“Faith, I’m not a girl.” His blue eyes looked at her through the deeper shadows of the car. “I don’t get my feelings hurt when a gorgeous woman tells me she just wants to use me for sex.” He laughed without humor. “Although you’re the first. It’s never happened before. It’s always the other way around.”
“Aren’t you just using me for sex too?”
He ran his gaze across her face and pushed the button to unlock her door. “Yeah. I am. Thanks.”
Monday night, Ty taped his socks just below his knees as Coach Nystrom pointed to the marker board. The rest of the Chinooks sat or stood around, waiting for the game to begin. The sound of ripping tape competed with Coach Nystrom’s last-minute instructions.
“Block the shots. Get in front of our goal,” he said as he drew O’s on the board.
In the arena beyond the tunnel, the Chinooks announcer warmed up the crowd as Queen blasted from the sound system.
“Keep your heads up and eyes on the puck,” Nystrom said one last time before the team followed the coaches out of the locker room and
into the tunnel. They walked across the mats covering the floor. As the announcer read each number, position, and name, the player skated onto the ice. Ty stood at the back of the line and glanced up at the owner’s box. Several people sat in the red stadium seats, but Faith wasn’t one of them.
Air horns split the air as the announcer called Sam’s number and name and Ty stepped closer to the opening. Yesterday he’d told her that he wanted to take her to dinner. No big deal. He’d just spent several hours having sex with her. She’d had her hands and hot mouth all over his body, and he wanted to take her out for some great Italian food. It wasn’t exactly unheard of. Any other woman would have expected it and more, but she’d acted like he’d asked her to have his baby. Her reaction had pissed him off, and he’d retaliated by having rough sex with her. Only it had backfired on him, because she’d loved it. He couldn’t stop thinking about the bite he’d left on her thigh, and that just made him madder.
The next player was called and Ty stepped forward.
He’d thought he’d regret having sex with Faith. He didn’t. He thought it would create complications for him. It hadn’t, and wouldn’t as long as no one found out. Physically, Faith was the perfect woman. Stunningly gorgeous from the top of her blonde head to her little red toenails, she was more than great tits and a nice ass. She had a brain and a sense of humor, but the most attractive thing about her was her determination and the strength of her will. To stand up and appear confident even when she didn’t feel it at all. Ty admired guts and grit and balls.
Blake was called onto the ice next, and Ty moved closer. The one thing about her that used to annoy the shit right out of him now attracted him like a bee to a sweet pot of honey. Ironic as hell. Or maybe it was karma. Whatever it was, it needed to stop. Here he was, about to be called out onto the ice to play one of the most important games of his life, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Faith. He needed his head in the game. Not turned around because a beautiful blonde just wanted to have sex with him and nothing more. Not even dinner.
Vlad was announced and Ty stepped to the edge of the ice. With another woman, that might be the perfect arrangement, but Faith wasn’t any other woman. She owned the Chinooks. Something he kept forgetting with alarming frequency.
“Number Twenty-one,” the announcer said, his booming voice almost drowned out by the screaming crowd, stomping their feet and blowing horns. “Playing the center position. The captain of the Chinooks,
Ty S-a-a-v-a-a-a-a-ge!”
With his head down, Ty took off like he was shot from the tunnel. The glassy surface of the ice sped past as he sprinted around the long line of his teammates and then turned his skates to the side, sending up a fine spray of ice and coming to an abrupt stop at the end of the line. The fans went wild and he glanced up at the owner’s box. Faith stood at the rail looking down at the ice. He could not see her face clearly, but he knew she was looking back at him, and anger tightened his chest. An anger that was out of proportion burned a hole in his stomach. Even though he knew his anger was over the top given the true nature of his relationship with Faith, it still lowered his brows and shot sparks from his eyes. Sparks that did not bode well for the Red Wings’ defensive line.
Chapter 16
Early-morning sun shone through the windows like oval spotlights as the BAC-111 punched through the cloud cover and headed east.
Faith opened the latest copy of Hockey News and tried to ignore Ty seated directly in front of her. Like the rest of the players, he wore a dark-blue suit jacket, and his big shoulder filled the crack in the seats. In his hands he held the Seattle Times sports page. No doubt reading about the 4–1 trouncing the Chinooks had given Detroit the night before at the Key, and loving himself. Ty had been unstoppable on the ice last night. The Detroit defense had failed to contain him, and he’d scored early in the first period and followed it with up two assists in the second and third.
After last night, he had nine goals so far in the playoff season, with fourteen assists, for a total of twenty-three points. It was the highest game-point average on his team and third-highest in the NHL.
This morning as she’d boarded the plane, he’d hardly looked at her. In her head she knew that everyone was supposed to believe they didn’t like each other. After the last time they’d been together, she wasn’t sure it was an act on his part.
The other players had acknowledged her. A quick hello wouldn’t have killed Ty. Unless she’d made him so angry he didn’t want to be with her anymore.
She took one of the high-protein bran muffins from the tray being passed around and handed one to Jules sitting next to her. “Where is the real butter?” she asked as she gave him a pad of Promise Buttery Spread. And why did the thought of never being with Ty again make her want to cry even as it made her want to kick the back of his seat? Hard. “I read that hockey players are supposed to eat an obscene thirty-five hundred calories a day,” she rambled. “Can you imagine trying to eat that many calories? Gee, you’d think they’d have butter around.” She lowered her tray and put her muffin on it. Had she done something? Other than not wanting to have dinner with him in public? “If I could have that many calories,
you’d better believe my muffin would have butter. And chocolate chips in it. Or better yet, I’d have a banana-walnut muffin.” Ty’s newspaper rustled and something in her chest pinched. How was she going to face him now if he didn’t want to be with her? “Oh, and I’d wash it all down with a real latte. No more fat-free, sugar-free skinny lattes with no whip, either.”
Jules looked at her. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She wished she’d stayed home. “Why?”
“You seem irrationally upset about a muffin.”
Faith tore off a piece and shoved it into her mouth. No, she wasn’t irrationally upset about a muffin. She was irrationally upset because the man sitting in front of her, flipping through the paper, hadn’t talked to her since he’d dumped her in her parking garage wearing nothing but her raincoat. Yeah, okay. So she’d kind of made it plain that she only wanted sex, but he still should have called. He could have said hello this morning.
“I was just trying to be nice. Now I don’t have to worry about it,” he’d said, and she guessed he was serious. She was irrationally angry because, while she was extremely aware of Ty, aware of the texture of his suit and the back of his dark head, she wasn’t sure he even knew she existed.
As she chewed her muffin, she tore the top off a little bottle of organic orange juice. She shouldn’t have let Jules talk her into accompanying the team to Detroit. Although in fairness, he hadn’t had to do much talking.