Disclaimer: All rights belong to Tony Grounds and the BBC.

He knew he should say something, or at least tell Kinders to say something. She was breaking regulations leaving her hair tumbling loose around her face like that instead of tying it off her neck, but she looked so cute in the tinsel coronet she was wearing that he didn't want to spoil the view and it was Christmas after all.

What was it about her that made him feel like a tongue-tied fifteen year old faced with his first ever crush? When he was out on patrol or carrying out any stuff that was required of him either with his own lot or the ANA, he was fine. Focussed and in full control of his own, and everyone else's, behaviour and actions, the ultimate professional army officer, but when work was over it was a different matter.

Physically, she hit every mark as far as he was concerned. Tiny and slender, her body was well toned with a flat stomach, beautiful legs and surprisingly full breasts for someone so small. All of this, together with a very pretty face, a waterfall of long brown hair and a pair of huge, expressive green/grey eyes meant that when the down time came he was in deep trouble. Oh he was sure he had managed to hide it well, not least from her, but watching her clown around with Fingers and then share a hymn sheet with him during the short service had made the envy he felt when she was with one of the lads bite very hard. He knew that there was nothing going on between Molly and any of the lads, she treated them all as extra brothers, and she never, ever flirted, but he couldn't help but be surprised that he appeared to be the only one that found her overwhelmingly attractive. He was in so deep that his enjoyment of Christmas swung from one extreme to the other depending on how she was feeling. He was happy when she was teasing him as their waiter, then envious again when she and some of the others got into an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. What the hell was so funny? and very anxious about her when she said that she didn't want to call home. He was sure that there was some problem at home, probably with her father. She never mentioned him, only her mother, her grandmother, who she seemed to be close to, and her siblings and yet he knew from her personal file that her father was still listed as her NoK., along with her mother at their home address. His happiness escalated again when he sat with her enjoying her happily infectious laughter as she blatantly cheated at the football tournament . This was his fourth Christmas in a row in Afghan, and apart from missing Sam dreadfully, this was by far the happiest time he had spent. The misery of jealousy returned later in the evening when she was dancing with Fingers, he so wanted to scoop her up and kiss her until she was breathless ….. Oh for fuck's sake, he was her boss!

Every emotion he was experiencing was against regulations! If anyone had been able to read minds he would have been in deep shit, so he had begun to wonder who'd decided on these bloody regulations. Who the hell had decided that it was realistic to put a mixed bunch of young, fit soldiers away from home in a boiling pot of tension and intense fear, mixed with periods of intense boredom, and then say you can't develop feelings for each other? And if you do, you can't express those feelings or act on them in any way. Oh he knew all the reasons for the rules and had never questioned them before, but now they struck him as madness!

He told himself that it was purely physical, that they didn't have anything in common. He couldn't see her at formal dinners or at poetry readings, although to be fair he didn 't do those himself any more, but he had enjoyed them once upon a time. He told himself that it was because she was a lone female in his totally male world, that it was because he hadn't really had any female company in his life since he had split from Rebecca, that he was lonely and that a couple of one night stands and a short term physical relationship which had ended when he was deployed, did not count as a love life, so he was frustrated! He could tell himself anything he liked, it didn't make a blind bit of difference because one of the biggest problems he had was that he liked her so much, she made him laugh more than anyone else had in a long, long time. Life had been so much easier at the beginning when he had been so thoroughly misjudging her.

She was at it again! Frightening the life out him by wandering off to chat to the kid she had got fond of. How many more times was he going to have to tell her not to get so involved with the locals, not to put herself in danger and not to answer him back when he was reminding her of standing orders? When he caught up with her he'd wanted to behave like some parent whose kid had got lost, he wanted to hug her and kiss her with relief, and then slap her for worrying him, so he shouted at her. But he didn't want to slap her, he wanted to kiss her, then kiss her some more, he definitely wasn't her parent, and she definitely wasn't a child, she was one of his squaddies and he had a duty of care and this was killing him. He was her boss for fuck's sake.

…..

Smurf's return from sick leave bought a whole new set of worries. He had welcomed him back with a warning about his future conduct, pointing out what he owed her and trying to make it plain that he wouldn't tolerate any more of the shit Smurf had handed out to her just before he got shot. His big worry was that Smurf tended to hero worship him and because of that he watched him all the time. That, coupled with the fact that he was more perceptive than the others, meant that he would almost certainly notice that his eyes were on a bit of string where she was concerned. He would have to be very, very careful.

She was chatting and laughing with Smurf while he made her a cuppa provoking the usual bite of jealousy, except that it was a little bit different this time. He could have sworn she was watching him work out in the makeshift gym, staring at him in fact. Hell, that was wishful thinking if anything was, he was her boss for fuck's sake.

They made routine patrols over the next few days and he made a superhuman effort to control his need to watch her all the time. He told himself that this was a crush that would pass, that all he had to do was to try and see her as one of the lads, to laugh and joke and take the piss and eventually he would weather the storm she was creating in him. He would follow army regulations to the letter and it would all sort itself out. He actually felt that it was beginning to work for him until he woke up at stupid o'clock in the throes of an 'X-rated' dream and desperately needing a cold shower, for all the world as though he was back to being sixteen.

Authors notes: Have focussed purely on his thoughts and feelings rather than diary the day to day events and have tried to use some of the same words and phrases as in Dear Diary to tie their thoughts together, to show that they had lots of the things that matter in common. Please review, I would love to know what you think before I carry on with this. Any suggestions would be very welcome.