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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 andsecure 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.
    He’d been good to his word, and during the first few years of their marriage, they’d traveled all over the world. Hit every continent, and stayed in exclusive hotels. They’d toured the Mediterranean in yachts, gambled in Monte Carlo, and lounged on the white sands of Belize. But shortly after their second year together, Virgil suffered a massive heart attack and they didn’t travel out of the country after that. They’d stayed in Seattle and socialized with Virgil’s friends, but mostly they stayed at home in the big house on the island. Faith hadn’t really minded. She’d cared for him and loved taking care of him.
    But they’d never actually made love.
    All the money and surgeries and miracle pills in the world hadn’t prevented Virgil’s old age and diabetes from interfering with and robbing him of the one thing that made him feel like a vital man. Long before he’d met Faith, he hadn’t been able to have and sustain an erection. Nothing had worked for him, and his enormous pride and gigantic ego insisted that he settle for the next best thing. The appearance of sex with a much younger woman. A centerfold.
    If she were totally honest, she would admitthat she hadn’t minded. Not just because he was fifty-one years older