A/N: Once again I'm getting ready to go away and cleaning up my to-do list. I'd like to have the chapter that follows this up before I leave simply for continuity purposes, but we'll see.

Guest reviewers, friends, everyone who takes the time to read and to share your thoughts with me: thank you doesn't begin to cover it. Your words of encouragement are precious to me and I treasure every one!

Lyrics at the close are from "Traveling" by Tennis.

xx,
~ejb~


She looks at their hands, thinking. "It isn't that I've only just been struck by the realisation that I'm in love with you. I've known it for some time now. I knew it at the pub." She squeezes his hands, meeting his eyes for a brief instant before looking away. "I've been in exactly one relationship in all of my life. And Reg and I never dated; at least, not in any conventional sense. What I'm saying is that I've no idea how to do this, Richard! Suppose … Well, suppose I'm awful at it?"

He has to bite the inside of his cheek - it would not do to laugh at her at such a moment as this. And it's not that he finds her concern amusing. It's only that with all that she's been through, this is what she's worried about: that, for all intents and purposes, she doesn't know how to be a girlfriend.


"Isobel," he says gently, "I'm no better suited to this than you are. We've done alright so far, haven't we?"

She chuckles. "Are you saying we get on well enough?" she teases, harkening back to their conversation in the pub.

"I am, rather." He grins. "Come here," he tells her in a half-whisper, the sound making her stomach tighten delightfully. She slides forward in the chair and his arms come around her waist and he gazes into her eyes. His breath is warm on her cheek and her own breath catches. Her eyelids flutter closed as his lips brush hers. Cradling his face in her hands (oh, God, she can touch him now!), she leans back and he follows, resting his weight on his elbows over her as she returns his kiss.

It has been a long time, such a very long time indeed, since she has done this: kissing simply for kissing's sake. He's brilliant at it, she decides. It likely doesn't say much for her as a feminist, but the feel and the taste and the shape of his mouth; the warmth of his body; the knowledge that he wants to be doing this with her all have her thinking one thought: LOVE. I love him. I love him! It is far from a fresh revelation; it's only that she has not, prior to today, allowed herself to quantify it with words, to speak it into existence. Because love, in her experience, leads to loss.

She gasps at the thought, and he pulls back to watch her. The sensation of the tips of his fingers running over the contours of her cheekbones breaks through her musings.

"I'm frightened," she tells him, feeling the burden begin to lift as she gives it a name. "I don't know how to kiss you without loving you, or to let you hold me without giving my heart into your hands." Speaking of her heart, it is pounding as she makes this admission. "I can't love you only a little bit, Richard, or keep parts of myself back from you."

He kisses her quiet. "Isobel, I know," he tells her as their lips part. "Do you reckon you'll frighten me off, love? Do you know why there hasn't been anyone since we've known one another?"

Shaking her head, she draws an anticipatory breath as she waits for him to continue.

"There were a few over the years who showed an interest, but I couldn't reciprocate. I had no way of knowing whether you'd ever be willing to risk it, but if friends were all we'd ever been it would still have afforded me the chance to love you from afar. It's never escaped my notice that there's fire inside you, darling. And far from putting me off you, it's what draws me in. I don't want you to hold back, alright?" He runs his fingers through her hair, soothing her, and she closes her eyes against the sensation.

"You make me feel things I've not felt since I was a girl, Richard. I'm not at all sure what will happen to me, to us, and I'm used to being sure! I know how to be a wife, and I know how to be a doctor." She pauses, casting her eyes towards the floor. "And I know how to be alone. But I don't know how to do … this!" She gestures to indicate herself and him and this newfound thing between them.

"Neither do I, sweet girl," he says gently, drawing her into an embrace. "I've no better an idea than you do. Shall we figure it out together then? Hmmm? Shall we give it a go?"

Looking up at him, into those eyes she's had to will herself not to get lost in from the first time they met, she nods. "I can't lie to myself - or to you - any longer and pretend that I don't feel what I feel. You know me so well that you had to have known, Richard. Didn't you?"

"I did," he confesses with a twinkle in his eyes. "You've a lousy poker face, darling."

She giggles. "You don't know the half of it." Pausing, she thinks about his admission that he knew of her feelings for him before she did. "But you waited without any guarantee …" she continues, astonished. "... I mean, that had to have been terribly frustrating."

He shrugs. "I haven't lived this long to settle. You were worth the wait."

She smiles prettily. "My God, listen to you! I reckon you'll change your tune after our first row."

"Isobel, we had our first row within a week of meeting one another. The shine's off, darling, no offence. You're not going to talk me out of loving you, alright? You might as well stop trying. Now let's go and find you a sofa, shall we?"

For the first time ever, she finds herself not wanting to leave her flat. She'll have to overcome it straightaway, but she would hole up with him here and cling to this moment forever if at all it were practical.

oOo

"Oh, I do like your car," she says as he helps her into his white Range Rover. She tells him she thinks it may be time to consider letting go of her old Lexus IS for one of these. He thinks that between them they'll only need the one car anyhow and she shouldn't trouble herself about it. But he doesn't tell her that, not yet. Their relationship is only just an hour old, after all.

She reaches tentatively for his hand as he drives and sighs with relief and contentment when he squeezes her own hand as their fingers wrap together. It's such a little thing, but when one has spent as many years as she has missing (and craving) those tiny affirmations that she is part of something - an us - the little things are positively monumental in their importance.

The furniture shop he takes her to is one whose chief clientele are interior designers - those who know exactly what they're looking for. As such the two of them are left to their devices and, rather like Goldilocks, they try out one sofa after another. She barely contains a fit of giggles when he sits down on one and abruptly pops back up because a spring pokes him in the arse. She sees one she likes the looks of, but the seat proves to be so deep and so plush that when she tries to stand up her feet don't reach the floor. At this he does laugh, so that when he offers her a hand up she pulls him down with her in retribution.

After half a dozen tries she finds the one: a two-seater sofa with a corner chaise in soft grey leather. The list price is £1500.

"This is it," she tells him. "The proportions are perfect, don't you think?" She tries the chaise and discovers that it reclines. "Alright, that's it," she sighs, envisioning many restful nights. "I'm sold." And then, "Richard, come here." She pats the space next to her.

"Isobel, what are you? —"

"Well, we've got to see if it fits the both of us, haven't we?"

He loves her. They have been together for four hours and she is buying furniture with the two of them in mind. That's my girl, he thinks. Now just mind you don't go second-guessing yourself. Before she has the chance to change her mind he sits down next to her, stretching out his legs, his thigh brushing against hers. Her eyes meet his and both of their cheeks flush pink. She elbows him and they giggle. There is a look in his eyes that says, 'I would kiss you if we weren't in this damned store,' and she just manages to cover her mouth so that her gasp is inaudible to all but him.

He locates the owner of the shop, an acquaintance of his, and the two men turn the sofa over so that he can inspect the frame. "It's solid beech," he tells Isobel. "Nicely built, but it ought to have a fifth leg there in the centre for support. And the feet want replacing as they're glued onto the frame." To the proprietor he says, "You and I both know that's not a £1500 piece. We'll take it for £1250 inclusive of delivery. We're home all day; how soon can it be arranged?"

She watches the exchange, thoroughly impressed. She hadn't figured him for a take-no-prisoners sort. She suspects there's a great deal about him that resides below the surface. The notion of getting to know the man behind the doctor is thrilling in a way that, not for the first time, makes her heart beat faster.

oOo

They walk away with her sofa done and dusted to the tune of £1150 inclusive, Richard having talked his friend down another hundred quid because Isobel paid cash in full. Delivery is set for four o'clock this afternoon. When he opens the car door for her she gives in to the urge and pulls him to her, kissing him thoroughly. He responds in kind, tracing the outline of her lips with his index finger when they part.

"What was that for?" he asks, a delighted grin quirking at the corner of his mouth.

"Because I can," she delivers, looking him straight in the eye. What has come over me? she wonders.

What has come over her? he marvels. She smiles; she laughs heartily. She flirts with him, and does it boldly. Part of him always knew it was in her somewhere: joy. Repressed, perhaps; buried beneath grief she'd never quite known how to shake. Now that she has finally tapped into it, she takes his breath away.

She spies him looking at her. "Penny for them," she says, catching his chin between her thumb and forefinger.

"You're beautiful," he answers. "It's nothing new, just … I can say it to you now."

It flaws her to hear him say the words, less because she doesn't think it's possible that such a descriptor could be applied to her than because he does. "Flatterer," she whispers, her cheeks colouring.

"Beauty," he counters, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "My beauty."

In the car on the ride back to Notting Hill she gets him to tell her how he got into building furniture and how he knows so much about it. His grandfather was a woodworker with whom Richard spent summers at his cottage in Luss, on the shores of Loch Lomond. He describes the man as "a real native son" and "quiet until he wasn't," and says that as a lad he was fascinated by watching him turn pieces on his lathe and carve fine details by hand. In order to get into the mind of the man he idolised, Richard took up knife and chisel and worked alongside him, until his skills became sufficiently honed that the two began building pieces together, many of which were then sold in area shops. Young Richard was chuffed to have earned money by his own hand, but his grandfather denied him the right to spend it. Instead both shares of their combined profits went into a trust fund that eventually paid Richard's undergraduate tuition fees at Edinburgh.

"But where do you work now?" she asks. "Surely there isn't sufficient space at your flat."

"I've rented shop space from some mates from the woodworkers' guild," he tells her.

"Will you show me sometime?" She regularly witnesses the precision and focus with which he treats newborn babies and thinks it would be thrilling to watch him work avocationally.

"What say you come with me next weekend?" he offers. "I'll be finishing up your coffee table."

"So long as I won't be in the way," she says. He may not know it, but she does: one day, no matter how smoothly their relationship progresses, he'll want to put some distance between himself and her from time to time. Curse her practical mind for thinking that now!

As if reading her thoughts (his ability to do this really shouldn't surprise her any longer, but it does), he enfolds her hand in his own. "When I need breathing room, I'll tell you, alright?"

He takes her through parts of the city she's never seen before and she wonders whether it's prettier than she realised, or if perhaps she's experiencing a bit of la vie en rose because she is in love. It's strange, she muses. The sky is the same one she's been looking at for nearly sixty years, but today it looks so much bluer - so blue, in fact, that it rivals Richard's eyes. He stops off to grab coffee at Costa and she notices that the same blend she's been drinking for ten years now tastes fuller and richer than it ever has done. It really is quite silly; nothing is different. The sun rose this morning just as it has done for eons. The robins who've built their nest in the eaves above her balcony sang the good-day song they always sing. She is still Isobel Turnbull Crawley; daughter of John and Fiona, sister to Edward, mother of Matthew. Widow of Reginald. Chief of Obstetrics at St. Mary's Hospital.

But everything has changed.

"You've gone awfully quiet," he remarks, glancing at her.

"Hmm?" she says. "Oh, sorry, love." My, my, but how easily that trips off the tongue! "Just wool-gathering." She slides over toward him as much as the console will allow and lays her head on his shoulder.

"Happy thoughts, I hope?" he asks as his thumb smooths over the back of her hand.

"So very happy," she affirms. "Though if I'm honest I'm trying not to get ahead of myself. As I was saying before, I don't know how this works. I've never been just a little bit in love or had a casual anything, so I suppose I'm already looking at certain things I do and thinking, I'll be able to do that with Richard now, when in fact I have no indication that that's what you'll want."

I'm not the only one keen to jump the queue then, he thinks with a grin as he pulls into the car park. He shuts off the engine and puts his hands on her shoulders. "We're a right pair, you and I," he tells her. "Do you know that? Do you know that this morning I almost said - when you mentioned exchanging your car - that there wasn't any sense in it because we'll only need one car between the two of us. And I stopped myself for fear of it being too soon!"

"Did you?" she asks, and he nods. She laughs, then kisses the end of his nose and laughs again. Hand in hand they walk to her door. "You'll come up, won't you? Let me give you lunch? I know it's a bit late, but—"

"That sounds lovely, darling," he says. As if you could get rid of me now, he thinks. "Would it help if I hung round until the sofa's delivered? Make sure it's done properly?"

Thank heaven above, he's beaten me to it. She sighs with relief. For as much as she'd been wracking her brain, she couldn't conceive of a way of saying, 'Never leave, will you? Please just say you'll never go,' that didn't smack of neediness. What she ends up saying to him is, "I'd be most grateful, so long as you're sure I'm not keeping you from anything."

Please, darling; do you know how long I've hoped that one day you'd be the one to keep me from all of the things? This time he says very nearly what he's thinking. "There's no place I'd rather be."

She fixes chicken salad from the roast chicken she had for dinner last night while he slices bread and fruit. She can't help but notice the ease with which they work in the kitchen together. With both of them left-handed, there is none of the awkward bumping of elbows. And because he has been single for so long he is used to cooking and can find his way round without asking. When he moves close behind her to place utensils in the sink ("Pardon me, darling,") a pleasant shiver runs the length of her spine and she indulges herself in a momentary daydream. Suppose she were to step backwards a bit at just the instant he moved forwards? And imagine if his hands then went to her hips in an effort to steady her? And if she were then to press her bottom back against him, what would he do? She catches herself. Steady on, old girl. This time you really are putting the cart before the horse.

The heat of the day doesn't touch her east-facing balcony, making it an ideal spot to enjoy a late lunch. They forgo the small table and chairs in favour of the bench as it affords them closer proximity to one another. As he takes in the surroundings he notices that they are cocooned in white roses. There are containers of them on the floor and suspended from the railings, trellises supporting climbers on each wall and an arbor overhead. "If I were to hazard a guess I'd say this is your favourite spot," he tells her as they balance plates of food on their laps.

"You'd be right," she says with a soft smile. "I sit here in the evenings and it's just quiet enough I can convince myself I'm not in the city at all." She closes her eyes and turns her face skyward and takes his breath away.

"So you're a gardener, then?" he asks, trying not to get caught up in the artistry of her features - long, dark lashes that curl against her cheeks and golden skin that appears to store up sunlight. He has admired her at a distance for such a long time and now suddenly here she is beside him, close enough that he can count her freckles and smell her shampoo, and the longing to take her into his arms is nearly overpowering.

"Oh no," she answers, the corners of her eyes crinkling when she smiles, "it feels rather more like I play one on television. There's only so much I can do in this space. But in Yorkshire …"

"I reckon I need to see this Yorkshire house," he says.

"It's very dear to me," she agrees. "And the gardens are lovely."

"It must be quite something, for the way your face lights up whenever you mention it."

Her cheeks flush at his words. "It's my favourite place. When I retire, that's where I'll go."

"Will you show it to me?" he asks. "How often do you go?"

"Oh, whenever I've a free moment," she admits. "Often I'll go up just for the day, even though it means eight hours' driving by the time I return. Do you know? …" she hesitates. They've finished eating, so she gathers the plates and sets them on the table.

"What is it?" he asks as she sits back down. She moves close and he puts his arm around her shoulders and why did she fight the idea of this for so long? He feels like home.

"I've wanted to show it to you for a long time," she says softly, "only I didn't know how. How to ask you, how to show you. I've spent many of my happiest moments in that house, but some of the darkest have been spent there as well."

"I want to know about all of it," he assures her, running his fingers through her hair. "Everything you're willing to share."

"I'll take you," she tells him, leaning into his touch. "Next time we have a weekend off. Which reminds me … have you sent in your RSVP for that awful wedding?"

"What, Larry Grey?" he asks. She nods. "No; I was rather hoping an act of God would conveniently incapacitate me so I wouldn't have to go." He has a habit of smirking impishly and then straightaway casting his eyes towards the floor when he says something self-deprecating. The effect is brilliant in its subtlety and she finds it does things to her. There are strange flutters low in her belly, heat slowly building, a fire rising.

She laughs at his answer. "You know you've got to make an appearance," she says, not chiding him; simply stating a fact. She looks at her hands in her lap, then at him. "We could go together. It's only the reception, and we won't have to stay terribly long." She takes his hand in hers and brings it to her lips, kissing the back of it.

He nods. "If we've got to do this we're far better off joining forces."

"I think this is the first time I've ever heard you speak a disparaging word about anyone," she remarks.

"Don't say you've gone off me." He moves his hand to her cheek until it rests in his palm. So soft, he muses.

"Please," she tuts. "No, I'm no admirer of young Mr. Grey! But what's he ever done to you?"

Larry Grey is the son of Richard "Dickie" Grey, chairman of finance for the board of directors of St. Mary's Hospital. Neither man possesses any formal medical training, but the elder has an apparent fascination with medicine in general and Isobel in particular. The younger seems keen to make a general nuisance of himself despite his having no affiliation whatsoever with the hospital.

"He doesn't need to have done anything to me; I heard the venom he spewed about you! And his father - that fount of all medical knowledge - can't keep the little bastard from running his mouth. Cut him off from the bloody trust fund! That'll shut him up!"

"Go on, tell us how you really feel," she teases. She's only ever seen him in a lather like this when he's been cross with her. He's gorgeous when he's angry, she thinks. What am I saying; he's gorgeous, period. End of.

She suspects he's jealous. Just about this time last year, Dickie Grey had proclaimed his love for Isobel over what she had understood as a business dinner during which they were to discuss fundraising for a dozen additional beds on the maternity ward. While she had always been cordial toward him, he was nothing more than a business acquaintance in her mind, and she had swiftly told him as much. But not before Larry had got wind of his father's infatuation and declared before a meeting of the hospital board that the "wide disparity" between his father's background and Isobel's would stand her in poor stead to fill his late mother's shoes. Dickie had physically removed his son from the meeting and apologised profusely to Isobel, who had taken it with grace - chiefly due to the bizarre nature of the entire situation.

Now Larry is engaged to be married to a woman every bit his conniving, arrogant equal, and because they are department heads, Isobel and Richard both have been invited to the wedding reception.

"It doesn't matter, you know," she tells Richard, turning her face into his palm and pressing her lips to the centre of it. "My mother always told me to let idle words roll off me like water off a duck's back. 'At least if they're talking about you,' she'd say, 'they're not talking about someone else.' I haven't got to defend myself to anyone; my work speaks for itself. Those whose opinions I value - yours and my son's - you know who I am." Holding his face in her hands, she looks into his eyes. "And you have my heart." She kisses him, her lips opening at his gentle urging. The tip of her tongue runs along the inside edge of his bottom lip and he pulls her closer, his fingers curling against her scalp as he nips at her lips with the edges of his teeth.

She had forgotten that kissing the man she loves could be like this, that her heart could threaten to beat its way out of her chest. Heat swirls in her belly again, a coiling tightness. A deep, primal ache that simultaneously exhilarates and terrifies her. She begins to laugh at herself, at the unlikeliness of her circumstances, as they break apart.

"You know you're absolutely brilliant, but you're a bit of a nutter," he tells her, because as her best friend he has earned the right to say such things.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just … last night I lay awake, as I've done every night for fifteen years, and figured I was past it all, and now … Now here I am doing things I thought I'd forgotten how to do, feeling things I've only ever felt once before. I …" A blush rises, colouring her cheeks bright red. She tries to turn away from him but he doesn't let her.

"Tell me," he urges, catching her wrists in his hands.

"I want you, Richard. It's not a new development …" She presses a palm to her forehead. I can't believe I'm saying this out loud! "... But it was never a possibility until today. Not that I'm saying it's a possibility now. I—"

He presses the tip of his index finger to her lips. "Oi," he says, raising the volume of his voice above hers, "Shh. It's alright, Isobel. This is all new, but it's not. It's been a long time coming and it isn't going away. There's time, and we can take it.* You're beautiful, my darling, and I think I'd embarrass us both if you knew how much I want you. But you're not ready, not yet. When you are, I'll be here." Always, he wants to say. Yours faithfully unto death. But even if she were ready to hear it, he will save those words for a moment he's been planning from the day he met her.

"I don't want to wait too long," she says, smoothing the collar of his shirt.

"You and I both know these things can't be rushed," he says as she blinks thoughtfully. She has the most impossibly long lashes. "It doesn't matter how long it takes." He says it again: "I'm here." You're the one I was always waiting for.


Now with your hand in mine
The heat strikes me as divine
Seated here by my side
As day blurs into the night

How is it you seem to know what I tried not to show?


* - This line borrowed from Elizabeth Jane Howard. From Falling. Because I love it.