The camera switched to the crowd and scanned the rows of Chinooks fans. It stopped on two men with their faces painted green and blue and the little flutter calmed. From her position high above the arena, Faith turned her gaze to the Chinooks bench and the players who’d stopped shaving for the playoffs. Their facial hair ranged from fuzzy and patchy to Miami Vice scruff. Ty was one in only a handful of NHL players who chose to ignore the tradition and shaved.
Ty took a seat next to Vlad Fetisov. He grabbed a bottle from a waiting trainer and sprayed a stream of water into his mouth. He spit it out between his feet, then wiped his face with a towel.
“Do you need anything?” Jules asked as he stood.
She shook her head and looked up at her assistant, who wore a red-and-white argyle sweater that was so tight, it hugged his big muscles like a second skin. “No thanks.”
Faith settled back into her seat and thought about tomorrow’s flight and the game against San Jose the following night. Faith had never planned to travel with the team, but just that morning Jules had convinced her that it was a good idea and it showed support. He’d said it was a good way for her to get to know the twenty-four men who played for her. If they saw her more, they might feel more at ease with her as the new owner. She wasn’t sure if her assistant had her best interest in mind, or if he just wanted to catch the second game.
When his health had permitted, Virgil had sometimes traveled with the Chinooks, often catching a game or two before returning home, but Faith had never traveled with him. Never had the urge to live and breathe the game. And although she was just beginning to understand a little about what “points against” and “averages” meant, she wondered if she would ever understand it completely. The kind of understanding that came with living and breathing and loving hockey for years.
Jules returned with a Corona and a taquito and sat next to her. “Tell me something,” he said in a voice just loud enough for her to hear. “Do you automatically think a guy is gay because he says ‘hair product’?”
Faith looked into Jules’s dark green eyes. “No,” she answered carefully. “Did my mother or Sandy say you were gay?”
“No.” He took a bite of his taquito. “I know you’ll find this surprising, but some of the guys on the team think I’m gay.”
“Really?” She kept her face blank. “Why?”
He shrugged one big shoulder and raised the bottle to his mouth. “Because I care about my appearance.” He took a drink, then added, “And apparently straight men don’t say ‘hair product.’”
“That’s ridiculous.” They suspected he was gay for the way he dressed and his dubious color choices. She turned her attention to the ice as Walker Brookes skated to the face-off circle while Ty watched from the sidelines. The camera panned the Chinooks bench. Some of them were relaxed and watchful like Ty, while others yelled at opposing players as they moved past.
Walker entered the playoffs circle, stopped in the middle, and waited with his stick down. The puck dropped. Game on. “Who says you can’t say ‘hair product’?” she asked.
“Ty Savage.”
She looked back at Jules. “Don’t listen to Ty.” He had too much testosterone to be any sort of judge. “Straight men say ‘hair product’ all the time.”
“Name one.”
She had to think about it for a few moments. She snapped her fingers and said, “That Blow Out guy, Jonathan Antin.” Jules winced as if she’d just proven Ty’s point.
“I don’t think that’s even on TV anymore,” Jules grumbled. “That guy was kinda gay. I’m not gay.” Something in her face must have betrayed her because his gaze pinched. “You think so too!”
She shook her head and rounded her eyes.
“Yes, you do.” He made a motion with his hand. “Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me.”
She shrugged. On the ice below, the whistle blew and Sam Leclaire automatically skated to the sin bin. Sam might not be a great fighter, but that didn’t keep him from throwing his gloves and sitting out an average of seven penalty minutes a game.
“It’s the way you dress. You wear everything really tight and your color choices are a bit bold for a straight man.”
Jules frowned and folded his arms across his bulky chest. “At least I’m not afraid of color. You dress in beige and black all the time.” He glanced at the rink below, then back at her. “A few years ago, I was fat. I got really tired of wearing a size forty-six, so I decided to change my life. I work hard on my body. So why not show it off?”
“Because sometimes less is better,” she answered. As in showing less skin, and she should know. “And sometimes loose is more flattering.”
He shrugged. “Maybe, but everything you wear is so loose it looks like you’re trying to hide something under your clothes.”
Faith looked down at her black turtleneck and black pants. Before Virgil, she’d worn tight clothes with cutouts over her cleavage. She’d gone from one extreme to the other to try and fit into his world. Now, she no longer fit in either.
“But I guess it doesn’t matter what you wear. You’re beautiful and don’t have to worry about it. Sometimes I worry that some guy is going to think I’m your bodyguard and try and start something with me.”
Faith figured Jules was being weird and just a tad dramatic. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. You might dress like you’re experiencing some kind of metrosexual meltdown, but I need to keep you around. Plus,” she said through a smile, “your hair’s bangin’.”