Chatper 1

Thanks for your patience, this got longer than I had anticipated but it was too good to stop...or at least I think so


The same old bell chimed over his head as he walked into the dimly lit shop, but it wasn’t the same bewhiskered old man that met Sidney at the counter that he dropped his tackle box onto.

‘Nice ass’, was the first thought that came into his head as he peered over the counter to see a pair of Daisy Duke style cut off jeans staring back at him. His gaze, once unstuck from the particularly spectacular butt, followed the long, bare legs down to the diminutive bare feet that were curled in such a way that left the owner of the view providing body parts, standing on tip toe, bent over peering into one of the hand made wooden boxes behind the counter. He didn’t clear his throat or even hit the little bell that sat next to the ancient cash register with the flip up cardboard numbers. Instead, Sidney just leaned on the counter and, well, gawked.

“Are you just gonna stand there staring, or is there something you need?” came the exasperated voice from within the box. Sidney felt his entire face get hot and he stepped back from the counter.

“I was just…uh…looking for some night crawlers or maybe some minnows,” Sidney managed to explain, trying to wipe the appreciation for her curves off of his face as the woman behind the counter turned around, wiping the dark soil from her hands and flipping her long, dark hair back over her shoulder as she studied his face. He waited for the usual change of expression, for her smile to get bigger and her gaze more assessing as she realized who he was. Her impatient smile didn’t change and her gaze remained, at most, judicial. She didn’t know who he was. It almost made him laugh.

“If I knew what those were, I’d be glad to help but it’s my first day. Maybe you could describe them to me,” she said, putting those hands on her hips, drawing his attention to a rather pretty dangle hanging from her belly button, just below where her shirt was tied and not far above where those daisy dukes sat low on her hips. The shirt was also proving a distraction as it pulled her checked shirt down revealing an ample amount of pale cleavage that made Sidney lick his lips nervously. He felt like kind of a jerk, checking her out this way, but she was so different from the person he’d expected behind the counter that, well, he could hardly help it.

“Uh…is Mr. King around? I mean…the guy that usually runs the place?” he asked, thinking of the grumpy old guy with the long, white handlebar mustache that had kicked Max and Tanger out of his store for throwing bait at one another and pissing off his regular customers.

“No, no he’s not,” she said simply, her expression quickly changing from slightly annoyed to something softer, something that looked a lot like pain mixed with sadness. Those were emotions Sidney was well acquainted with these days. “My grandfather passed,” she explained, gazing around the store like she half expected the old man to appear from behind one of the racks of rods and reels or fishing magazines before her gaze settled back on his. “So I’m sorry, I just got here and I don’t know a grub from a worm so if you know what you’re looking for…grab a pail and dig in,” she suggested, taking one of the small tin pails that, as long as Sidney could remember, were stacked next to the register and pointed at the wooden boxes and plastic pails behind the counter. “Why he didn’t have them labeled is beyond me,”

“Well I guess when you’ve been somewhere forever, you don’t think about it,” Sidney offered, taking the pail from her, noticing her long, deep red, fingernails and wondering how long they’d last working here. “So are you putting the place up for sale or…?” he asked, mostly out of curiosity and partly to keep her talking to him as he rounded the counter and headed for the bucket he was fairly sure would contain the night crawlers.

“Maybe…I mean yes, at the end of the summer, I think, if I can get this place straightened up and labeled and figure out what’s where…maybe hire some help,” she added, almost as if she was making a list out loud, talking herself through it as she did.

“This place has always been here, as long as I can remember. It would be kind of strange if it wasn’t,” Sidney replied, mostly because it was true. “I remember my dad bringing me here, picking up grubs and red worms,” he mused aloud as he picked the long, slimy worms from the deep, dark rich soil they were kept in and put them in the small bucket she’d handed him. He glanced over at where she was standing and his gaze stuck on those bare stems of hers’ and he couldn’t help but notice the colour on her toe-nails was the same as one her hands. “If you wanted some help labeling some of this stuff, I mean, if you need some help I could,” he offered, feeling that heat rising into his cheeks again as he turned his attention back to the worms and away from the thoughts of what those legs would look like wrapped around him….

“It would be nice not to piss off all of grandad’s customers on my first day,” she sighed, and he could hear her tapping those long nails of hers’ on the counter and an image of those red nails digging into his back flashed through his mind. “I mean, if you can spare the time that is,” she added as he straightened and brought his little pail to the register. “I mean I don’t even know how much to charge you for that, for starters,” she continued, staring down into the pail of earthworms as the wound around each other. He pulled a face, her straight nose wrinkling, her full, red lips pursing.

“Uh…I think, I’m pretty sure, one in a while when he had someone filling in…if I could…?”
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He motioned for her to let him by and Tabitha backed up just enough for him to squeeze by and get to the register. His ass just brushed her hip and she bit down on her bottom lip as the expensive cologne he was wearing filled her head.

You’re not here to chase boys, she reminded herself sternly as she watched him fish beneath the antique cash register with long, thick fingers that filled her imagination with images that made her mouth suddenly very dry.

His shoulders made a large t-shirt look an extra small. In fact, all of him looked like he’d just stepped off of a plinth at the Roman Coliseum. All bulbous ropey muscle, sinew with fashion model cheekbones and full lips that looked like they’d just met with the needle of a plastic surgeon. They’d make Angelina Jolie jealous.

Tabitha leaned back to try and get a better look at his ass. It was huge, but solid. Like you could smack that bitch with a two by four and nothing would move or jiggle. And then there was the width of his back as his shirt pulled taught across his shoulders. She licked her lips as an image of him throwing her over his shoulder, cave man style, filled her imagination.

He wasn’t really her type. She usually went for the more pale, vampire types, the underfed musicians who only ventured out at night. She could make an exception, but he was wearing flip flops and if it was one thing she had a rule against it was plastic footwear….

“Here,” he handed her a card with various items with prices. It was like a cheat sheet for the store. It wasn’t in her grandfather’s tight scrawl but in her grandmother’s loose, rounded old fashioned script. As her gaze followed one line to the next, her eyes filled with tears. Though her grandfather had always been a gruff, authoritarian sort of a man, her grandmother had been soft and sweet and just looking down at her writing filled Tabitha’s head with the smell of fresh baked muffins and pledge.

“I’m sorry, “she sniffed, brushing at her tears with the back of her hand. “It’s just a little…overwhelming right now.”

“I can only imagine,” he said quietly, standing near her, shuffling his feet uncomfortably like he was thinking about bolting. As if she could blame him. All that this poor guy wanted was some worms so he could go off and do what men do, drink some beers in absolute solitude.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized again, taking a deep breath. “I’ll get that rung up for you and get you on your way,” she managed, reaching for the pail and putting it on the scale, watching the red hand on the dial with vision blurred by tears.

“I’d like to help,” his hand covered hers where it was poised over the keys on the register, and Tabitha looked down at his hand as he gently, but firmly moved her hand away. “Why don’t you sit down for a minute or two, I’ll grab you a coke, if you still have that old freezer outside?” Tabitha managed to nod her head as she dropped onto the stool behind the counter.

She was embarrassed and not just because he was cute, which he definitely was. She had totally held it together and now to fall apart in front of a total stranger…. Tabitha wiped at her eyes and clenched her teeth and admonished herself for turning into an emotional wreck at the first sniff of testosterone.

“Here,” he handed her a cold can of coke, already opened and she held it up, pressing it to her forehead while she studied him from beneath her bangs. He was downing a bottle of orange juice, which made her wince. Unless oj had a at least two shots of Stolichnaya in it, she never drank the stuff. “Yours has to be the only place that you can still get pop for less than a dollar,” he added, looking around the small store thoughtfully. “Actually, a lot of your stuff is…under priced. You could probably raise almost everything a little at a time without pissing off your regulars. You could probably expand your range a bit to accommodate the campers and day trip crowd…,” he added, in a thoughtful tone. He didn’t use an ‘I know best’ tone or an authoritative ‘you obviously don’t know about these things’ tone. He just said in it in a way that pricked up Tabitha’s ears.

“You sound like a successful businessman,” she noted and he shook his head, a boyish smile that made his eyes crinkle at the corners. It was a nice smile, an honest smile she thought as she finally took a sip from the can.

“No, shit…I usually leave that kind of stuff to other people but…I’ve just been coming here for years and nothing ever changes,” he said, glancing sideways at her, almost as if he’d expected her to object.

“I haven’t been here for years,” she agreed, the beginning of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips, “and I couldn’t agree with you more.” She looked around the place, and it really didn’t look much different from the days that she could hide behind the magazine rack, watching her grandfather dropping grubs into one of the pails behind the counter. “So were you serious about giving me a hand Mr.…?”

“Umm, Patrick,” he held his free hand out to her and she took it, watching with a certain degree of amusement as her hand disappeared entirely into his.

“Tabby…well it’s Tabitha but…Tabby please,” she added, wondering at the soft feel of his hands. He looked like the type of guy who was use to doing manual labor but his hands sure didn’t feel like he would know how to use a hammer. “So, should I grab the labeling machine?” she asked with one eyebrow raised. “I mean, if I’m really not keeping you from anything,” she added, finding it hard to believe that there wasn’t some cute little thing waiting for him somewhere.

“I was just heading to the lake,” he reiterated, hooking his thumb towards the fishing pole and tackle box he’d abandoned at the counter, “and you look like you could use the help. I mean…not that I think you can’t handle it but uh…I mean if you need the help,” he stammered and turned a deep shade of crimson, right up to the tips of his ears. It was darling. It really was.

“Just remember you volunteered,” she grinned and turned her back on him before he could see that she too was going a little fuchsia herself.

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There was a couple of times that Sidney was sure he was going to be found out, but the few customers that had come in while he was helping to organize and label the store had only nodded in his direction, wearing those secretive sort of smiles that only made Tabitha…Tabby, glance at him curiously. He just smiled back and kept to himself, and, luckily that was all they did back. That was one of the benefits of being the home town boy. Maybe most people did recognize him on sight but they also tried to let him be.

Why had he lied?

He’d asked himself that almost as soon as it had come out of his mouth, but he’d felt sort of relieved when he’d realized she didn’t know him, which was also strange because she wasn’t exactly his type. That wasn’t quite right either. She wasn’t blonde, and he usually went for blondes, but then he did like the more exotic species and as he watched her climb a step stool to bring down more of those little tin pails from a top shelf, he found himself staring at her legs and trying to decide if that was a tan or if she was maybe Italian or Portuguese, in which case that might explain why he kept thinking about that raven’s wing black hair of hers’ fanned out over his pillow….

And that was a thought he had to get out of his head, at least until he was home, alone. He wasn’t looking for a relationship. He’d told himself that he was going to spend the summer getting his head on straight, training and trying not to think about hockey. That was Disco Dan’s orders. Chasing tail was nowhere on that list.

Oh get over yourself Crosby, he admonished himself. You’re acting like Jordy, assuming every living, breathing woman is interested. He finished labeling another barrel of grubs and adding their new, higher price and did his best not to turn and look as he heard the aluminum step ladder creak as she stepped onto the top step. If he looked his line of sight would be right in line with her round ass and he knew all he had to do was turn around and he could pretend to support her, to steady her, by putting his hands on those embroidered pockets….

“Fuckityshitcuntwhore!” she snarled, and Sidney whirled as the step stool crashed onto its side, leaving her hanging precariously onto the shelf that didn’t look like it was meant to hold much more than those little buckets.

Sidney Patrick Crosby to the rescue, m’am, he thought doing his best not to grin as he slid his arms around her waist, careful not slide his arm below that little belly ring so as not to tug on it as he helped her down. Her skin was warm and smooth, her waist small, and she smelled like birthday cake, he thought as he held onto her maybe a little tighter than was strictly necessary.

“That’s quite a mouth you have there,” he said, with honest admiration as he set her down on the floor.

“Stupid fucking thing,” she kicked the stool down the aisle and then rubbed at her arm. “Great, now I’m gonna need some kind of fucking shot so I don’t die of fucking lock jaw,” she sighed as her hand came away with blood. Not too much blood. Sidney had seen more than that drawn between Max and Cookie in practice.

“I don’t think you’re going to die,” he said quietly, turning her slightly, his hand beneath her elbow as he lifted it so he could see the wound. “It’s not that deep. Do you have a first aid kit?”

“Jesus, I don’t know,” she hissed, her dark eyes once again brimming over with tears. Not a high tolerance for pain then, he noted. “If I do it’s probably in the house,” she mumbled, looking over her shoulder towards a door that he assumed led into the rickety old Victorian behind the store.

“I’ll lock the door,” he offered, reluctantly letting go of her arm and heading for the front of the store, turning the ‘open’ sign to read ‘closed’ and locked the door. He turned to find her dark eyes watching him warily yes, but there was something else in her eyes too, he thought as he walked back toward her, following her as she turned to head through the door behind the counter.
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“You know your way around a bandage,” she noted as she watched his skillful fingers first clean the wound and then add ointment before placing gauze over it. Now he was getting ready to cut a bandage using his long, thick fingers to measure the width and length of the wound before he did. Measure once, cut twice.

“I…uh, I’ve been cut once or twice,” he replied sheepishly, pointing out a fresh looking scar on his smooth chin. Tabitha wanted to touch it, to see if the pink scar tissue was raised, if it was as smooth as the rest of his face, but he had one of her hands pressed down to the table and the other one, she was sitting on. That seemed the safest thing to do, considering she’d found many things about him that she wanted to touch as he’d gone about the business of playing doctor.

Like he had ridiculously long, full, and jet black eyelashes, the kind that women were going for when they bought lash blast mascara. Then there was the older, meaner looking scar on is high cheekbones, the kind of sculpted, strong cheekbones that high fashion models paid for. And then there was his smooth skin, or it looked baby smooth on his cheeks where there was only the slightest hint of a five o’clock shadow and she was willing to bet that would last for days before it became anything remotely threatening as far as stubble went.

But mostly, and worst of all, she was completely and utterly distracted by the thickness of his thighs. As soon as he’d sat on the chrome legged, bright blue pleather kitchen chairs straight out of some fifties diner, his shorts had sort of…tugged tight around thighs that could only be described as the size of tree trunks and spoke of absolute power and that…well that made her breathing just a little bit more difficult.

“So…what is it you do where you get cut like that?” she asked, needing the distraction both from enjoying the view and the feel of his gentle touch that seemed to burn her skin. It wasn’t better, or worse, than when he’d lifted her down, his arms vice like around her waist. Being held against the width of his chest, his muscular arms holding her close had done something to her brain and his gentle, attentive touches now were keeping her brain in that soft, mushy state even now.
“Umm…,” he stuck the tape he was using to finish bandaging her arm in his mouth and used his straight, white teeth to rip off a strip. It also muffled his answer and Tabitha tipped her head to one side and considered the tips of his ears which had turned decidedly pink.

“You didn’t say ballet did you?” she asked, fairly sure that that hadn’t been his answer but while she was wracking her decidedly distracted brain for occupations that could create muscles like his she’d had a vision of him in a leotard and tights that she couldn’t shake.

“No, fuck no. I’ve got two left feet,” he replied, shaking his head as he laughed and she decided that he was incredibly, heart-breakingly handsome when he smiled that way. At least her chest hurt when she watched him duck his head to the side while his entire face lit with amusement. She didn’t quite believe him about the two left feet comment though. From what she’d seen so far, he had a certain amount of deliberate grace about his movements that definitely spoke volumes about a high degree of coordination and at least some sort of training that was above and beyond what she, with her sincere lack of coordination, was capable of. “There, that should hold for a while,” he said finally, running the pad of his thumb along the seams of the bandage. It was probably overkill, as far as what was required to cover the wound, but she wasn’t about to complain, especially now, as he turned his gaze up from the bandage to meet hers’ and she found herself looking into a pair of gold laced caramel and green flecked hazel eyes that made her stop breathing altogether.

Not fair, she thought to herself as his hand curled around her wrist and his gaze held hers’ in a way that made her heart beat double. I’ve sworn off men for the summer, she reminded herself even as she leaned forward, intent on tasting those full, soft looking pink lips of his. She couldn’t remember ever being this nervous about kissing a man, at least not since she was, maybe, fourteen. The fact that he was a complete stranger, that he could be an axe murderer for all she knew, didn’t stop her body from wanting his, and the fact that he seemed to feel the same wasn’t helping, at all.

“I think that’s the second time I’ve heard that bell,” she muttered just as his lips were about to touch hers’. At first she’d thought it was that sound you were supposed to hear, bells or music or whatever, but now she knew it was someone being annoying at the door.

“Yeah, you’d uh…you’d better get it,” he mumbled, clearing his throat loudly and pushing his chair back with a loud scraping sound as he reached to gather the tape and scissors, putting them back into the first aid kit as if he hadn’t just been about a millimeter away from kissing her.

“Yeah, I should,” she agreed, heading for the door , pressing her hand over her heart and silently willing it to slow so that she could actually breathe while she just as silently cursed the person on the other side of the door, wishing a plague upon them and half hoping they’d be gone by the time she pulled the door open.
No such luck.

“Delivery for you…ma’am?” the scruffy looking kid with bright red hair in grime covered overalls, barely old enough to have a license Tabitha thought, stood on her front step scratching his head as he looked down at the clipboard in his grubby hand. He looked back up at her, obviously expecting someone else; confusion clear on his freckled face.

“You’re looking for Mr. King, aren’t you?” she asked and he stared down at the paperwork on his metal clipboard and then back up at her, nodding. “Tell your dispatch that it will be Miss King, for now,” she smiled as she grabbed the clipboard from him, reading over the paperwork quickly. Fishing line, some rubber glow worms, a couple replacement reels that she had to wonder if they were special orders for some client she had yet to meet and…. “Crickets? Does this say live crickets?” The kid peered down at the sheet she was holding and then smiled broadly and nodded.

“Yes ma’am. Deliver ‘em once a week durin’ the summer,” he added brightly, as if this was good news.

“They’re good bait.” Tabitha shivered as Patrick’s warm breath bathed the back of her neck. He’d crept up behind her and she didn’t mind, even if he shanked her right here and now, she decided, she really wouldn’t mind.

“What am I supposed to do with them?” she asked, wide eyed as she turned towards the dark haired stranger that made her pulse race.

“If they’re like the ones that were here last summer, you just put the individual boxes out on counter and between the kids and the serious fisherman, you’ll probably be sold out by the end of the week and you won’t have to throw out any dead ones.” Tabitha’s skinned crawled at the idea of having live insects in the store. Worms and grubs were bad enough, but at least they were in drums or boxes, buried in soil.

“Can’t they eat their way out?” she asked, signing on the dotted line and handing the delivery kid back his clipboard.

“I don’t think so,” Patrick laughed, edging his way past her, tackle box and fishing pole in hand.

“You’re going?” she asked, feeling suddenly at a loss without his guidance for the shop and a serious sense of unfinished business between them. She silently willed him to stop walking and when he didn’t to turn around to see how furious she was but he did neither. Not until he reached the corner of the house where a big, dark expensive looking SUV was parked.
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“I’ll uh…I’ll see you around,” he said, half waving with his pole in his hand before disappearing around the back of his vehicle, where he promptly pressed his forehead to the cool metal. ‘You can’t do this, you know you can’t get involved with someone you know nothing about’, he scolded himself as he repeatedly banged his head against the hatch. He’d almost kissed her, and he’d wanted to, badly. ‘Talk about saved by the bell’, he thought grimly as he forced himself to stop physically beating himself up and get about the business of getting the hell away from her and her house and the idea of holding her warm, curvaceous body in his arms.

It was one thing to lie to her, but everyone around here knew who he was and it wouldn’t take more than two shakes of a lamb’s tail for word to get out that he’d been seen coming out of that house. It would be about two seconds after that when Troy would be having a seizure about his thoughtlessness and his letting his hormones get the better of him. After all, as his father and Mario never stopped reminding him, Sidney Crosby ‘the brand’ couldn’t be seen with just any woman. There couldn’t be pictures of him like there was of Max, Jordy, Geno …well of just about any of his teammates with their tongues down some random girls’ throat. Any woman he did get involved with had to go through a background check as if she was being vetted for the fucking FBI.

But he wanted her. Damn but he wanted her, he knew, as he climbed into the driver’s seat and clenched his hands around the wheel. It wasn’t just that she smelled good, or that she looked damn near edible in those cut offs. There was something vulnerable about her, beyond her taking care of business outward demeanor that called to him. There was a sensuality about her that promised a passionate nature like his own that piqued his curiosity.

But she was off limits, unless he called his friend Mike Chiasson, a local member of the RCMP detachment, and asked him to do a full background check and sent the information to Pat to approve….

I’m not supposed to be chasing girls, he told himself firmly. No matter how good they smell or how soft their skin is or…or anything.

And he was going to have to find somewhere else to get his bait if he was going to keep that promise he sighed as he threw the car into reverse and headed for the lake.