True Love and Other Disasters Read Online Free PDF

that surprised to see him. “Have you finished telling them the good news?” he asked, all smiles, as if he were an avenging angel sent to save the Chinooks from her clutches.
    She stood. “We’re still discussing the details.”
    “I’ll take over from here,” he said, sounding like the CEO that he was in his four-thousand-dollar suit.
    “You don’t own the team yet, Landon. I don’t believe you can legally discuss anything.”
    He waved his hand, dismissing her. “Run along.”
    She felt her cheeks flush. From anger or embarrassment, she didn’t know. Maybe both. She stood a little straighter and squared her shoulders. “If you want to talk to the coaches and staff, you’ll have to wait outside until we’re finished.”
    His smile fell. “Like hell, Layla.”
    No maybes about it now. She was both mad and embarrassed. To call her Layla in the lawyers’ offices had been bad enough, but here in a room filled with these men was far worse. He meant it to be degrading. To remind all the men in theroom of her former profession. If Virgil were alive, Landon wouldn’t have been so openly disrespectful. Not in public, anyway. Now he felt free to publicly insult her. “I said wait outside.” Then she smiled and used the nickname he hated, “Sprout.” She didn’t know why he hated his nickname so much. “Sprout” was kind of cute, and lots of kids had gone through adolescence called far worse.
    Apparently Landon didn’t think so, and his icy gaze got all frosty again and he took a step toward her. “For five years I’ve been forced to tolerate you,” he said as a vein on his forehead popped out. “Not anymore. If you don’t leave, I’ll have security take you out with the rest of the trash.”
    Anger clutched her stomach and burned her cheek, and before she gave it a thought, she opened her mouth and said, “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not selling the team. I’m keeping it.”
    Landon stopped dead in his tracks. “You can’t do that.”
    Momentarily satisfied at her power to slap him down, she smiled. “I can do whatever I want. And what I want is to keep the team your father gave me .” God, she wanted to hurt him. To call him names and spit in his face. To give him a good hard knee between the legs. In another life she would not have hesitated, but Mrs. Duffy did not knee men in the nuts. Virgil had taught her that. “Stay away from my hockey team.”
    He took a few more steps and reached for her. Before she could react, a big body stepped in front of her and she was suddenly staring at a wide back and white cotton T-shirt.
    “It might be best if you leave now, Mr. Duffy,” Ty Savage said. “I don’t want to see anyone get hurt.” Faith wasn’t sure if he meant her or Landon. “And I would sure hate to read in the papers that Mrs. Duffy had you hauled out by security.”
    From behind Ty’s back she heard Landon’s lawyers say something, and then Landon said, “This isn’t over, Layla.” After a few tense seconds, the door slammed shut behind him and Faith let out a pent-up breath. Her cheeks burned. She’d endured her share of humiliation. Some of it, admittedly, self-inflicted, but this felt like the time in elementary school when Eddie Peterson pulled up the back of her dress at the drinking fountain and exposed her holey pink underwear for the entire first grade.
    Ty turned and spoke to her, “What did you do to make the man hate you so much?”
    She looked up past the white scar on his chin surrounded by stubble, over his mouth and into his blue-on-blue eyes. “I married his father.” She gave in to her weak knees and sat. “Thank you for stepping in.”
    “Don’t mention it.”
    Her hands shook and she pulled them into herlap. “I guess I’m not selling the team,” she said, dazed, and to no one in particular. She turned and looked at the stunned faces around her. She knew the feeling. She was just as stunned by her announcement.
    “I’ve never seen a man treat a