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.
The talk in the locker room at the Key Arena was that Virgil had had a massive heart attack while trying to please his young wife in the sack. The rumor was that the old man had blown out a heart valve and died with a big ol’ grin on his face. The mortician hadn’t been able to remove it, and the old man had gone into the cremation oven wearing a hard-on and a smile.
Ty didn’t care about rumors, and he didn’t care what people did or whom they did it with. If it was good, bad, or somewhere in between. Until now. He’d just signed his contract with the Seattle Chinooks organization three months ago, partly because of the money the old man had offered him, but mostly for the captaincy and a shot at Lord Stanley’s cup. Both he and Virgil wanted that cup, but for different reasons.