“That’s right. You don’t.” Ty stood. “That’s why we were talking about my father dating her mother.” Which was true. In between him looking at her like she was naked. “I like you, Jules. If I didn’t like you, I’d just tell you to stay the hell out of my business.” He moved toward the door and stopped to look down into the other man’s face. “So, I’m going to be straight with you. Every man on the team has seen those pictures in Playboy. There’s no point in even denying that. Hell, you’ve seen them, and Mrs. Duffy doesn’t seem at all worried about it. But there’s a world of difference between thinking about her in those pictures and taking it a step further. Let me assure you that nothing is going to get in my way of making it all the way to the finals.
“Not winning the cup has been a monkey on my back for fifteen years. I’ve been one overtime shot away from having my name engraved on the cup, and the last thing I’m going to do is fuck that up.” He gave Jules one last hard look and walked from the room.
He’d parked his BMW in the lower level of the parking garage, and on his way home, he thought about what he needed to do in tomorrow night’s game. They needed to shut down San Jose’s de fense, clinch the second round, and move on to the third. He thought about Faith and Jules. And he thought about his dad and Faith’s mother. Of all the women in Seattle, why did the old man have to screw around with her? Ty didn’t get it. It was like Pavel was the Pied Piper of penis and women followed him anywhere.
He drove across the floating bridge of Lake Washington to Mercer Island. He parked the BMW in between his Bugatti Veyron and his father’s Cadillac.
“Jesus, Dad,” Ty said as he walked into the kitchen and tossed his keys on the deep brown granite countertop. “You didn’t tell me that Faith Duffy walked in on you having sex with her mother.”
Pavel shrugged as he turned from the refrigerator and shut the door. “She was supposed to be in California.” He popped the top on a can of Molson and shrugged as if that said it all. “But she got sick and came home early.”
Ty doubted she’d been sick and suspected her sudden departure from San Jose had more to do with that kiss in the hall than bad fish or the flu bug. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You are judgmental.” Pavel raised the can to his lips and took a drink.
“No. You didn’t tell me because you knew I wouldn’t like it.” He sighed and shook his head.
“Seattle is a big city, Dad. Couldn’t you find another woman besides Faith Duffy’s mother to bang?”
Slowly Pavel lowered his beer. “Don’t talk disrespectful, Tyson.”
That was the weird paradox about Pavel. You could treat women like shit, and that was okay. But you couldn’t talk disrespectfully. “What’s going to happen when you break up with her?” There wasn’t a doubt in Ty’s mind that he would, too. “I don’t want to have to deal with a hysterical woman showing up here.” Like when women always discovered that Pavel was married, or wasn’t going to marry them, or he had dumped them for someone else.
“Val isn’t the type to get too attached. She’s only in town for a short time to help her daughter through a difficult time. She’s a devoted mother.”
Which brought up a subject Ty had been meaning to talk about. He couldn’t come right out and ask the old man when he was going back to his house. “What are your plans?” he asked instead as he moved toward the refrigerator and opened the stainless-steel door.
Pavel shrugged and raised his can. “Just having a beer. Later Valerie invited me over for dinner. I’m sure the two ladies wouldn’t mind if you joined us.”
After his latest conversation with Faith and the enormous wood she’d given him, that wasn’t going to happen. “I’m meeting some of the guys at Conte’s for poker and Cubans.” He was definitely in the mood to kick some ass on the poker table.
“You spend too much time in the company of men and it makes you bad-tempered.”
“I’m not bad-tempered! Jesus, I wish people would lay off about that.”
Pavel shook his head. “You’ve always been so sensitive. Like your mother.”
His father was talking out of his ass again. Sensitive? Like his mother? Ty was nothing like his mother. His mother had spent her life loving the wrong man. Ty had never been in love at all.
“You need to find a woman,” Pavel suggested. “A woman to take care of you.”
That just proved how well the old man knew him. The last thing Ty needed was a woman in his life. A down-and-dirty hookup was a different matter, but even that was too big a distraction. And right now, he couldn’t even afford a quick, wham-bam distraction.
Chapter 12
On Monday morning Jane Martineau walked into Faith’s office at the Key. A petite little package with dark hair and glasses, Jane wore very little makeup and was dressed in black from head to toe. She was cute rather than pretty, and not what Faith expected in either a lifestyle reporter or the wife of former elite goaltender Luc Martineau.
“Thank you for meeting with me,” she said as she shook Faith’s hand. She put a black leather briefcase on the desk and reached inside. “I had to threaten Darby with physical harm if he didn’t at least approach you for the interview. I also sicced his wife on him.”
“I didn’t know he was married.” For the inter view, Faith hadn’t known what to wear and had dressed in a white blouse, her black pencil skirt, and black patent leather T-strap pumps. Clearly, she’d overdressed.
Jane took out a pad of paper and a pen. “To my best friend since grade school, Caroline. I introduced them.”
“Wow. You still see your friend from grade school.” Faith didn’t know why she found that unusual, other than she hadn’t seen her friends from grade school for about fifteen years or so.
“I talk to her almost every day.”
“That must be nice. To have a friend for that long.” She shook her head. “I didn’t mean to sound pathetic.”
Jane looked at her through the lenses of her glasses as she dug around in the briefcase. “You didn’t. People come and go. Caroline and I are fortunate to still be in each other’s lives.”
Faith eyed the small tape recorder Jane pulled out of her briefcase and asked, “Do you have to use that?” God forbid she said something pathetic and it ended up in the newspaper.
“It’s as much for your protection as mine.” She set it on the desk and put the briefcase on the floor. “Don’t worry. I won’t ask you any embarrassing questions. This isn’t an exposé or a hit piece. Seattle hockey fans are excited about the playoffs and curious about you. They want to know a little bit about Faith Duffy. You don’t have to answer anything that makes you feel uncomfortable. Fair enough?”
Faith relaxed a bit. “Fair enough.”
Jane sat and started the interview with simple questions about where Faith had been born and how she’d met Virgil. Then she asked, “You’re only thirty years old; how does it feel to own an NHL franchise?”
“Shocking. Unbelievable. I still can’t believe it.”
“You didn’t know you were going to inherit the team?”
“No. Virgil never mentioned it. I found out the day his will was read.”
“Wow. That’s a nice inheritance.” Jane looked at her through the lenses of her glasses. “There are probably a lot of women who’d love to be in your shoes.”
True. She had a great life. “It’s a lot of work.”
“What do you know about running an entire organization like the Chinooks?”
“Admittedly not a lot, but I’m learning every day. I’m getting on-the-job training, and I’m actually starting to understand hockey and how the organization runs. It’s not as scary as it was a few weeks ago. Of course, Virgil was smart enough to hire good people and to let them do their jobs. So that makes my job easier.”
Jane asked about goals and points and the Chi nooks’ chances of winning the Stanley cup. In a 4–2 win the previous Saturday, the Chinooks had beaten the Sharks in Game Six and were set to play the Red Wings in the third round Thursday in Detroit. “Zetterberg and Datsyuk were both top scorers in their division during the regular season,” Jane said, referring to two Detroit players. “What’s the plan to slow down the momentum of Zetterberg and Datsyuk?”