True Love and Other Disasters Read online

  “The grip on your club is hinky,” he said and handed Ty the driver. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

  There was nothing wrong with his grip and Ty shot a few more balls into the net just to prove it. A little after ten, he flipped on his big-screen TV and settled onto the overstuffed moss-colored couch to watch the news. He thought about tomorrow night’s game and the Sedin twins.

  He thought of Faith Duffy and hoped like hell that her announcement not to sell the team didn’t throw the Chinooks off their game. Knowing who was going to end up owning the Chinooks was better than not knowing, but not by much.

  He thought about the way she’d looked that afternoon. First composed and together, then obviously shaken. Landon had called her “Layla,”

  which Ty figured had probably been her stripper name. Virgil’s son was an asshole. No two ways about it. To purposely degrade any woman in public was a nasty thing to do, but to do it to his former stepmother in front of a roomful of people showed a nasty arrogant streak that had made Mrs. Duffy look like the classier of the two. She’d stood there, toe to toe, with her head high and her back straight, and Ty had to give her points for not dissolving into tears or cussing like the irate stripper she’d once been.

  He raised his beer to his lips and took a long drink. She didn’t dress like a stripper. Not even like a more subdued playmate. No bright colors or tight T-shirts ripped in strategic places. No tight jeans or short skirts with thigh-high boots. That afternoon, she’d been all covered up from her chin to knees like an uptight socialite. Of course, that sweater had just drawn attention to her large breasts, and every man in the room had been wondering what she looked like naked.

  Ty lowered the bottle and glanced over at his gym bag. He guessed some of the guys already knew. He set his beer on the coffee table and moved across the room. Looking at her photos wasn’t something he would have gone out of his way to do, but they were sitting right there and he was a man. He reached into the bag and pulled out the five-year-old magazine with some woman he didn’t recognize on the cover all painted up like Uncle Sam. As he moved back toward the sofa, he flipped to the pictorial in the middle. His feet stopped as he stared down at Faith Duffy standing in a field of wildflowers wearing a sheer yellow dress. The light was behind her and she was nude beneath the loose material. In the next photo, her back was to the camera. Her green eyes looked over one shoulder, and the dress was pulled up her long legs and past her smooth behind.

  Ty turned the page and this time she was on her hands and knees on a blanket laid out on a deep green lawn. She wore a pair of pink spike heels, white thigh-high stockings, and a pair of tiny white panties that tied at her hips. Her back was arched and her breasts thrust forward in a thin white bra. Heavy. Round. Perfect. It must have been cold that day. Her nipples puckered against the thin lace. Her wild hair curled about her shoulders and a slight smile curved her pink lips. He flipped to the next photo of her kneeling on the blanket next to a picnic basket, her thumb hooked in one side of her panties, pulling them down one thigh. He tilted his head to the side and a brow lifted up his forehead. She was as bald as a little peach.

  He turned to the next photo. “Holy shit,” he whispered as he eyed the centerfold. Faith lay on the blanket, completely naked except for those thigh-highs and a long strand of pearls looped around her left breast. One of her knees was bent, her back arched off the ground and her skin glowed. Her eyes looked into the camera from beneath heavy lids, and her lips were parted as if she wanted to make love.

  What a shame, he thought as he looked at her smooth, round breasts. What a shame that she’d wasted that body on an old man. Because no matter what anyone said, Viagra couldn’t turn back time fifty years and give an eighty-one-year-old man what it took to please a thirty-year-old woman.

  He flipped to her Playmate Profile and read that she’d been born in Reno, Nevada, and was five foot six. She’d weighed 125 pounds and her measurements were 34D-25-32. He thought of her in that black dress the day of Virgil’s funeral and figured she hadn’t changed much. Her ambition was to “be a goodwill ambassador and help orphans in third-world countries.”

  Rich laughter poured from Ty’s lips. Her ambition should have read, “I want to be a gold digger who ends up with more money than a third-world country.” He supposed Playboy wouldn’t have printed something like that, but at least it would have been more accurate, and he would have respected her honesty.

  Her favorite food was crème brûlée. Her least favorite: hot dogs. Her favorite movie:

  Sweet Home Alabama. She hated social injustice and rude people.

  Ty chuckled and flipped back to the centerfold. He knew the photos had been airbrushed, and she really wasn’t his type of woman, but damn, she was something. Her hard nipples were perfect little pink berries in the center of her breasts and there wasn’t a mole or mark anywhere on her. A woman who looked like that should have at least one love bite somewhere on her perfect body.

  He thought of her curled along the side her old husband. He’d liked Virgil, but the mental image made him a little queasy. Maybe it was just him, but he tended to think he wasn’t alone in his belief that an eighty-one-year-old man just didn’t have the jump in his junk to keep a thirty-year-old happy in the sack. Virgil might have had decades of practice, and more money than God, but it took more than that. It took a healthy stamina to satisfy a woman like that.

  He closed the magazine and thought of the phone call he’d overheard the day of Virgil’s wake. Virgil might have had enough money to keep his young wife happy, but he’d bet there’d been someone else putting a satisfied smile on his young wife’s face.

  From twenty-six stories above the city, Faith looked out the two-story wall of glass at the lights of Seattle and the thick fog covering the waters of Elliott Bay. Through the soupy night, she could almost pinpoint the exact location of Virgil’s estate. Not that she could see it, but she’d lived there for five years and knew it well.

  She thought of the first time Virgil had brought her to his home after their quickie wedding in Vegas a month after they’d met. She’d taken one look at the big house out on the island and just about had heart failure, wondering if she’d get lost in the big, rambling mansion.

  She thought of the first time she’d seen Virgil at a Playboy party she’d helped host at the Palms. That night he’d made her an offer she’d refused. He’d made it again after the Playmate of the Year ceremony at the Playboy Mansion. He’d told her he’d show her the world and everything in it, and all she had to do was pretend that she loved him for more than his money. He’d promised her a million dollars for every year that she stayed married to him and she’d said yes.

  In the beginning, she’d figured she’d stay married to him for a few years and get out. But after a short time, they became best friends. He’d shown her kindness and respect, and for the first time in her life, she’d known what it felt like to be safe and secure and not have to worry about anything. By the end of the first twelve months, she loved him. Not like a father, but like a man who deserved her love and respect.

  He’d been good to his word, and during the first few years of their marriage, they’d traveled all over the world. Hit every continent, and stayed in exclusive hotels. They’d toured the Mediterranean in yachts, gambled in Monte Carlo, and lounged on the white sands of Belize. But shortly after their second year together, Virgil suffered a massive heart attack and they didn’t travel out of the country after that. They’d stayed in Seattle and socialized with Virgil’s friends, but mostly they stayed at home in the big house on the island. Faith hadn’t really minded. She’d cared for him and loved taking care of him.

  But they’d never actually made love.

  All the money and surgeries and miracle pills in the world hadn’t prevented Virgil’s old age and diabetes from interfering with and robbing him of the one thing that made him feel like a vital man. Long before he’d met Faith, he hadn’t been able to have and sustain an erection. Nothin
g had worked for him, and his enormous pride and gigantic ego insisted that he settle for the next best thing. The appearance of sex with a much younger woman. A centerfold.

  If she were totally honest, she would admit that she hadn’t minded. Not just because he was fifty-one years older than herself, although that had been a part of it—especially in the beginning. But mostly Faith just didn’t like the uncertainty of sex. You could never tell by looking at a man if he was good in bed or not. There was never any way of knowing until it was too late and your panties were missing.

  Before Virgil, she’d had a lot of boyfriends and a lot of sex. Sometimes it had been really good. Sometimes it had been really bad. To her, sex was like a box of chocolates—and yeah, she’d sort of stolen that from Forest Gump—she never knew what she was going to get. Faith didn’t like anything that wasn’t a sure thing, and there was nothing worse than craving something wonderful and yummy but getting a horrible orange jelly.

  She hadn’t had sex since she’d married Virgil. At first it had been difficult, especially since she was young and she’d been fairly active, but after a few years of going without, she really didn’t miss it anymore. Now that Virgil was gone, she doubted her sex drive would suddenly come back to slap her in the head. And she just couldn’t see herself with another man.

  The doorbell brought Faith out of her contemplation of sex and men. She moved through the living room and the travertine tile felt cool beneath her bare feet. She and Virgil had purchased the four-bedroom penthouse last year, but they’d used it only on the rare occasions when it had been easier to stay overnight in the city. It was mostly finished in marble and tile and had an ultramodern feel. Virgil had let her decorate it, and she’d picked out white leather and tons of red and purple pillows. It had a main-level terrace that looked out over Elliott Bay, and a rooftop solarium covered with glass that had an unrestricted 360-degree view of the city, the busy waterways, and Mount Rainier beyond.

  She opened the door and a white ball of fur jetted past, its little toenails clicking on the tile. Faith felt an overwhelming urge to punt.

  “Mother.” Faith looked behind her own shoulder as a white Pekingese jumped up onto her white leather sofa. “And Pebbles.” The nastiest dog on the planet. “You should have called.”

  “Why? You would have told us not to come.” Valerie Augustine wheeled her large pink suitcase into the penthouse; her overly painted lips air-kissed Faith’s cheeks as she passed.

  “It isn’t that I don’t want to see you,” Faith said and shut the door behind her. “I’m just swamped.” She followed her mother and pointed to the pile of books open on the glass-and-stainless coffee table.

  “What are you studying for?” Her mother shoved the handle down into her suitcase and moved toward the leather couch on her five-inch spike heels. Pink, of course. To match her leather pants. She picked up a book and read, “

  Idiot’s Guide To Hockey. Why are you reading this? I thought you sold the team.”

  “I decided not to.”

  Valerie’s big green eyes widened and she shook her head, disturbing her perfectly feathered Farrah ’do. In the seventies, someone had told Valerie that she looked like Farrah Fawcett. She still believed it. “What happened?”

  She didn’t want to get into the whole story with her mother. “I just decided to keep it.” She thought of Landon reaching for her and Ty Savage stepping between them. She was grateful he’d been there. Grateful he’d stepped in. Almost grateful enough to forgive him for calling her “Miss January” in the press.

  “Well, I’m glad. Now that the old bastard is gone, you need something to do.”

  “Mother.”

  “I’m sorry, but he was old.” It wasn’t exactly a secret that her mother hadn’t liked Virgil. The feeling had been mutual. Virgil had provided a nice monthly income for Valerie, but there had been strings attached that Valerie resented even as she cashed the checks. One of them being that she could not show up whenever she felt like it. “Too old for a young, beautiful girl,” she added as she tossed the book on the sofa and picked up her dog. Pebbles looked at Faith through beady black eyes and growled and snapped as if Faith had tried to snatch a piece of jerky from her jaws. “Oh hush,” Valerie said through pursed lips as she raised the dog to lick her face.

  “Yuck. That’s disgusting.”

  “I love Pebbles’s kisses.”

  “She licks her butt.”

  Valerie frowned and tucked the dog under one arm. “No, she doesn’t. She’s very clean.”

  “She pees the bed.”

  “Not my bed. And she just did it that one time because you yelled at her.”

  Faith sighed and walked into the kitchen. “How long are you staying?”

  “As long as you need me.”

  Faith groaned inwardly and opened the door to the small wine cellar. It wasn’t that Faith wasn’t happy to see her mother or that she didn’t love her, she just didn’t want the responsibility right now. Not for Valerie and certainly not for the evil Pebbles.

  For as long as Faith could remember, her mother had never really been a mother. They’d been “friends,” as opposed to child and parent. One of the best days in Valerie’s life had been the day Faith got a fake ID and they could party together.

  And when Faith had turned eighteen, she’d followed in her mother’s acrylic-heeled footsteps on the stage.

  She pulled a perfectly chilled bottle of chardonnay from the rack and closed the door behind her. She knew her mother believed anything could be solved with a fine bottle of wine, a good cry, and a new man. While Faith didn’t believe that herself anymore, she did believe everything tasted better served in Waterford—something she’d learned from her late husband—and she set a pair of crystal glasses on the black granite countertop.

  “I ran into Ricky Clemente at Caesars last weekend. He asked about you,” Valerie said as she ran her pink nails through her dog’s fur.

  Faith didn’t know which was more appalling, that her mother chatted with “Ricky the Rat,” the guy who’d cheated on her with half the dancers in Vegas, or that she was in Caesars. She glanced at her mother as she uncorked a bottle of Virgil’s finest.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I was meeting Nina at the Mesa Grill for dinner. I stayed away from the slots.”

  Faith wanted to believe it, but she didn’t. Her mother had relapsed too many times to be trusted in a casino. Her mother was a pleasure seeker. She needed it like oxygen, and playing the slot ma chines had been pure bliss for her. Thank God she’d never really developed a fondness for cards or dice.

  “Ricky said you should call him.”

  Faith made a gagging noise as she poured the wine.

  “If not Ricky, someone else. You need to jump back on the horse. Take a few rides around the track.” She reached for the glass and held it to her lips. “Ah, the good stuff. This will make you feel better.”

  “I feel fine, and it’s too early to date.”

  “Who said anything about dating? I’m talking about riding around the track a couple of times with someone fun. A man closer to your age.”

  “I don’t want to ride anyone.”

  “It would get rid of that sad look on your face.”

  “My husband just died.”

  “Yeah. Last week.” She set Pebbles on the floor, and the dog waddled to the pantry door and sniffed around. “You need to get out. Have fun. I’m here to make sure you do both.”

  Most mothers would have come over with a casserole and cautioned their daughters not to jump into anything too quickly. To take it slow.

  Not Valerie. Valerie wanted to party.

  “Tomorrow we’ll go shopping and go somewhere nice for dinner.”

  “Tomorrow I have to meet with Virgil’s former assistant.” Darby had put her in touch with Julian Garcia and he’d agreed to meet with her the following afternoon. If he also agreed to work for her, and she wanted to hire him, he’d begin working tomorrow night. Starting with the s
econd game against Vancouver. If he didn’t agree and she didn’t like him, she didn’t know what she’d do next.

  “After your meeting then.”

  “After the meeting, I want to read my hockey books.”

  “What’s happened to you?” Her mother shook her head, disturbing wisps of fine, blonde hair. “You used to be so full of life. You used to be so fun.”

  She used to be a stripper who partied until the sun came up. She used to be a lot of things she wasn’t anymore.

  “You used to be audacious and sexy. Virgil made you old before your time. You don’t dress like yourself anymore, and I could just cry.”

  No. She didn’t dress like her mother anymore. “Maybe we can go out to dinner afterward. Tomorrow night’s game against the Canucks will be my first as the official owner and I don’t want to screw it up.”

  “How could you possibly screw it up?”

  So, so many ways. “I’m sure the press will want to talk to me afterward. I just don’t want to embarrass the guys.” She took a drink and thought of the pain in Ty Savage’s eyes when she’d asked about hiring Terrible Ted. “Or myself.” Especially herself. “I don’t want to look dumb. I’m terrified they’ll ask me questions and I won’t know the answers.” And the likelihood of that happening was probable to certain.

  Valerie nodded like she understood the dilemma perfectly. “You need a good outfit,” she said, offering motherly advice. “Something tight.” She pointed to her large breasts. “Low cut. Flash any man enough cleavage and he’ll forget every intelligent question in his head.”

  Chapter 4

  Julian Garcia was Irish and Hispanic, with the fashion flair of Doctor 90210, a.k.a. Robert Rey, thrown into the mix. To his first meeting with Faith, he wore a gold Saint Christopher necklace visible inside the collar of his purple-and-pink-striped shirt. His black trousers were tight and his hair was spiked with gel. He was one snappy dresser, but the most striking thing about him wasn’t his brave use of color or even his green eyes, but his muscles. He was five-six with his boots on and had a neck the size of a tree trunk. The man was serious about his workouts. The kind of serious that made Faith wonder if he was gay. Not that it mattered, but a lot of the muscled-