“What are you going to do before the game?” Darby asked her.
She tore her gaze from Ty’s fingers, which were brushing beads of condensation on his glass. “I don’t know. I’m sure there’s some great shopping around here. Although I’m kind of shopped out.”
“There’s a new casino,” Daniel suggested.
“When you are born and raised in Nevada, gambling kind of loses its appeal.”
“I saw some people Rollerblading along the Riverwalk,” Coach Nystrom said.
Faith shook her head. “I don’t skate.” Twenty-two stunned faces stared at her as if she’d just said something unimaginable. Like she was putting salary caps at fifty grand. “Right now. I plan to take lessons,” she lied before things got ugly. “Maybe I’ll go swimming tomorrow.”
“When are you going swimming?” Sam wanted to know. “I always try and hit the pool in the morning. I was on my high-school swim team and took state in the butterfly.”
“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.