Chapter 2

I guess this is gonna be long cuz once I get started on these chapters they just keep going!


She stared at the boxes sitting in the middle of living room still waiting to be unpacked. It would help pass the time, she thought, but on the other hand, the big old house felt too empty and besides, it was making weird noises. It creaked and groaned like an old woman when the wind picked up in the evening and it was beginning to give her a serious case of the willies. She had been too tired by the time she’d arrived the night before to hear all the strange sounds that put her in mind of living in a haunted house, but she didn’t feel tired yet, despite all the work she’d done today. She knew if she tried, she’d just end up lying there, staring into the dark, listening to every creak and groan and wondering what manner of axe murderer was about to come tip toeing through the door and crank up a chainsaw.

She also wasn’t ready to face the big old fashioned brass bed upstairs with all its’ posts and finials. Her grandparents' bed, their bedroom, where everything was still just as it had been for years. It looked like they could walk in at any minute and continue their lives, like a shrine, undisturbed. The night before she’d just grabbed a blanket and pillow out of the hall closet and camped out on her old, single bed in the guestroom and she wasn’t ready to face that lumpy old mattress yet either.

The place was also musty, stale and layered in dust and after spending all day dusting, cleaning and moving things around in the shop, the last thing Tabby wanted to do was spend more time sneezing and coughing.

What she needed was some fresh air, and to stretch her legs. Normally that meant putting on her high heel boots, her slim jeans and a tank top and heading straight for the Roxy. She assumed if she drove far enough she’d find something like a bar, even a wine bar if she was lucky, but that was the other thing she was sorely in need of – wheels.

There was her grandfather’s old pick up, but she didn’t feel like hurtling down dark, narrow roads she didn’t know in a vehicle she wasn’t familiar with and then drowning her sorrows in a few glasses of wine and then trying to find her way back again. She’d probably end up in the bottom of the lake.

So instead, she slipped a soft black cashmere cardigan over her Within Temptation concert tee, pulled on a simple pair of black clam digger length leggings and slid into a pair basic black ballet flats and, iPod in hand, Tabby headed out the front door and down the winding dirt path towards the lake.

You had to get waaay out of Vancouver to see this many stars, she thought as she gazed up at the velvet black sky dotted with what seemed like a million points of light. The moon hung so low in the sky it looked almost like she could reach up and touch it. The nearly full moon also cast a long silver shadow across the lake.

Romantic, Tabby mused as she walked towards the end of the dock and glanced around, half expecting to see little row boats full of canoodling couples dotting the lake, but it seemed like she was alone. All this to myself and no one to share it with, she sighed and then started to laugh out loud. Since when did she have a romantic bone in her entire body? The closest thing she’d ever had to a relationship was Damon and that hadn’t exactly been all roses and champagne. The closest thing she could think of him doing that could be considered romantic was to not pull her under the covers and give her a ‘dutch oven’.

As she slipped the ballet flats off and sat down at the end of the dock, wincing as her toes hit the chilly water, Tabby tried to think of the last time anyone did anything romantic for her. Maybe Kev, in high school when he’d tied a balloon to her locker on her birthday. She smiled to herself and leaned back on her hands while she stared up at the sky.

“Amazing what a girl will settle for,” she said, laughing out loud.

“I always find it best not to settle when you can strive for more.” Tabby froze and felt her heart stop beating in her chest. She looked around, seeing no one, at least not until a hand reached up and placed an old metal tackle box on the dock beside her. She leaned forward and looked down at a jet ski and found Patrick holding a fishing rod up for her to take.

“Jesus Christ! Do you always go around sneaking up on people in the middle of the night?” she asked, reaching out to take the rod while holding her now rapidly beating heart with her other hand. “Doesn’t that thing have a fucking engine?”

“It’s only ten and I ran out of gas a while ago. Do you have any idea how hard it is to row this thing with a fucking fishing rod?” He looked pissed and for some reason that made her want to laugh. She put his fishing rod down and then covered her mouth with his hand so he wouldn’t see her smile.

“Gee, I’m sorry about that,” she managed but couldn’t quite keep the laughter out of her voice.

“I’ve been stuck out here for at least two hours,” he grimaced, reaching up put both of his arms onto the dock and he looked so pissed that she couldn’t help smiling and now it took both hands to try and cover up the fact that she was laughing at him.

“Don’t you carry a cell?” she asked as he pushed up on his hands, his shoulders and then his entire torso appeared over the dock and suddenly it wasn’t so funny. It was…breathtaking. Even with the bright orange life vest on (safety first) the sight of his round, muscular shoulders and every single sinew, muscle and vein straining in his arms literally caused her to hold her to feel faint.

“I dropped it, my hands are cold,” he muttered, his knee now on the dock, shortly followed by the rest of them. He lay there at her feet, on his stomach, his eyes closed for long enough for Tabby to start to wonder if she should be running back to the house and calling for help, which she realized wouldn’t be much help, if the phone in the house hadn’t been activated yet. Taking off her sweater, she went to wrap it around his shoulders but just as she did, he sat up and shook like a wet dog sending out a spray of …of she wasn’t sure what. Sweat? Water? Both?

“Why didn’t you just swim in?” He looked like he could have beaten the lake into submission with the size of his biceps but he shook his head, again sending out a fine spray of what she hoped was water.

“It’s kinda heavy to drag in and I wasn’t going to just leave it out there,” he said sternly, as if that was that and there was no other possible answer.

“Uh huh, because hypothermia is worth the price of a skidoo,” she mumbled, seeing the gooseflesh on his arms and deciding he did need her sweater after all.
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“Sea doo not skidoo; skidoos are for snow,” he corrected her, softening his voice as he finally dragged himself to his feet while he gently pushed the offer of her sweater away. “You’re not much of an outdoor girl are you?” he added with a side long glance at Tabby who was slipping back into her sweater. So much for avoiding her, he thought as he took in the lines of her legs wrapped tightly in the dark leggings, admiring the way the thin material hugged her ass.

“I like looking at it, if that helps,” she sighed, now crossing her arms over her ample chest, which was too bad, but at least it stopped him from staring at the way the picture on the front of her t-shirt tugged across her breasts.

“Yeah well, I guess sometimes it is overrated,” he mumbled, reminding himself to get a grip as he turned back to make sure he’d tied up the seadoo before ripping off the floatation vest that had begun to chafe. “Do you think I could make a call?” he asked, glancing back at her hands, looking for a purse or pockets where she might be keeping a phone.

“I’m not sure if the phone’s hooked up in the house yet,” she sighed and glanced over her shoulder at the big old house sitting up on the rock overlooking them. It seemed like she’d left every light in the house on and for some reason that made Sid smile. Taylor did that sometimes, when she was home by herself, turn on every light in the house. She said it made her feel less ‘vulnerable’. He let his gaze roam over the defensive stance Tabby was holding and wondered if it was the same with her in that big old place all on her own. “But I plugged in my cell before I came down. It should be charged up by now.” She slipped her small feet into the shoes sitting on the edge of the dock and then turned and headed down the dock, her arms still hugged around her like she was cold.

Part of him thought that it might be a bad idea to be alone with her, in that big empty house, but the alternative meant catching his death trying to walk back to someone else’s house, and he’d never hear the end of that from his father. So, shrugging his shoulders, he padded after her in his bare feet, actually having to take a few jogging steps to keep up with her.

As she headed up the goat path that lead up to the house, Sid found himself staring at her ass in those skin tight leggings, all kinds of x-rated thoughts forming in his head. No, no, he told himself. All he was doing was getting warm and making a call and then he was going to have to hear it from his dad all the way home about not checking the gas gauge before going out on the lake.

He was internally wincing at that thought and almost missed her as she stumbled and fell backwards, right into his arms. They both froze, her body stiff as a board in his arms and he, half startled and half far too aware of her heady scent and the brush of her breasts against his arms left him afraid to move and holding his breath, waiting for her to what…? Was she going to lean back into him? Relax into his arms and turn her head and kiss him the way he’d wanted to kiss her earlier in the day.

Shutting his eyes tightly against the image of her lips drawing towards his, Sidney did his best to stay completely still until she made a move. ‘You don’t know that she’s attracted to you, you idiot’ he reprimanded himself silently as she remained immobile in his arms.

“You…okay?” he asked tentatively, as she got her feet beneath her, her back still toward him as if she was afraid to face him and he was glad about that considering he could feel the heat in his face and it wasn’t as if he’d touched anything on purpose .

“Fine, yeah…good,” she muttered and continued ahead, her head down now, scanning the ground at her feet. Sidney watched her for a moment, wanting to call out to her, to explain that if he’d done anything, touched anything he hadn’t meant to. Except she wasn’t accusing him of anything and maybe, just maybe, he told himself, she’d felt the same sort of electricity running between them. Maybe she’d waited for him to make a move and he’d blown his chance.

‘Or maybe she’d just been catching her breath and you’re an idiot’, he sighed, shaking his head and grinning at his own internal monologue before putting his head down and trudging up the path, silently, behind her.
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Tabby’s hands shook as she searched through her grandfather’s things to see if she could find something that would fit Patrick. With one ear to the door she listened to the timbre of his voice without actually eavesdropping on the conversation he was having.

She could still feel the solid wall of his chest against her back, the vice like grip of his arms around her, and for the second time that day she was furiously denying that she’d felt anything more than that, like an electric current that had felt like a lightning bolt going through her from head to foot when his arms had circled her. Or when his breath on the back of her neck had made her stomach clench, or when his hand had brushed her nipple and she’d forgotten to breathe?

‘I’m not here to fall for anyone. I’m not here to get involved with some guy. I’m not feeling anything’, she told herself over and over again like a mantra as she unfolded and refolded sweaters and work shirts until she found one of her grandfather’s original Hawaiian print shirts. With a chuckle she draped that over her arm and grabbed an old, well worn pair of army issue Bermuda shorts and headed back down stairs, pausing at the landing to hear if he was finished his conversation yet.

“The old house at the end of the lake, the one behind the bait shop,” he was saying, and she took two steps backward up the stairs so he wouldn’t see her. “No, there’s a woman living here…granddaughter…does it matter? Can you just come get me?” There was silence and then she heard him heave a huge sigh. “Yeah, I know, but it’s fine…just…just trust me on this. I’ll see you in a bit okay?”

Tabby waited, her back pressed to the wall, waiting for more, hating to intrude on his private conversation, even if she didn’t really follow it other than to know whomever he was talking to was asking a hell of a lot of questions. When she heard nothing more for at least a minute, she cautiously continued down the stairs and nearly tripped, again, when she saw that he’d taken off his t-shirt, leaving his sculpted, heavily muscled torso bare to her greedy eyes. ‘Well of course he did’, she chided herself. It had been soaked right through. He was probably freezing.

“I found some things,” she began, holding them out toward him, not knowing where to look. His obvious six pack drew her gaze like a magnet, but his broad, round shoulders and the smooth, bare skin of his chest were distractions in and of themselves. “I think they might fit. My grandfather was a…when he was younger he was…fit,” she managed. ‘How do you say your grandfather was hot like you when he was probably your age’, she thought, meeting his gaze with what she hoped was a plea not to ask for more of an explanation than that. Patrick took the shirt and held it up in front of him, a bemused look on his face. “It’s authentic. He got it…I don’t know when but…a long time ago when he was in the navy,” she explained, holding the shorts out for him to take. “They’re a bit tattered at the seams but, they’ll do until you get home,” she added to which he nodded gratefully.

“I doubt these will fit,” he mumbled, looking prejudicially down at the shorts and Tabby had to bite down on the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.

“He was a…a runner and a boxer and…he…,” she shut her eyes tight, searching mentally for some other words other than ‘had a huge ass like yours’. “He was muscular…down…there,” she managed before turning bright red and immediately turning her back on him, finding something in one of the boxes nearby that she could fiddle with so she didn’t have to look at him. “If it’s one thing that works in this house, it’s the water pressure. You can have a hot shower if you want…. I mean to warm up. That is if you have time before your friend comes to pick you up,” she added, stammering over her words. The thought of him being naked in this house, with only the threat of his friend showing up to keep her from climbing into the shower with him was almost too much.

“Thanks…I think my dad will be here in about twenty so…thanks,” he repeated and he heard him walking towards her. Her hands gripped the first thing she could pull out of the box, and felt the edge of a metal picture frame bite into the palm of her hand. “Is the bathroom upstairs?” he asked, and she nodded, still refusing to look up at him, almost sure that if she did, a mixture of hormones and pure, unadulterated lust would take over her brain and she’d be begging him to fuck her senseless.

She listened to him heading up the stairs and let go of the picture frame once she heard the door click shut above her head. Looking down at her hand, Tabby saw she’d drawn blood and quickly headed back to the kitchen for the first aid kit, again.

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Sid leaned one hand on the bubble gum pink tile, steaming hot water pouring over his back and stroked his Johnson slowly with the other. His eyes squeezed shut, the image of Tabby on her knees with his cock between her full pink lips, her long dark hair wound around his hand, fucking her mouth and hearing her make sounds of pleasure that made him even harder filling his head.

He imagined her nude, his full breasts swinging and bouncing gently as her head bobs back and forth on his dick, her fingers wrapped around the base of it, her other fingernails digging into his ass. His mouth falls open, and he lets loose a soundless gasp as the orgasm grips him, shooting his wad against the wall as he imagines her wrapping her tongue around his cock, sucking him deep into her mouth, her dark eyes gazing up at him, alight with desire.

Panting, he leans his forehead against the wall and groans quietly. ‘How in the hell has this woman, that I’ve known for less than a day gotten into my head’, he asked himself as he finally turned his face up into the hot water, letting it run over his face, into his mouth and down his chest. He wanted her. With everything in his very being, he wanted to go downstairs, pin her to the wall, pull her legs up around his waist and drive his cock balls deep into her pussy. He wanted to hear her whimper. He wanted to fist his hands in her hair and taste her lips and lick her tonsils and have her sigh into his mouth.

‘Get a fucking grip’, he told himself firmly, reaching down to turn off the water. ‘Put those clothes on and get the fuck out of this house and away from her before you lose your fucking self’, he instructed himself as he reached for a towel and dragged it roughly over his head and down his chest. The problem with that was he was now imagining her here, nude, in this shower, with water running over her full breasts and he had to shake his head and replace that image with one of Dupers hairy back to make it disappear.

It was only when he was doing that that he realized he could hear voices and not just hers’ but another voice, a man’s voice….

Troy!

Sidney quickly toweled himself off and neatly folded the towel back up and put it on the rack, grabbing the shorts she’d offered him and gave them a dubious look.

“Here goes nothing,” he muttered, stepping into them and pulling them up slowly, waiting for that moment when they’d stop moving, when his skater thighs would be too big or his ass…. “Huh…whaddya know?” Pleasantly surprised to find that she was a good judge of his size, he buttoned the well worn, army drab shorts and then reached for the brightly coloured red and orange printed shirt. It was kind of a cool shirt, he thought as he pulled it on, but he didn’t have time to admire it. She was alone, with his father, downstairs and she didn’t deserve that.

Jogging down the stairs, he practically slid to a stop in front of her, giving his dad that look that said he hoped he hadn’t been interrogating the poor girl. Troy, in his turn, only raised an eyebrow, the universal signal for ‘now would I?’

“Ready to go?” Troy asked and Sidney nodded, grabbing his t-shirt from the back of the dust cloth covered sofa. “Thanks again for rescuing my son. It was a pleasure meeting you,” Troy smiled a little too warmly at Tabby, who, in turn, grinned warmly back at him. Sid stood between them, looking from one to the other, wanting to ask, but not daring to.

“I’ll umm, have these dry cleaned and bring them back to you,” Sid offered, but Tabby shook her head.

“What am I going to do with them? They’ll just be going to good will anyway,” she smiled, maybe a little wistfully and he wondered if she could see her grandfather in the clothes and if she could, if it hurt or made her sad, but he wouldn’t let himself meet her gaze, half afraid she’d be able to read the lust he was feeling for her in his eyes. “Well then ummm, okay. Thanks for the shower and I guess I’ll see you around.” He turned and headed towards the door, feeling like she and his father were sharing some silent joke behind his back, but he kept moving anyways.

Once outside, he felt Troy’s big hand on his shoulder.

“That’s a good looking woman you got there partner,” his father said and Sid stiffened at the amused sound of his father’s voice.

“She was just letting me use her shower. I was stuck out on the lake for hours and….”

“And you didn’t notice what a nice rack she has? C’mon son, I didn’t raise a stooge,” Troy mused as he walked around the car to the driver’s side. “You were thinking of any reason to come back and see her,” he added, leaning on the roof of the car and grinning across it at his son. Sidney only shrugged. What would be the point in lying about it? “Hey, I’m not blaming you. That’s a perky little filly, all alone in that big old house, all sad over her grandfather passing…,” Troy let his voice fade as Sid began to get angry and made no attempt at all at hiding his feelings from his father. He felt immediately protective of her, defensive, possessive even.

“It’s not like that,” he muttered but his father only laughed as he slid behind the wheel.

“Sure son. Sure. And if you haven’t tapped that by the end of the summer, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” his father guffawed as he cranked the big car to life and Sidney slid silently into the passenger seat.