“
Cable Guy?”
“It sucked.”
He shook his head. “No more than Me, Myself and Irene.”
“It might be a toss-up.”
“I like Jim Carrey,” her mother confessed. “He was on that In Living Color show with J.Lo.”
“I used to love The Rockford Files,” Pavel added.
“Oh,
The Rockford Files,” Valerie cooed. “I loved Jim Rockford’s Firebird. My third husband had a Firebird. Do you remember Merlyn, Faith?”
“He drove too fast.”
“You’ve been married three times?” Ty asked as he spread his napkin across the lap of his dark wool pants. The back of his hand brushed Faith’s hip and she would have scooted over if there’d been room.
Valerie paused with a bite of salad halfway to her lips. She looked at Faith and then at her boyfriend. “Five times, but only because I was young and vulnerable.”
It had been seven times, but who was counting. Obviously, not Valerie. “Are you going to join us in the skybox tomorrow night for the game against Detroit?” Faith asked to change the subject.
“I would love to. Thank you, Faith.” Pavel ate a few bites and said, “The Chinooks are going in as underdogs, but sometimes that is the best position to be in. If our guys can get them to draw penalties, I think there’s a very good chance we’ll advance to the final round. Which I predict will be against Pittsburgh.”
“I don’t know, Dad.” Ty grabbed his fork and planted his free hand on the seat beside Faith’s thigh. “Pittsburgh’s playing without two of their power forwards.”
Father and son talked and argued about everything from power plays to penalty killers. Well into the main course, they talked about the best games ever played and Pavel’s glory days. Several times during their conversations, Ty’s hand accidentally brushed her hip. His touch spread fuzzy tingles to the back of her knee and tightened the hot, liquid knot in the pit of her stomach.
“Once I fired that puck into traffic, I lost sight of it,” Pavel said as he cut into his steak. “I didn’t know I’d scored until I heard it hit the back pipe.”
“I wish I could have seen you play. I bet you were something,” Valerie gushed and took a bite of chicken.
“My mom used to love to watch my dad play.” Ty raised his wine to his lips and his free hand slid to the top of Faith’s thigh. “She used to buy me a hot dog, and we’d sit in the middle row behind the goal because she thought those were the best seats. The old Montreal Forum had the best hot dogs.”
Faith’s eyes widened and she gasped at the heat of his palm spread across her lap. This time his touch was no accident. “I hate hot dogs,” she said.
He looked at her and his grasp tightened a bit. “How could you hate hot dogs? You’re American.”
“I ate too many of them growing up.”
“Faith was crazy for hot dogs back then.”
Faith’s breath caught in her chest and she couldn’t respond. She took a bite of salmon but had a hard time swallowing. Especially when his thumb brushed across her leg back and forth. She gave up trying to eat and reached for her wine.
“Is something wrong with your food?” he asked her.
“No.” She looked into his eyes, at the fiery blue lust and need staring back at her, and she wanted more. More of the hot flush and warmth pooling in her belly. She wanted to fall headfirst into more. Into him. She was a thirty-year-old woman who hadn’t felt the irresistible tangle of lust and need pulling her under in a very long time and she wanted to go. She wanted him to take her there, and she slipped her hand beneath the table. She ran her fingers down his forearm, over his rolled-up sleeve until her palm rested on the back of his hand. His grasp tightened, but instead of removing it, she licked her dry lips and slid his hand between her thighs.
“I think we should all go dancing after dinner,”
her mother suggested. “Faith was always a good dancer.”
Through the linen of her dress, Ty squeezed and she closed her legs around his warm hand. “I have an early morning,” he said.
“I’m tired.” Faith looked at her mother and yawned. “But you two can go ahead. I can take a taxi home.”
“I’ll take you.”
She looked at Ty and said, just above a whisper, “That might be inappropriate.”
“The things I’m going to do to you are very inappropriate.” He lowered his mouth to her ear. “You should probably be afraid.”
“Are you planning anything illegal?”
“Not the first two or three times.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure aboat the rest.”
Chapter 13
It’s kind of empty,” Faith said as she stood in the center of the darkened solarium. Overhead, stars crammed the clear night sky, and she felt like she was floating twenty-eight stories above Seattle. “Virgil and I didn’t stay in the city very often, so I never got around to doing anything up here. I always pictured lots of plants and cane furniture. Maybe a tiger, like in Who’s That Girl, with Madonna. Hated that movie, but I loved that big garden and the tiger.”
“Are you nervous?”
The heels of her hot-pink Chanel pumps tapped across the tile floor as she moved to the edge and looked out. “Can you tell?”
“You talk a lot more when you’re nervous.”
She put her hands against the glass and gazed at the Space Needle, all lit up like a giant flying saucer. On the way home from the restaurant, they’d stopped at a pharmacy and he’d run in and bought condoms. Magnums. “You make me nervous.”
He moved close behind her. “Why?”
Several reasons. Starting with, “Were those magnums necessary?”
“I like ’em snug.”
Oh God. And ending with, “It’s been a long time for me.”
He bent his head and asked close to her ear, “A long time since…?”
“I was with anyone.”
He placed his hands on her hips and pulled her back against his chest, nestling her behind against his erection. “Anyone but Virgil?”
She looked into the shadowy outline of his watery reflection. So tall and powerful and ready. “Virgil was good to me and I loved him, but we never…” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t betray him even though he was gone. “Our marriage wasn’t about that.”
His hands touching her hips and stomach stilled. “You never had sex?”
She didn’t answer.
His barely visible gaze met hers in the glass. “Not even with someone who could?”
“Of course not.”
“How long were you married?” He sounded incredulous.
She turned her head and looked back over her shoulder into the variegating light touching his face. “Five years.”
He was silent for several heartbeats. “You haven’t had sex in five years? A woman who looks like you?”
“Why’s that hard to believe?” Quiet laughter escaped her lips and whispered across his chin. “You said I was ugly.”
“I think I said unattractive.”
“That’s right. You don’t go ugly just to get laid.” She lifted her face and kissed his jaw. “Should I stop?”
“No. Tonight I’ll take one for the team.” He slid his palm up her stomach and he said next to her ear, “Sometimes being the captain is a burden.” His hands slipped up the slopes of her breasts and he cupped her through the pink linen dress and her white lace balconnet bra. “I’ve had a hard-on for you since that night of the photo shoot.”
Her nipples tightened beneath the brush of his fingers. “That night you made me feel things too.” She arched her back and pressed her bottom into him. “Things I haven’t felt in several years.”