Chapter 13

She hadn’t even said goodbye and she’d refused to take him to the airport both actions that gave Sidney hope that maybe, just maybe, Tabby was beginning to come around to the idea that what they had was more than just a summer fling. Oh, he’d waited, sitting outside in his SUV, letting the engine idle as he stared at the door of the little bait shop in front of the house, but she'd never come out. She’d known he was there and she’d known he was leaving and she’d made damn sure that he hadn’t had more than a half hours sleep the night before, getting her fill before he left Sid supposed, but she didn’t come out. She didn’t even wave.

Now, as he sat in the back of an air conditioned stretch limo plodding down the Vegas strip, he found himself having a conversation with her in his head. He wanted to talk about the amazing buildings and all of the people walking down the sidewalks with bottles of beer or giant margarita glasses in their hands. He wanted to ask her if she wanted to see that show at Treasure Island. He wanted to tell her about the heat and all of the people and he found himself smiling and shaking his head at himself.

He had it bad.

He was beginning to regret not opening up to her, not asking her to come with him as the limo pulled up in front of the Palms hotel, but as the door opened and Sidney found himself staring straight into the lens of at least six TV cameras, those regrets quickly disappeared.

“If I’d known this was going to happen I’d have dressed a little better for arriving,” he muttered to the bell hop who was loading his single case and suit bag onto one of those brass trolleys.

“This is a town that knows how to do red carpet,” the young man smiled as Sid dropped an American twenty into his hand. He was about to ask him to do his damndest to get him by all of the welcoming crew but then there was a TV crew he recognized from home and he put on his best smile and felt glad that Tabby wasn’t beside him, wondering what in the hell was going on. This wasn’t easy for someone who’d grown up in front of the camera like he had. He didn’t really want to put anyone else through it. Not unless he knew it was going to be for keeps.
_______________________________________________________________


“The eastern marine air must be suiting you,” the woman on the other end of the line teased as Tabby sat across a high winged back chair, her legs swinging over the arm, her other hand trailing along the edge of her notebook, which was open on the floor in front of her. “It looks like you’re doing some of your best work. Maybe you’ll listen to me this time when I tell you that you should move out this direction.”

“Maybe,” Tabby smiled. Yeah, maybe, if things became a little more solid, a little more stable with Patrick when he came back, if he came back, she thought to herself, but kept that to herself. “So you’re happy with all three pieces Shannon?”

“Mmm, yeah, great stuff. The authors are thrilled too,” the art director at Harlequin chirped happily and Tabby felt a grin beginning to grow on her face. If she took all three pieces, there would be a big cheque coming her way in the mail. “I gotta say, whoever he is, your muse is something else. He has a real…quality,” Shannon continued and Tabby bit down on her bottom lip to stop herself from laughing. Oh, he had a quality alright. Unbelievable stamina in the sack, a smile that made butter melt and a tender touch that made her knees weak. “I keep thinking though,” Shannon continued on what sounded like a more serious note, “that I’ve seen him somewhere before. You know? Like he’s been in something or on something I’ve seen…,” her voice trailed away and Tabby straightened in the chair, putting her feet flat on the floor. She knew what her art editor was asking; am I going to have to pay some actor or model for his permission to be on the cover of our stories?

“I swear Shannon,” Tabby began, using her serious business voice and not the light, conversational girl talk voice she’d been using before. “I just met this guy. He’s a marketing exec. I promise, this isn’t going to be a problem,” she insisted and waited, chewing on the end of her thumb as the silence went on and on at the other end of the line.

“Mmmm…I could swear that I know him, you know? But maybe he’s just got that quality, that boy next door thing.” Tabby smiled and leaned back into the chair.

“I know, right? I tried a few sketches of him in the cowboy gear, you know, for those kinds of series but…he looks kind of like a chump in anything more than a ball cap but…put a toque on him and he’s great for one of those out of the cold stories,” she suggested and heard her editor laugh on the other end of the line.

“Well, whatever you’ve found out there in the Maritimes, it’s really working for you Tabitha. Keep up the good work. I’m happy to keep signing these cheques if you keep sending me stuff like this. This is much better than that urban, girl in the city stuff you were doing back in Vancouver,” she added and Tabby allowed herself a happy sigh. She had the urge to tell her editor that she’d never felt this way back in Vancouver, but she was hardly ready to admit that to herself, never mind someone at the other end of a phone line that she’d only met twice in her life. “Speaking of which,” Shannon continued, “did you get that list of titles I sent you? I thought of them as soon as I looked at this last piece,” she added, which made Tabby slide sideways again so she could access her notebook.

She tabbed up to the first jpg she’d sent and smiled to herself. Patrick, as a baseball player, hat sitting jauntily back on his head, bat over his shoulder in those tight leggings, socks up to the knees, grinning his big dimpalicious grin at a dark haired girl with a ball in her hand and a mischievous smile on her face. Tabby sighed as she thought about the game he and his friends had put together in the backyard. She’d never seen a casual game get so heated before, but then she’d got into the shower with him afterwards and he’d taken out the rest of his competitiveness on her. Her legs still went to jelly just at the thought of it.

“Yeah, he’s definitely got that athletic build,” Tabby agreed, “and yeah, I won’t have any trouble working up something for a carpenter,” she added, barely able to stop from laughing. She had plenty of ideas for that, what with all the work he’d done around the house. “And hockey…yeah, I’ll have to do a little research on the jerseys and equipment and that, but I think I can figure something out for that too.” Maybe she’d even ask him to pose for her for that one, Tabby thought to herself as she thought about what his powerful legs would look like on skates and that led her to wondering if there were any ice rinks within fifty miles of the place that they could rent a pair.

“Well, like I said girlfriend, keep up the good work. I’m serious. This stuff is great,” Shannon added.

“As long as I see some money in my account, I’m happy you’re happy,” Tabby laughed.

“Sounds like someone else is pretty happy too,” Shannon went back to her conversational, girlfriend chat sort of tone and Tabby sighed out loud.

“I don’t know. It’s all too new but…yeah, it’s been an eventful summer so far,” she admitted. “Look, I’ll get to at least one of these pieces this week, considering he’s off on some kind of business trip. I’ll send you something by the end of the week,” she added, a picture already forming in her head of a tool belt slung low on his hips, just below his six pack, sweat glowing on his bare chest and some poor woman that looked a lot like her but maybe with some geeky glasses staring up at him with naked desire clear on her face.

“I’ll look forward to that Tabitha. Speak with you soon.”

Tabby heard her editor hanging up and she hit the end button on her cell and was about to toss it aside when it made that chirping sound that told her she had a text. She looked down at the screen and found herself grinning as a picture of Patrick and his big, blonde friend Jordy came up, standing beside one of the giant lions outside the MGM grand, grinning and waving like a couple of schoolgirls. The text beneath it was a simple ‘wish you were here’ but it still made her stomach do a little flip.

She wasn’t happy that he was gone, but she had a feeling she was going to be very happy to have him back.
_____________________________________________________


“Did you see that chick?” Jordy asked as he came, breathless, off of the dance floor. “She was hooottt!” Sidney’s answer was the slightest of shrugs, one shoulder only, as he stared out over the dance floor. “Did you want me to get that girl back?” Jordy asked, peering out over the crowd for the young, blonde starlette who had done her best to try and get herself invited along with them into the limo. Sidney shook his head, again. “Oh c’mon man, she was totally your type,” Jordan argued, taking another glass of champagne from one of the scantily clad waitresses as she went by. He offered one to Sid, who again, merely shook his head.

“Jesus, you’re like some kind of fucking bump on a log.” The NHL’s youngest new stud, Patrick Kane, had three girls hanging off of him and was liquored to the gills. Sidney spared him the briefest of glances and then went back to watching the floor show. There was a cute girl bumping and grinding on a stripper pole who had been giving him the eye for the past half hour but he was never going to invite her to the table. He was only looking at her because her long, thick dark mane of hair reminded him of Tabby’s and now that the awards were over, she was pretty much the only thing on his mind.

“You have to forgive my quiet little friend here,” Jordan announced, having downed his glass of champagne he was currently reaching for one of the glow in the dark shots that were sitting in the middle of the table. “He thinks he’s in looooove,” he added, grinning dangerously at Sid before downing three shots in succession, one after the other. Jordan liked to drink and Jordan liked to party, and normally his crazy antics and insistent nature would pull Sidney out of his quiet shell. Not tonight. “If you looove her so much why don’t you tell her who you are?” his friend asked, swaying on the spot like a tall tree in the wind, except it wasn’t wind that was going to fell this tree, Sidney knew.

“I’ll tell her when I’m ready,” he replied, giving Jordan a look that his friend, under normal circumstances, would have quickly interpreted as ‘shut the fuck up’. But when Jordan, or any of his siblings, got this far into their cups, that look was more like a red flag to a bull.

“Look, buddy, she obviously doesn’t know who you or any of us are, so if all you’re fucking worried about is your precious freaking anonym…anononym…fucking privacy or whatever, then dude…you’ve totally got that. She doesn’t fucking know who you are. She doesn’t know about your big fucking house or that you’re fucking loaded. She just thinks you fuck like a bunny rabbit.” Jordan spewed liquid out between his lips as he laughed at his own joke. For himself, Sid was just glad that the club was dark and loud, but even so, he glanced around to be sure that the revelers around them weren’t staring at him with that look, the one that said ‘oh my god, Sidney Crosby fucks like a what?’ “Dude you are almost fucking twenty fucking three years old. No one honestly thinks you’ve kept your schmeckel in your pants all this fucking time, shit!”Jordan added with a note of disgust as Sid shrank down in the booth, sure that they were being overheard and that when he logged on to his lap top later he’d find this entire conversation repeated, verbatim on at least a dozen websites.

“Oh god, you’re not one of those guys are you?” Kaner asked, being fed by one of the girls he was with, as if his hands were broken. When Sid merely raised his brows, Patrick rolled his eyes. “Dude, we have all this,” he gestured with his hands around the shoulders of the two girls nearest to him, “and dude, you’re the king of the fucking mountain. You’re the fucking poster boy. You should be getting pussy left, right and fucking centre. If you tell me you’re holding out for one fucking girl…dude I think I’m gonna puke,” he added, laughing at this own joke. He did that a lot, Sid had noticed. Patrick Kane seemed to think everything that came out of his own mouth was fucking hilarious.

Sid didn’t want to be rude to the girls that were hanging all over this year’s Stanley Cup winner, but he was never, ever, going to want a girl who draped herself over him like that. They were obviously competing to be taken back to his hotel room, if he didn’t take them all, Sid realized as one of them shared an olive from her martini, by mouth, with one of the other girls while Patrick watched, his gaze bleary from a mixture of alcohol and raw desire.

He’d seen Max and Geno do just this, more times than he cared to count and both of them seemed happy to put in the minimum required effort to take some girl home and never start any kind of meaningful relationship, despite Oksana’s blood red painted clutches being dug into the big Russian galoot.

He’d never do that either. He knew a lot of the guys had women in other cities. He knew he wasn’t ever going to be one of those guys. If he gave his heart, that was going to be it. Which made the way he was beginning to feel about Tabby scare him, and more than just a little.

“Look, I have to get up early to be at the draft. I’m gonna call it a night,” he explained as he got up to squeeze his way by Jordan who got up to let him by, but was shaking his head.

“C’mon dude, you’ve got to try some more of the thirty one flavors before you settle for just one,” Kaner called out to him as he left the table behind but Sid didn’t even turn around. He was sure his father would probably have the same argument, but that wouldn’t change his mind either. He had at least another month to decide if he had to put his line back in the water or if he was done fishing, permanently.
___________________________________________________________________


“Mom…Mom, I know I haven’t been to see Uncle Dave, but I told you that there’s still a lot of work to do around the house.” Tabby paced while she answered her mother’s litany of questions.

“If you’re going to get it sold before the end of the summer, in this climate, you need to get it on the market as soon as you can,” her mother scolded her, using that ‘I know best’ tone that had Tabby chewing on her nails.

“I don’t know mom, I haven’t really made up my mind,” she began, trying to think of how she could explain about keeping the place as a summer retreat. That wasn’t something her working class parents would or could ever understand. It would be an extravagance, and she hadn’t quite worked out how she could afford the taxes or the upkeep, but if it turned out that Patrick lived somewhere like Toronto in his real life, and maybe if she decided to follow him there instead of returning to the west coast….

“That’s so like you Tabitha, leave everything until the last minute and then wonder why it doesn’t work out,” she winced as she heard her mother’s frustrated sigh. “There’s more to it than just sticking a for sale sign out front. I’ll call your Uncle, get the place appraised….”

“Mom!” Tabby practically shouted down the other end of the line. “Gramps left the place to me, not you, me. So I think I’ll decide when and if the place goes up for sale.” Taking a deep breath, as she squeezed her eyes shut, Tabby tried to ease the defensiveness and hostility out of her voice. “Just…I promise it will get done…just give me some time to do the renovations. It won’t sell this way.”

“You could be throwing good money after bad Tabitha. I’ll call Uncle Dave, have him come down and look at what you’ve done. You should get another opinion before you get all artsy fartsy on the place. Sometimes I think you forget that not everyone shares your…artistic sensibilities,” her mother grumbled and Tabby felt her hackles rise.

“Mom…the plumbing is ancient, the stairs were practically falling apart…I’m not talking colours, I’m talking basics,” she began but heard another one of her mother’s patented impatient sighs on the other end of the line.

“Tabitha, baby, you’re not Mike Holmes. What do you know about plumbing? And for that matter, have you had the roof or the foundation checked. For all you know the whole place is ready to come down,” Tabby winced again. That was true, she couldn’t deny it. And yet she had begun to love the feel of the old house, even with all its’ leaks, creaks and groans.

“Okay, okay, I’ll call him myself, in the morning, I promise,” Tabby mumbled as she gave in.

“It’s for the best hun, I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but you don’t know anything about this kind of stuff,” her mother told her for the umpteenth time. Tabby gazed out at the reflection of the moon on the lake clenched her teeth. “We just want you to get the best price possible honey. If you’re going to keep going with this art stuff, you’ll need some money to fall back on.” There it was; the dig about her chosen profession. Tabby bit back all of the old arguments that never got her anywhere anyway, like if they’d cared to help with university or if she hadn’t had to work on top of everything. Arguing with her mother, full stop, never got her much of anywhere.

“I said I’d call him,” she replied quietly.

“Besides, you want to come home to your friends don’t you?” her mother continued, like a rabid dog with a bone. “That Damon character called for you today.”

“Did he?” Tabby was surprised to find she felt absolutely nothing at the mention of his name and smiled to herself. “Look mom,” she turned from the window and headed back to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, “I gotta go, it’s late and I have to get up early here so…I’ll talk to you soon okay?”

“Alright hun but just make sure you call your Uncle in the morning. Your Aunt Linda has been expecting to have you over for dinner. You really should make an effort to be more sociable Tabitha,” her mother added, like squeezing lemon juice into an open wound. Tabby rolled her eyes.

“Love you mom. I’ll call in a couple days.”

“Take care of yourself honey.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t think her parents were sincere, Tabby thought as she put the phone back on the charger and lay back on the bed. It was just that they refused to treat her like an adult capable of making adult decisions. And what do you think they would say if they knew you were practically shacked up with a complete stranger? Tabby grinned as she reached over to pull his pillow to her, burying her face in it and inhaling his musky male scent. They’d call the men in the little white coats is what they’d do, she answered herself, and I don’t fucking care.