Harry was slightly late into work that morning. He'd been up most of the night worrying so he had ended up oversleeping. As he walked onto the grid he saw Ruth on the phone, clearly a work related call. She threw him a slight smile and he felt his heart skip as her eyes sparkled a gorgeous blue at him too. God, he couldn't resist that look from her. He was thrown back to the look on her face last night when she… Harry shook his head trying to clear the image and got to work.

Later that day the same scenario came around again. Ruth and Harry alone on the grid as everyone else went home. She knocked on the door once and went in slowly, closing the door behind her. She stayed near the door, feeling safer if she were near an exit. Harry stood up the second she came into the room and she felt the air get very thin. He always did this, make her head swim like this. Make it impossible to think clearly.

"Oh God Harry," she whispered. Suddenly what she came in here to say had vanished through the door. He lifted a hand and traced one finger along her hair line painfully slowly. His finger moved down to the crows feet he made her forget even existed, his touch travelled over her cheek, down her neck and across the neckline of the skin her blouse revealed, tantalisingly slowly. In the moments it took for his eyes to raise and capture her own she knew she was going to give in. She closed the gap and kissed him for all she was worth.

Ruth found herself slipping to the floor, still wearing her bra but not much else. She found her knickers and pulled them on quickly getting dressed again. Once her shirt was buttoned up she looked at Harry who was studying her with a strange look on his face. "What is it?" he asked.

"I can't keep doing this Harry," she said, shaking her head sadly. "I can't keep this affair going."

"Its been months," he said standing up and facing her.

"I know," she said. "I just can't do it anymore, that's what I came in here to say."

"You had no problem sleeping with me once more for good measure though did you?" Harry asked, surprised this was coming from her now.

"Harry, we're both married, this is wrong," she said slowly. "I can't keep cheating on my husband. You've got two children and a wife, I can't keep doing it."

"You're not in love with him," Harry said accurately. They'd never discussed their respective partners in much detail before.

"I stood in a church and vowed to spend the rest of my life with him," Ruth said sadly. "And five years later I'm carrying on an ongoing affair behind his back and he has no idea how badly I'm betraying him."

"But you don't love him," Harry reiterated in a soft voice she adored to hear.

"Of course I don't," she replied, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. "I'm in love with you." Neither of them had ever said that before. "I can't deal with the guilt anymore."

"Ruth, you are an amazing woman. I don't want this to end. Between us, I don't know how I'd bear it."

"Go home to your wife," Ruth said. "I need you to leave me alone."

"Oh God Ruth," he said in a harsh whisper, one hand cradling her face. "Do you really want me to leave you alone?"

"Want? No, I don't. But I do need you to do it, because I want to fix my marriage without guilt of our illicit relationship drowning me."

"Do you really want to fix your marriage?" Harry asked, a lot of meaning behind that. "I love you Ruth. If you asked me to, I'd leave Jane for you."

"No, I'm not asking that, and I would never ask that. If we both did leave them, do you think our relationship would work?" Ruth asked. "Its secrecy and sex, that's the high. Its an illusion Harry. We would never work."

"I don't believe that," he said.

"How many affairs have you had?" Ruth asked bluntly as she picked her skirt up and buttoned it. "I don't care, just be honest."

"At least a dozen," he admitted.

"And you still think we'd work away from the hiding and the sordid secrecy?" she asked.

"I've never once offered to leave my wife for any other woman," he said honestly.

"Maybe that's true, but I can't do it Harry." She leaned across him and kissed his cheek. "From now on we're colleagues, nothing more okay?"

"If its what you want, then yes." Ruth nodded and left his office, sliding the door quietly shut behind her.

Sitting in her car a mile from home she kept wiping her face to try and dry the tears which she couldn't stop shedding. Eventually she calmed down enough to pick up her phone and called Simon. "Hi," she said in a voice approaching normal as much as possible.

"Are you alright?"

"Yes," she said. "Stopped some bombs at work today, I'm just a little stressed that's all. I'll be home in about twenty minutes."

"Okay, thanks for calling," he said with such sincerity that it made another tidal wave of guilt swamp her.

"I'll see you soon."

"Bye love." Ruth disconnected the call before dissolving into another fit of tears.

"Oh God Harry, why do you do this to me?"

Following its own little storyline this one.