Читать онлайн «True Love and Other Disasters»

Rachel Gibson

True Love and Other Disasters

The fourth book in the Chinooks Hockey Team series, 2009

Chapter 1

The night before Virgil Duffy’s funeral, a storm pounded the Puget Sound. But by the next morning, the gray clouds were gone, leaving in their place a view of Elliott Bay and the spectacular skyline of downtown Seattle.

Sunlight cut across the grounds of his Bain-bridge estate and in through the towering windows. Among the guests honoring him at his wake, there were those who wondered if he was up in heaven controlling the notoriously gray April weather. They wondered if he’d been able to control his young wife, but mostly they wondered what she was going to do with the pile of money and NHL hockey team she’d just inherited.

Tyson Savage wondered that himself. The voices pouring from the formal living room drowned out the sound of his Hugo Boss dress shoes as he moved across the parquet flooring of the entry way. He had a really bad feeling that the Widow Duffy was going to screw up his chance at the cup. The bad feeling bit the back of his neck and had him adjusting the tight knot of his tie.

Ty walked through the double doors and into a large room that reeked of polished wood and old money. He spotted several of his teammates, spit and polished and looking slightly uncomfortable amongst the Seattle elite. Defenseman Sam Leclaire sported a black eye from last week’s game against the Avalanche that had resulted in a five-minute penalty. Not that Ty held a muck-up in the corner against a guy. He also had a reputation for throwing the gloves, but unlike Sam, he wasn’t a hothead. With only three days to go before the first playoffs game, the bruises were bound to get a hell of a lot worse.

Ty stopped just inside the door, and his gaze moved across the room and landed on Virgil’s widow standing within the sunlight spilling through the windows. Even if the sun hadn’t been shining in her long blonde hair, Mrs.

Duffy still would have stood out amongst the mourners surrounding her. She wore a black dress with sleeves that reached just below her elbows and a hem that touched just above her knees. It was just a plain dress that looked anything but plain as it poured over her incredible body.

Ty had never met Mrs. Duffy. A few hours earlier, at St. James Church, was the first time he’d seen her in person. He’d heard about her though. Everyone had heard about the billionaire and the playmate. He’d heard that several years before the Widow had snagged herself a rich, old man, she’d been working a stripper pole in Vegas. According to the gossip, one night while she’d been rocking her acrylic heels, Hugh Hefner himself had walked into the club and spotted her onstage. He’d put her in his magazine, and twelve months later, he’d made her his playmate of the year. Ty hadn’t heard how she’d met Virgil, but how the two had met didn’t matter. The old man dying and leaving his team to a gold digger did. One whole hell of a lot.