**
Lucas woke the next morning to find the bed empty and Jo nowhere to be seen. After dressing he wandering into the kitchen to see a note left on the counter. "Ros needed me in early. Help yourself to breakfast & lock the door before you go please. Jo."
After following Jo's instructions Lucas arrived at the office a little after 8. Only Malcom appeared to be on the Grid.
"Where are the others?" asked Lucas.
"Heathrow, scanning for an Al Queda suspect the Americans are after."
"Anything interesting?" asked Lucas.
"Nothing out of the ordinary," replied Malcolm, disinterested.
Lucas spent the morning researching a British citizen suspected of being associated with the Russian mafia that Harry had asked him to look into.
Ros and Jo returned to the office just after 10, and Ros immediately called for a team briefing session in the meeting room.
During the briefing Jo studiously managed to avoid making any eye contact with Lucas throughout the entire hour, and her cheeks took on a distinctly rosy flush whenever he looked at her.
She had trouble concentrating during the session, being far too preoccupied with the question of whether she had completely taken leave of her senses last night and what on earth she should say to Lucas now.
Ros finished the session by directing her gaze at Lucas and asking, "MI5 not meeting your monetary expectations then?.
Lucas looked puzzled, "Why do you say that?"
"That's the exact same getup you had on yesterday. Can't you afford more than one outfit?"
Fortunately no one was looking at Jo to see her mortified expression.
Lucas replied smoothly, "Well, you know – eight years in a Russian Prison Camp does tend to teach you how to economise, amongst other things."
"Spending your pennies on wine, women and song no doubt, " Ros quipped.
"Something like that," Lucas replied nonchalatently.
Jo quickly exited the room, Ros and Lucas's conversation having further discomforted her already fragile sense of composure.
When Lucas reentered the Grid he strolled up to stand silently in front of Jo's desk, and waited for her to acknowledge him. After busying herself with her files as her cheeks became pinker by the minute, she eventually looked up at him. "Yes?".
"Can I see you outside?" Lucas asked casually.
Jo looked extremely unenthusiastic about the idea but reluctantly followed him outside a short while later.
Once outside she leaned against the balcony, her eyes focused on the city beneath them and waited for him to speak.
"About last night Jo – I don't want things to be awkward between us. Last night was something special and I wouldn't want it to spoil things between us," he said touching her arm.
She shook her head, saying shortly, "It won't," while wishing that he wouldn't stand so close to her. It was all extremely unsettling.
"I'm glad to hear it," said Lucas, smiling. "Now I'd best get back the Grid, I expect Ros clocks every minute I'm not at my station."
Jo nodded and followed him back shortly afterwards.
By the end of the day, however, it was clear to Lucas that their little talk had had no effect whatsoever on Jo. She continued to avoid him if at all possible and the few times they had come into contact she seemed to display the symptoms of something similar to stagefright – becoming suddenly silent and awkward.
This strange behavior continued the next day. That afternoon, Lucas walked up to Jo as she was busy reviewing some footage on her computer. "Do you fancy going out to dinner tonight?" he asked bluntly, settling himself on her desk.
She looked up at him, startled by his question, "Oh – well Ros wants me to keep going on a few leads so I expect I'll need to be here late."
He was about to ask her about her plans for tomorrow evening when Malcolm suddenly appeared at the entrance to the meeting room and signaled urgently to Lucas, "Lucas we need you here asap."
"Right," said Lucas, pausing to deliver his most charming smile to Jo, before striding off towards the meeting room. At her desk Jo was pondering over how unpredictable Lucas could be at times and how she didn't really know him at all.
On the third day Lucas found out from Harry that MI6 had asked for him to be temporarily seconded to help out with a Russian case from the London end.
Jo didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved to find that Lucas had disappeared from the office on a temporary basis.
**
Lucas arrived back at Thames House early on a clear spring day to find the team busily occupied at their desks, following up leads on a suspected Muslim terror cell.
Jo looked up to see Lucas enter the room, and appeared visibly startled by his reappearance.
"Oh, you're back, we didn't expect you so soon."
"Guess it's your lucky day then," he replied, thinking as he said so that while he was away he'd forgotten how lovely she was.
Jo nodded in response to his comment, but based on her expression Lucas deducted she clearly thought it was anything but her lucky day.
For the next three days Jo again avoided Lucas wherever possible. She appeared to have gotten over her earlier bout of stagefright and no longer halted conversations when he appeared but did her very best to avoid being left alone with him.
On the fourth day Ros ordered Lucas to conduct a surveillance operation outside a mosque where a suspect from the terror cell was believed to be preaching extremist teachings. "Jo, I want you to go too," Ros added after giving Lucas his brief.
**
The operation inside the surveillance van started uneventfully and was conducted in almost complete silence.
After an hour, Lucas lifted his eyes from the footage, then moved towards the rear of the van to pour himself a coffee from the flask he'd brought with him. "Want one?" he gestured to Jo.
Jo shook her head. "No thanks, I'm fine."
Lucas paused and looked at her for a while. "Are you – are you really?"
The truth was that over the past couple of days she had found herself increasingly preoccupied with thoughts of her former colleagues. Fiona, Colin, Zaf, Ben and Adam had all been on her mind. She thought of their suffering and their too short lives, the families left behind to grieve for them without even understanding why they had been sacrificed.
She wondered gloomily what the average life expectancy of an MI5 officer was really – two, three years? It didn't seem possible that it could be much more than that. Every time she looked at Lucas she couldn't help but wonder how much longer he would be with them. She wondered too how long she could expect her own luck to last. Not long going by the track record of her office was the only reply she could think of.
Jo looked slightly taken aback by Lucas's comment, and after a while nodded, "Yes, I'm fine."
"That's interesting," said Lucas thoughtfully, before continuing, "because you don't seem fine to me. Ever since that night at The George you've done your best to ignore me - to pretend I don't even exist."
"You might even call your behavior a little rude," he added.
Jo looked thoroughly flustered by his comment and said quickly, "I didn't mean to be rude – it's just that, well, things have changed between us, and I – I just want things to be how they were before but they can't."
"I don't see why they can't," said Lucas, smiling at her encouragingly , "We were friends before – I don't see why we shouldn't be friends now."
"It's not that simple," said Jo quietly.
"I don't see why it shouldn't be – let's make it simple."
"We can't – it's too late," replied Jo unhappily, her voice unsteady.
"It's never too late," he replied, hoping to cheer her out of her gloomy state of mind.
She didn't reply, just shook her head, her eyes fixed on the floor.
Lucas looked at her more closely and wondered whether he had done something else to upset her or whether her fragile disposition was just a symptom of her troubles over these last few months.
"I know that I'm not your favourite person right now, but I'd like to think we could still be friends. What's the matter?" he asked sympathetically.
"I don't even know where to start," she said - a note of despair in her voice.
He walked over to stand opposite her, "How about at the beginning," he replied gently, as he stroked her hair.
"You know the beginning as well as I do," she said, refusing to meet his eyes, "it's the ending that concerns me."
Lucas looked at her, puzzled, "I don't understand you."
Jo inadvertently stepped back from him to prepare herself for the outburst she was anticipating as she took in a breath to work up the courage to cut to the final conclusion of the last few weeks.
"Lucas, I think that - I mean I don't know but it's that I think its possible that -"
"What?" he asked, growing impatient.
"I'm late," she said reluctantly, then added quietly, "and I'm never late."