They were always together -- and it always seemed so unnatural. On the campaign hustings in the middle of hockey season. Drinking in a trendy Toronto bar in March. Sharing a fruit plate at the Magna Golf Club in June. Whooping it up at the Calgary Stampede in July. And that was just 2006.

The unlikely friendship between MP Belinda Stronach and retired Toronto Maple Leaf hockey enforcer Tie Domi dates back years. You'd watch them pal around with casual familiarity and wonder if there could be something more to the relationship, perhaps a fairytale romance along the lines of Beauty and the Beast, before dismissing the implausibility of it all.

Thanks to the howl of hell's fury from Domi's future former wife Leanne, too much information has been gushing forth on the alleged current affair between Stronach and the now-homeless and retired penalty box king of the Maple Leafs. Stronach, always so calm, cool and controlled in her relationships, stands accused of being the homewrecker in a family where three children are among the divorce-court casualties.

Now, marriages die by the hundreds every day, yet it was hard to find a water cooler yesterday that wasn't gurgling with talk of Canada's newest odd couple, including our very own news bureau. A lot of women I've consulted in the past admire Stronach's aggressive sway over men. They live somewhat vicariously through her celebrity-studded dating history, where she exercises a firm command over the opposite sex and always seems to let the guy down gently when she decides it's over. The notable exception, of course, was her messy defection-eve breakup with Peter MacKay.

Stronach's sexuality has always been a big part of her mystique, and she has a particular fondness for athletes, having dated a former Montreal Alouettes poster hunk and a Chicago Blackhawks defenceman. She even got serious and married one: former Olympic speedskating champion Johann Koss.

But Tie Domi? A player who spent 58.5 hours in the penalty box, the third most penalized player in National Hockey League history? A guy who admits he hates politics and doesn't know much about business? A star who says Stronach has never watched him play professional hockey? Someone who, when asked about his friendship with Stronach, told me "she knows me pretty good and I know her pretty good." That's hardly Clintonesque conversation. So what's the mutual attraction? Don't answer that.

Despite Domi's then-status as married father, I asked him about the rumours of a romance last June in researching a biography on Stronach. "No, no, no," he insisted. "This is just a friendship, totally a friendship. It's just that during her campaign there was a lot of press and photos of us together. We're visible people, so it gets a lot of attention."

Okay, so he apparently fibbed. What married man would admit to adultery when a journalist is taping the conversation? But while this affair might macho up Domi's testosterone count in male eyes, the allegation of having a walkaway father fall into her eager arms will hurt Stronach in the court of public opinion. While Canadians are far more tolerant of political hanky-panky than Americans and, for the most part, think it's private business best left alone, being named in such graphic terms in a scorned spouse's divorce papers is a Stronach smear that will stick.

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