True Love and Other Disasters (Chinooks #4)

by Rachel Gibson

  “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 satisfying 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.”

  “I respect myself.” Her mother tied the belt and smoothed the silk over her legs. “You’re not the morality police, Faith. You married an old man for his money. You can hardly lecture me on morality.”

  In the beginning of her marriage, that was certainly true. “You can only feel secure with yourself if there’s a man in your life.” She unrolled the silk bag and spilled her diamonds into her palm. “I find my security with money. Neither of us can claim the moral high ground.”

  “Money is a poor substitute for love.”

  “I had both with Virgil.”

  Her mother sighed and rolled her eyes.

  “It was a good marriage.”

  “It was a passionless, sexless marriage to a man old enough to be your grandfather.”

  She moved into the big walk-in closet stuffed with clothes in varying shades of beige, white, and black. “You’ll never understand my relationship with Virgil. He gave me a great life,” she said as she punched the numbers to the safe and popped it open.

  “He gave you money in exchange for five years of your life. Five years of your youth that you can never get back,” Valerie called after her, and Faith refrained from reminding Valerie that Virgil had given her money as well. Enough that she didn’t have to work. “You can’t have a great life without passion,” her mother added.

  Faith swung the safe door open and pulled out one blue velvet tray filled with Tiffany and Cartier earrings. Passion didn’t buy your child shoes when the soles wore out or put food in your child’s stomach. It didn’t keep the repo man from hooking your mother’s car to his wrecker and hauling it away from your single wide while the rest of the kids in the trailer court pointed and laughed because at least they were better off than you.

  Faith looked down at the glittering stones of all shapes and colors. Passion did not take away the sick feeling in your stomach that you were one paycheck away from living in an alley behind a Dumpster at the Hard Rock.

  “Those don’t keep you warm at night.”

  She looked at her mother standing a few feet away. At the deep lines in the corners of her green eyes and her Farrah hair, messed up by a man’s hands. Faith slept beneath a comforter filled with the down of Hungarian white geese to keep her warm at night. She didn’t need a man for that.

  She placed her diamonds on the blue velvet tray. She didn’t need a man for warmth or money. Passion was overrated and never really lasted anyway. Her mother was certainly an example of that.

  Faith had everything she needed. She didn’t need a man for anything. And yeah, she knew what people would say about that. That she’d used her body instead of her mind to get what she wanted.

  So what? She didn’t care. All that mattered was that it all belonged to her and no one could take it away.

  Chapter 10

  Monday afternoon, as Faith sat in a meeting with the coach, Darby Hogue, and the scouts from the player development department, her nerves twisted her stomach into knots. A television was set up and they watched clip after clip of free agents and minor-league prospects. Even though all trades and acquisitions were put on hold until the end of the season, the player development department still worked at finding new talent, and Jules had thought it important that she attend the meeting. While the men in the room discussed the prospect on the screen, she felt as nervous as a sinner in church, wondering if Ty would breeze through the door, looking hot and cool at the same time. She wondered if any of the men in the room knew that she’d assaulted the captain of the hockey team with her lips. She was fairly certain Ty wasn’t the kind of man to kiss and tell. That he wouldn’t want something like that to get around either, but she didn’t know well enough to be certain he wouldn’t talk about her with one of the guys. Who might in turn tell other people.

  Yes, he’d kissed her first, but she was the one who’d grabbed ahold with both hands and hadn’t wanted it to end. Not like that. Not until they were both naked.

  “Can I get you anything, Mrs. Duffy?” the coach’s assistant asked as he popped in another tape.

  A Xanax. She smiled and shook her head. “No. Thank you.” Her hands lay loosely in her lap, appearing relaxed and composed as her ne
rves pinged through her veins and zapped her every time someone walked past Coach Nystrom’s door, but Ty never showed and no one mentioned the unfortunate episode in San Jose.

  That night, the Chinooks won their second of three against the Sharks. Faith chose to attend a benefit instead and skipped the game. She and Virgil had bought tickets to the thousand-dollar-a-plate event the previous summer. She decided to go by herself and participate in the silent auction to raise money for Doctors Without Borders.

  She dressed in her black Donna Karan sheath and hung a string of opera-length pearls around her neck. When she walked into the ballroom at the Four Seasons, she spotted several women she knew from the Gloria Thornwell Society. They turned their faces as if they didn’t know her. The glittering chandeliers shined down on the Seattle elite as she grabbed a glass of Moët from a passing tray. Toward the front of the room, Landon and his wife stood in a circle of Virgil’s close friends congratulating each other for one sort of acquisition or another. She raised the champagne to her lips and her gaze slid to the members of the Seattle Symphony, playing on a raised dais. She knew a lot of these people. Now, as she moved to the table displaying the silent auction items, she caught the gazes of the few trophy wives she’d associated with for five years. In their eyes she saw pity and fear as they turned away, afraid to make eye contact with their fate.

  “Hello, Faith.”

  She looked across her shoulder at the wife of Bruce Parsons, Jennifer Parsons, a trophy wife only slightly older than herself.

  “Hi, Jennifer. You braved the crowd, I see.”

  Jennifer smiled tightly. “How are you doing?”

  “A little better. I still miss Virgil.”

  They talked for a few short minutes, and in the end promised phone calls that would never be placed and lunch that would never happen.

  When the dinner bell rang, she found herself at a table with Virgil’s empty seat beside her. Sadness at his absence settled next to her heart. He’d been a strong stabilizing influence in her life and she missed him. Now that he was gone, she had to be strong by herself.

  Across the table, Landon and his wife, Ester, ignored her completely while silently transmitting their contempt in venomous waves. If Virgil were alive, he’d have expected her to paste a smile on her face and force them all to be civil. But frankly, she was tired of forcing polite behavior from Landon and Ester when they were in polite society. To some of the people in the room, she would always be a woman who took her clothes off for money. But there’d been some freedom in that life which had nothing to do with being naked and everything to do with not caring what people thought. There were only a few rungs lower on the social scale than a stripper.

  While she ate a five-course meal that started with a braised short rib and red cabbage salad, she made small talk with those around her. By the time the fourth course was cleared from the table, she realized that she really just didn’t care anymore. Not about Landon and his wife, and not about people who would never accept her now that Virgil was gone. Since the funeral, her life had been different. In just one short month, it had drastically changed.

  “I heard the Chinooks are still in the playoffs,” one of Virgil’s business associates commented from Faith’s left side. She leaned slightly forward and looked into Jerome Robinson’s kind brown eyes. “How’s the team looking?” he asked.

  “We’re looking good,” she answered, as a panna cotta with fresh berries was set on the table before her. “Of course there was a huge concern once we lost Bressler, but Savage has stepped in and done a great job of keeping the team focused. Our goal was to give the players a few games before the playoffs to find their legs and adjust before we started shuffling the deck, but they’ve adjusted so well, there hasn’t been much shuffling.” Or so Coach Nystrom had said yesterday. She shrugged and lifted her dessert spoon. “Our front line has a combined twenty-three goals and eighty-nine points so far in the playoffs. I think we have a really good shot at the cup this year.” That, she’d figured out on her own.

  Jerome smiled. “Virgil would be proud of you.”

  She liked to think so. But more important, for the first time in her life she was proud of herself.

  “My father was a senile old man,” Landon said from across the table.

  “Your father was many things.” Jerome turned to Landon. “Senile was never one of them.”

  Faith smiled and took a drink of her dessert wine. Once the dishes were cleared, she stayed just long enough to make a few silent bids. As she stood at the coat check, she realized that in the short month since Virgil’s death, she’d become more comfortable sitting in an Irish pub with a bunch of hockey players than with the people she’d associated with for the past five years. It wasn’t that all the Seattle elite were supercilious snobs. They weren’t. A lot of them were like Jerome. Nice people who just happened to have more money than God. It was more like Faith was different now; she was becoming someone else. Someone she didn’t know. She wasn’t a stripper or Playmate or a rich man’s wife anymore. The weirdest part about it was that even though she didn’t know the new Faith yet, she liked her.

  By the time she got home, Valerie had returned from the hockey game, where she and Pavel had used the box to watch the Chinooks dominate in a 2–0 victory over the Sharks. Wednesday night’s game would be in San Jose, and if the Chinooks won, they would advance to the next round. If not, it was back to Seattle for Game Six.

  “Pavel wanted me to thank you for the use of your skybox.”

  “When you see him again, tell him he’s welcome,” Faith said and headed to her room. She went straight to bed feeling oddly at peace with her life. She slept like a log until around one, when Pebbles jumped on her bed and curled up against her stomach.

  “What are you doing?” she asked the dog, her voice a bit sleep-drugged. “Get out.” Through the darkness Pebbles’s beady eyes looked up at her as a deep moan filtered into the room. Faith recognized that moan and the next one too. Obviously, Valerie and Pavel hadn’t found a hotel.

  The next morning Pavel was gone, and Valerie acted as if he’d never been there. When Faith confronted her mother, Valerie promised to “be more quiet.”

  “I thought you said something about going to a hotel,” she reminded her mother.

  “Every night? That could get expensive.”

  Every night? “You could go to his house.”

  Valerie shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s living with Ty. Maybe when Ty’s on the road. I’ll talk to him about it tomorrow.” She pulled off her chunky bracelets. “You don’t mind if he comes over Wednesday night and watches the game here with us, do you? I hate to think of him all alone with nothing but his big-screen TV.”

  She wondered why her mother couldn’t go there. “I don’t really mind. Just as long as you didn’t make out like teenagers and plug in ‘Sexual Healing.’”

  Valerie waved away her concern. “Pavel gets too engrossed in the game and can’t manage to pull himself away,” she said.

  But the very next night, the two headed to Valerie’s bedroom during the first intermission.

  “What are they doing?” Jules asked as he walked into the kitchen and reached for a section of the three foot-long sandwiches Faith had picked up at a local deli.

  There was a large thump on the wall followed by deep laughter and a little giggle. “You don’t want to know.” Faith shook her head and bit into a deli pickle. “My mother and I have adopted the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.” She took a sip of her margarita and moved back into the living room. “At least I’m trying to make her follow it.” Pebbles lay in Faith’s spot on the couch with her feet sticking straight up in the air. “But like her dog, she doesn’t follow commands very well.”

  Jules sat beside Pebbles and scratched the dog’s belly with his free hand. “You missed a good game the other night.”

  She sat on the arm of the couch and looked across her shoulder into his green eyes. “I was at a benefit.” She thoug
ht of Landon and frowned. “Unfortunately, I won’t be going to many charity events. Landon and his friends have made me persona non grata.”

  “If you want to participate in a charity event,” Jules said between bites of his sandwich, “you should play in the Chinooks Foundation charity golf game this summer.”

  “I’ve never heard of the Chinooks Foundation.”

  “They have a charity golf game every year. I know they’d welcome you and it would be fun.”

  Big boobs and golf didn’t go together. “No thanks. I’m better at chairing events and writing checks.”

  “I know the foundation does other things to raise money too. I’ll look into it if you want me to.”

  She might actually really like that. At least it was something she knew about. “Okay.”

  “Has Darby talked to you?”

  “No.” Faith glanced at the television and the remaining few minutes of the second intermission. After the first two periods of the game, the Chinooks were ahead by one goal, but they had the third period to go, and anything could happen. “Why?” she asked.

  “He wants you to do an interview with a local reporter, Jane Martineau,” he said.

  Faith had heard of Jane. Had read her columns in the Life section of the Post Intelligencer. “Doesn’t she write about life in Seattle?”

  “Yeah, but she used to be a sports reporter for the Seattle Times. That’s how she met her husband, Luc Martineau. I don’t know if you remember, but Luc was the Chinooks goalie until he retired a few years ago.”

  Faith only had one question. “When?”

  “As soon as Darby can set it up. Probably sometime next week to coincide with the new billboards of you and Ty.”

  “Which photo is going to be used?”