“That is some comfort. God rest his soul,” Pavel murmured as he looked down at the little radar unit monitoring Ty’s speed and tempo. The speed read 101, and Pavel’s dark brows lowered. “Is she as beautiful as her pictures?”

“I haven’t seen her pictures.” Ty hooked another ball with his driver and lined it up on the golf mat next to the radar. He didn’t have to ask whom his father was talking about. “I don’t give a shit about her pictures.” After she’d announced earlier that afternoon that she was not selling the team, the Chinooks PR department had issued a statement to the press that landed Faith Duffy on every channel of the local news. They’d dug up film footage of her walking into an event with Virgil and had spliced it with footage of her wearing a low-cut dress from her Playboy days and smiling with Hugh Hefner.

Ty’s phone had rung nonstop, with reporters wanting to know how he felt about the new owner, and instead of answering, he’d unplugged his phone. After Landon’s behavior, Ty was certain Virgil’s son wouldn’t have been a better choice. The man’s judgment was obviously flawed and influenced by emotion and personal motivations, which was never good in an owner. Now suddenly, a playmate was the better of the two choices. How had that happened? “You’ve seen the photos, I imagine.”

“No. I have not.” Pavel’s eyes pinched at the creased corners as he watched Ty swing.

The ball shot across the room and hit the red center of the net.

“That’s surprising.” Ty glanced at the radar, then at his father: 113. He recognized that squinty glint. Pavel was sixty-five and as competitive as ever.

“Not so much.” He shrugged and motioned for Ty to hand him the club.

“You couldn’t find an old Playboy.”

“No.” Pavel lined up a ball beside the radar.

Ty didn’t tell his father that he had the magazine in his gym bag right across the room. There was just something wrong about showing it to the old man, especially when he hadn’t even seen it himself.

“But then I really didn’t try. There are a lot of beautiful women in this world, why spend unnecessary time and energy on one?” Which summed up Pavel’s relationships with women. Even those women he’d married. He swung and the ball flew across the room and into the net. The radar flashed 83. Not bad for a man Pavel’s age, but of course it wasn’t good enough to beat his son.

“The grip on your club is hinky,” he said and handed Ty the driver. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

There was nothing wrong with his grip and Ty shot a few more balls into the net just to prove it. A little after ten, he flipped on his big-screen TV and settled onto the overstuffed moss-colored couch to watch the news. He thought about tomorrow night’s game and the Sedin twins.

He thought of Faith Duffy and hoped like hell that her announcement not to sell the team didn’t throw the Chinooks off their game. Knowing who was going to end up owning the Chinooks was better than not knowing, but not by much.

He thought about the way she’d looked that afternoon. First composed and together, then obviously shaken. Landon had called her “Layla,”

which Ty figured had probably been her stripper name. Virgil’s son was an asshole. No two ways about it. To purposely degrade any woman in public was a nasty thing to do, but to do it to his former stepmother in front of a roomful of people showed a nasty arrogant streak that had made Mrs. Duffy look like the classier of the two. She’d stood there, toe to toe, with her head high and her back straight, and Ty had to give her points for not dissolving into tears or cussing like the irate stripper she’d once been.

He raised his beer to his lips and took a long drink. She didn’t dress like a stripper. Not even like a more subdued playmate. No bright colors or tight T-shirts ripped in strategic places. No tight jeans or short skirts with thigh-high boots. That afternoon, she’d been all covered up from her chin to knees like an uptight socialite. Of course, that sweater had just drawn attention to her large breasts, and every man in the room had been wondering what she looked like naked.

Ty lowered the bottle and glanced over at his gym bag. He guessed some of the guys already knew. He set his beer on the coffee table and moved across the room. Looking at her photos wasn’t something he would have gone out of his way to do, but they were sitting right there and he was a man. He reached into the bag and pulled out the five-year-old magazine with some woman he didn’t recognize on the cover all painted up like Uncle Sam. As he moved back toward the sofa, he flipped to the pictorial in the middle. His feet stopped as he stared down at Faith Duffy standing in a field of wildflowers wearing a sheer yellow dress. The light was behind her and she was nude beneath the loose material. In the next photo, her back was to the camera. Her green eyes looked over one shoulder, and the dress was pulled up her long legs and past her smooth behind.

Ty turned the page and this time she was on her hands and knees on a blanket laid out on a deep green lawn. She wore a pair of pink spike heels, white thigh-high stockings, and a pair of tiny white panties that tied at her hips. Her back was arched and her breasts thrust forward in a thin white bra. Heavy. Round. Perfect. It must have been cold that day. Her nipples puckered against the thin lace. Her wild hair curled about her shoulders and a slight smile curved her pink lips. He flipped to the next photo of her kneeling on the blanket next to a picnic basket, her thumb hooked in one side of her panties, pulling them down one thigh. He tilted his head to the side and a brow lifted up his forehead. She was as bald as a little peach.

He turned to the next photo. “Holy shit,” he whispered as he eyed the centerfold. Faith lay on the blanket, completely naked except for those thigh-highs and a long strand of pearls looped around her left breast. One of her knees was bent, her back arched off the ground and her skin glowed. Her eyes looked into the camera from beneath heavy lids, and her lips were parted as if she wanted to make love.

What a shame, he thought as he looked at her smooth, round breasts. What a shame that she’d wasted that body on an old man. Because no matter what anyone said, Viagra couldn’t turn back time fifty years and give an eighty-one-year-old man what it took to please a thirty-year-old woman.

He flipped to her Playmate Profile and read that she’d been born in Reno, Nevada, and was five foot six. She’d weighed 125 pounds and her measurements were 34D-25-32. He thought of her in that black dress the day of Virgil’s funeral and figured she hadn’t changed much. Her ambition was to “be a goodwill ambassador and help orphans in third-world countries.”

Rich laughter poured from Ty’s lips. Her ambition should have read, “I want to be a gold digger who ends up with more money than a third-world country.” He supposed Playboy wouldn’t have printed something like that, but at least it would have been more accurate, and he would have respected her honesty.

Her favorite food was crème brûlée. Her least favorite: hot dogs. Her favorite movie:

Sweet Home Alabama. She hated social injustice and rude people.

Ty chuckled and flipped back to the centerfold. He knew the photos had been airbrushed, and she really wasn’t his type of woman, but damn, she was something. Her hard nipples were perfect little pink berries in the center of her breasts and there wasn’t a mole or mark anywhere on her. A woman who looked like that should have at least one love bite somewhere on her perfect body.

He thought of her curled along the side her old husband. He’d liked Virgil, but the mental image made him a little queasy. Maybe it was just him, but he tended to think he wasn’t alone in his belief that an eighty-one-year-old man just didn’t have the jump in his junk to keep a thirty-year-old happy in the sack. Virgil might have had decades of practice, and more money than God, but it took more than that. It took a healthy stamina to satisfy a woman like that.

He closed the magazine and thought of the phone call he’d overheard the day of Virgil’s wake. Virgil might have had enough money to keep his young wife happy, but he’d bet there’d been someone else putting a satisfied smile on his young wife’s face.

From twenty-six stories above the city, Faith looked out the two-story wall of glass at the lights of Seattle and the thick fog covering the waters of Elliott Bay. Through the soupy night, she could almost pinpoint the exact location of Virgil’s estate. Not that she could see it, but she’d lived there for five years and knew it well.

She thought of the first time Virgil had brought her to his home after their quickie wedding in Vegas a month after they’d met. She’d taken one look at the big house out on the island and just about had heart failure, wondering if she’d get lost in the big, rambling mansion.

She thought of the first time she’d seen Virgil at a Playboy party she’d helped host at the Palms. That night he’d made her an offer she’d refused. He’d made it again after the Playmate of the Year ceremony at the Playboy Mansion. He’d told her he’d show her the world and everything in it, and all she had to do was pretend that she loved him for more than his money. He’d promised her a million dollars for every year that she stayed married to him and she’d said yes.

In the beginning, she’d figured she’d stay married to him for a few years and get out. But after a short time, they became best friends. He’d shown her kindness and respect, and for the first time in her life, she’d known what it felt like to be safe and secure and not have to worry about anything. By the end of the first twelve months, she loved him. Not like a father, but like a man who deserved her love and respect.