A/N: And I acknowledge that Sparky75's suggestion of `more' has prompted this whole fic.

~ The Second Date ~

"I like the restaurant," Ruth says, more out of a need to say something, than to pass judgement on Harry's choice of restaurant for their second date. For the past three minutes, Harry has been grinning across the table at her, like her being here with him has something to do with him.

Well, were he not here, nor would she be, but their being there together is not all down to him. Ruth is here – with Harry Pearce, her boss, and perhaps soon to be something more – not because of him, but because she saw the light.

Literally.

She'd phoned him, begged him to visit her, so that she could tell him she'd been too scared to go out with him again due to something which had happened in her past. As a result, Ruth has always believed that anything good happening in her personal life will always be balanced by the loss – or damage to – those she most cares about, and rather than having something dreadful happen to Harry, she had kept him at arm's length. Rather than think of her as a silly child, he'd been understanding, caring, solicitous, and altogether perfect. He'd even kissed her before he left her house, and if that kiss is an indicator of what is to come, Ruth will be lining up for more. She just hopes Harry enjoyed kissing her as much as she'd enjoyed the kiss. Even half as much would do the trick.

Harry is altogether different from all the other men she's dated. Mostly, it had been her kicking them out of her house, because they'd have had one drink too many, and would have tried it on before she was sure whether she even wanted to see them again. Last night, Harry had left because it was the right thing to do, and besides, they have tonight, and hopefully many more nights to be spending together.

"I thought that since we're beginning again, we should begin somewhere new," he says, his eyes watching her as she looks around the restaurant.

"The other place was nice," she replies. "Elegant."

"You don't like this place?" The crease between his eyebrows deepens slightly with worry. Ernest's is all wooden beams and dark red tablecloths. Perhaps it's too gothic for Ruth's tastes. Harry thinks it's intimate.

"No, I love it. I was just saying …... we shouldn't remember our first date as a failure. Think of it more as a …..."

"A trial run."

Ruth smiles into his eyes, and she feels warm all over. He really is quite lovely. From the moment he'd picked her up at her place, he has been gentle and rather quiet, and he has been watching her, like she is some precious possession which may disappear into thin air were he to look away, even for a moment.

Harry watches Ruth, and Ruth smiles. So far, so good.

"I have a confession to make," he says, after the wine waiter has poured them each a glass of wine – white burgundy. Harry had not had to ask Ruth her preference for the wine they'll drink with dinner. He already knew what her answer would be. "Today, I spoke to Malcolm."

"You speak to Malcolm most days, Harry. What was different about today?"

Harry takes his hand from his wine glass, and folds his hands on the table in front of him. He then takes a breath, and then looks across the table into Ruth's eyes.

"I spoke to him …... about us."

"But -"

Harry lifts his hand, and Ruth stops, her mouth still open.

"Let me finish, Ruth, and then you can give me a bollocking, if you still think I deserve it ….. but please hear me out." When Ruth nods, he continues. "My aim in speaking to him was to let him know that we're still planning to …... see one another outside work, and that we don't need scrutiny, or judgement – of any kind – from those we work with. I asked him to convey to the others that we wish to be left alone."

"How did he take it?"

"Fine. He was …... he was happy for us, Ruth. He shook my hand. I suspect he thinks that I'm lucky you'd even look at me twice, let alone have dinner with me twice."

"I'm hoping we can do this more than twice, Harry."

He looks across the table at her, and sighs heavily. She really is very lovely, and he is a lucky man, despite their poor start. He nods. "I'm hoping we can be doing this long into the future."

There. He's said it, and she's still sitting there, across from him, but she appears wary.

"What's wrong, Ruth? Are you surprised I said that?"

She nods, turning her napkin around between her fingers, a gesture he knows conveys anxiety. "How can you know that, Harry?"

"I just do. We get on well, you and I, and we …... things between us can only become more …."

"More?"

"Yes. More …... well, you know what I'm trying to say, don't you, Ruth?"

"You want to keep seeing me. Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes, that's what I'm saying."

Ruth looks away from Harry's eyes, which seem to see right into her. She is excited, happy, overjoyed by what he is saying, but surely he can't mean it. Can he? Ruth knows that she over-thinks everything. Before Harry had arrived that evening to take her to dinner, she had decided that she would enjoy herself - enjoy him - and allow herself to be wooed by him, because she has a feeling it might be rather nice to be wooed by Harry.

When their main course arrives, conversation slows. But not for long.

"I've been thinking," he says, while they wait for their sweets to arrive. "I came on a bit strong last time we had dinner. I've had to re-think the Grand Tour. I think we should begin with a mini-break in Paris."

"You were asking me?"

"I wasn't asking exactly, but perhaps I was testing you, to see how you'd react."

"And how was it I reacted?"

"Guarded. You pretended ignorance, like I was vetting women to see who I might like to take with me."

"That's how it sounded to me, Harry."

He lifts one eyebrow over his glass of white burgundy. "That would hardly be smooth of me …... to give a woman the impression I might take her on a big trip to the cities of Europe, but first I have to interview another thirty women."

Ruth hesitates. She can feign shyness …... or total ignorance, or she can enter into the spirit of the conversation, (which, to Ruth's mind, is entering Salvador Dali territory). This is Harry, and she trusts him.

"Thirty women? Do you even know thirty women well enough to take away to Paris?"

"Not really. In my life, as of this moment, I know around twenty women who work for the security services. And I know you. You're the only woman I would like to know better."

"What you're saying, Harry, is that I'm the only one you'd like to know intimately."

This time it is Harry who looks surprised, and even a little uncomfortable. "Ye-es. That's what I'm saying, Ruth. But this isn't even about sex for me. It's about so much more."

"There's that word again."

"What word?"

"More," Ruth says quietly. "You used that word before our main course arrived. You said you wanted more with me."

"And I do, and that includes physical intimacy, but I don't want us to jump into that. If you want us to wait, I'll wait. I happen to think you're worth it."

Ruth hadn't expected that. She'd been sitting across from Harry, admiring him from afar, imagining what it would feel like to have his lips on hers, his tongue searching inside her mouth. She'd then travelled further inside her imagination, feeling his lips on the tender skin beneath her ear. He would then run his tongue between her breasts, while with his beautiful hands, he'd …...

And then he said that he's prepared to give them time before they become physically intimate. The words have left her mouth before she has time to consider whether they'd be better left unsaid.

"What if I don't want to wait? What if …... I want us to sleep together …... rather soon?"

Now it's Harry's turn to be shocked. He sits, his hand on the table, his fingers about to drum a quiet rhythm on the tablecloth. He stares at Ruth, and then blinks.

"Did I hear you say that you want us to sleep together?"

"Yes. What are we waiting for? I'm not suggesting tonight. I think tonight might be too soon, but Harry, I have been out with other men before you, and when a man says that he doesn't want to have sex with me until sometime in the future, and that he can wait …... well, I recognise the desperation behind that suggestion, and your hoping I'll take pity on you. I don't want to wait any more than you do. If I'm being honest, I think we might be rather good together ... like that."

Harry is breathing rather heavily, holding in his emotional reaction to what Ruth has been saying. He is also having to suppress some rather graphic images which have suddenly popped into his head, images of them both ….. together. What a strange – and wonderful – night this has become. And all this out of his suggestion that they travel to Paris together. He swallows before he replies.

"I think we might be too, Ruth. Good together. I'd like us to spend a few nights in Paris. I'd like to do that soon …... before the summer is over …... after the African summit at Havensworth."

He looks up at her, and her eyes are shining.

"I'd like that," she says. "And if I ever come to you and say I can't go with you …... for any reason at all …... then don't accept no for an answer from me, because right now …... right now, I'm already looking forward to it."

Harry nods. "A mini break, Ruth. Just you and me, in Paris. I'll book it tomorrow. Havensworth begins in three days, so it will have to be after that."

"Two weeks from this weekend, Harry. Surely by then we'll be …..."

"Comfortable with one another?"

Ruth nods, looking down at her hands. Hopefully by then she'll be able to look Harry in the eye without looking away.

Neither wants the night to end. Harry walks her to her door, and when she suggests he come inside for a cup of tea, he hesitates.

"We have work tomorrow, Ruth."

"We'll always have work tomorrow. I'm not suggesting you stay, Harry. I just …... don't want you to go home yet."

"I don't want to go home, either," he says quietly, leaning towards her, his breath tickling her ear.

He smells so wonderful – his spicy, masculine smell – that Ruth turns towards her door, and opens it, before he changes his mind.

They sit at Ruth's kitchen table over a pot of Irish Breakfast. Harry has taken off his jacket, and he sits across from her in an open necked burgundy coloured shirt, with his sleeves rolled to just below his elbows. Ruth can't take her eyes from his bare forearms. What was she thinking when she turned him down? Sometimes – and she knows this about herself – she can be completely and utterly irrational, and for an intelligence analyst, that tendency is neither healthy, nor congruent with her job requirements.

Seeing Harry get to his feet, and take their cups to the sink for rinsing, Ruth gets up quietly, and stands close beside him, watching as he performs the simple, everyday domestic ritual. When he has placed both cups on the dish drainer, he wipes his hands on a towel, then he turns to her, and slides both his arms around her, drawing her closer to him, their bodies fitting together from chests to knees. From underneath his shirt, Ruth feels his heartbeat, rapid as a bird's. He reaches down to kiss her.

This is not a chaste, goodnight kiss, like the one they'd shared the evening before. This is open-mouthed, tongues touching, breathing ragged, hands searching for bare skin. Ruth's hands slide around his neck, her fingertips softly caressing the skin at the back of his neck.

When they come up for air, his eyes are shining. Each watch the other, wordlessly. Ruth reaches up this time, and his mouth again meets hers. This time their kiss is hungrier, deeper, and their hands move over the body of the other. Harry's thumb glances repeatedly across her breast, while one of her hands seeks the skin between the buttons of his shirt. By the time this kiss ends, Ruth has opened three of his shirt buttons, and is humming to herself, as she caresses the skin of his chest, while Harry buries his face in her neck, and kisses her skin from chin to the cleft of her breasts.

They pull apart when it is clear they are both aroused. No man has elicited this kind of response in her. It is Harry's idea that they wait, and so she has to respect that. Were it up to her, they'd already be half way up the stairs.

Harry has stepped away from her, so that their hands still rest on the other's waist, but their bodies are apart.

"I'm sorry, Ruth. I -"

"Please don't apologise for …..."

"For desiring you quite a lot."

"I know you're turned on, but so am I. Had you not stepped away, I might have …..."

"What, Ruth?" Harry dips his head to plant a soft kiss on her forehead.

"Dragged you upstairs."

Harry chuckles quietly

"That was nice," she says, allowing herself to lean into him, her hands resting on his waist.

Harry nods, a silly grin on his face. "More than," he says.

"So, we're already experiencing more," Ruth replies. "I like your idea of more."

"I knew you would."

"I'm already looking forward to Paris."

Against the drives of his body, Harry steps away from her, to gather his jacket from the back of the chair on which he'd sat to drink his tea.

They kiss again at the door, but this time the kiss is gentle, rather than passionate. Harry is about to step through the doorway, when he turns back towards Ruth, and kisses her again.

"I hate leaving you," he says against her mouth, and then he turns and walks purposefully down the path to the gate, before turning back to look at her.

Seeing him turn towards her, Ruth blows him a kiss. As Harry gets into his car, Ruth still watches him. The next time she sees him, they will be at work, and kissing will be out of the question. As Ruth closes the door, she thinks how cruel life can sometimes be.