I'm saying nothing. Other than this story does have 2 chapters – so make sure you read the second as well. You'll want too………

Soundtrack: Honesty – Billy Joel

If you search for tenderness, it isn't hard to find

You can have the love you need to live

But if you look for truthfulness, you might just as well be blind

It always seems to be so hard to give

Honesty is such a lonely word

Everyone is so untrue

Honesty is hardly ever heard

And mostly what I need from you

...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

There was a knock on the door. Jacob groaned inwardly, fuuuuuuck. It had been a long, long day at the end of 10 long, long days in Geneva and all he wanted to do was to take a long hot shower, order a meal from room service and then try to get some sleep before he flew home in the morning.

He'd had a big night the evening before with his colleagues from CERN, hadn't got to bed til 3am and was up again at 5am to write a report, before heading back into CERN to wrap up the project.

Surely it wasn't the guys back for another night on the town like the night before. He wasn't sure he could cope with another evening like that.

He was in the bathroom and had been about to step into the shower, so he turned off the water and wrapped a towel around his waist before opening the hotel room door.

He leaned on the open door, stood and looked silently at the person before him.

He'd never seen such a beautiful sight in his life.

She was breathtaking.

She was holding a big cream coloured cake topped with a mass of orange flaming candles.

"Happy Birthday Jacob" she said simply, looking at him with such radiance in her eyes that he almost broke down.

"Rachel."

Her face was lit with the gentle flicker of the tiny flames dancing on top of the cake, illuminating her gentle blue eyes and highlighting her golden hair.

He stood silently for a few moments.

"You are without doubt, the most beautiful thing I've seen in two weeks," he said finally.

As much as he wanted to reach out and touch her, take her in his arms and hold her, for now he was completely content just to stand and look at her, to drink in her luminous beauty.

"Jacob, could you blow out your candles so I can put this cake down? It's quite heavy." she said hopefully.

He smiled and lent forward, gently blowing out the flames. Then he leaned over the cake and kissed her gently on the lips. Tentatively, wistfully, longingly.

"I've missed you," he murmured into her mouth.

She closed her eyes as he kissed her. Luxuriated in the touch of his gentle lips on hers. The kiss finished but he didn't move. Just stayed there, his lips barely touching hers, eyes closed, forehead resting on hers.

"I love you," he whispered finally.

He gently took the cake out of her hands and placed it on the table next to him. He reached down next to her and picked up her overnight case, placed it under the table, unbuttoned the two buttons on her coat and slipped it off of her shoulders and put it over the back of a chair. Then he swang the door shut behind her.

Finally, he stood before her, took her face in his two hands and kissed her skin gently, barely touching her face with his lips, one cheek then the other, her eyelids, her forehead, her chin.

He slid one hand down to her bottom and the other behind her head, winding his fingers through her hair and pulling her hard and strong into his half naked body. And then he kissed her mouth, long and deep and hard, as she had never been kissed before. His lips were gentle but demanding, his mouth passionate and skilful, the sweet tip of his tongue finding hers in a touch so intimate that it made her gasp.

If she ever had any doubts as to the depth of his feeling for her, they were swept aside in that very moment.

She ran her hands slowly up his body, over his bare chest, down to his warm belly, round his sides, feeling the strength in the muscles of his back, up to his strong shoulders. She was completely and utterly lost in him, lost in the passion of his kiss, the taste of his mouth, the feel of his body.

"I can't believe how much I've missed you," she murmured as his mouth moved to her neck, nipping at the sensitive skin behind her ear. She tipped her head back, his tongue teasing her neck, sending shivers down her spine "God, I love you Jacob.

He started to walk slowly backwards, drawing her with him towards the bed, his mouth locked on hers. As the bed touched the back of his knees, he sat and pulled her onto his lap, his hands never leaving her body, pressing her into him. She squeezed her hands between their bodies, pushed his shoulders down until he was laying flat on the bed, his feet still on the floor. She could feel him thick and hard and urgent, pressing up into her groin. She moved her hips slowly against him and he groaned.

"You feel so good Jake," she whispered, running her hand down to his waist, down to the knot of the towel.

He moved his hand onto hers. "No sweetheart," he murmured.

Undeterred, she sat up straight, her legs straddling him, and slowly began to undo the pearl buttons of her midnight blue dress. The buttons ran down the full length of the dress and she opened it like a shirt, revealing the black French lace bra and panties she wore with garter belt and stockings. He groaned and slid his hands up her stockinged legs to the warm, bare, soft flesh of her thighs, caressed her skin with his thumbs.

"My god Rachel, you have the most beautiful body, you have no idea what you do to me…"

She saw his eyes drinking in the view of her, his eyes dark with lust, his lips apart, his breath rough in his throat. He reached his hands up to her shoulders and drew the dress down her arms slowly. His fingers, barely touching her skin, travelled back up her arms and over the delicate skin of her shoulders. Holding his breath, he ran the pads of his thumbs down over the warm swell of her breast and the delicate, seductive fabric of her bra, until he reached her nipples, hot and hard beneath the sheer lace.

She was having trouble breathing, the feel of his hands on her body and the pure arousal on his face was turning her upside down. She couldn't ever remember a man looking at her with such unbridled love and desire, and it made her feel sexual and powerful. She slowly ground her hips against his, the feeling of him so hard against her making her desperate to unknot his towel, release him, sink herself onto him, take him deep, deep inside her.

She gasped with the thought of it and ran her hands slowly up over his belly and chest, luxuriated in the feel of his muscular frame under his skin, the soft hair of his chest. She bent her head to his left nipple, licking it, flicking it with her tongue while her fingers toyed with his right. The movement in her pelvis as she bent placed him in a perfect position to enter her, with just her panties and the towel providing a barrier between them. He ran his hands down, over the warm skin of her waist to the curve of her hips and gripped her tightly, his fingers desperate against her hipbones. He pulled her down hard against him and moved her across him, thrusting up slightly to meet her.

She saw him bite his bottom lip, heard him groan in frustration.

"I need you, my beautiful," he murmured, his eyes closed. His voice was ragged and she felt the desire dripping from his words "I need you so much I can hardly even speak, but I don't want us to make love again until we've talked. I want you more than I can express in words, but until we've talked about some of this stuff that's going on between us right now, I don't think we should. I don't think it would be fair on either of us just to fall back into bed."

She sat upright again; the movement of her groin against his making him draw breath. She could see he was barely holding himself together and she was tempted to seduce him, knew that she could convince him to make love to her by moving her hips against him, by reaching behind her and unsnapping her bra, taking his big hands in hers and cupping them over her bare breasts, by leaning forward, letting her hard nipples brush his chest, by running her the tip of her tongue around his ear, by whispering to him seductively, telling him what she wanted to do to him.

She suspected he was possibly right, but she hated his decision. Her body and her mind desperately wanted to make love to him. Somewhere in her heart she knew that they needed to talk more than they needed to have sex. But they really, really needed to have sex, she thought ruefully; she really, really needed to have sex with him. She was imagining the feeling of him filling her, and it made her squirm in anticipation.

"Please Jake, don't do this to me. I want you so much…"

He put his hands around her waist and moved her gently off him, lay her on the bed. He turned onto his side and they lay facing each other.

She moved her hands up to his face, ran her fingers along his cheekbones, her thumbs on his lips. "I've missed your face."

He kissed the pads of her thumbs gently. "Why are you here Rachel? I thought you were going to the beach house. I thought you needed to be alone."

"I've been alone all week, Jake. I've been alone all week, in Chicago, doing a job I hate for a woman that I completely despise, that horrible Madeline Cox…"

He raised his eyebrows,

"… all the time wishing that I hadn't written that letter, worrying about you, worrying about us. And I knew it was your birthday, and I knew I was going to miss it…"

"You were going to see me tomorrow"

"… I know but your birthday's today, well was today, I've pretty much missed it already. I couldn't bear to think of you alone on your birthday. And I just couldn't wait to see you any more Jacob. I couldn't bear to be away from you for a second longer than I needed to."

She buried her face in his chest, and he felt the wetness of her tears on his skin.

"And I forget to bring your present with me, it's still on my bed at home," she sniffed.

"Don't cry beautiful," he whispered into the top of her head. "You're here now." He held her in his arms. "You are the best birthday present I could have possibly hoped for."

They just lay there for a while, luxuriating in the feel of the others body.

"It's so good just to hold you Rachel," he whispered. "So good to feel you again. You must be tired though, and thirsty. Can I get you something? Can I make you some coffee or get you some water or a soda or some wine?"

"You're not drinking wine from the mini bar are you? I've told you before…"

"Ssssh," he put his finger to her lips. "I can spend my money however I like. And I will spend it on wine from the mini bar to share with the woman I love on my birthday if I want to. In fact I think we should clear out the entire thing. We're not going out, so lets have a mini bar party instead."

She laughed, "you are stupid sometimes."

She felt the muscles in his body tense just a fraction. She wondered why.

He stood up, and walked to the fridge, "that's funny. According to your letter, I'm stupid quite a lot of the time."

She studied the back of his dark head as he bent to get a bottle of wine out of the fridge.

"Champagne, chardonnay or merlot," he asked, turning his head to look at her. She saw his face had hardened a little.

She drew breath. Her hands felt shaky. Was this the start………… no, she had to hold it together. He wasn't angry, he just needed to talk to her, that was all. 'Don't overreact Rachel,' she thought.

"Merlot would be nice," she said quietly.

With his back to her, he closed the fridge and took the bottle of red wine and two glasses out of the side cupboard. Opened the wine and poured.

The silence in the room hung heavy between them.

She watched the interplay of the muscles in his back as he moved. He had a beautiful back she thought. She was particularly entranced by the ridged line of muscle, which ran up either side of his spine, and the big muscles that ran across the top of his shoulders.

"I'd love you to get another tattoo one day," she commented, "across the top of your back or a shoulder cap or bicep cuff."

He turned slowly, looked at her, frowning.

"You say the oddest things to me sometimes Rachel, at the oddest times."

He walked over to her and handed her one of the glasses. Put the bottle on the bedside table. Sat down on the bed, next to her.

She ran her other hand across his upper back. "I love your back, you know, you'd look great with a big one right across here."

He narrowed his eyes at her incredulously, "are you making fun of me now. I didn't realise that you hated my tattoos as well."

"As well? As well as who?"

"Oh, never mind, just people." He didn't think it was a great time to start talking about Anna,

"No. I love them Jake. I love that you have something so completely opposite to the you that you present to the world. Something hidden, something that only the people closest to you know about."

He smiled slightly, "I didn't know you felt like that. Most other people don't understand why I have them."

She laughed, "see now, you think you know me don't you, but I don't think you know me at all."

It was his turn to laugh. "No, I don't even pretend to know you to be quite honest. I certainly don't begin to understand you. Believe me Rachel. I don't think I'll ever understand you."

She looked at him playfully, "well I'll help you a little bit. I love driving fast cars…"

He raised his eyebrows and looked about to say something, but changed his mind.

"…and firing my weapon, hitting a perfect score at the shooting range, I love baking, and I love shopping, I love getting dressed up, and I love extreme sports..."

He nodded slowly; he hadn't known that.

"…but most of all I love big, handsome, clever, curly dark haired men with tattoos. I adore your sexy little seahorse, Jake and the yin yang on your hip. I'd love you to get another one day."

She ran her hand down his side to the infinity tattoo, "but I love this one most of all." She leaned over and kissed it, trailed her tongue over the figure 8 pattern.

"Mmmm, Rachel, you're driving me nuts," he murmured.

She moved her hand into his crotch as she kissed his body; felt him still thick and hard under the towel.

He placed his hand over hers and moved it upwards away from his lap.

"No Rachel, I was serious about what I said. I don't think I should have sex with you again until we've sorted some of this mess out. I think we should wait until we get back to the beach house. I still want to go there and spend some time with you, talk, think."

"Mmmm, but you do seem to want to have sex with me though," she said, moving her hand back down and squeezing his thick erection, making him squirm. "You aren't really going to keep me away from this no matter how much you try, you know that don't you. What, are you trying your delayed gratification strategy again?" she winked.

"No sweetheart, it's nothing like that."

"Oh I know, you think that if you tease me with your impressive hard on for long enough, that I'll agree to your terms just so I can get in your pants. You're such an egomaniac sometimes."

He raised his eyebrows sharply, "I hope you're joking."

"Of course I am you silly man. What's the reason then, what possible reason could there be for us not to have sex right now when we both want to so much."

"Rachel, I don't want to have sex with you while I'm thinking that this could be the last time. I want to know that we're forever. If I'm thinking all the while that we may never do this again, I won't…"

"What you won't be able to perform," she laughed.

"Now, this is exactly what I'm talking about Rachel. Why do you have to make jokes and put up this wall when we get close to actually saying something to each other that matters. I don't believe this is really you; this is just an act isn't it? An act you put on to protect yourself from hearing something that might hurt you."

She drew breath. It wasn't like him to speak sharply to her like that. Her face softened, "I'm sorry Jake, that was wrong of me. Tell me your reason and I won't interrupt or make jokes, I'll listen to you."

"Sweetheart, you must understand that I can't, won't, make love to you until we have sorted this mess out. If I do that it will just be sex and I don't ever want it to be just sex with you. I couldn't carry that memory with me. I already have enough bad memories to contend with."

She kissed his face. She knew he was right.

"Just lay with me Jake. Just lay with me and hold me."

He took her wine glass off of her and placed both the glasses on the bedside table next to the bottle of wine. They moved up the bed and lay together, their heads side by side on the pillow. He put his arm around her and she turned, lay with her head on the side of his chest. She bent her leg and moved it up onto his hip, ran her fingers through the hair on his chest.

"Sweetheart, you need to tell me about these bad memories you carry, you know that don't you. I need to understand what you've been through if I'm to understand you."

He sighed, "Rachel, I never wanted to burden you with all this, I wanted our relationship to stand on it's own, without the shadow of what has gone before falling over us."

"It doesn't have to cast a shadow over us Jake, but it did happen and you need to tell me about it. For my sake as much as yours. But how we choose to handle it is up to us. We can let it destroy us or we can use it to make our relationship stronger."

He sighed, was quiet for a few moments. "I guess you're right, but what you have to understand is how very, very awful it was from the beginning. It was an absolutely tragic chain of events Rachel."

He fell silent.

"Tell me Jacob. You know you need to tell me. Talk to me."

Eventually he spoke.

"Well, Maggie had just turned 35 and she decided that she wanted us to have a baby, was concerned that if we didn't start a family soon that it would be too late. Just came to me out of the blue one-day and told me. So she did all the right things, went for a medical check-up, started taking folate and other supplements, stopped drinking, gave up caffeine, everything. And within a month she began feeling nauseous and light-headed and of course, we thought she had fallen pregnant straight away. But when she did a home pregnancy test it was negative, test after test was negative but she kept feeling worse and worse. Eventually she went to the doctor and after they ran more tests they told us about the cancer. It was an aggressive form called Glioblastoma multiforme; they gave her less than 6 months.

You know Rachel, there are just some things in life you have no control over. It was like watching a train wreck in super slow motion. It was as though the cancer had a life of it's own and it didn't matter what we did, that tumour was going to take it's own course.

The parallels between the cancer that we hated and the pregnancy that we wanted, struck me again and again. When a woman falls pregnant, she starts to do things that she believes are going to help the baby, when in actual fact the vast majority of pregnancies will progress perfectly well with no interference whatsoever from the outside world. Once that fertilised egg is implanted into the wall of the uterus, a chain of events is set off which no amount of interference from the outside world is going to disrupt. That fertilised egg is going to develop and grow to a predetermined schedule regardless of what you do, and that baby will be born at the time determined by nature, no matter what.

Well that's exactly what Maggie's cancer was like, progressing to it's own predetermined schedule no matter what we tried. We did manage to keep her alive for 2 years, rather than the 6 months she was originally given but it only slowed the inevitable result, in hindsight we never had a chance of curing it."

He reached over to the bedside table and picked up the wine bottle, topped up their glasses, took a long drink.

He lay down again. This time she reached out her arm and put it around him, he rested his head on her breast. She stroked his hair as he continued speaking.

"Maggie's plan to fight it was just to get healthier, to eat the very best diet, to exercise, to meditate, to think positively, to spend her last months in meditation of her life, enjoying what time she had. But that wasn't enough for me. I was sure there must be something that could be done, so even though she didn't really want to go through it, she suffered through surgery, through experimental drug treatments, chemo, radiation, gene therapy, anything that I could find. And she did it for me because she knew that was the only way that I could cope with her illness. By feeling that I was somehow controlling it. And it seemed like it was working, because she lived past the 6 months that they had given her, and she lived past 12 months and she lived past 18 months.

But then the tumour burst into life again, bigger and more aggressive than before, and this time she had secondary cancers as well. It may have been that the surgery had allowed some cancerous cells to escape into her bloodstream, they couldn't tell us really. But at that point it became clear that she was truly done for. She just got sicker and sicker and nothing we tried was of any help. In the end all we could do was to be with her and try and ease her way.

She'd had quite a good week and the doctors decided that she could go home for the weekend. It was a beautiful sunny autumn day and she and Anna and I were sitting outside in the fresh air, talking and laughing. I could see that she was getting tired and I was going to take her inside, but out of the blue, I had the most profound and overwhelming feeling of grief. I've never felt anything like it Rachel, just sheer overwhelming sadness for having put her through all the pain and suffering that I had. It hit me in the heart, like something I had never felt before. I turned to her and tried to tell her how very, very sorry I was for making her suffer for all these months. For making her suffer through the pain of surgery, and countless tests, and needles, and invasive procedures.

She looked at me with her gentle eyes, and she put her hand on my face and told me quietly, her voice no more than a whisper..."

He rubbed his forehead with his long fingers, she could see he was close to breaking down. His voice cracked, "I remember her exact words because I've gone over these words in my head a thousand times. She touched my face and said to me, 'nothing in my life has ever meant more to me than you have. If everything I went through meant that I could spend just one more day on this earth with you, then it was all worth it. I wanted to win this for you, I wanted to get better for you but I can't do it any more. I've loved you more than life itself."

He shook his head.

"She said my name Rachel. And then she closed her eyes, rested her head back on the cushion. She just closed her eyes and died. Just went. With no warning, no fuss, no nothing. She was just gone."

He was silent for a few moments. She could feel the warmth of his tears running down her breast. She just let him be, let him tell his story without interruption.

"And I will never forget that scene Rachel, not if I live to be 150. And it doesn't matter how much I talk about it, how many times I go over it, how much Anna tries to analyse me, I will simply never forget. So all I can do is learn to live with it. Learn to live with the guilt that I made the woman that I loved suffer for my own selfish need. My own selfish need to not let her go. I'll never forgive myself for that Rachel. Never. In the end it wasn't just that I couldn't save her, that I couldn't protect her. It was that I made her suffer unnecessarily. I wouldn't do that to my dog, yet I did it to my wife."

"Oh Jake, don't do that to yourself…." the lump in her throat was so big she could barely breathe.

"I never wanted to tell you this, I never wanted to burden you with it. But I really need you to understand why I can't lose you as well."

She held his dark head closer to her. There was nothing she could do except hold him.

She felt profoundly guilty, for not understanding the depth of his grief, for demanding he accept her choice of job, for not listening to him before. How could she have been so selfish as to not realise how much he had been through, how much he was still suffering. She understood then what Anna had been trying to say to her. She remembered her saying that the decision that had to be made wouldn't be based on logic, that it would have to come from her heart.

She held him for what seemed like an eternity.

Eventually, she spoke.

"Jake, Anna tried to tell me, but I thought she was threatening me…"

He sighed. "Don't be too hard on Anna, Rachel. She's only trying to protect me. She knew Maggie a lot longer than I did, she was there all through her illness, she was there with me the day she died. You have to understand that we've been through such a lot together over so many years, that we'll always have a deep bond."

He shook his head.

"I really don't know why she told you about high school though, I don't know what she was trying to achieve by doing that."

"Why, isn't it true?"

"Oh it's true, but it's only true because she planned it that way."

"She asked you to take her virginity?"

"We'd been friends for a couple of years, hanging around in the same group. And because she's always been a deep thinking type of girl, she decided that she wanted her first time to be with someone who would respect her afterwards, didn't want to give herself away in a chance encounter fuelled by too much booze and too many hormones."

"And of course, being the incredibly nice boy you were you just had to oblige her I suppose"

He laughed, "listen Rachel, she might have been a sincere and deep thinking 15 year old girl, but I was a 17 year old boy, and I couldn't believe my fucking luck.

Anyhow, we went out for a few months afterwards until we decided, even back then, that the sex was getting in the way of our friendship, and what was most important was that we remained friends. So we broke it off, started seeing other people and we stayed close until we eventually both left for different colleges.

And we've stayed friends ever since. Sometimes we don't see each other for months, even years on end. Sometimes we're closer than others. But believe me when I tell you that as much as I love her as a close friend, I know, and she does too, that we aren't destined to be together. Lord knows we've tried over the years to have proper relationships, but they've never worked."

"She loves you Jacob, do you not realise that."

He sat up, moving up the bed until he was leaning against the headboard. Took a drink of his wine. She moved up and sat next to him.

"I know she loves me Rachel, and I love her, but not in the way that I love you. And it just doesn't work when we're together."

"She told me that if I broke your heart that she would make it work."

"She's just looking out for me Rachel. She knows as well as I do that it's never going to work for us as a couple, no matter how much we might try to make it.

After Maggie, I couldn't face her again. She was with Cooper and I just took the chance to disappear. It was quite strained between us for a long time because I knew she wanted me to talk to her, let her be my grief counsellor. She did take Tanner for me, but our relationship was probably as distant as it's ever been. It wasn't until that case involving the college students in Daytona Beach that I really started talking to her properly again. Maybe that case dragged up too many memories for me of the old days when we were close, maybe it had just got to the point where you were driving me completely insane with desire, I don't know.

Anyhow, I made that date to see her on the phone that you overheard, and I met up with her at Stanford a few days later. And it took a few days of reconnecting before we finally, well, you know, and yes, there were a couple more times over the following months, it wasn't just the once. But one of those nights I told her how I felt about you, and she broke it off with me completely then and there, told me to go and be with you. Said that I owed it to myself and to you, to be honest and to tell you how I felt. It was really her prompting that made me call you that night and meet you at the bar. It was really Anna that got us together."

She was a little taken aback by that. She certainly hadn't known that. "I don't understand how you ended up spending the night with her before you came here though"

"You do know that I would never have sex with another woman now, any other woman, don't you?" He frowned. "I love you Rachel. I would never betray you like that."

"But you spent the night with her didn't you?"

"Well, yes," he shrugged, "but we were both fully dressed. For the whole night. We just talked, we had dinner and we slept. I asked her to stay with me. I just didn't want to be alone. I was a little bit screwed up Rachel. I needed to talk to her."

"And you never thought about having sex with her."

"Well it might have crossed my mind once or twice, but I never would have actually gone through with it."

"Did you kiss her?"

"Not in a passionate way. Just as a friend."

She raised her eyebrows, looked a little sceptical.

"And did she get you hard."

He looked at her incredulously, "surely you're not really asking me that. You're not really asking me that. It's not always something you can control Rachel."

"So she did then."

"Come on, I think you've exhausted this line of questioning don't you?

"I'm only going down this track because she told me that she would have sex with you next time you came to her, she'd have sex with you if I broke your heart again."

He smiled, and shook his head, "I think I'm capable of deciding for myself who I'm going to have sex with. Look, don't ever feel threatened by Anna. She's fiercely protective but she only wants me to be happy, as I want her to be happy. And she knows as well as we both do, that I won't be happy until we've sorted out this job situation. Because no matter how I try Rachel, I just can't cope with the thought of you being a handler for someone else. And I can't cope with the thought of you in a dangerous job without me being by your side."

"Jake, I…"

"I know, I know," he raised his hand, "I know that you can't face a desk job, that you want to stick with field work, whatever form that may take. But I need to know that you're safe. It might not make any sense in here," he touched his head, "but I need to know it in here," he put his hand to his heart.

"In the end, I think what we both want is to keep doing the job that we're doing, together."

"It's funny, because I've been thinking that too," she commented. "In fact I was wondering; if we had to make the choice, what would be more important. Is it more important that we get to see each other every day and be together working, or is it more important for us to be sleeping together. What if we give up our job and then this," she indicated around them, "doesn't work. You realise that we'll end up with nothing don't you."

"You are joking aren't you?" he asked, frowning. "You're not seriously suggesting that we should, that we could, stop being together now. And just work together."

"Well," she shrugged, "it was a thoug…"

He turned to her, held her face in his hands. "I love you Rachel, and I thought you loved me. I could never, ever stop loving you now. How could I possibly work with you every day and not kiss you."

"Thank god." She leaned forward and kissed him full on the mouth. "I was so frightened you were going to say it was a good idea. I couldn't do it either. But what if we can't work out this job thing. I can't bear to lose you Jake. I don't think I could survive."

She kissed him again, desperately, passionately, trying to show him with her mouth what she couldn't articulate with her words.

He pulled back a little as she continued to kiss him, started talking again, "that's the thing though Rachel, I know there's a solution, I've really started to believe that there's a solution. But I can't put my finger on it. It's in my brain, its just here," he indicated to the right of his temple, "but I can't quite grasp it. I can sense it, I can taste it, but I just can't see it."

She stopped kissing him, sat back a little, looked at him, "you think there's a solution, really, do you really Jake or are you just teasing me. Because if I could keep doing my job and you could keep doing yours and we could keep doing them together and we could keep protecting each other like we always have…."

"What do you mean like we always have, you're the one with the gun Rachel," he interrupted.

"Yes, but you're the one with the brain, you've thought us out of many situations that I couldn't shoot us out of, we're a team Jake and neither of us work as well without the other. You saved my life when you got me out of that smallpox centre, you saved my life when I had that arrow in my thigh, don't ever forget that. If you hadn't have found me, found that woman's baby, I'd be dead now without a doubt. And I want you by my side at work and at home."

He raised his eyebrows, "I thought I was annoying."

"Oh will you just get over that. You are annoying sometimes. That's why I love you. So now we need you to work out how the hell we're going to keep doing it, because Frank Fuller didn't seem to me to be likely to let it happen."

He sighed, "I don't know what the answer is Rachel, I just know there is one."

He looked at the clock next to the bed. It read 11.47pm, "maybe we should sleep on it, you must be exhausted. And I'll need to call the airline first thing and organise us both onto the same flight home."

He kissed her lightly, "Listen, I'm going to take a leak and brush my teeth. When I come back we're going to get some sleep." He got out of bed and went to the bathroom.

While he was gone she unzipped her suitcase and got out her toiletries and a red satin nightdress. When he returned, he had ditched the towel and was wearing black trunks. She thought he looked incredibly sexy. Black suited him. Even if it was only on his sexy ass.

She went to the bathroom and got changed, cleaned her teeth, brushed her hair. She looked in the mirror; surely he wasn't really going to refuse to have sex with her. On his birthday. After she had travelled all this way to see him. He looked so gorgeous and she wanted him so much. It all seemed so unfair.

But regardless, she felt hopeful and happier than she had in weeks. She went back into the room and hung her clothes in the closet, plugged her mobile phone into the charger and flicked the do not disturb sign on the hotel room door.

As she busied herself, he lay in the bed, hands behind his head, watching her. She looked so sexy in the red satin, and he was enjoying the view of the silky fabric sliding over her ass as she moved around the room. Jesus, he thought the French lace lingerie was sexy until he saw this. She was making the no sex thing exceedingly difficult.

He didn't understand why she would feel insecure about Anna. Shit, she was the one that made him fucking hard as hell, not Anna. He couldn't help but imagine how it would feel running his hands over her body in that nightgown. He loved her body; it was womanly, curvy, soft. He closed his eyes; he had to stop looking at her.

He felt her climb into bed next to him, and cuddle up into his chest, warm and soft and fragrant. "I'm going to sleep so well tonight Jake. I've missed your arms around me. I love you so much."

He reached over to the bedside table and switched off the room lights. Slipped his arms around her and pulled her into him. The satin felt silky and sensual against his skin. He sighed. 'Don't get distracted Jacob. Don't start thinking about sex again. Concentrate.' he thought to himself.

They lay quietly for a few minutes. Their feet moving slowly, entwining around each other.

Eventually he spoke.

"I'm sorry for what I did to you at the beach house. It was wrong of me. I overreacted to the accident and I treated you badly."

"I treated you badly too. I shouldn't have been so flippant about the car."

"You weren't to know."

"Even so, I didn't really do the right thing when I told you. What happened to it?"

"It's being fixed. Probably take another month or so, but they said they could fix it. We'll see. I shouldn't have done what I did to you though Rachel. I feel bad about that."

"You were quite drunk Jake."

"That's never an excuse though. I should have treated you with more respect."

"It's partly my fault. I should have treated myself with more respect. I shouldn't have let you do it."

She paused.

"The sex was good though. It was really good Jacob. That thing with the fly buttons on your jeans…"

"Ssssh," he said. "Don't remind me. It was still wrong. I shouldn't have tried to manipulate you like that. And I'll give you your keys back."

"It doesn't matter what you say though Jake, the sex was fantastic. It's always fantastic with you. Sometimes all I can think about is having sex with you. That's all I can think about now."

Her words flared through his cock like a bolt of lightening. 'Jesus Rachel,' he thought, 'give me a break.'

He sighed, kissed her hair and the side of her neck, "I love you Rachel. Sleep well my beautiful girl."

After a few moments, she spoke.

"Jake," she whispered, "if we've worked everything out, why can't we have sex now?"

"Because we haven't worked it all out yet, love."

"Are you sure? Because it feels like we have to me"

"Yes I'm sure. Until I can figure out how we're going to work together, it might still all fall apart."

She groaned, "but Jake…."

"No sex. Just pretend we're on assignment."

"But…"

"No buts, now go to sleep."

"You're so mean to me"

"I'm mean? I'm not the one who turned up wearing French lace and stockings…."

"You should, it'd suit you."

"Go to sleep you fucking cheeky girl."

He buried his face in her hair, inhaled her scent. His groin was throbbing and uncomfortable. It was going to be a long night.