He looked at her a moment as “Are You Ready To Rock?” blasted from the arena speakers. “That’s the first genuine smile I’ve seen out of you,” he said.
“I smile all the time.”
He raised his beer. “Yes, but you don’t mean it.”
Faith turned her attention to the sports timer and the action below. Long before she’d met Virgil, she’d learned to smile when she didn’t mean it. Long before she’d stepped her first acrylic heel onstage and transformed herself into Layla, s
he’d learned to mask her true feelings with a smile. Life was sometimes easier that way.
But life had a weird way of throwing curve balls, or curved pucks, rather. Never in a million years would she have thought she’d someday own a hockey team. It would never have even occurred to her in a wild fantasy, but here she was, watching her team shoot pucks and throw punches. She wondered what they were going to think when she boarded the jet with them tomorrow.
The next morning she found out as she followed Coach Nystrom into the BAC-111. She couldn’t see beyond his wide shoulders, but a low hum of male voices filled the forty-passenger craft. It was seven thirty, and they were still keyed up from their win against the Sharks the night before.
From the back of the plane, someone complained loud enough for everyone to hear, “The son of a bitch tried to shove his stick up my ass.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time you walked around with a stick up your ass,” someone else said. This triggered a lot of deep manly laughter followed by numerous “up your ass” commentaries and speculations.
“Listen up,” Coach Nystrom said from the front of the plane. “Mrs. Duffy is traveling with us to San Jose.” As if someone pushed a PAUSE button, all laughter and butt jokes abruptly stopped. “So keep it clean.”
The coach took his seat and Faith was suddenly the focus of several dozen startled male faces.
From one row back, Ty Savage looked up from the USA Today sports section he held in his hands. The light above his head shined in his dark hair, and his eyes locked with her for several long seconds before he lowered his gaze to the paper once more.
Jules waited for her in the third-row window seat and she took her place beside him. “How long is the flight?” she asked.
“Less than an hour.”
Behind her she heard a few low whispers and a couple of deep chuckles. She buckled herself in and, except for a few bits of conversation too low for Faith to hear, and the rustle of Ty’s newspaper, the fuselage remained quiet as they taxied to the runway and took off. Once they punched through the thick, gray clouds, the stabbing rays of morning sun flooded the oval windows. Almost as one, the shades were all pulled down.
Faith wondered if they were quiet because they’d played a grueling game the night before that had ended in a 3–4 win in overtime and it was suddenly catching up to them, or if it was because she was sitting in the front of the jet.
Once the snow-covered summit of Mount Rainier was behind them, Darby Hogue leaned across the aisle and asked, “How are you doing?”
“Okay. Are they usually this quiet?”
Darby smiled. “No.”
“Are they uncomfortable flying with me?”
“They’re just a little superstitious about traveling with a woman. A few years ago, a female reporter traveled with the team. They didn’t like it at first, but they got used to her. They’ll get used to you, too.” He turned and looked into the seat behind him. “Got that tape, Dan?”
He was handed a DVD that he plugged into his laptop. Then he turned the screen for Faith to see. “This is Jaroslav Kobasew. We’re looking at him to fill the hole in our second-line defense. We need more size in the back, and he’s six five and two thirty-five.”
She hadn’t known they had a hole in the second line or anywhere else. “I thought we couldn’t make any trades.”
“Not until after the season ends, but we’re always scouting new talent,” Darby told her.
She looked into the screen across the aisle as a huge man in a red jersey battled for a puck in the corner. The huge guy won by knocking the other player off his skates. “Good Lord.”
Jules leaned over her. “How does he hit?”
“Like he has cement in his gloves,” Darby answered.
“How does he skate?”
“Like he has cement in his shorts.”
Normally, Faith would have thought cement in shorts was a bad thing. But this was hockey and she didn’t know. Maybe that meant he could take a hit. “And that’s bad. Right?”