This right here is one of my favourite chapters I've ever written =)

Sunscreen by suggestion of Krato!

-:-

After examination of her window, they concluded that somebody had stolen Harry's necklace; there were scuff marks on the windowsill and fingerprints on the glass. Dempsey was all for investigating, but Harry firmly refused on the grounds that they were supposed to be on holiday; so before they left the house the next morning she rang the police. To her annoyance, they replied that they were very busy, and would be round the next day. "We go home tomorrow," she said irritably. "What's the point in turning up when we might not even be here?" The man on the phone stayed calm and politely told her that he was sorry, but there was no other option.

When Harry had put the phone down, she hastened to get ready to go to the beach. The morning had brought bright sunshine which warmed her to her marrow, so she found the sunscreen she had brought for just this occasion. She put it on in the living room, because some unacknowledged part of her wanted an excuse for him to touch her…and she planned to let that happen. Though of course, entirely unintentionally. Well, maybe only partly unintentionally. Harry felt confused by her own feelings. It was as though they were working together in an attempt to humiliate her. She dismissed that thought as foolishness, but she couldn't help but feel that they were going to lead her into trouble.

As she expected, she was rubbing sunscreen into her left arm when Dempsey came into the living room to see if she was ready.

"You missed a bit," he said, running a finger up her back; plenty of it was revealed in the black swimming costume she wore for the beach.

She hesitated only slightly before, in one movement, she turned and pressed the bottle into his hand.

Dempsey span her around without a word and squeezed some sunscreen lotion into his hand. There was an agonising pause which felt like hours but could only have been seconds, and then the cold lotion, followed immediately by his fingertips, touched her back. Both made her shiver, for different reasons. His fingers travelled slowly up her back to the top of her neck, by which time there was no sunscreen left on his fingertips and the movement finished as a caress.

Harry was beginning to regret her provocation because she wasn't sure how long she could stand and let him touch her without something happening that she would later regret. Something that she would have started.

And all the time, his fingers travelled slowly across her skin as though he was mapping an undiscovered territory; almost - dare she imagine? - as though he wanted to remember it.

-:-

Harry was carrying a large beach towel and a book, the corners of which kept catching in the sea-coloured, translucent sarong she wore over her black swimming costume. Dempsey had given a long, low whistle when he saw her that morning, which had made her smile shyly. Harry loved it when he complimented her, though she would never have admitted it. Dempsey was wearing a pair of dark blue shorts and a red polo shirt, and Harry thought that it was strange to see him out of a suit. She was quite certain, however, that his gun was jammed somewhere in the waistband of his shorts.

By unspoken consent, they settled themselves in a quiet spot on the beach not too far from the sea. Propped up on his elbows, Dempsey lay back and looked around at the people on the beach while Harry sat up and opened her book. After about five minutes of this, Dempsey felt compelled to break the silence.

"Are you gonna do that all day?"

"Do what all day?" she asked without looking up.

"Just sit there doin' nothin'."

"I'm not doing nothing, I'm reading a book and relaxing."

"Well it's very annoying!" he snapped.

There was such a bite to his words that Harry put her book on the towel and asked: "What do you want to do, then?"

"You know what I want to do, Harry," he replied with a wicked grin.

"I'm not sure that's legal on a beach," she replied coolly. "It's a public place."

Feigning a look of shocked innocence, Dempsey said: "I don't know what you're thinkin' of, Lady Harriet, I was just gonna suggest goin' down to the sea."

He looked so funny that Harry couldn't help but laugh.

"You got a filthy mind," he told her, poking her in the side which made her flinch away. An evil smile took over his face and he pretended to poke her a few more times; though he never touched her, Harry still (to her annoyance and embarrassment) could not stop herself from recoiling away. "Come on, let's go to the sea," Dempsey urged, leaping up and grabbing Harry by the hand to drag her with him.

Caught off guard, Harry stumbled after him, laughing. "You're crazy!" she cried when she had recovered her balance. The only reply she received was a grin. Still holding hands, they sprinted towards the ocean, the wind blowing into their faces and lifting Harry's hair away from her face. They ran like their lives depended on it, chuckling giddily with the little breath they had spare.

When they reached the ocean they kept running, kicking up an almighty splash in the shallow water. Dempsey stopped running and released her hand in order to bend down and spray her with water, and soon they had fallen into a wild water fight. They splattered each other without mercy, and soon a group of children joined them in filling the air with white spray and hilarious laughter.

Dempsey paused in soaking a small boy with shocking red hair to sneak a look at Harry. She was being pushed into the water by a pair of girls who looked like sisters, and all of them were shrieking with laughter. Never had he seen her lose her inhibitions so completely. She looked beautiful. She looked free; free from the usual constraints she set upon herself.

The moment was broken when the red-headed boy leapt onto his back in an attempt to unbalance him, and he was forced to turn his attention to not falling over.

Eventually, they managed to extricate themselves from the chaos they had caused. Though they were soaked from head to foot, their smiles never left their faces as they sauntered back to their place on the sand.

"Well, James, that was certainly an interesting experience," she said, a smile in her voice as well as shining in her eyes.

Dempsey flopped down on the blanket next to her. "Sure was."

"Don't drip on my book," she said, pushing him over and away from the book. To Dempsey's frustration, Harry dried her hands awkwardly on the beach towel, picked up the book and turned her body half away from him to start reading again. She was unaware of his gaze as he appraised her body, shown off through the sarong which had become clingy and almost transparent because of its soaking. There was a droplet of seawater sitting on her bare shoulder, which was slightly pink. That morning, she had let him touch that shoulder. Had there been a point to that sentence? If there had, he'd forgotten it. All he could think was, She let me touch her. And now he wanted nothing more than to trace the shape of her shoulder with his fingers, press his lips to her burning skin…

He needed to distract himself. "Wanna get an ice cream?"

-:-

Dempsey soon realised that he hadn't picked the best diversion technique. He was captivated by the way Harry was eating her fudge ice cream. He was so distracted that he barely noticed when his own ice cream began dripping over his fingers, falling onto the floor of the promenade on which they had chosen to eat because it had the best view of the sand and the sea. Harry had been looking out over the ocean, but when she turned to say something she realised he was staring. Knowing full well why, Harry held his gaze as she took another lick of her ice cream. She placed a hand on his shoulder to pull him down to her level, and paused a moment with her lips next to his ear. The position was intimate and took Dempsey's breath away.

Then she whispered sharply: "Stop staring, you pervert."

Dempsey leapt back as though she had administered an electric shock, but when he saw the mischievous way she was looking at him over the top of the cone, he knew she couldn't be serious. Or if she was, she was incapable of not flirting with him.

Which made it all the more frustrating that, had he tried flirting with her, she'd have shot him gently through the heart. Hmm. What was a guy to do?

-:-

That evening, Harry sat close to Dempsey on the sofa. He'd had his arm around her for half an hour or more now, and Harry was loathe to move.

They both jumped as a harsh ringing sound filled the air, and Dempsey cursed under his breath. "That'll be your lover-boy," he muttered darkly.

Harry cuffed him lightly on the back of the head as she got up, and he watched her walk over to the phone with a frown forming between his eyes.

"Hello?…Oh, hello Jack…I don't sound surprised!…Yes, I remember you said you'd call…" She looked around to smile at Dempsey - who avoided her gaze - as she said: "Yes, we're having a wonderful time…We went to the beach…Yes…So how are Sam and Sam?…Mm-hm…Right…I'll see you tomorrow, then…About half-past eight, probably, sometime in the evening, anyway…Yes…Thank you…I will…Bye."

"That was Jack," Harry said as she returned to the living room.

Dempsey tried to pretend he hadn't been listening to her conversation. "Oh, right. What'd he say?"

"Am I having a nice time, what have we been doing. That sort of thing." She settled herself next to him on the sofa again, a little further away. Somehow it didn't feel right to be too close to him, now that she'd been reminded of Jack.

"Nice." Silence, just a touch awkward, fell over them. "Well, I guess I'm off to bed. See you t'morrow, Harry."

"Goodnight," she replied, but decided to remain up a little longer. She thought of the phone call she had received from Jack. He'd called exactly when he had promised, had said all the right things, and put the phone down when she had implied an end to the conversation. Dempsey would have forgotten to call, insult her when he did, and refuse to put the phone down until she was forced to be rude. But Jack, he was reliable, dependable.

She imagined Jack being there with her now, walking into the room, sitting down beside her. He'd wrap an arm around her waist and smile, and he'd say, "I've missed you, Harry." Harry smiled. She liked thinking of Jack.

So why, she wondered with a jolt, had he called her Harry, not Harriet?

And why did he have an American accent?