“Last year you injured your rotator cuff showing off and were out half the season,” Coach Nystrom reminded him. “Stay out of the pool.”
Sam smiled. “That’s because I was freestyling.”
“That’s your problem on the ice, too,” someone down the table commented in a slight Swedish accent. “Too much freestyling and you end up in the penalty box.”
“At least I have style, Karlsson.”
Faith glanced down the table at Johan Karlsson, who was dressed worse than Jules, in a bumblebee-yellow-and-black-striped shirt. He had a thick blond beard and an unfortunate Will Ferrell ’fro.
“Yeah, an eggbeater style,” Logan Dumont joined in the razzing.
“Shut your donut, rookie. You’re barely out of the shinny league.”
Faith had no idea what an eggbeater or a shinny league was, but apparently it wasn’t good.
“Not here, guys,” the assistant coach warned.
“Logan’s just got his equipment in a tangle because he can only manage to grow a scraggly patch of hair on his chin,” Blake told Sam.
Faith wondered if Logan’s “equipment” was a euphemism for something else. Knowing the guys at the table, she would bet it did. She took one last bite of her chicken and set her fork across the edge of her plate.
“At least my patch doesn’t look like Jenna Jameson’s crotch,” Logan fired back.
Faith felt her eyes round and she raised her napkin to her mouth to hide her inappropriate smile.
“Jesus, Dumont. Mrs. Duffy is sitting here,” the coach admonished.
“I beg your pardon,” the rookie apologized.
Faith lowered her napkin. “Apology accepted,” she said, and as she glanced away from Logan, her gaze met Ty’s. From the length of half the table he simply looked at her. His blue eyes gave nothing away. Not the anger she’d seen in them the last time they’d been together, nor the lust. Nothing, and she felt a little pinch near her heart.
They weren’t a couple. They weren’t even dating. Their relationship, if it wasn’t over, was purely physical. So why did it bother her that he looked at her as if she meant nothing to him?
Faith reached for her purse next to her plate. “I’m tired,” she told Jules. “I’m going to skip dessert.”
Jules looked at her across his shoulder and put his cloth napkin next to his plate. “I’ll walk you to your room.”
“No. You stay.” She stood. “Good night, gentlemen. I had a lovely time. I’ll see you all tomorrow night at the arena.” She left the restaurant and forced herself not to look back. Within a few minutes, she was back in her suite and tossed her bag on the table. She turned on the television and pushed the UP button on the remote until she stopped on TCM and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Virgil had been a big fan of classic movies and starlets like Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren.
Faith had never really been all that interested in old movies and continued flipping the channels.
There was a knock on the door and she tossed the remote on the couch. She expected to see Jules, but wasn’t all that surprised that Ty stood on the other side.
“Who is it?” she called out as she stared at him through the peephole.
He raised a brow and folded his arms across his chest.
She was irritated with him. Maybe irrationally so, but she was still annoyed and didn’t feel like letting him in right away.
“I know you’re staring at me. You might as well open up,” he said.
“What?” she asked as she opened the door.
Instead of answering, he stepped inside and forced her to move backward.
“I’m tired and not—” His mouth on her stopped her flow of words as he brought his hands to the sides of her face. The door shut behind him with a soft click, and his thumbs brushed her cheeks. His lips slid over hers with the promise of passion rather than a full-out kiss.
“No skating with Sam,” he said against her lips. “I’ll teach you.”
She hadn’t been serious about learning to skate. “I don’t want to fall and hurt myself.”
“I won’t let that happen. And the next time you need a whole-body massage,” he said as he kissed the corner of her mouth, “call me.”
She almost smiled. “How? When you’re so good at pretending I don’t even exist.”
He brushed his lips across hers. “I should get an award for that.”
She put her hands on his chest and pushed. “You could at least say hello.”
“No, I couldn’t.” He dropped his hands and leaned his back against the door. “I can’t risk it.”
Faith moved across the room and turned off the television. “What does that mean?”
“It means that when I look at you, I’m afraid everyone within ten miles can see that I have sex with you.”
She tossed the remote on the table. “Oh.”
“And it means,” he continued as he moved toward her, “that I’m afraid everyone within ten miles can see that I’m remembering the last time I saw you naked. That I got a little rough with you and I wish I was truly sorry about that, but it was so good I’m not. Every time with you is good, and I’m afraid that anyone within ten miles will look at me and know I’m thinking about how to get you naked again.”
She bit the side of her lip. All he had to do was show up and she’d be more than willing to get naked. “You took a big risk in coming here.”
He reached for her hands and brushed his thumb over the backs of her knuckles. “Everyone is still in the restaurant. Besides, none of us are on this floor.” He pulled her toward him. “So you got the muffin.”
“You sent me the muffin?”
“Can’t have you wasting away on bran and Promise spread. I need you full of energy.”
She owned a penthouse in downtown Seattle and an elite hockey team. She had more money than she knew what to do with, yet she couldn’t help smiling like a fool over a two-dollar muffin. “Thank you.”
He reached for the frog buttons closing her dress. “I have an ulterior motive.”
Faith reached up and pulled the jade sticks from her hair. “Shocking.”
“Monday, I played some of the best hockey of my life. I’m not usually superstitious, but I gotta believe it had something to do with the night before.”
She tossed the sticks on the table and her hair fell down her back.
“You have to have lucky sex with me before each game or I could be jinxed.” He popped the buttons closing the dress over her breasts. “I know you want to do the right thing.”
“Take one for the team?” She pulled the tails of his shirt from his waistband.
“It’s your turn.”
“Yeah, but what if…” she raised one hand. “And I’m not saying this is going to happen, but what if we have sex and you lose? Then you’re not lucky.”
He looked up from the frog buttons as if he hadn’t thought of that. “Honey, having sex with you makes me one lucky son of a bitch.”
“Thank you. I think.”
He shrugged and continued with the buttons. “If we lose, it just means that someone else on the team fucked up. Not our fault. We did our part.”
She laughed. “And we have to do ‘our part’ before each game?”
He nodded. “At least once.” He pushed the dress down her arms and it pooled at her feet.
She pushed at his chest as she took a step back and kicked her dress aside. “Don’t go anywhere.” Wearing nothing but her black lace bra, matching thong, and red Valentino pumps, she left the room, only to return a moment later with an armless vanity chair. She set it in the middle of the room and said, “Sit down, Mr. Savage.”
“What are you planning?”
“My part to make sure the captain of my hockey team isn’t jinxed.” She walked to the sound system and tuned the radio to a hard rock station. A perennial favorite of every strip club across the country poured from the speakers. Faith had danced to “Pour Some Sugar on Me” more times than she could recall. This time, she didn’t have to slip into character. She wanted to please him and herself. She wanted to spin his head around and leaving him gasping for breath. Just as he’d done to her. She turned to look across the room at Ty, still standing by the chair, watching her.