Chapter 1

Chapter 1  

“The ceiling’s spinning ‘round like I’ve been drinking, I’ve got this banging in my head, Boom Boom Boom I need my medicine and the cure ain’t aspirin” (lyrics Andrew Frampton, Nadir Khayat, Stephen Kipner, Pixie Lott from ‘Here We Go Again’)

 “You know, I don’t even like cleaning my own place,” I mumble as we pull up to the white house at the end of a curving driveway. 

“It’s a job Becks,” My sister, Jen, gives me that look that only an older sibling can pull off as she pulls a mop and broom from the back of her minivan. A minivan, I ask you. Is there any vehicle less sexy than a minivan?

“It’s bad enough that you’ve got me driving around in a minivan and now you want me to clean up after some spoiled rotten rich kid who probably leaves used condoms and puke all over the floor,” I mutter, reaching past her for the box of cleaning fluids, powders and sprays. “Plus, I really fucking hate the smell of bleach.” 

“You know, you’re doing a lot of god damn bitching for someone who was trying to mooch money off me last week,” Jen sighs, hand on hip, her head tilted to one side so that her pig tail splits over her shoulder.  

“I would have preferred a hand out,” I grumble, which makes her roll her eyes. “What? I’m being fucking honest.”

“You’re just lucky that Mindi was on vacation so that I could get you some work,” Jen replies, shaking her head before turning to head towards the front door of the house, fishing in her pockets for the keys. “I’ll take downstairs, you start upstairs.” 

“Great. Upstairs. Where there’s definitely a higher likelihood of cleaning up condoms and puke,” I mumble as I follow her in. “And, if I’m really lucky, a prostitute to wake up.” 

“I don’t think this guy needs to pay for it,” Jen advises me as the front door swings open and we walk into the marble tiled foyer. I stare up at a crystal chandelier and a then up at a wide wood and wrought iron staircase that looks like something out of Gone with the Wind. 

“He can fucking pay me for it,” I chuckle to myself as I take a mop and a bucket full of cleaning products with me and start up the stairs. At the top of the stairs I flip a mental coin and head right and towards the end of the hall opening the first door on the right. It’s a guest bedroom that doesn’t look like it’s been slept in, ever. Shaking my head, I plug in my ear buds and crank up the tunes. 

“It’s really sore,” I mumble into the phone, my eyes still closed.

“Well then just come in a little later, we’ll get it massaged out and wrapped and you can keep it elevated for a couple more days and then we’ll see,” Dr. Burke suggests and I nod, trying to stifle a yawn behind my hand so he won’t hear it. I’ve got a reputation as a hard worker to uphold and I don’t want the Doc to get the idea that I haven’t even gotten out of bed or tried to put any weight on my leg yet today. Oh, I know my shoulder still hurts, I mean, I can feel it, but I’ve also, for once, decided that my bed feels really fucking good and warm and I don’t want to get out of it. 

“Thanks Doc, I’ll see you in a while.” I hit the end button and drop my phone somewhere on the bed. I’ll find it later, when I get up, maybe.

Turning over, I curl around one of the pillows and try to get back to the dream I was having about eating poutine out of the Cup, when I hear a sound from down the hall. At first I put it down to my imagination, but then I hear it again and that gets my attention. I open one eye and look around, trying to remember if I came home alone last night and if I did, did I set the alarm, and if I didn’t, was she hot enough to want to get up and have some morning after shower sex with?

I’m just reaching to stick my head in the pillow next to me, to see if it smells like perfume, or if there any tell tale long stray hairs on it, when I hear the sound again and I decide that it’s not the sound of someone making coffee or having a shower.

Reaching down to the floor I let my fingers do the walking until I feel the solid length of wood under my hand. Smiling to myself, I pull my trusty old CCM wooden stick out from under my bed and head down the hallway. 

I stick my head in the main bathroom, but there’s no one there, so it’s definitely not someone having a sneaky shower. I should be so lucky. I always seem to pick up the stage five clingers who don’t want to leave.  As I walk slowly down the hall, listening, I hear the sound again and this time I realize that it’s humming. Well, humming mixed with singing. Like someone who doesn’t know all the words. 

I stick my head in the second bedroom, the one my parents use when they come to town, and I find the source of the off tune singing. There’s a girl, a woman, dancing with a mop in the guest room en-suite. I let my stick rest on my shoulder as I stand there and watch her shake her groove thing, which is quite a thing to watch, considering the tight pair of black leggings she’s wearing and how she’s tied her uniform shirt up around her waist. 

I know she’s going to be really embarrassed when she realizes that I’m standing here watching her, but she’s so damn cute with her dark curly hair bouncing around and her tight little ass swinging in time to the music that I can just barely make out. It’s something upbeat, something fun and obviously something motivating by the way she’s working the mop. 

I’d forgotten that the cleaners come in today. It’s an easy thing to forget I guess. I’m usually either at the rink or on the road when they’re here. All I know is the place never gets that funky or that messy but I’d never really thought about the people who made sure that my bathtub doesn’t have a ring around it. I guess I’d thought of them as women my mother’s age, not young hotties with asses that you could bounce a quarter off of. 

“Hi.” She doesn’t hear me, but I’ve said it, and then I wait, with my hockey stick on my shoulder, watching her in the mirror. It takes another minute or so, but as I know from having women checking me out when I’m on the ice, if someone stares long enough and hard enough, you start to feel it. So finally, when she looks up at me in the mirror, I’m half surprised when she jumps in the air, lets out a squeal and drops the mop.

“What the fuck!” I drop the mop and it clatters loudly on the floor as I realize that there’s another set of eyes besides mine watching me in the mirror. Half scared and half furious, I turn around, yanking out my ear buds to face down the intruder, although admittedly I find it difficult to remain furious when I get an eyeful of the wide muscular shoulders and a sculpted chest with just the right amount of manscaping along with tight fitting black boxer briefs that don’t go far enough in hiding what’s beneath. “Who the fuck are you?” I ask, the venom going out of my voice as he tilts his head to one side and stares at my rack. I’d be pissed if I hadn’t just been checking out his package. I guess fair’s fair. It’s also a stupid question. I know exactly who he is, but he’s got me flustered and at a disadvantage and besides, in my opinion, it doesn’t hurt to knock a guy’s ego down a peg or two. 

“My name’s Max and this, ma douceur, is my house,” he replies with this bemused look on his face and he’s still mostly looking at my rack, which has gone on a little long in my opinion so I do that thing where I sort of dip down until my eyes are level with where he’s looking and I stare until that blank look disappears from his face.  Funny thing is, he doesn’t even have the good sense to look remorseful. 

“Yeah, I know that, but what are you doing here?” I ask, reaching for the mop and putting it back in the bucket so the dirty water stops pooling on the floor. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere…else?”

“Yeah, practice but I’m uh…feelin’ under the weather,” he replies, this funny sort of smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he stands there with a hockey stick draped across his shoulders so that he’s giving me the full gun show. I open my mouth to say he looks just fine to me but I manage, but only just, to edit my thoughts before it actually slips out. Damned thing is it looks like he guesses because the fucking smirk on his face gets bigger and his gaze slips back down to where I’ve tied the stupid uniform my sister is making me wear under my boobs.

What? I’m working, it gets hot. 

“Does my sister know you’re here?” I ask, listening to hear if she’s nearby but all I can hear is her way out of tune singing downstairs. 

“Sisters huh?” He gets that look on his face, like he’s thinking about having a ménage à trois and it’s all I can do not to smack that smirk off of his face. 

“You wish,” I grumble, leaning the stupid mop against the wall and crossing my arms in front of my chest because as soon as his sick little mind gets back from the sick little place it’s been his eyes go right back to where they were. “God, you’re fucking amazing, you know that? You don’t even try to be subtle about it,” I shake my head at him but the grin on his face just gets wider if anything. “Shit, you must have balls the size of coconuts.” 

“Now you’re the one wishing ma chère.” Okay, admittedly, cocky does it for me, so when he flicks those green eyes of his back up to meet mine and they’re full of nasty, dirty, purely carnal thoughts you have to forgive me if my own, far less than pure, thoughts show on my face. 

I suck at poker, just so you know. 

I should probably tell him to stop where he is when he carefully leans his stick against the wall, suggestively sliding his hands down it before he starts pacing towards me like a panther stalking its prey. I don’t even have the sagacity to yell for my sister, who would, if I asked her to, beat him off with a broom. I guess that means I don’t want her to. 

“Were you about to clean my shower?” he asks, invading my space enough that his chest is practically presses against mine as he leans across me to open the glass door on the shower, which forces me to back up against the vanity, which, I’m gonna go ahead and guess, is part of his sinister plan. 

“I was,” I mutter, finding myself surrounded by the warm, slightly funky smell of unwashed male, mixed with bourbon and the underlying but heady scent of one of those off the shelf deodorants that’s supposed to make anything with a vagina come running from miles away. It makes me want to call a penalty and toss him into the shower for two minutes just so I can clear my head. 

“Maybe if I help we can get it done in half the time,” he purrs, backing up only enough to grab the ends of the bow I’ve made out of the ends of the shirt currently tied around my middle.  I look down at his hands, or more specifically his fingers, and I can’t quite decide if I should laugh or not. Talk about balls….

“Somehow I doubt that,” I reach up, with half a mind of batting his hands away, but then he leans in and the way his gaze holds mine, a challenge behind those turquoise lagoon coloured eyes, stops me. He wants to do it, and he wants me to know that, and more than that, he wants to kiss me.

Usually I’m like the fox in a henhouse when it comes to women. I mean, I like them all and I don’t want to choose. I want to take them all home. Right this minute, however, I feel a little like a wolf with a cornered lamb, except the expression in her eyes is far from fear. In fact, as soon as I make up my mind to kiss her, it’s her that turns into the aggressor as she runs her palms up my chest until her arms are around my neck and just before her mouth finds mine, she gives me this look that seems to say either ‘you’re going to be sorry’ or ‘get ready you’re world is about to be rocked’. 

I’m hoping for the latter but just as her lips come within a hare’s breath of mine she throws her head back and laughs and pushes me away. 

“Fuck! You really think you’re all that don’t you? You really thought I was gonna fucking do it. That’s hilarious.” 

I’m left standing there, staring at her as she laughs at me, her arms wrapped around her middle as if she has to hold herself together, as if her laughter is threatening to blow her ribs apart or something. It’s pretty fucking humiliating. I like to think there aren’t too many women that are immune to my charms. Strangely, I find it…intriguing.

“S’il vous plaît pardonnez-moi, but can you blame me? Finding a beautiful woman in my house, with your…particular charms?” I add with another obvious glance towards her more than ample cleavage. “Can you really blame me for trying?” When out and out lechery doesn’t work, I switch it up and use a tactic my good friend and captain used to use when we cruised for girls. I say used to because he’s taken now, or at least he’s working on it but when he wasn’t, the bashful, good boy, complimentary shit worked for him every time.  

“My…charms?” I don’t think I’m wrong. I’m pretty sure that even though she’s trying to give me that look that some women will give you when they know you’re pretty full of merde, just the corner of her full, pink lips turns up and her dark brown eyes have a kind of mischievous light in them. Like maybe, just maybe, she doesn’t hate me that much. 

“Oui. Je suis dévasté par votre beauté.” Sure, I know what the accent does to a non French speaking woman’s knees, and, if I’m lucky, her panties too. 

“Fuck you’re slick,” she responds with a shake of her head, sending a curly lock of hair into her eyes. Before she can brush it away, I do, but slowly, reaching up and brushing my fingertips across her cheek before tucking the unruly curl behind her ear and now I’m sure that she’s playing at being repulsed, but isn’t…at all. 

“Non mon chéri, just honest,” I reply, giving her the appreciative once over that she deserves. She could be on the cover of FHM…or, Playboy. 

“Jeeezuss,” she shakes her head but doesn’t pull away as I reach up again to brush the knuckle of my index finger along the sharp line of her jaw. “Does this work with all the girls?” 

“What is that, mon petit renard, the compliment or this?” I shouldn’t and I’m almost a hundred per cent sure I’m going to get slapped, but I find that the more I look at the curvaceous shape of her lips, especially the full, soft pink pout of her bottom lip, that I can’t resist just taking a quick taste. 

Damn. Damn. Damn. 

I hate slick. I detest smooth. I fucking loathe mac-daddy playas, and if I’ve ever seen one, Max Talbot is one. On the other hand, he tastes vaguely of whiskey and mouthwash and that, combined with the heat coming off of his skin, the way the whiskers on his cheeks brush mine like sandpaper and even with all of the warning bells, lights and sirens going off in my head like some kind of air raid warning, my temperature goes up to about a thousand and all I can think is ‘please sir, I’d like some more?’

Fortunately I’m not in the habit of letting my body lead me around like some kind of horny housewife from Wisteria Lane and the shrieking alarm in my head finally wins out enough for me to place my hands flat against his chest and push. Nothing happens. He doesn’t even tip back half an inch and I’m left with my hands planted against something that feels like a locked door, solid and hard. Oh yeah and warm, very warm.

“Are you kidding me?” It’s not quite ‘fuck you’ or ‘stop’ but it’s all I can manage when he looks back at me with his sleepy bedroom eyes. “Are you kidding me?” And now I’m sounding like some neurotic surgeon wannabe from Mercy West and I’m not even really making sense and it doesn’t help one fucking bit when he reaches up and runs his thumb along my bottom lip, like he has to wipe away drool and the worst of it is, I’m not sure whether I am actually drooling or not. 

“As I said, how can I resist?” He grins at me like he’s won a spelling bee or something and then tilts his head to one side like he’s waiting for me to do something and he just looks at me with this expectant half smile that I actually have to fight not to return. 

“Look, maybe all this charming shit works on other girls but where I come from, that kind of shit will get you arrested.” I feel like patting myself on the back for finally coming back with a complete sentence. Unfortunately, it doesn’t wipe that cocky, and yes, sexy grin off of his face. 

“And where I come from, if a man doesn’t tell a woman just how much he appreciates her beauty, it would be like committing a mortal sin.” Damn. Damn. Damn. It’s so not fair how sexy it sounds when he says that, or they way my entire body goes into a shiver when he touches my face again, or the way I want to lean into his hand and starting purring like a stray cat finally picked up off of the street, like I’m grateful for his attention which I shouldn’t be but…damn. Damn. Damn. 

“You are so full of lines…really, you should write a fucking book,” I tell him, gritting my teeth and hating that this guy, this cock sure multimillionaire with his nice house and his great job and his fucking cereal box is getting my panties wet by just petting my cheek like I’m some kind of fucking Golden Retriever. I also hate that if I had a tail I’d probably be wagging my ass off right now. 

“Ouch,” he grins, finally taking a step back and holding his hands out to the side, as if to say he’s unarmed. Yeah right, like that could be possible with that bulge in his Joe Boxers. “You wound me,” he adds, with a slight bow, sweeping aside and allowing me room to escape, which I should take, and I try telling my feet to move. Only they won’t. Fucking traitors.  

I watch as he raises a single eyebrow while he stands there still in his courtly bow, waiting for me to sweep past him in all my angry glory, but I don’t. I don’t move because I can’t. I can’t stop looking at his guns, what with the way his arms are flexed and I can’t stop looking at his ultra defined pectoral muscles with the cute little rosebud coloured nipples. And worst of all, I can’t stop myself from staring at those tight black boxer briefs and the way they hug his muscular thighs and…and other things. Other things that are just a little happier than they were a minute ago. 

Damn. Damn. Damn. 

“There you are!”

Huh. I’ve never been so happy to hear my sister’s grating voice in my entire life. It’s almost all I can do not to run and jump into her arms like a happy puppy greeting its master. It’s only the way she stands in the doorway, looking at Max and then looking at me with that disapproving older sibling look on her face that reminds me I should be just as unhappy with her as I am with…well, with myself. 

“I’m sorry Mr. Talbot. I hope we didn’t disturb you. We weren’t aware you were home. There must have been some kind of mix up with the schedule.” I watch as my sister goes digging into her mommy jeans looking for something and take the opportunity her distracting appearance has provided to remind myself to breathe. 

“No, ceci est absolument de ma faute. Ladies, I apologize. Please, carry on. I’ll just…have a shower,” he adds, with a glance towards me that holds an offer that makes everything below the belt clinch in an uncomfortable way. “And then I will be out of your hair, momentanément.”

I watch him walk away and chew on my bottom lip as I get a full view of how those damn boxer briefs hug his sensational ass. Half of me…no, if I’m honest, more than half of me wants to follow him down the hall to his room, his shower and his bed. The part of me that would never, ever want my sister to hear me have sex, however, manages to get dominion over my internal hussy and I remain where I am feeling a little like I’ve just gone eight rounds with Laila Ali.

“You weren’t bothering him were you? I mean you didn’t ask him for an autograph or something did you Becks because these celebrities have a right to their privacy you know. I mean, that’s one of the reasons I get hired for this kind of thing is that I understand that these are just regular working stiffs like the rest of us but….”

“Cut the crap sis, okay?” I snarl, picking up my mop and dropping it back to the floor. “First of all…he’s a fucking jock, not a celeb and second of all…I’m not a fucking pucky bunny okay?” Jen gives me that look like she knows I’ve done something, she just isn’t sure what, but then she finally shrugs and turns to head out of the room. 

“Oh, I almost forgot what I came up here for,” she says just as I go back to mopping the floor. “I just wanted to say I have another house tomorrow and Mindi’s still feeling off so if you want some more hours…?” I think about saying no, think about telling her where she can stick her bleach and ammonia, but I can’t really afford to. 

“Yeah, whatever. No probs,” I reply with a sigh, and go back to mopping the floor. 

“You’ve lost your touch old man,” I chastise myself as I lean into the scalding hot spray of the shower. I even have to consider that maybe my best moves just didn’t work in the harsh light of day, as I close my eyes and let the water rush over me. 

Or maybe, just maybe she was one of those girls whose panties only automatically slid to the floor for the mighty Sidney. There seemed to be a lot of those and it was something I was used to, women bypassing me like I don’t even exist to get to Captain Cutie-Pie. At least I wasn’t still waiting around looking to scoop up his sloppy seconds. That, I’ve outgrown. 

What I obviously haven’t gotten used to is rejection. Probably because it hasn’t happened since I was the hero of game seven. I’ve pretty much been able to get any piece of ass I’ve wanted since then. There’s even been a couple of times that a pretty little thing has gone right past Sid to get to me. 

But I’m not really just looking for just a piece of ass anymore. I’m kind of over the whole one night stand thing. From watching Sid and Tabby play house, I think I’m a little jealous of the whole domestic scene and I’m starting to think maybe it’s time to give up the whole alley cat image.

Of course I would have taken advantage of ce joli petit chaton if she’d let me. I mean, I may thinking about settling down, but I’m not dead. She was cute. 

No, not just cute. She was that perfect mix of Madonna and whore that a guy wants, or at least that’s what I think I want. And she was lippy…and I might not like it but I probably need that kind of challenge. Or at least that’s what Vero and Tabby and even Jordy’s new squeeze, Trina, keeps telling me. 

I guess if it works for them, I muse as I reach for a towel, they could be right. 

Maybe. 

Running the towel through my hair I consider how my shoulder is feeling. It will be good to get some rest this summer, and some physio. This hasn’t been a good season. I haven’t been able to get back to where I was and…

.

The grin on my face almost hurts as I stand there, dripping on the tile floor, staring at a message written in the steam on the bathroom mirror; Leave the lines at home, but call me and a number.

Maybe I’m not losing my touch after all.