Chapter 3

A little shorter this time but I hope you like it

She’d tossed and turned all night, the haunting sounds of the house settling in the cool darkness mixed with an uncomfortable fever that had her body flushed and aching. Though she tried to shut out the images of that boy with his strong arms and his lips like two pieces of hubba bubba bubble gum that called out to be bitten and chewed, every time she shut her eyes, he was there, tempting her fingers to explore the valleys and ridges of his six pack, feel his lips closing over her nipple, his gold flecked tiger’s eyes looking up at her, telling her that he could be the best she’d ever had.

Twice she had woken up, her spine bowing with the strength of an orgasm brought on by only thoughts of his body invading hers, his arms holding her to him, his lips on her neck. Both times she’d lain awake staring out the window, blinking in disbelief. Even Damon, who had been accomplished in matters of the bedroom, had always needed to use clitoral stimulation to make her orgasm at all. No man had ever just made her fall, screaming over the edge with only his body moving inside of hers’, never mind having actually never felt him at all….

Half exhausted from the sensational and yet troubling dreams that had kept her from achieving any kind of rest, Tabby had dragged herself off of the lumpy little mattress in the guest room and found herself staring out at the lake at the first golden rays of sunlight reaching over and through the trees. She recited the colours to herself as her gaze scanned the horizon: ochre, mango, saffron and lemon over celery, mint, myrtle and shamrock.

She hadn’t painted just for the sake of it for…well probably not since the last summer she’d spent here and that had just been to pass, what had seemed like then, an eternity of time. Now her hands itched to hold a brush and capture this beautiful morning on canvas. The only question was were her paints still here and if they were, were they dried up beyond use?

Tabby practically ran down the stairs, through the house and into the basement. If she was going to capture it she had to do it before the sun entirely broke the tree line.

Her fingertips danced over the boxes downstairs. Magazine, books, summer linens, winter linens…it seemed like her gradmother had kept everything but….

Tabitha’s art supplies.

Tabby grinned and sent up a silent thank you to her grandmother as she peeled back the lid of the box to find rolls of primed linen canvas, and both oil and watercolour paints. She squeezed the watercolour tubes but found all of them hard, the aluminum tubes cracking along the seams, so those were out. Oil paints could always be revived and she reached for a bottle of lime green but her fingers were suddenly around a box marked “pastels”.

Fast, and less fussy, they had been her favorites once. She hadn’t worked with them in a long time but she found herself grinning as she picked up a couple of the rolls, and put the box of pastels under her arm and then turned to look into the dim corner of the room to find her old easel still standing in shadows. Closing her eyes she sent up another quick thank you and then grabbed it too before heading back up the stairs to find an old shirt to wear as a smock.

This was going to be a messy business.
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Sidney’s hand, clenched into a fist, paused as his knuckles were about to brush the door. She’d said she hadn’t wanted the clothes back. It was going to be painfully obvious that he was prepared to use any old excuse to see her and yet….

He knocked on the door and waited. It was early and yet the sign on the bait shop door said it should have been open for an hour by now. Sidney knocked again and leaned against the door, listening for signs of life inside.

Nothing.

He told himself to go back to his vehicle, get in and drive home but what he did was walk around the side of the house, and looked intp the dining room window. He felt like a peeping tom. Hell, he felt like a stalker, and yet, he pressed his face to the glass and shadowed his eyes with his hand and stared into the house looking for some sign, no, fuck that, any sign of life.

She’d haunted his dreams. Time and again he’d woken up, bathed in sweat, her name on his lips and as soon as the first rays of the sun had crawled across his bed, he’d been up, dressed and retrieving her grandfather’s clothes from his dryer.

He could hear Max and Tanger laughing at him now. They’d be telling him he had no game and he knew it was true. Problem was, he’d never really had to develop the whole charm offensive that Max had and the whole shy boy hiding behind his hair wasn’t something he could pull off with a straight face like Tanger did.

Besides, if they could see her….

He caught sight of movement at the back of the house, the living room he thought and for just a moment he thought – intruder and his adrenalin spiked, his pulse began to race as he jogged around the side of the house to the deck that overlooked the lake. And then he froze, his breath literally caught in his throat as he stared at the scene in front of him.

There’s something about a woman wearing a man’s shirt. It either says that she’s teasing you, that she’s taken your shirt and she has something amazing underneath or that the sex was so good she stayed the night and has nothing else to wear. Either way, it’s just sexy and seeing her, standing there on the deck, her long, bare legs peeking out from beneath the crisp hem of the light coloured striped shirt, the arms rolled up to her elbows, stole his breath away, even with the smudges of…was that paint, that even went down onto her thighs. The early morning light, the sun just topping the trees at the far end of the lake, made it entirely obvious that she wasn’t wearing anything at all beneath the shirt and he stumbled as he topped the last stair, which caused him to reach out and grab the railing, which was loose and creaked as he leaned into it.

She spun on the ball of her naked foot and he froze again, expecting a barrage of ‘what are you doing here’s’ and ‘how dare you come sneaking up on me’s’ but instead she too froze, wearing an expression on her face that was eerily reminiscent of a little kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar and Sidney had a moment to wonder if he was wearing a similar expression, until he got a look at the canvas she’d been working on.

For a moment he wasn’t sure what he was looking at, and then, as he took a couple more steps toward her and the painting, he realized it was his own likeness he was looking at, though he was dressed more like…was that a knight in chain mail, with his helmet under one arm, a fainting beauty in his other arm, her dress slightly torn, her heaving bosom nearly bare to his obviously appreciative gaze.

“I was just…I was sketching the sun rise and…,” she grabbed another, smaller canvas from the where it was leaning against the rail and placed it carefully in front of the picture that was all dark colours and brooding emotions and while both were good, technically, he supposed, the smaller one looked more like something he could see his mother hanging in their living room. It showed the light breaking through the trees and caressing the lake, dotting it with light and dark and it was good, very, very good.

But there was still the question of the other canvas…..

“And?” he asked, prompting her with a raise of his eyebrow while she blushed and turned away.
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“I do marketing artwork…cover pieces for Harlequin,” she mumbled, feeling both ashamed of what she did for a living after feeling so inspired by the beauty of the sunrise and the lake, but also embarrassed at being caught putting his likeness in a piece when she didn’t know him at all. Once or twice she’d done it, used a one night stand for inspiration, but usually the wan and pale guys that she went for weren’t exactly the brawny, strapping, tanned types that Harlequin wanted for the covers of their bodice rippers. Apparently the only men that women who read those kinds of things desired were six foot four, muscle bound pirates and cowboys. Though Patrick didn’t exactly fit that bill…he was way closer than anything she’d been attracted to in years.

And she was attracted to him. Even as he stood there in a pair of dark green shorts that were too baggy for her taste and came down almost to his knees along with a t-shirt that was clearly too big for him, hiding all of that lovely, smooth skin that poured over his musculature like a thin layer of sweet syrup, it was almost all she could do not to drool. And this wasn’t like her at all. She wasn’t normally the kind of girl whose knees got weak at the sight of a man. Normally it took a combination of confidence, a certain kind of smile, a swagger and a great sense of humor before she would get that wobbly feeling around a guy but now there was no denying just how much this guy had gotten into her head. The proof was on the canvas in front of her.

“And that is me, right?’ he asked, coming closer to her and to the canvas, his gaze scanning it before he gave her a, wary, sideways glance. Tabby opened her mouth to explain, but quickly shut it again and just nodded instead. What could she say? Part of what Harlequin wanted was realism and if he could tell that it was his own likeness he was looking at, was there any point in denying it?

“You have great…cheekbones,” she muttered, feeling that tell tale heat under her skin as she picked up her box of pastels and busied herself putting them away, in order of hue, as she tried to get her hormones and her temperature under control.

“So this is some kind of…knight in shining armor thing?” he asked, an amused lilt to his voice that made her cringe. Silently she cursed Walt Disney for their endless lines of princesses being saved by handsome princes. It wasn’t her fault if that was the lie that every little girl was raised on.

“It’s an illustration,” she corrected him, hoping to put some distance between the obvious meaning in the picture before them and her own desire to have him scale the wall of her castle and rip off her chastity belt.

“And who is this?” he asked, his fingertips almost brushing the canvas as he pointed at the fainting woman in the picture, who, Tabby was relieved that she had given flaming red hair.

“It’s just a picture,” she insisted again, reaching for hem of the shirt she was wearing, which was the first time she had thought about exactly what she was wearing, or not wearing, since she’d realized she wasn’t alone. She stood there, staring down at her hands that were covered in greasy pastel and then down at her very bare legs. Well, they were bare other than where she’d already wiped her hands. There hadn’t been any turpentine and….

“Here,” he thrust a ball of material into her hands and Tabby found herself staring into the middle of that smooth skinned, sculpted chest and she swallowed, audibly before forcing herself to look up and smile.

“Th…thanks,” she stuttered, glancing at the label, hoping for fruit of the loom but finding Lucky Brand on the label. Not exactly your ten dollar t-shirt. She wanted to hand it back to him, but she could see grey and blue fingerprints on it already and knew it was too late. “This…this doesn’t generally come out,” she sighed, staring down at the greasy prints her hands had already left behind, knowing full well if she use his t-shirt to wipe off what was on her arms and legs that the t-shirt would be well beyond saving.

“I’ll just put this back on,” he smiled, retrieving her grandfather’s Hawaiian shirt from the deck rail and part of Tabby wanted to beg him not to. A vision was already forming in her head of some kind of Tarzan character wearing just a loin cloth and swinging down to grab a terrified looking Jane…. “And you’d better get something…more on than that too,” he suggested, and when she glanced up at him in horror, he was grinning but not in a lewd way. “The bait shop?” he gently reminded her and Tabby’s hand flew up to her forehead, no doubt leaving behind more greasy marks.

“Oh for the love of Pete,” she muttered, deciding instead to use his t-shirt to gently grab the edges of the smaller canvas and carry it inside, fully intending to go back out and use it again to carry in the larger one, but as soon as she’d turned around he was right there behind her, using her grandfather’s Hawaiian shirt in the same way. “But…but now you’ve got nothing…,” her voice failed her as she watched him gently lean the larger picture against the wall before standing back to consider it again, his thumb and forefinger curled around his chin as one arm rested on the other. Now he looked like that bronze sculpture, the Thinker, his shoulders wide, his muscles flexed. She stood, staring, or rather, appreciating the view long enough for him to notice and, raising his eyebrow but not even turning to her, he said.

“I’ve got clothes I can change into at home,” he mused as he gazed at the picture of her swooning in his arms. “I’m guessing you’ll have lost some clients already. You’d better hurry,” he added with a playful glance in her direction.

“Yeah…right, clothes,” she muttered, forcing herself to turn away from the visually stunning sight before her and run up the stairs.
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More than a few eyebrows were raised in his direction when he walked out of the locked bait shop as she turned to go back inside to deal with the first rush of fishermen who were already grumbling about missing the best biting time. It was likely that she neither understood nor realized the implications of his leaving her house half dressed at this time in the morning but Sidney couldn’t help but allow himself a private, little grin.

If there was anyone else in town with designs on Tabitha King, he’d just erased them and he hadn’t even meant to.

No, that wasn’t quite right, he told himself. He meant to do it alright. In fact, he’d decided almost as soon as he’d seen the phantom lines of her body beneath that old shirt that she would be his by the end of the summer; his and his alone. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was about this girl that was driving him so fucking crazy but she was and now at least he could be pretty sure that as much as she was haunting his thoughts…well, he was certainly in hers’.

Grinning from ear to ear and clearly pleased with himself, Sidney got into his SUV and pulled out his phone. There weren’t a lot of good restaurants in the area, but there were one or two, and he was going to make a reservation, tonight, for two.