Chapter 10

Sidney woke to the sound of songbirds and reached across the bed for her, but came up empty. The indentation in the mattress where she had been curled up next to him was even cold. Rolling over onto his back, Sid closed his eyes and thought about going back to sleep but he felt this sort of tug, internally, like he had to get up, he had to be with her. Tugging his shorts back on, he headed down the stairs, wondering at the internal compass he seemed to have when it came to this woman.

He followed his nose to where the coffee pot was just finishing percolating and he filled a mug and headed out to the deck where Tabby was standing near the railing, wearing what appeared to be no more than his faded blue t-shirt. She had another one of those big canvases on a stand but she was staring out over the lake, the rough sketch on the canvas apparently forgotten.

Sidney looked at the sketch, a doe and a fawn on the bank of the lake, all blues and greens except for the deer. The doe looked straight out of the canvas at him and Sidney thought the look reminded him of his mother, protective and perpetually worried.

“This is good,” he offered, only to have her clap her hand across his mouth.

“Shhh,” she hissed, “you’ll scare them away.” Sidney smiled against her hand and nodded, silently agreeing before she’d let go of him. Keeping his lips tightly sealed, Sidney moved up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder. Together they watched the fawn crop at the grass, watched over by his mother, her ears like satellites, twitching and rotating towards every sound.

Sidney stood, as still as a lamp post, watching the deer and grinning to himself. He liked this. He liked that there was no pressure to talk, not about hockey, or about his plans for the rest of the summer, or next year, or the next ten years. Not about the things that some of the guys’ girlfriends liked to talk about, clothes and manicures and babies. There was none of that. Just the two of them surrounded by silence and nature and Sid felt…relieved.

Not a lot of people understood how much he enjoyed just sitting, on his own, thinking, and sometimes, even better, not thinking. Tanger was good for that, at least when Max wasn’t around. Flower was the best for that. MAF could sit beside him for hours and say nothing. Dupes could, almost, but he always needed something else. Dupes needed music, TV, reading; something other than nothing in the background. There always seemed to be something going on in his life and the few, brief moments of silence were like little gifts in his otherwise hectic life. Like right now and Tabby seemed to enjoy silence as much as he did.

Finally, the doe’s ears swiveled towards where a loon was just landing on the lake and, with a single spring, she was off into the brush, her baby at her heels. They watched her white tail disappearing into the trees like a flag and then Tabby let out a contented sounding sigh.

“I wish I’d brought my camera,” she muttered, staring down at an incomplete sketch she’d made on plain white paper done in sweeping, loose strokes and then up at the rough colour sketch on the canvas. He watched her cute little nose wrinkle as she tilted her head to the side and stared at it like she wished it would change before their eyes.

“I think it’s good,” he reiterated his previous observation and she narrowed her eyes and made a face.

“It is not good. It’s awful actually,” she sighed, packing up her paints and taking the canvas off of the easel as if she was done with it.

“Can’t you go back to it? Finish it off? I can go inside, leave you alone, I’m sure I can find something to do,” he offered, and she laughed and shook her head.

“I might…later, after I’ve thought about it for a while. But believe me, it’s not good,” she said again as she stepped into the house.

“I think my mom would like something like that in the house,” he offered and Tabby turned her skeptical gaze on him and raised a single eyebrow. “I really think she would and I’m not just saying that because it’s way better than anything I can do. I mean…kindergarten kids can do better than anything I can do. You should see, at Christmas, we have to do these…decoration things…for the trees and mine…mine is always the worst. Give me a hot glue gun and the first thing I do is stick my fingers together,” he added honestly to which she tried, but failed to hide a grin. “Honest, I’m like…I could be the least artistic person I know. But Max…his are always really cool and it makes me feel guilty that mine go for the most,” Sid stopped, realizing he was heading into territory that was going to require an explanation, one that he wouldn’t be able to give without her knowing that he’d been lying this entire time.

“Go for? You sell them?” she pulled a face and Sid could practically see the gears turning in her brain.

“It’s…it’s kinda like a bachelor auction really,” Sid mumbled, feeling the tips of his ears began to burn as he realized how egotistical that might sound. Luckily Tabby didn’t seem to take it that way. He watched as she bit down on her bottom lip in an effort not to laugh out loud.

“You mean women actually pay for your services?” she asked, fighting to keep a straight face as she back peddled away from him. It sounded ridiculous when she said it out loud, despite some of the things he’d read and seen online about just what women would actually give and pay for just one night….

“Hey, I didn’t hear you complaining about getting it for free last night,” he grinned, reaching for her, but she stepped back, just out of his reach.

“Free? I seem to remember plying you with wine and meat and….” Sidney closed the gap between the two of them and swept her into his arms, covering her mouth with his, a little more aggressively than he intended to. She didn’t seem to mind. She was still grinning when he pulled back enough to draw breath. “Now I suppose you’re going to want bacon and eggs and pancakes to pay for that,” she teased, her eyes full of playful light as she grinned up at him.

“Well I have to keep my strength up somehow,” he smiled back at her, brushing her hair back from her face as he felt his heart melting under the wattage of her smile, “because you keep draining me of all my strength.”

“Oh really? Because I don’t think it was me that doing the waking up at three this morning for another round of….” Sidney captured her mouth again, and laughing, kissed her into silence.
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Tabby stared at the unfinished canvas in front of her, a paintbrush still in her hand and several brand new tubes of paint yet unopened beside her. When she’d seen the doe and its’ offspring from the window in the early hours of the dawn, the end result of the painting had been so clear to her, but what she was looking at now seemed nowhere near what she was seeing in her head.

“So what if you’re not Robert Bateman,” she scolded herself as her gaze followed her choppy strokes, the greens melding together to form a tree that, while it didn’t exactly look super realistic, the feeling was there. That’s what they were trying to instill in her back the Emily Carr, they…the ‘design scholars’ or so they called themselves that were always trying to lead her away from what they termed ‘hyper realism’.

That was just one of the reasons she was thinking of not returning to Art College in the fall. Firstly it seemed like a waste of money. Other than maybe in marketing, really, what was she going to do with art that she wasn’t already being paid by Harlequin to do? And secondly, though it was certainly nice of him to say so, Tabby sincerely doubted that Patrick’s or anyone else’s mother for that matter, would really pay for something like what was staring back at her now.

Tabitha reached for a tube of yellow and squeezed some onto palette and started to mix it with white as she ruminated on the last reason that had her contemplating leaving art school. She hated being told what her art should look like. It wasn’t the criticism she was afraid of, it was that it seemed to her that they were always trying to put her into a category she didn’t want to be in.

“Well there’s no one here to tell you what to do now,’ she reminded herself as she raised the brush to highlight the green. Patrick had gone to get some tool from home and some paint they’d picked out together online. He wouldn’t be back for at least an hour. “Paint what you see Tabs,” she told herself firmly. ‘From the heart’ she added silently, taking a deep breath before touching her brush to the canvas.

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It was the scream, and his cat like reflexes, that saved Sidney from getting his skull caved in as Taylor came down through the door to the garage swinging five- iron. Ducking and side stepping her not so stealthy attack, he managed to grab a hold of her before she put the gold club through the windshield of his SUV too.

“What the fuck Taylor?” he snarled, wrestling the club from her hand while she stood staring at him, wide eyed.

“You’re not even supposed to be home! I thought you were being broken into!” his sibling insisted, going from screeching banshee to defensives and prickly teenager in a heartbeat. “You’re lucky I didn’t call 911,” she added, her hands on her hips, flipping her long, sandy blonde hair over her shoulder and giving her older brother one of her patented ‘I can’t believe I’m related to you’ looks. “That would have been interesting watching you explain to the cops why you’re running around at…,” she glanced at her watch and then back up at him, quizzically. “Why are you running around without a shirt and in flip flops at eight in the morning? Are you trying out for a part as a werewolf in the new Twilight film or something?” she added sarcastically. “As if you haven’t got enough cougars sniffing around.”

“Do you think I’d get a part?” he asked, striking one of those muscle men poses that made his pecs and shoulders appear bigger than they actually are and watched as Taylor shuddered and rolled her eyes back in her head. He also seriously considered lying but as much as his little sister could be a royal pain in the ass sometimes, if it was one thing he tried not to do with her, it was that. She had enough to put up with just being his sister, not to mention people physically pushing her aside to get to him and never feeling like she could do enough to get her own father’s attention. “There’s this girl…woman,” he stumbled over his words, the vision of Tabby as he’d left her, sitting in front of her easel again at his insistence, in nothing but his faded old shirt made it difficult to talk.

“Huh…well that will make Troy happy. Finally, proof that his one and only son isn’t gay,” Taylor smirked and tilted her head to one side. She was clearly baiting him and under normal circumstances he might have gone for the trap, but not today. Today he was too relaxed and too happy to fall for the bait his younger sibling had placed before him.

“Yeah, well, I’d rather you told him that than I’m going to be painting her stairs today,” he muttered, half to himself, but with the full knowledge that Taylor would hear it and he wasn’t surprised when there was almost a full minute of silence as she chewed on that particular morsel of information during which he began to poke through the paint brushes and stir sticks that were left over from when he’d bought this house. Certainly, he could have paid someone to paint his bedroom that deep chocolate colour he’d picked out, but then there would have been someone out there that didn’t really know him telling people about the king sized four poster bed and the fifty inch LCD flat screen and the Jacuzzi tub in the en-suite. Those were things he didn’t really need shared around. Not even for MTV cribs.

“You…are doing manual labour…for some…woman?” He turned back to face his sibling, an almost full can of primer and a large flat brush in his hand and smiled.

“Yep, so how about I give you a hundred not to tell dad I’m home and you keep looking after this place like I’m gone and we’ll just leave it at that?” he said hopefully, walking over to his SUV and putting the can of primer and the brush in the back. That would save some money out of the funds that Tabby had forced on him.

“Wait, are you…? Are you playing house with this…woman?” Taylor hissed as she grabbed her brother’s arm and Sidney smiled at the particular turn of phrase, ‘playing house’. He tasted the words on his tongue and felt his smile get broader. It was kind of like that. Sidney extricated himself from his sister’s grasp and headed into the house, ignoring the scandalized look on her face.

“I need to get some clothes. I’m pretty sure there are a couple fifties in my wallet in the glove box,” he called over his shoulder as he pushed the door open at the top of the stairs. “Just take that though, ‘cuz I need the rest for supplies. Thanks Tay Tay.” He used his mother’s pet name for Taylor and it made him smile, just a little ruthlessly. He didn’t often afford his younger sister the opportunity to blackmail her older brother, not like, say MAF who gave his little sister Marylene every opportunity in the world to earn what was turning into a regular income for keeping information from his small town Catholic parents. It was about time that he gave Taylor a little ammo of her own, he thought as he headed up the stairs towards his bedroom, trying to decide just how many changes of clothes he should bring with him and what Tabby might think if he came with a whole suitcase full.

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“I want to buy it.”

Tabby smiled to herself as she felt his arms slide around her waist. She was standing in front of the canvas, brush still in hand, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere that needed another stroke. It was good, not great, but it was good. She could feel it in her gut. This was something she could be proud of.

“I didn’t say it was for sale,” she sighed, leaning back into the solid width of his chest, her gaze still locked on the scene depicted on the canvas in front of her. She’d struggled with the doe’s eyes, but they felt right to her now, liquid brown with a soft light behind them and just the right mixture of alarm and a mother’s fierce protectiveness.

“Well…I’d like to buy it, for my mom,” he repeated, placing a kiss on her cheek. “I’ve missed a lot of Mother’s Days. I have some making up to do.” For some reason that made Tabby’s chest get tight, and not only because she was missing her own mother back home in Vancouver. Normally a momma’s boy would be something she would avoid like the plague but Patrick didn’t strike her as a one of those guys who lived his life by his mother’s rules. As if reading her mind, he continued. “She sacrificed a lot for me. Not just for me but…she’s done a lot and she never asks for anything…ever and no matter what I do, she’s always there. I’m sure you know how it is,” he added, withdrawing enough to allow her to lay down her paint brush and palette and turn to put her arms around his neck.

“How can a girl resist a boy who loves him mommy?” she whispered against his lips and he managed to both kiss her and grin at the same time. He smelled of an expensive man’s cologne that was both spicy and musky and he was wearing a crisp, white dress shirt and a pair of jeans that hugged his muscular thighs tightly. “And one all dressed up like this…you’re not painting my stairs in those are you?”

“I thought, considering it was Sunday and I don’t know about you but I haven’t had much to eat yet, I would take you out for brunch before we paint.” He took her hand in his and brought it up to his lips, brushing them over the back of her hand before leading her towards the stairs in question. “So why don’t you go upstairs, have a shower and slip into one of those pretty dresses you have and I’ll…uh…get the plans in motion.”

“Plans?” she asked, raising her eyebrow at him but he gave her a firm pat on the ass that sent her up the stairs.

“Less questions, more getting ready,” he laughed as she made her way up the stairs. She allowed herself one, last look down the stairs at the way that white dress shirt looked against his tanned skin, opened at the throat to reveal all of that thick neck of his that begged to be bitten. “Hurry up,” he called and Tabby turned and headed into the shower, wondering if she still had some paint thinner in the bathroom to help take off all of the paint that decorated her skin up to the elbows.
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“A helicopter?” Sidney watched with a certain amount of indulgent amusement as Tabby stared out the windshield at the waiting chopper, its’ blades already beginning to rotate slowly as he pulled his Land Rover into the parking space. “Okay…seriously, who the hell has a helicopter waiting for them? You said brunch, I thought we were going to Ihop or something,” she hissed as she turned to stare at him, obvious confusion mixed with patent disbelief all over her face.

“I’ve done a couple of favors for these guys so I thought I would cash one in. I saw you’d started to read Anne of Green Gables and I thought you might like to go there today,” he added, which made her mouth fall open and her eyes get as wide as dinner plates.

“You’re taking me to P.E.I. for brunch?” she managed, still staring at him with shock on her face. He shrugged and waited for to say something like ‘no way’ or that she was afraid of heights but instead she just started laughing. “A helicopter…what next?” she muttered, pushing the passenger door open and hopping out. Sidney pocketed his keys and followed her out, offering his hand as she stood staring at the rotating blades of the helicopter in front of them. “You don’t own this right?” she asked suddenly, turning to him. Sidney shook his head. He’d had his first helicopter ride a year ago, when he’d brought the Stanley Cup home and he’d been wanting to go on another ride ever since, but he’d had no desire to buy one. Mario had suggested, with all the flying around he’d been doing the last couple of years that a private jet might be a good investment, or even flying lessons, but Sidney just hadn’t found the time.

“Like I said, I did these guys a solid so it’s kind of like a favor to me,” he shouted as the blades began to rotate more quickly, making her long, dark hair whip around her like a living thing, her light, white cotton dress dance around her knees. She looked beautiful. Her tanned skin was the colour of burnt sugar, her dark hair gleaming in the early afternoon sunlight. “I think we’ll just about make it for lunch if we leave now,” he added, leaning in to speak directly into her ear. He felt her entire body shudder against his and was fairly certain it wasn’t anticipation of getting in the chopper that was doing it. She looked over at him, a mischievous grin on her face and then she was tugging him toward the craft, keeping her head down, one hand holding her hair back.

The chopper pilot gave them both headphones and helped them buckle in and then he got behind the controls and the chopper immediately began to lift away from the concrete pad below. Sidney felt her hand reaching for his and he laced his fingers with hers and pulled her hand onto his knee. She had the cutest grin on her face that reached from ear to ear and he knew it wasn’t the fact that they were now looking down at the buildings racing by below them that had his heart in his throat.
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“I saw the TV movie when I was kid…maybe like three times,” she whispered reverently as they stood outside of the house that had featured in it, gleaming, whitewashed in the sun, the famous P.E.I. marram grass high around them. “I read the book too, when I was like…twelve but the movie was so real,” she sighed again and then turned to press her lips against his. “This makes me want to dye my hair red.”

“Well I like your hair, just the way it is,” he whispered back, reaching up to tuck an unruly strand that the wind kept picking up and setting free. “But you’ve got the freckles,” he noticed, which made her scrunch up her nose.

“I can’t believe we get to have tea at Ingleside!” she grinned, and wondered if she looked even vaguely like Joker from the Batman movies with this perma-grin she couldn’t seem to get rid of. If she did, Patrick didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he’d had his own tolerant expression on his face all day, like he was enjoying watching her enjoy herself.

“That was the idea,” he said quietly, keeping an eye on the other goggle eyed tourists, mostly families and older women. They seemed to be the only couple here, she thought, and she was willing to bet they were the only ones who’d arrived in a helicopter.

“I can’t believe you did all this for me,” she said, suddenly sobered by the extravagance of the idea.

“Hey, I’m enjoying this too,” he smiled down at her, that indulgent smile making her feel like the centre of his universe, as if they were the only two people here and no one and nothing else in the entire world mattered. She ran her fingers along the sharp edge of his jaw and offered her lips up to his and felt her entire body turn into liquid fire as his mouth moved over hers’, as his tongue stroked over hers’ and his hand slid from the small of her back down to cup her ass through the thin fabric of her dress. He pressed against her and it was entirely clear that he was enjoying himself, very much. “Do you think, if we slipped off down to the those dunes,” he whispered in her ear as he held her close, “that anyone would notice if we were gone for a little while?” Tabby shook her head, and putting her hand in his, lead him away from the tour group and through the high grasses and down towards a sandy path.

She bent to slip out of her sandals and felt his eyes on her. As she hooked her fingers through the straps of her shoes and straightened, she felt her entire body shiver under his hungry gaze. He held his hand out to her and once more she put her hand in his and he lead her down the beach until they found a sheltered spot between two dunes and that’s where he pulled her down into the soft sand and pulled her close.

He kissed her eagerly, his tongue reaching for hers’ as his hands slid up beneath the hem of her dress. He was tugging on her panties and she reached down to help him push them down. She wriggled out of them as he pushed his jeans down over his hips and freed his long, thick erection. Tabby looked down at him, lying there, waiting for her and felt like pinching herself. That handsome man with the boyish grin wanted her. He obviously wanted her very badly.

She slid down over him until he was entirely sheathed within her and she let out a little gasp. The skirt of her summer dress hid what they were doing from prying eyes, had there been any, but she knew the rapturous look on her face would tell the truth.

She almost didn’t dare move. Just having him this deep inside of her, out here in the open and the fresh air filling her lungs all conspired to make her catch her breath. ‘Stop thinking Tabs, just feel’, she told herself as she felt his hands cup her bottom through her dress as he pushed himself up into her. “Feels so fucking good,” she whispered to him and he smiled and pressed her body down over his as he thrust up into her once more and she was fairly sure he was saying that it felt the same to him.
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His entire life was controlled, from the time he got up in the morning, until his preordained curfew during the season. Even in the off season it was rare for Sidney to experience any true level freedom so taking this kind of risk was exhilarating. It had to be that she was a free spirit, he thought as she settled her body over his. Her energy, her smile, her casualness was infectious and it made him forget, just for a moment, that he was Canada’s golden boy. In this moment, with her dark eyes glazing over as she sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, he was throwing caution to the wind and just being.

He slide his hands up the cool length of her thighs and around to her ass, pulling her down over him as he pushed himself up inside of her and he heard her gasp and he thought that there was no more beautiful sound than anything that came out of her mouth when they made love.

“Feels so fucking good,” she whispered and Sidney felt like he’d just won something. Oh it wasn’t as good as the gold medal of the Cup but it was up there. He held her still and pushed upwards, filling her, feeling her body tense around his and knew that neither of them were going to last. He knew her body now almost as well as he did his own and he knew that the way her muscles squeezed around him now meant she was as close as he was. He knew when her bottom lip stuck out that way, like a child’s pout, that she was fighting to hold off the orgasm, that she was literally trying to concentrate it away. He also knew, as he slid one hand up over the swell of her hip and up, up to capture her breast in his hand, that he could make her cum for him. He knew if he rolled her nipple just so between his finger and thumb and pushed her a little with his hand on the small of her back so that she was forced to rotate her hips and bring her clit into direct contact with his pelvic bone that she’d throw back her head and her entire body would shudder and his cock would be bathed in her hot, wet juices. “Oh…oh sweet jesus,” she hissed, her eyes rolling back in her head as she dug her fingernails into his shoulders. There would be sand in places that would be incredibly uncomfortable for the rest of the day but he didn’t care as the tug and suck of her muscles milked him dry and his own body trembled as shook with the strength of his own orgasm.

Even if they’d been caught then, even if he’d opened his eyes to find Commissionaire Bettman and his father standing over him, Sidney thought it would have been worth it just to see the grin on Tabby’s face. Reaching up, he cupped her cheek in his hand, those three words on the tip of his tongue as she turned to press a kiss to the palm of his hand.

“I can’t believe we just did that,” she smiled and he nodded in agreement instead, swallowing the words as she picked up her skirt and slid off of him. She made a face and he immediately felt guilty, knowing that he’d pumped about a gallon of cum into her and most of it was probably dripping down her thighs now. “I’ll just…go over there,” she giggled, making a run for the ocean, her skirt held high so that Sidney found himself staring at her legs as she ran.

“I am so screwed,” he whispered to himself as he watched her dash into the surf, kicking spray up around her, her high pitched squeals reaching him in the dunes as he tugged his jeans up. “So, so screwed.” Brushing the sand from his backside as best he could, Sidney tucked her lacey white panties into his back pocket and walked down the sand and stood just out of reach of the tide as it came in. She was laughing and splashing in the water like a child and he longed to join her but he knew without having to turn around that they were now in full view of the rest of the tour group and even though it had seemed, so far, as if he hadn’t been recognized, that little voice in the back of his head was taking back control and his moment of frivolous madness was ebbing away. “We should get back,” he called to her, and she turned, a bright, wide childish smile on her face that Sidney knew if she had any idea of what kind of risk they had just taken, if she only knew what would happen if they had been caught…his chest squeezed painfully around his heart. He would not ruin this moment, he told himself. There would be some other time to tell her, just not now.
As she came out of the surf, her hair whipped around her face and her dress hugged close around her legs and the sun hit her just so and Sidney felt his breath catch in his throat.

“Boy, I’m hungry now,” she grinned, holding he hand out towards him. He took her hand and bit back those words for what seemed like the tenth time today and kissed her instead, a soft, almost innocent kiss.

“Let’s go get that tea then,” he offered, turning her to head back up towards the park.

“Mmm buttery scones!” she skipped beside him and Sidney bit down on his tongue and made himself smile and nod instead of saying any of the words that were in his head.

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Tabby leaned her head on his shoulder as the chopper lifted into the air and closed her eyes. She was satiated in every way possible and part of her was wishing that this day would never, ever end. A smile crept across her lips as she thought of the way the older ladies had looked at the two of them when they’d sat down for tea, his fingers laced with hers’ as they sat across the lace doily covered table sipping hot sugared tea and eating old fashioned scones with jam and dripping with butter.

Well we are a cute couple she mused as she slid her arm beneath his and cuddled closer to him. He smelled like warm sunshine, hot sand and faintly of sex she thought as she took a deep breath. He eased her arm across the flat plane of his stomach, taking her hand in his and slid his other arm around her shoulder, bringing her even closer to him. She glanced up at his handsome face as he gazed out the window and thought how easy it would be to let herself fall for him.

But she was only here for the summer she reminded herself, tearing her gaze away from the high angle of his cheekbone and the slightly crooked angle of his nose and who knows how long he’s even here for. ‘It’s a summer romance’, she decided, ‘and that’s just fine’. A vacation romance; she liked the sound of that phrase in her head. People did that, if Hollywood was to be believed.

As soon as she thought of that she wrinkled her nose. Hollywood always had those people finding each other afterwards and making them get together forever. That didn’t happen in real life. People just went their own way and that was fine she thought as she let out a long, heavy sigh.

“Something wrong?” he asked and she turned her gaze up to meet his.

“Not a thing,” she told him honestly and smiled and then cuddled into him once more. She wasn’t going to ruin this now by worrying about later. She wasn’t that kind of a girl and, she decided, it wasn’t a bad thing to fall a little in love as long as she remembered that this all had an expiration date. Realistic but happy she decided as she smiled to herself before a yawn stole her breath.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered, pressing his lips to the top of her head, “I’ll wake you up when we touch down,” he promised and Tabby nodded, giving in to the pull of sweet dreams and warm, welcoming darkness safe in the knowledge that she was in the arms of a knight in shining armor.