Sam looked at Ty as if an alien had just landed at their table. A sexy-as-hell alien who talked about hockey and sounded like maybe she knew what she was talking about. Just a few weeks ago, she’d wanted to sign Terrible Ted. He wondered if she even had a clue what she’d just said.
“Ah, yeah,” Sam managed. “We were just talking about how we need to beat them offensively and hammer their goalie.”
Above the smell of food and beer, Ty caught the scent of her perfume. He recognized it from the other night at the photo shoot.
“I don’t know a lot about their goalie.” She raised one hand and toyed with the top button of her sweater. “But I’ve read that he isn’t consistent.”
“Don’t believe what you read,” Ty told her. She looked across her shoulder at him and her green eyes stared into his. “That’s where a lot of people make mistakes.”
“Believing what they read?”
“Yeah.”
“I read that you’re persona non grata in Canada. Is that true?”
“Pretty much.”
“I also read that you think the Stanley Cup will come down to who wants it more.”
“Where did you read that?”
“
Hockey News.”
“I don’t remember saying that.”
“I’m paraphrasing.” She lowered her voice a fraction and added, “You actually said it will come down to who has the biggest sac.”
That sounded more like him. “Which is different from wanting it enough.” He took a drink of his beer then set it back on the table. He didn’t want to talk about his sac. Not with her. Not when his sac had noticed the way she smelled and the way her breasts filled out that sweater.
“How is it different?”
He looked into her big green eyes surrounded by thick black lashes. “It just is.” Her cheeks were smooth, perfect. He lowered his gaze to her full mouth and chin down to the hollow of her delicate throat just above the top button on her sweater. He wanted to do things to her. Hot, sweaty things that would make their skin stick together. Wild things that would get him into a lot of trouble.
“How’s it different?” she pushed.
“Angel of Harlem” poured from the pub’s sound system and he wondered how to answer. If she were a man, he wouldn’t even hesitate. If she were a man, he wouldn’t have a hard-on. “You can want something, Mrs. Duffy, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get it. Sometimes wanting isn’t enough.” And because she pushed, he added,
“Sometimes it comes down to what you’ve got left in your gut and the size of your sac.”
She chuckled as if she wasn’t the least bit shocked. “The article didn’t mention the importance of sac size, Mr. Savage.”
“Size is always important. Massive sac is almost as important as massive skill.” And because they were sharing what she’d read about him, he leaned toward her a bit and said just above a whisper, “I read about you too. I read you hate hot dogs and love crème brûlée.”
Her brows lowered in confusion. “How did you…? Ah.” Her confusion cleared and she smiled. “That’s true. Where’d you get the magazine?”
“One of the guys.”
“Of course.” She turned her face toward him and, to anyone looking, it appeared as if they were speaking closely to be heard over the music. Her mouth just inches from his, she said, “So, I assume it’s been passed around.”
“I got it a couple of weeks ago.”
“What took so long?”
“Sam wasn’t finished looking at it.”
She reached for her beer and laughed, not the least embarrassed. “Those were taken a long time ago.”
Not that long ago. He thought of her with that long string of pearls.
“You’re thinking about those pictures, aren’t you?” she asked from behind her glass.
He didn’t answer.
She smiled. “Only seems fair.”
“How’s that?”
“Because completely against my will, and no matter what else I try to shove into my head, I can’t stop thinking about ‘massive sac.’ It’s very disturbing.”
He chuckled and she looked at him as if he’d sprouted a horn from the middle of his forehead. “What?”
“I didn’t think you ever laughed.”
Of course he laughed.
“Hey, Mrs. Duffy,” Sam called from down the table. “Do you know The Girls Next Door?”
“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Jules admonished like a preacher, and Ty had to admit that the assistant probably had a point. Which made the conversation he’d just had with her completely off the scale of appropriate.
Faith smiled. “It’s okay, Jules. I met Holly and Bridget at the mansion. There were other girls there too. But Kendra didn’t live there at the time.”
“What’s Hef like?”
“He’s nice.” Her salmon arrived and she placed her napkin on her lap.
He was also old. Like Virgil. What was it with her and old men? Oh yeah. Money.
“He’s also a very a smart businessman,” she continued.
“Did you go to a lot of parties?”
“As Playmate of the Year, I hosted several. That’s how I met Virgil.” She squeezed lemon on her fish and picked up her fork. “He and Hef were good friends.”
“Do you still get invited?”
“Occasionally, but the last few years Virgil really couldn’t travel very often. So we didn’t go.”
For some inexplicable reason, the thought of Virgil’s old hands on her smooth, young body made Ty feel uneasy. Why he should give a shit, he didn’t know. Maybe it was the Guinness. He was used to Canadian brew, and rich beer always hit him hard after a few.
“Maybe you can get us all an invite to the mansion,” Sam persisted.
She looked up and smiled. “Win the Stanley Cup, and I’ll see what I can do.”
The heels of Faith’s red pumps clicked across the lobby as she made her way to the bank of elevators. She’d just left Jules and Darby Hogue at the pub, talking hockey and acquisition. It was a little after ten, and Ty and the other hockey players had cleared out of the pub by nine. She didn’t know where they’d gone. They hadn’t said, but it was Saturday night, and she suspected they’d joined their other teammates at various bars around town.
She pushed the button and the empty elevator opened. The back wall was mirrored and she looked at herself as the doors closed. She pulled the band out of her ponytail and scratched her scalp as the elevator moved upward. It had been a long, exhausting day, and she was tired. She had a slight headache from the Irish beer or the ponytail or both.
A few floors up, the elevator stopped and the doors slowly slid open. Inch by inch, Ty Savage appeared in the mirror. In the glass their gazes met and held as he stepped inside. He still wore the deep blue dress shirt and jeans he’d had on earlier, and a nervous little flutter settled at the bottom of her sternum. She turned and spoke first to cover her nerves. “We meet in an elevator yet again.” Although why he would make her nervous, she didn’t know. Maybe it was his height. Tall men had never made her nervous in the past.
He acknowledged her with a slight nod of his head and pushed the button for the floor above hers.
“I thought you’d be out partying with the guys.”
The doors closed and he leaned a shoulder into the mirrored wall. “I don’t party during the play-
offs. I was just in Sam’s room talking to his kid on the phone.”
“Sam has a kid?” He seemed so young.
“Yeah. He’s five.” As the elevator moved up, Ty’s gaze moved down. It started at the top of her head, lowered over her face and throat and paused for a few heartbeats on her breasts. “Does it bother you,” he said as his gaze slid down her stomach and legs to her shoes, “that the guys have seen you naked?”
She was used to men looking at her body, but with Ty it was different. The warm little flutter in her chest slid to the pit of her stomach. “Roughly four and a half million men worldwide have seen my pictures in Playboy. If I worried about who’s seen me naked, I’d never leave the house.”