’s chance at the biggest trophy in the NHL was in the hands of a trophy wife.

“Hey, Saint,” Daniel Holstrom called out as he approached.

Ty had been given the nickname “Saint” his rookie year, when after a night of especially wild partying, he’d played like shit the next day. When the coach benched him, Ty had claimed he had a flu bug. “You’re like your father,” the coach had said, with a disgusted shake of his head. “A damned saint.” Ty had been trying and sometimes failing to live down the reputation ever since.

He looked across the shoulder of his navy blazer and into the eyes of his teammate. “How’s it goin’?”

“Good. Have you given your condolences yet to Mrs. Duffy?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you think Virgil really died while doing his wife? He was what? Ninety?”

“Eighty-one.”

“Can a guy still get it up at eighty-one?” Daniel shook his head. “Sam thinks she’s so hot she could raise the dead, but frankly I doubt that even she can work miracles on old equipment.” He paused a moment to study the young widow as if he couldn’t quite make up his mind. “She is smokin’ hot.”

“Virgil probably had pharmaceutical help, eh?” Ty’s own father was in his late fifties and was still getting it on like a teenager, or so he said. Viagra had given a lot of men back their sex lives.

“That’s true. Isn’t Hefner in his eighties and still having sex?”

Or so he claimed. Ty unbuttoned his jacket. “See ya later,” he said and moved through the crowd, which ranged in age from old as dirt to a few teenagers whispering in the corner. As he walked straight for the “smoking hot” Mrs. Duffy, he nodded to several of the guys, who looked slick and a little uncivilized decked out in designer suits.

He stopped in front of her and held out his hand. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” A slight frown creased her smooth forehead and her big green eyes looked up into his face. She was even more beautiful and looked much younger up close. She placed her hand in his; her skin was soft and her fingers a little cool. “You’re the captain of Virgil’s hockey team. He always spoke highly of you.”

It was her hockey team now, and what she did with it was up for speculation. He’d heard she was going to sell it. He hoped that was true and that it happened soon.

Ty dropped her hand. “Virgil was a great guy.” Which everyone knew was a stretch. Like a lot of extremely wealthy men used to getting their way, Virgil could be a real son of a bitch. But Ty had gotten along with the old man because they’d had the same goal. “I enjoyed our long talks about hockey.” Virgil might have been eighty-one, but his mind had been sharp and he’d known more about hockey than a lot of players.

A smile curved her full kiss-me-baby lips. “Yes. He loved it.”

She wore very little makeup, which surprised him given her former profession. He’d never met a Playmate who didn’t love to paint her face. “If there is anything the guys and I can do to help you out, let me know,” he said without much sincerity, but since he was the captain of the team, he figured he should offer.

“Thank you.”

Virgil’s only child stepped forward and whispered something in the Widow’s ear. Ty had met Landon Duffy on several occasions and couldn’t say that he liked him much. He was as ruthless and driven as Virgil, but without the charm that had made his father such a success.

The Widow’s smile faltered and her shoulders straightened. Anger flashed in her green eyes. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Savage.” Like a lot of Americans, she’d mispronounced his name. It wasn’t savage, like in beast. It was pronounced Sah-vahge.

Ty watched her turn and walk away, and he wondered what Landon had said. Obviously, she hadn’t liked it. His gaze slid down her blonde hair to her nicely rounded behind in the plain black dress that looked anything but plain. He wondered if Virgil’s son had propositioned her. Not that it mattered. Ty had more important things to worry about. Namely, this Thursday’s game in Vancouver when they’d take on the dual threat of the Sedin twins in the playoffs opener. Until three months ago, Ty had been captain of the Canucks, and he knew better than anyone to never underestimate the boys from Sweden. If they were on their game, they were a defenseman’s worst nightmare.

“Have you seen the pictures?”

Ty removed his gaze from the Widow’s departing ass and looked over his shoulder at his teammate, all-around shit-disturber, Sam Leclaire. “No.” He didn’t have to ask what pictures. He knew and had never been interested enough to search them out.

“Her boobs are real.” Out of one corner of his mouth Sam added, “Not that I looked.” He tried to appear innocent, but the black eye ruined it.

“Of course not.”

“Do you think she can get us invited to the Playboy Mansion?”

“See ya tomorrow,” Ty said through a laugh and moved toward the entry. He walked out the huge double doors of the brick mansion and the chilly breeze brushed his face. He paused to button his jacket and the sound of the Widow Duffy’s voice carried on the breeze.

“Of course I want to see you,” she said. “It’s just such a bad time.”

Ty glanced at her, standing a few feet away with her back to him. “You know I love you. I don’t want to argue.” She shook her head and her hair brushed the middle of her back. “Right now is impossible, but I’ll see you soon.”

She moved toward the side of the house and Ty continued down the steps. He wasn’t shocked that Mrs. Duffy had what sounded like a lover on the side. Of course she did. She’d been married to an old man. An old man who’d just given her his hockey team.

Ty didn’t like to think of all the ways that could screw up his chances at the cup, but of course it was always first and foremost in his mind. Virgil’s death could not have come at a worse time. Any sort of uncertainty could and would affect the players, and not knowing who was going to buy the team or what changes the new owner would implement, was a big question mark hanging over them like an axe. But worse than the uncertainty was the thought of being owned by a stripper turned playmate turned trophy wife. It was enough to make the bite at the back of his neck clamp down a little harder.

As he moved toward his black BMW, Ty pushed everything out of his brain but his latest obsession. He put Virgil’s widow, the impending buyout, and the upcoming game out of his mind. For a few hours, he wasn’t going to worry about the widow’s plans for the team or the game against the Canucks.

For most of his life, Ty had always tried to curb the wild Savage impulses that could get him in trouble, but he had one true weakness that he regularly indulged. Ty loved nice cars.

He slid inside the soft leather interior and fired up the M6. The low, throaty growl of the 5.0-liter V-10 engine hummed across his skin as he slid a pair of Ray-Ban aviators onto the bridge of his nose. The mirrored lenses shaded his eyes from the bright afternoon sun as he pulled out of the gated estate and headed toward Paulsbo. He opened up the 500 horses under the Beemer’s hood and took the long way home.

Faith Duffy closed her cell phone and looked out across the emerald expanse of lawn, carefully tended beds, and sputtering fountains. The very last thing she needed right now was a visit from her mother. Her own life was uncertain and scary, and Valerie Augustine was an emotional black hole.

Her gaze skimmed the busy waters of Elliott Bay, and she folded her arms across her chest and rounded her shoulders against the cool breeze blowing the hair about her face. Last night she’d dreamed she was working at Aphrodite again. Dreamed that her long blonde hair blew about her head as Motley Crue’s “Slice of Your Pie” pounded from the speakers above the main stage inside the strip club. In the dream, pink laser light slashed across her long legs and six-inch acrylic platforms as she slowly ran her hands down her flat stomach. Her palms slid over her crotch, covered in a tiny plaid skirt, and her fingers gripped the chair between her bare thighs.

Faith hated that dream. She hated the panic and the knot of fear the dream always left in her stomach. She hadn’t had that dream in years, but it was always the same. She always turned sideways on the chair, arched her back, and slowly lowered her head toward the stage as her hands unbuttoned her little white blouse. The pink light cut across her as she balanced on the seat of the chair and brought her legs up. She slid one foot down her calf as her big breasts spilled free of the blouse and threatened to fall out of her red sequined demi-bra. As always, men lined the edges of the stage, watching her with hot eyes and slack mouths.

“Layla.” They chanted her stage name while clinching money in their tight fists.

In the dream, an I-know-you-want-me smile curved her mouth as Vince Neil and the boys sang about a sweet smile and another slice of pie. Inside the gentlemen’s club, three blocks off the Las Vegas strip, Faith placed her hands on the floor by her head and executed a perfect walk over until she stood with her feet a shoulders’ width apart. She tossed her shirt to the side and rocked her hips as she bent forward at the waist. She slid the tiny plaid skirt down her thighs and legs, and she stepped out of the skirt wearing a red G-string that matched her bra. The heavy bass and drumbeat thumped the stage and the bottoms of her acrylic platforms as she became the object of male fantasy, manipulating them into digging deep into their wallets and handing over their cash.

The dream always ended the same. Her stash of money always evaporated like a mirage, and she always woke gasping. Anxiety beating her chest and stealing her breath. And as always, she felt like a helpless little girl again. Alone and terrified.

Women who claimed they’d rather starve than strip had probably never had to make that choice. They’d probably never had to eat hot dogs five days in a row because they were cheap. They’d probably never fantasized about tables of Big Macs and fries and ramekins filled with crème brûlée.

Faith turned her face toward the breeze and took a deep breath. She should go back inside. It was rude to neglect Virgil’s friends at his wake, but most of them had never really liked her anyway. As for his family-well, they could all go to hell. Every last one of them. Not even on this day, of all days, had they put aside their bitterness.

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 players? 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.