underwear. Years ago she’d lost luggage and now she always carried her jewelry and other essentials on a commercial flight with her.
“I can’t believe you,” her mother said as she opened the door and walked into the room. “You embarrassed me in front of Pavel.”
She glanced over her shoulder as she moved across the floor toward her mahogany dresser. “You were having sex in my living room like a teenager,” she reminded her mother. “You should be embarrassed. For God’s sake, you’re fifty.”
“Fifty-year-olds enjoy sex.”
Which wasn’t the point at all. She opened a drawer and placed her panties inside. “Not in their daughter’s homes with strangers.”
“You were gone and Pavel isn’t a stranger.”
“I know.” She shut the drawer and moved toward her bed, which was covered in a red silk duvet. Her mother and Pavel were just a disaster waiting to happen. And it would happen. It always did. “He’s Ty Savage’s father. Couldn’t you have found someone other than my captain’s father?”
“Did you see Pavel?” she answered as if that explained it all. Sadly, for Valerie, it did.
“Yes. More than I wanted.”
Valerie crossed her arms beneath her large breasts. “I’ve never understood how you could be a stripper and a Playmate, yet remain such a prude about sex.”
She’d never been a prude. Far from it; she just wasn’t a nympho, like her mother. Despite what people thought of her, her former jobs, and the way she’d dressed, she’d never been a very sexual person. She’d always been able to control herself. Except for last night, anyway. And she wasn’t so sure that had been about sex as much as satisfy ing five years of pent-up need. It was just too bad that need had been released all over Ty Savage.
“How could you be in Playboy and want to live like a celibate nun? That doesn’t make sense to me.”
Stripping and doing Playboy had never been about sex. Those things had been about money. Faith had always kept the two separate in her own head. She’d explained it to her mother before and she didn’t feel like explaining it again. To her mother, being sexy and sex were one and the same thing, and she’d never understand. Not even if she tried. Which she didn’t. “And I’ve never understood how you could sleep with men you hardly know.”
“I know Pavel.”
“You’ve only been in town for two weeks!”
“It only takes an instant to feel chemistry.” Her mother sat on the edge of the bed and Pebbles jumped up beside her. “It’s this…” She snapped her fingers. “It’s a spark that you either feel for a man or you don’t.”
“But you don’t always have to act on it,” she said as Pebbles jumped inside the hatbox, spun around in a few circles, then made herself cozy.
“If you keep that kind of passion suppressed, it explodes and you do something rash. Before you know it, you’re naked and cuffed to the headboard of some guy named Dirk with a ruler tattooed on his penis.”
Faith held up a hand for her mother to stop. “How about we adopt the military ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. I won’t ask and you don’t tell.” She really didn’t want to hear about her mother’s exploding passion. Although after last night, when she’d kind of “exploded” in the hallway at the Marriott, she really couldn’t cast stones from her glass house. But in fairness to herself, she hadn’t exploded like that in a very long time. The last time she could recall had been with an old boyfriend on his Harley. Or at least they’d tried to have sex on his Harley. It hadn’t really worked out.
“I don’t understand you,” Valerie said.
“I know. And I don’t understand you. I don’t understand how you can keep repeating the same mistakes with men. When I was fifteen, I stopped counting the men that came and went in our lives.”
“I know I made mistakes.” Valerie sighed as if her mistakes were no big deal. “What parent hasn’t made a few mistakes?”
A few? Valerie had been married seven times and engaged at least a dozen.
Faith reached inside the hatbox and had to dig beneath Pebbles’s long fur for her jewelry roll. The little dog growled and bared its tiny white teeth. “You bite me, and I’ll drop-kick you off the balcony,” she warned.
“Don’t listen to her, Pebs,” Valerie said as she reached over and scratched the dog’s head. “She’s just jealous.”
“Of a dog!”
“Not you. Her. It’s called sibling rivalry. She views you as a sister competing for my attention. I read about it in a book.”
Since Valerie didn’t read books, Faith suspected she was making it up. She wrapped her hand around the jewelry bag and pulled it from beneath the dog.
“I don’t think Pebbles likes you lecturing Mama.”
Mama. Faith almost gagged. “I’m not lecturing you. I just think you need to respect yourself more.”