'No.'

'What do you mean, no?'

'I won't see you tomorrow night.' Caroline's phone was silent for a while after she stopped typing, and the screen went dark. She resumed her text message to Eleanor. 'I'll see you today. And if I can, right now.'

She pictured Eleanor's dark head bent over her mobile, and her flirting smirk as she sat at her desk on the other side of Harrogate.

Caroline's phone was quiet for a frustratingly long time before it blinked to life.

'What time are you taking lunch.'

'Noon.'

Once again, she pictured Eleanor in her office at Anadyne, lit by the bright November sun. She then pictured her in her bed this morning. Blanketed only in that bright November sun. She heard her deep voice in her head, ringing out over and over again through the house, then the bedroom, the entire night previous. "Yes, Caroline. Yes."

'Your place or mine?'

'Mum and Alan are back.'

'I can be quiet – well, quieter. I'm sure they won't mind. ;-) '

Caroline smiled. 'But they'll notice. I want you to myself. Your place at noon. Don't be late, please.'

'I'll be early. xxx'

Caroline sighed. She'd planned the marriage proposal down to the last detail. Minus the ridiculous notion that a Sunday night, followed by a Monday morning, would be optimal timing. All she could think about was Eleanor. All she could see was Eleanor. After the work and struggle of it all, she was finally feeling that they were standing on bedrock and ready to build. She was filled with an irrepressible optimism and actual excitement for the future. She felt ten years younger and uncontrollably – frisky.

She put her glasses back on and turned to the computer, glanced down at the corner of the screen, playing at the silver infinity loop hanging at her throat, running her fingers over its contours. 10:47. 'This is ridiculous.' She clicked open her calendar, studied it, and buzzed Beverley.

"Can you pop in, please?" Her tone was light and stupidly girlish - but it was Beverley and she made no effort to hide herself.

Beverley came through smartly a moment later, notepad in hand. "Yes?"

"I'm going home for the day." In illustration Caroline turned and shut down her computer, then turned back to Beverley, who was grinning, one hand on her hip.

"Touch under the weather?" Still smiling, Beverly continued. "Might explain your inexplicable good nature during the faculty brawl that that broke out over divvying up that unexpected surplus in the English department."

"Feeling positively awful." Caroline stood and beamed back.

"Can I ask?"

"You can - and I did." Caroline fixed her with a pointed look as she flipped up her blonde hair and slid into her black blazer.

"Dr. Strathclyde?"

"Yep." Bright blue eyes and the familiar pop in the 'p' at the end of the word.

"And of course she accepted?"

"Yep."

"I see." Beverley's look became conspiratorial. "Should I clear your day tomorrow as well?"

Caroline frowned indulgently as she picked up her bag and draped her overcoat on her forearm. "No need to go that far, I don't think."

Beverley feigned somber agreement. Caroline had learned recently that her looks of disapproval were no longer in any way intimidating, nor even always effective with her.

"Congratulations. To both of you."

The weight of it came over her for a moment, the realness of the telling, and she paused and met Beverley's eyes. "Yes." She exhaled loudly. "Thank you."

"Before you go - I'm sorry - but I'm afraid we've had a - situation - come up. It's nothing we can't fix in a jiff, but it is rather annoying."

She frowned, really meaning it this time, and Beverley continued.

"Apparently none of the classrooms have dry erase markers this morning."

"Has there been an issue with supply?" Caroline's frown became a scowl. "You haven't mentioned anything."

"It's not that. I'm afraid they've all disappeared simultaneously."

"Ah. The class of 2018 feeling their oats already?"

A resigned look passed over Beverley's face. Though the faculty were usually the brunt of the jokes, remedying the situation usually feel to her. "I'm afraid so."

Caroline came around her desk. "Chin up soldier. We manage it ever year, somehow."

Beverley saluted. "Aye, captain."

They smiled at each other for a moment. Caroline remembered what was waiting at home, and concern over dry erase markers disappeared from her mind.

"Go on then. You're hopeless." Beverley shoo'd her with a wave of her notepad. "Mum's the word here, I'll square it all – as long as you can try and manage to look a little dour on your way out the building."

She did her best to look the part of the implacable matron as she flowed down the stairs and across the portico. Class was in session, and she was grateful for the abandoned hallways. Congratulating herself on the easy getaway as she clicked around the corner to the corridor before the car park, she let Eleanor wander through her mind again, filling it with fluid impressions of dark auburn and warm skin.

Lost in the throes of anticipation, she ran smack into Michael Dobson as he exited his classroom. She dropped her bag and he his papers.

"Oh – Michael." She was initially vexed but recovered herself. "Thoroughly my fault. I'm so sorry." She bent to pick up his papers.

He was flat-footed and nonplussed, clearly expecting a very different response as she stood with a smile and handed them back over to him.

"Uh – Caroline?"

She'd already begun to walk off, bag crooked in her elbow and keys in hand. She turned back to him. "Yes?"

"I was wondering if I might have a quick word?" His eager expression faded as hers changed from one of mild and feigned interest to frustration.

She put her shoulders back and set her hip to one side. "Fine. The operative word here being quick, Michael." Give them an inch – she regretted already her inviting manner. His resolve and his posture weakened as Caroline's face fully transformed back into the more familiar typically worn by Headmistress McKenzie Dawson.

"Well." He shifted under her gaze, which was becoming impatient. "The budget surplus that - came up this morning."

"You want your piece of it. Likely more than your piece of it." She nodded once, sharply. "So what is it then, Michael? Chop chop." She tilted her head down toward him, missing only her glasses for effect.

"Ah yes. Well." He took a deep breath. "It's for a batch of new books for 9Fs. Really we should have had them two years ago. Johnston Day's had the one's I've been wanting on their curriculum for several terms now."

"Perhaps you'd prefer to teach at Johnston Day, then?"

He recognized his error, several of his errors, all at once. "Not at all. Just putting in a plug."

"Right. Noted." She continued to stare at him.

"Okay, then." He turned and slunk off down the corridor.

She watched him walk off. 'Insufferable.'

She scowled down the corridor opposite and set off again, but as she walked through the door, strutted out into the sun, and blipped open the Jeep, a wide smile plastered itself back on her face. The rest of the day would be shaping up well enough.


"Jeffrey?" Eleanor turned from the computer to look at her office phone as she spoke toward it.

"Yes, dear?"

"Do you plan to address Joan Phillips that way?" Jeffrey, her trusted and beloved assistant, was being promoted next month during the merger to become the Executive Assistant to the CEO at Pantheon. He'd gotten a little cheeky with Eleanor since the arrangement became final.

"While she's asking me to make sure that the right winter tires are being put on her Jag? Absolutely." It was a promotion, but rumors abounded about Pantheon's CEO and her benevolent usury of subordinates.

"Mmmmm. Fair enough." Eleanor studied her calendar as he waited patiently on the other end of the line. "Look - I need you to get me out of my 3pm call today with the Pantheon COO."

"Does this have anything to do with that bit of fantastic bling you were wearing when you traipsed in late this morning?"

Jeffrey had immediately spotted the ring and practically eaten her alive with questions when she'd come in. She couldn't tell if he was more excited about the jewelry or the engagement.

"If I say no, will you believe me?"

"Not for a minute."

"Fine. Then it's none of your business." She smirked and felt it returned.

"Consider it done, Eleanor. Anything for love." His voice dripped sarcasm.

"Anything for diamonds is what I think you mean, Jeffrey. I know you better than that."

"Better than my last four boyfriends put together. And I will miss you terribly, Eleanor. Not just this afternoon."

"I'll miss you too. What will I do without your handsome smiling face greeting me every morning?"

"I can't imagine. I'm sad just thinking about it."

"Oh enough. I'm leaving." She clicked off with a smile and gathered herself up.

As she picked up her bag, she noticed, really noticed, the ring that had already garnered so much attention. It wasn't the diamonds, it wasn't the platinum, but what it meant to her, the journey to get here, that took her breath away so unexpectedly, and she sat heavily back in her chair. 'We were fools to even think of coming to work today.' She had plowed head-first through a dreadfully absorbing budget meeting earlier. Madhur their CFO asking her the kind of questions that blotted out anything but numbers.

But Caroline - her wicked temper and her wicked smarts, the kindness and compassion underneath it all and never boring for a second. She'd been simmering in the back of Eleanor's mind all morning. Her whole face had lit in a smile as she'd returned to the office to find her text. They'd set a time for 'lunch' and she'd done nothing since. It wasn't even near half eleven but there was no way she could sit at her desk another minute. There were perhaps a million things she wanted to talk about and think about, and none of them had anything to do with pharmaceuticals.

She took a deep breath in, exhaled, and flew out the door with no intention of returning that day.


Caroline was already waiting at Eleanor's house, the clock in the now very familiar kitchen ticking loudly on the wall. She drummed her fingers on the counter top, literally watching the kettle and waiting for it to boil. She knew Eleanor wouldn't be late, she never was, and she loved that about her. But it was still quarter to noon and she'd given up pacing and stewing in favor of busying herself making a cup of tea.

Finally, she heard Eleanor's SUV. 'Oh thank god.' She snapped off the gas under the kettle just as it started to whistle and abandoned her empty tea mug. She walked through the dining room, then stopped. 'What are you going to do, tackle her in the drive?' She crossed her arms and stood, stupidly, in the middle of the room, still in the same clothes she'd had on when she left for work. She heard the car door shut and her stomach flipped. 'You idiot. You should have just waited for her in bed, stripped and ready to go. Too late now. Try to make yourself look intentional, in some way?' She only had one thing on her mind. And if sex were on her mind, guaranteed it had been on her – fiancée's - five minutes previous.

Eleanor breezed through the door. She tossed her coat and her bag somewhere near where they belonged in the entry and fixed Caroline with a serious look.

"I assume you have no intention of actually eating lunch over the course of the next hour."

"Nope." Caroline strode forward, shrugging out of her blazer as she walked. "And if you think this is only going to take an hour, you're going to be very, very late for something."

Eleanor didn't have time to laugh as Caroline crashed into her. She couldn't speak through her kiss, and finally caught her breath as Caroline moved her attentions down to her neck, and then her cleavage. She buried her hands in Caroline's thick blonde hair and closed her eyes, ecstatic but frustrated.

"Can't we just, somehow, fit all of forever into right now? Because that's what I want. I want to be in all our years together simultaneously, each and every one of them, all this very second." She ripped off Caroline's black knit sleeveless shell. 'Damn her black bras and her perfectly pale freckled skin.' She pushed her by her hips toward the stairs as she unzipped her skirt.

"I'm afraid that not even I can find a way around those theoretical physics. But I would very, very much like to try." Caroline smiled against Eleanor's jawline and whipped off and discarded her thin belt on her way to unbuttoning her chocolate brown trousers. She glanced down. 'Is that - leopard print?' She immediately tore off her sweater to discover the matching set.

They made it to the landing, but were so bound by various stages of undress they couldn't make it any further up the stairs. Eleanor pouted as Caroline pushed her against the wall with a ravenous look. She shook her head. "This will not suit my purposes in any way."

Caroline exhaled, loud and showy. She rested her palms against the wall on either side of Eleanor and tilted her forehead against hers. She took them both in with an appraising glance, and the trail of garments leading up the stairs. She couldn't help but laugh.

She struggled to catch her breath, lips millimeters from Eleanor's and her eyes traveling all over her face. She couldn't hide her fascination, got out only a question - "Why is it that contemplating spending the rest of my life with you makes me so bloody impatient?"

Eleanor reached around and re-zipped Caroline's skirt. But she held her firmly in place against the wall as she ran her hands and her eyes slowly all the way up her torso, finally resting them on her shoulders. She responded with a soft, despairing sigh. "I suppose it must be because I'm so bloody fantastic." She donned a nasty grin and pushed Caroline gently away by her shoulders. Caroline turned and swayed up the stairs, Eleanor hot on her heels.