“I can’t believe you,” her mother said as she opened the door and walked into the room. “You embarrassed me in front of Pavel.”
She glanced over her shoulder as she moved across the floor toward her mahogany dresser. “You were having sex in my living room like a teenager,” she reminded her mother. “You should be embarrassed. For God’s sake, you’re fifty.”
“Fifty-year-olds enjoy sex.”
Which wasn’t the point at all. She opened a drawer and placed her panties inside. “Not in their daughter’s homes with strangers.”
“You were gone and Pavel isn’t a stranger.”
“I know.” She shut the drawer and moved toward her bed, which was covered in a red silk duvet. Her mother and Pavel were just a disaster waiting to happen. And it would happen. It always did. “He’s Ty Savage’s father. Couldn’t you have found someone other than my captain’s father?”
“Did you see Pavel?” she answered as if that explained it all. Sadly, for Valerie, it did.
“Yes. More than I wanted.”
Valerie crossed her arms beneath her large breasts. “I’ve never understood how you could be a stripper and a Playmate, yet remain such a prude about sex.”
She’d never been a prude. Far from it; she just wasn’t a nympho, like her mother. Despite what people thought of her, her former jobs, and the way she’d dressed, she’d never been a very sexual person. She’d always been able to control herself. Except for last night, anyway. And she wasn’t so sure that had been about sex as much as satisfy ing five years of pent-up need. It was just too bad that need had been released all over Ty Savage.
“How could you be in Playboy and want to live like a celibate nun? That doesn’t make sense to me.”
Stripping and doing Playboy had never been about sex. Those things had been about money. Faith had always kept the two separate in her own head. She’d explained it to her mother before and she didn’t feel like explaining it again. To her mother, being sexy and sex were one and the same thing, and she’d never understand. Not even if she tried. Which she didn’t. “And I’ve never understood how you could sleep with men you hardly know.”
“I know Pavel.”
“You’ve only been in town for two weeks!”
“It only takes an instant to feel chemistry.” Her mother sat on the edge of the bed and Pebbles jumped up beside her. “It’s this…” She snapped her fingers. “It’s a spark that you either feel for a man or you don’t.”
“But you don’t always have to act on it,” she said as Pebbles jumped inside the hatbox, spun around in a few circles, then made herself cozy.
“If you keep that kind of passion suppressed, it explodes and you do something rash. Before you know it, you’re naked and cuffed to the headboard of some guy named Dirk with a ruler tattooed on his penis.”
Faith held up a hand for her mother to stop. “How about we adopt the military ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. I won’t ask and you don’t tell.” She really didn’t want to hear about her mother’s exploding passion. Although after last night, when she’d kind of “exploded” in the hallway at the Marriott, she really couldn’t cast stones from her glass house. But in fairness to herself, she hadn’t exploded like that in a very long time. The last time she could recall had been with an old boyfriend on his Harley. Or at least they’d tried to have sex on his Harley. It hadn’t really worked out.
“I don’t understand you,” Valerie said.
“I know. And I don’t understand you. I don’t understand how you can keep repeating the same mistakes with men. When I was fifteen, I stopped counting the men that came and went in our lives.”
“I know I made mistakes.” Valerie sighed as if her mistakes were no big deal. “What parent hasn’t made a few mistakes?”
A few? Valerie had been married seven times and engaged at least a dozen.
Faith reached inside the hatbox and had to dig beneath Pebbles’s long fur for her jewelry roll. The little dog growled and bared its tiny white teeth. “You bite me, and I’ll drop-kick you off the balcony,” she warned.
“Don’t listen to her, Pebs,” Valerie said as she reached over and scratched the dog’s head. “She’s just jealous.”
“Of a dog!”
“Not you. Her. It’s called sibling rivalry. She views you as a sister competing for my attention. I read about it in a book.”
Since Valerie didn’t read books, Faith suspected she was making it up. She wrapped her hand around the jewelry bag and pulled it from beneath the dog.
“I don’t think Pebbles likes you lecturing Mama.”
Mama. Faith almost gagged. “I’m not lecturing you. I just think you need to respect yourself more.”
“I respect myself.” Her mother tied the belt and smoothed the silk over her legs. “You’re not the morality police, Faith. You married an old man for his money. You can hardly lecture me on morality.”
In the beginning of her marriage, that was certainly true. “You can only feel secure with yourself if there’s a man in your life.” She unrolled the silk bag and spilled her diamonds into her palm. “I find my security with money. Neither of us can claim the moral high ground.”
“Money is a poor substitute for love.”
“I had both with Virgil.”
Her mother sighed and rolled her eyes.
“It was a good marriage.”
“It was a passionless, sexless marriage to a man old enough to be your grandfather.”
She moved into the big walk-in closet stuffed with clothes in varying shades of beige, white, and black. “You’ll never understand my relationship with Virgil. He gave me a great life,” she said as she punched the numbers to the safe and popped it open.
“He gave you money in exchange for five years of your life. Five years of your youth that you can never get back,” Valerie called after her, and Faith refrained from reminding Valerie that Virgil had given her money as well. Enough that she didn’t have to work. “You can’t have a great life without passion,” her mother added.
Faith swung the safe door open and pulled out one blue velvet tray filled with Tiffany and Cartier earrings. Passion didn’t buy your child shoes when the soles wore out or put food in your child’s stomach. It didn’t keep the repo man from hooking your mother’s car to his wrecker and hauling it away from your single wide while the rest of the kids in the trailer court pointed and laughed because at least they were better off than you.
Faith looked down at the glittering stones of all shapes and colors. Passion did not take away the sick feeling in your stomach that you were one paycheck away from living in an alley behind a Dumpster at the Hard Rock.
“Those don’t keep you warm at night.”
She looked at her mother standing a few feet away. At the deep lines in the corners of her green eyes and her Farrah hair, messed up by a man’s hands. Faith slept beneath a comforter filled with the down of Hungarian white geese to keep her warm at night. She didn’t need a man for that.
She placed her diamonds on the blue velvet tray. She didn’t need a man for warmth or money. Passion was overrated and never really lasted anyway. Her mother was certainly an example of that.
Faith had everything she needed. She didn’t need a man for anything. And yeah, she knew what people would say about that. That she’d used her body instead of her mind to get what she wanted.
So what? She didn’t care. All that mattered was that it all belonged to her and no one could take it away.
Chapter 10
Monday afternoon, as Faith sat in a meeting with the coach, Darby Hogue, and the scouts from the player development department, her nerves twisted her stomach into knots. A television was set up and they watched clip after clip of free agents and minor-league prospects. Even though all trades and acquisitions were put on hold until the end of the season, the player development department still worked at finding new talent, and Jules had thought it important that she attend the meeting. While the men in the room discussed the prospect on the screen, she felt as nervous as a sinner in church, wondering if Ty would breeze through the door, looking hot and cool at the same time. She wondered if any of the men in the room knew that she’d assaulted the captain of the hockey team with her lips. She was fairly certain Ty wasn’t the kind of man to kiss and tell. That he wouldn’t want something like that to get around either, but she didn’t know well enough to be certain he wouldn’t talk about her with one of the guys. Who might in turn tell other people.