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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 hedidn’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 thosethigh-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 leastfavorite: hot dogs. Her favorite