"Ruth….Ruth."

She was in a deep sleep, why was he waking her up?

"What?" she said sleepily.

"Ruth…I.."

"What time is it?"

"Four."

"Four o'clock in the morning?"

"Yes."

"Harry, what's wrong?" he was worrying her now.

"I love you, Ruth."

"Oh,"

"You said I could tell you early in the morning."

"I could have waited another three hours."

"Sorry."

They lay side by side.

"Harry, have you been awake long?"

"I never really went to sleep."

"Why?"

"I was wondering what time was considered still night and when it became early morning."

"And you concluded it was four am?"

"Yes."

"Is that all you've thought about in all that time?"

"No, I was thinking about love."

"Go on, you might as well, I'm awake now."

"Well, I was wondering how it could be that a man could reach his fifties and still not know what it was to love someone. I mean, I have loved…Jane, Juliet, others, several others…but they were mixtures of need, lust, passion, yes and love but I thought that was it, I thought loving them was the same as being in love with them. And now at fifty something I know it's not. It's not the slightest bit similar. I know, that for the first time in my life I am in love with someone, deeply, irrevocably, unselfishly in love and I wonder why it has taken this long and why I couldn't have met you when I was twenty five."

"Because I'd have been ten and that's illegal, Harry."

He smiled and turned to her, his head resting on the pillow, facing hers.

"Okay thirty five," he suggested.

"I think I prefer you as you are now."

"What over the hill?"

"No, I think the more 'mature' you," she said it with a smile, "is probably more tender, more patient and less gung ho than the younger version."

"Maybe gung ho was what we needed Ruth."

"Maybe, but we've got there in the end," she said and wound her legs around his.

He smiled.

"Are you hoping that I'll tell you that I love you back?" she whispered.

"Only if you want to, Ruth."

"I don't want to."

"That's okay," he said, bereft.

"I only want to tell you that I'm in love with you. Deeply, irrevocably, unselfishly. And I'm sorry too that we've wasted time but now we know and there's no going back."

"No doubts?" he asked tentatively.

"Not a single one."

He kissed her, he inhaled her, he wished he could envelop her and hold her to him and never let anything separate them again.

"There's only one problem," she added when she could get her lips free of him.

"What's that?"

"I think my boss might have something to say about it."

"Don't worry about him, I think he loves you nearly as much as I do."

"Surely that's not possible."

"Everything's possible, Ruth."

And he kissed her again.


Epilogue to come