A/N: I wrote this 3 months ago, and had forgotten about it, so here it is.

It has only been since she's moved to the small cottage by the beach, tucked up against the headland, hidden by a grove of conifers, that she's been haunted by the dreams. After seven months of travelling around Europe, stumbling from one city to another, she'd decided that Cyprus is as out of the way and safe as she is ever going to be. She'd rented the cottage after only a week on the island, and it was on her third night in this place – this safe place – that she'd experienced her first dream.

The dreams began slowly, with just touches of skin against hers, and she'd wake to the smell of him, that familiar warm masculine scent that she'd loved. It would be in her nostrils, and so real that she'd turn her head, only to see the empty pillow beside her own, and then sigh with the loss of him all over again.

After a week or two, the dreams progressed. She'd dream they were kissing - deep, passionate kisses during which she'd push herself against him, and he against her. She'd feel his skin hot against hers, his beard growth rasping against the skin of her cheeks. She'd move her hands around his body to grasp his buttocks, and then she'd wake, her body aching for him.

By the end of her first month in Cyprus she is going to bed early, eager to be dreaming of him. By the sixth week on the island, she is touching his body intimately, and he hers. She feels him hard against her inner thigh. She is hot and wet with wanting, and then, just as he is about to push himself inside her, she wakes, panting, hot, her body screaming for him.

This last dream is repeated around twice weekly for three weeks, leaving her body aching, and her mind in a turmoil of loss, longing and regret. She'd sent him a postcard a few months after she'd left London. Perhaps the dreams his way of speaking to her – across the ocean, from so far away. Perhaps it is now her turn to again reach out to him.

Harry has grown accustomed to dreaming of Ruth being in bed with him. He loves the dreams, and equally he hates them. In the dreams they never fully come together. He wakes from these dreams hard and wanting her, and often as not he staggers, still half asleep, to the shower, turns the water on hot, and rubs himself to climax. Afterwards, he'll lean his head on his arms against the tiles, the water stinging his skin, close to tears, wondering why it was he'd not made more of an effort to clear her name.

She'd sent him a postcard, and he'd waited for another, but it never came. He goes to work, and he throws himself into his job. It is all he has left …... apart from her postcard, which he treasures, keeping it near him at all times.

And then, one morning – a dreamless morning – he gathers the mail, and beneath the credit card statement and the advertising brochures, there is a padded envelope with Italian stamps, and …... and her writing on the front. She has written his name – Mr H J Pearce – in bold strokes with a black felt pen. He takes the envelope into the kitchen, and places it unopened against the sugar bowl, watching it as he eats two slices of toast and drinks one cup of tea. Her hands have touched this, he thinks as he takes it in his hand. He holds it to his nose and sniffs it, but it smells like stationery, laced with the industrial odour of the sorting machines.

He is half way through his second cup of tea when he can wait no longer. He is already late for work, but for once - just this once - his personal life takes precedence. With a knife, he opens the envelope, and out of it falls a photograph. He picks it up, and gazes at the image of Ruth, dressed in a colourful cotton dress, sandals on her feet, standing outside the door of a villa (Greece? Italy?). He feels the tears prick behind his eyelids, and he brushes them away with the back of his hand.

Then it hits him. Why use a padded bag to send just one photograph? Very carefully, and wearing his reading glasses, he tears the padding away from the manilla paper, searching for something that wouldn't normally be there. Right at the base of the envelope he finds it – a tiny black rectangle. He takes it out, and places it on the table top. He recognises it as the data storage chip from inside a flash drive. He also recognises this is a job for Malcolm.

It is after lunch when Malcom enters Harry's office, the reconstructed flash drive in his hand.

"I haven't accessed it, so I trust it works. I also trust that when you attempt to access it, it won't explode, taking out the whole of Thames House."

"I'm almost certain that it won't, Malcolm. Besides, I won't look at it until I get it home. "

"You can guarantee the source, then?"

"Yes." Harry looks at Malcolm, his eyes challenging him.

"If it's from who I think it's from, will you give her my love?"

Harry sits back, shock visible on his face.

"Did you receive it in a padded bag?"

"Yes."

"Good. I taught her how to do that. Perhaps I should also have given you instructions on how to put the device into a flash drive."

Malcolm's eyes are shining gleefully as he leaves Harry's office.

After a late dinner of ready-made pasta, Harry sits at his computer in his home office and opens the flash drive. On it are two files – one is a photo file, with just one photo of the villa, but from a different angle, while the other is a document file. He opens the document file, to see a list of directions for reaching the villa. He prints off both, and then destroys the flash drive. He locks the printouts in his safe, and then heads downstairs for a glass of Scotch.

Sixteen days later, Harry is in Italy, and he has parked his rental car at the top of the drive which leads to the villa. It looks small and cosy, and behind it he catches a glimpse of the ocean, achingly, brilliantly blue. He sits for a moment, and watches the door of the villa, the same door Ruth is standing beside in the photograph, the same photograph he carries in the top pocket of his shirt, next to his heart.

It takes him a few minutes before he is ready to knock on the door. He wants to see her, but doesn't want to seem too eager, too desperate. The door is opened by a woman of around his own age. Her skin is tanned and weathered, and her pale blue eyes are kind and wise, and speak of a a long life with many lessons learned. She is dressed in lightweight beige slacks, and a sleeveless beige shirt. It is as though she's been carved from the cliff face. She stands in the doorway watching him before she smiles, and then speaks in perfect English.

"I've been expecting you. You'd better come in."

"I ….. I think I must have the wrong house."

"You have the right house. It's just that the person you're looking for is no longer here. She's …... well, I'll tell you more about that when you come inside. Would you like a cuppa?"

Harry follows the woman into the villa, where it is dark and cool. His eyes soon become accustomed to the darkness, as he follows her to a sun filled room at the back of the house. Here, there is a large window which overlooks the sea, and Harry can't help but stand and stare.

"Lovely, isn't it? By the way, my name's Ronnie."

"I'm Harry," he says, turning to face her.

"I know who you are. She told me a lot about you, including your name."

"You're English," he notes, somewhat unnecessarily.

"Yes, and my accent is pure Devon."

"You knew Ruth from …..?"

"I taught her in primary school. She was a remarkable child."

"She's a remarkable woman."

"Yes, she is. I lived only a few houses from her family home in Exeter, so we kept in touch, even after she went away to university. Then my marriage broke up, and so I sold my house, and came to Italy – chiefly to escape the climate. It was here I fell in love for the first time. This was Maximo's house, and he left it to me when he died. That was only two years ago, and I miss him every day." She looks directly at Harry, assessing whether to tell him more. "When Ruth turned up here almost three months ago, and told me …... what she told me, I offered to help in any way I could. When two people love one another, nothing should be allowed to keep them apart."

"How did you know I wasn't some serial killer?"

Ronnie throws back her head and laughs ….. a hearty, throaty laugh. "Ruth described you perfectly. She said I'd recognise you by your eyes and your voice, and she was right. I think I'd know you anywhere."

"And the padded envelope she sent me?"

"She sent it to me, and I posted it in Salerno. She hadn't wanted to be traced to where she is now."

"But you know where she is."

"I do. I'm to be your travel advisor and director. I've also booked your flight. It's to Paphos. In Cyprus."

Two days later, Harry drives his rented Renault along a rocky, uneven road which leads to a headland 8 km outside Polis, on the northern coast of Cyprus. He had not had the dreams since he'd left London, and so his energy is high, as are his hopes. Ronnie's instructions are clear, and he knows he is only moments from seeing Ruth again. He parks the Renault under a pine tree next to the lone, small white bungalow, and slowly and quietly steps from the car, and looks around. It is already early evening. He hadn't wanted to spend a night in Paphos. He wants to see Ruth, and he hopes his arriving as the sun is setting doesn't frighten her. Quietly, he closes the car door, and he steps towards the house. He hears a sound from the shoreline, about a hundred yards to his left, so he looks towards the beach …... and that is when he sees her.

Ruth – his Ruth – stands in waist deep water, wearing a plain black swimsuit. Even from a distance, he can see the plunging neckline, and his heart rate increases. She has seen him, and she is waving. He waves back. He uses all his considerable self control to remain where he is, and not tear off all his clothes, and run to her. Then he notices her gesturing to him to come closer. He bends to remove his shoes and socks, leaving them on the terrace, and then slowly walks across the sand towards her. All he can see is Ruth. All he feels is an incredible surging of love – and lust – for her.

He has reached the hard and compacted sand, and he can hear her voice as she calls to him.

"Get your clothes off, Harry," she cries, her face wreathed in a wide smile. "Come in the water with me. It's beautiful."

Harry stands at the water's edge, watching Ruth. He could focus on her bathing costume, and how good her body looks in it. He could focus on the strip of skin which is revealled by her deep neckline. He doesn't. All he can think about is how inappropriate it would be for him to strip down to his trunks – white, and practically transparent when wet – and join Ruth in the water. He has some red swim shorts in his bag somewhere, but he doesn't fancy digging around in the boot of the car in search of them. What bothers him most is that were he to join her in the water – wearing trunks, swim shorts, his chinos, even – he'd not be able to keep his hands off Ruth. He'd have to hold her, kiss her, feel her body against his, and then his self-control would crumble, slip and slide, and then disappear altogether. He'd no doubt have to make love to her, right there in the water, his back and knees aching and straining with the effort of holding her against him.

It would not be right for him to be pawing her, pulling off her swim suit, searching for bare skin. He respects Ruth too much for that; he respects them too much to allow himself to do exactly what his baser insticts have always wanted. They were a restrained and dignified couple in love prior to her leaving London, and they need to be that way for just a few hours more.

Harry smiles at her and shakes his head. He then reaches his hand towards her.

"You come to me," he says.

Ruth pushes through the water until she is wading through the shallows. Harry is spellbound by her legs. He has loved Ruth for at least three years, and this is the first time he's seen her legs. They are sturdier than he'd expected, and suddenly – in one brief moment – he decides that his favourite kind of legs on a woman are the sturdy and shapely kind, the kind which can hold her body steady and sure, and power her through the shallow water when she is on her way to greeting her loved one after a long absence.

She stops when she is just a yard away, standing in water which is ankle deep. Harry's feet are wet, but the tide is now on the way out, so he knows his trousers will stay dry.

"Hello, Ruth," he says, smiling into her eyes. "I'm …... really glad to see you."

Ruth nods in agreement. "Me too," she says, as she steps closer.

They stand a little under a yard apart, and just stare at each other, drinking in the face of the other, before Harry reaches out with his hand and cups Ruth's face. She is real, and she is warm and alive and well. Harry steps just a little closer, so that Ruth can rest her hands on his waist, while they smile into each other's eyes.

tbc