The alarm woke them for the second morning in a row but this time with no purpose. Richard had simply forgotten to turn it off and for a moment he was left to wallow in the confusion of the most wonderful dream he had been having and the reality that work apparently presented. Camille was back in his bed, soft and warm and he'd made love to her over and over again. If he could just block the alarm out for a few seconds more...a few precious seconds of her...

"Turn it off!" her arm came from nowhere reminding him of her very real presence. She came rushing back to him in a flood as his hand now fumbled for his alarm. It hit home on the third time of trying, sending it sprawling to the floor. He settled back on his side again, pushing himself closer to her, realising for the first time that he was naked. Relishing it.

"Morning."

She mumbled an unintelligible good morning back at him, rubbing herself against him provocatively before spinning herself around in his arms as his hand delved back under the duvet.

But now he was stuck with a different problem. He had forgotten what a lump she could be in the morning. Where he had remembered a beautiful tangle of limbs and curves perfectly fitted to each other, he now recalled the slightly more gawky reality. Clearly grace was something that Camille got after coffee, or at least when she was less out of the count.

She was quick to drift back into a doze, shifting him from a very comfortable position into a new arrangement of limbs, something that wasn't remotely conducive to relaxation for him. She was effectively using him as extra cushioning for her bedding. For five minutes it was fine. Then pins and needles set in his legs, his arm lost all feeling and her head became a dead weight on his chest, rubbing uncomfortably against his collar bone. Enough was enough.

He rolled her away gently and was met with muffled huff of dissatisfaction before she settled again and he was able to swing his own legs out of bed. If he tried anything else this morning he was likely to get a slap.

Catching up with work downstairs had been easy enough. The paperwork, the emails, they had been accomplished swiftly and silently, conscious that waking Camille by any method would have spelt disaster for the rest of the day.

Pushing the ream of paper away from him he exchanged it for a book. He had no intention of reading it at this particular moment but the colours on the dust jacket brought it more to life than usual this morning and he enjoyed tracing the images on the front cover with his index finger. He absentmindedly continued as Camille's head appeared from behind the door. Assessing that he had finished whatever it was that he had been doing, the rest of her shirt covered body followed as she crossed the room to his desk in a couple of strides and folded herself up in his lap, wrapping her arms around him and nuzzling into the warmth of his chest and neck.

They sat in quiet contemplation, Richard eventually unhooking her arms from about him. Instead he held her hand in his, his thumb tracing the furrows and grooves of her knuckles, rubbing out a soporific tempo, back and forth, back and forth. She tolerated his silence for as long as she could.

"What are you thinking about?"

He frowned, embarrassed that he was so readable, that he had been caught thinking about something so mundane when he should have been thinking about how lucky her was to have Camille in his arms.

He risked a glance at her, saw she wouldn't be moved and sighed.

"The house."

"The house?" He knew he should have lied from her tone. "What about the house?"

He shrugged. How to tell her that he thought it was boring? Unimaginative? That he didn't want to live in it without her?

He went with a more tactful, "it doesn't really say a lot about me does it?" She looked guilty, biting the inside of her bottom lip. "You don't need to lie Camille, I know it doesn't."

The guilt turned into a cheeky smile. "Would you believe me if I told you I hadn't noticed? Really, I haven't."

He shook his head, signifying that her lack of observation made no difference. "Don't you think it needs...modernising?"

"Modernising?"

"Oh God, don't say it like that, you make me feel old." She responded by rolling her eyes and ignoring him.

"So, how do you want to 'modernise' it?" she deliberately placed emphasis on the word he hated, knowing it would annoy him.

He shrugged again, considering her question. "I don't know. Just make it something that you feel happy living in." He clarified, blustering, "when you come and stay."

"But I do feel happy here. It's your house."

His house. That was the whole point. He didn't want it to just be his house anymore. "It's not exactly a home though is it?"

"Because it lacks a woman's touch?"

She had gone straight to the point. She always did and as usual he was grateful for it. He hadn't been able to bring himself to say as much to her.

He smiled a little sadly. "Perhaps. I just don't really feel that either of us live here. It feels more like it's rented doesn't it?"

She considered his last point and realised he was right. She hadn't really noticed anything in the house because nothing stood out as being his. If she thought about it, she realised that it was the reason she had bought a rug for his bedroom, her own personal statement piece. She wasn't sure what he wanted, but she could guess. "Do you want me to come with you to get some things to change it?"

He suddenly grasped what he had let himself in for. A day's shopping stretched exhaustedly ahead of him, the chaos of the people, the queues, the bag carrying, the hunger, the boredom and the annoyance. He had half a mind to tell her not to worry, that he would take care of it when she had gone, but he knew he wouldn't. She would come back and it would be just the same. Worse, it would torment him when she was gone because he would know that he had an opportunity to create something new with her and had turned it down.

He nodded. Better to get it over and done with.

"Do I get to use your credit card again?" She was grinning cheekily at him.

He sighed gently then lifted her to her feet, knowing that there was no way out of this. She took his action as approval and became less of a dead weight, the smile growing. It was going to be a good day.

Camille had been too excited to stay upstairs. She had tried lying still on his chest, listening to his rhythmic breathing and steady heartbeat but ultimately it was her turn to leave Richard dozing gently and sneak off downstairs. It was something she always did after a shopping spree: laying her new purchases on the floor in order to review them. She wanted to see what was in the bags, to remind herself of what had been bought. She always felt a thrill that reminded her of what it had felt like to be a child at Christmas, when they had still been a family: ripping open the wrapping paper despite already knowing the contents because she had sought out the presents before they had been hidden. She wondered for a moment if she would ever grow up and move on. Perhaps she thought, when she had a family of her own.

Looking at the bags, she had forgotten how many they had brought home with them. Her pulse spiked with excitement and she started by pulling everything into view. She stood back happy. Yes, they had done well. She frowned at the memory of the row she had had with Richard that afternoon. But with every argument she was beginning to understand him a little more. It turned out that the majority of his mood swings stemmed from the fact that he was hungry, something she had only just begun to pick up on. All that pouting and eye rolling that Richard had managed to achieve in the afternoon faded into nothing in light of Camille's new secret weapon: a sandwich. She smiled at her small achievement, made a mental note to start keeping snacks in her handbag, then got to work.

He appeared downstairs, drawn by the smell of a home cooked pizza and the noise from the television. Settling himself on the sofa next to her he leant forward taking a slice and putting it on a plate. She shot him an amused look which went unnoticed, she would have been content to have foregone plates, but had known he would never have gone for it.

He was staring at the television with a look of disgust on his face. "What is this?"

"Saturday night tv."

"It looks dreadful."

"It's funny," she countered. He gave her a look that said her statement was debatable and consoled himself by looking around, spotting several of his new purchases around the room. Camille had been busy while he had been upstairs. Huge empty paper bags littered one end of his sitting room. The difference, although only slight was huge. There was colour. He felt marginally less boring simply by being in the room. Scatter cushions in dark reds and navy now jostled for attention on his sofa and chair. A large rug beneath his otherwise very boring and sturdy coffee table now brought it to life and his old and trusted blanket had been replaced with something a little more island in temperament. He felt a little pang of regret at that last change. The blanket had been like an old friend. But the room now belonged irrevocably to Camille. He felt the beginning of acceptance at the thought of letting her go for the first time. It would be a comfort to him when they were apart, knowing that she had made something of this room.

He caught sight of the large piles of photo frames on the table and failed to keep the shock out of his voice. "How many photos are you expecting me to put up of you?"

She narrowed her eyes at him by way of reply. Wiping his hands thoroughly on a piece of kitchen roll (again thoughtfully provided by Camille) he reached forward to pick up one of the books he was halfway through. He had barely opened it when he realised that it would be impossible to read, the background noise was too invasive. He held it tightly between his hands, a talisman against the bright lights and the fake laughter and reluctantly watched as the gameshow unfolded before his eyes.

It made no sense to him at all. Women, and hoards of them by the looks of things all judging one man primarily on the way he looked. He turned to Camille for clarification. "So...if they don't like the way he looks they switch their light off...?"

"Yes."

"Seems a little barbaric doesn't it. I mean, he's alright isn't he?" She shrugged. He continued to watch. "And if they don't like his character they can also turn their light off?"

"Yes." As he spoke a plethora of lights suddenly went out and Richard looked at the screen in disbelief. "I don't understand. He said he liked animals. Isn't that a good thing?"

"It is for me. I wouldn't have turned my light off..."

He waited a little before asking, "so you like him?" He was desperate to try to insinuate that he didn't really care one way or the other.

She bit back a smile as his supposed casual interest. "He's alright."

"Oh." Richard took one look at the much younger man on the television screen, brimming with self confidence then pushed him to the back of his mind.

More lights went out and his confusion only grew. "This is ridiculous - she just turned her light off because he said he liked spending time with his grandmother!"

"Shhh!" She hit him with the flat of her hand on his chest, "I want to hear!"

Richard watched completely bemused. Lights went out because one man admitted to liking chick flicks, something Richard privately thought would work in his favour. There was too much male grooming, not enough male grooming, trousers were too tight, too loose, shoes too scuffed, not scuffed enough. All this programme was proving so far was that he really didn't understand women. No wonder he'd been single for so long. Equally, some men just came across as complete Neanderthals, and still the women kept their lights on. One talked about himself constantly, another admitting to bringing his washing home for his mother to do, something that didn't seem to bother any of the girls because he was good looking enough to balance out the fact that he was clearly a hideous human being, incapable of looking after himself.

The book, once clutched so tightly, had by now been completely discarded in favour of a glass of wine, his second. He had found that after the first glass the bottle had been placed within easy reach by Camille. She noticed triumphantly that with every sip he became more amenable to bad television.

He was now leaning forward, more engrossed by the second, shaking his head. "I will never understand women."

She elbowed him in a friendly manner. "You understand me."

He gave her a bemused look. "Camille, in all honesty I have absolutely no idea if you'd date someone like that in real life."

She gave a non committed shrug. "He's not that bad. I've had worse."

Richard choked on his wine. "You know he's the reason nice guys never get a look in. You all seem to be dazzled by the big muscles, the bright smiles and the stylish outfits. And even though you know someone like that's going to leave you at the first opportunity he gets, you still want to be with him..."

She giggled. "Are you jealous?"

"Yes of course I'm jealous!" He was also on the verge of being drunk. "All the women I ever wanted always wanted someone like that instead." He was pointing at the TV. "And you know what? It would be almost statistically impossible for someone like me to get a date this way. What would I say?" He patted down his shirt self consciously pretending that he was in the studio surrounded by women. "Hello, I'm Richard, I work for the police," he started mimicking lights being turned out, "I just want to make the world a better place by catching the bad guys," he imitated more lights going out, "I'm loyal, caring and I'd like to find a woman who doesn't find the idea of having children with me totally disgusting." He turned his own final lights out and turned to Camille, shrugging, "and now I have no date. Which just goes to show that nice guys definitely finish last."

As if to prove his point an almost total blackout occurred when one man admitted to being a gentleman and liking romance. Richard was practically jumping up and down on the sofa pointing at the television while Camille tried desperately to stifle her giggles.

He was watching her and smiling, glad that he was able to make her laugh, thinking that he would never in a million years have predicted that such an intimate setting between them might have been possible. One hand was clutching his glass, his other arm was bent up and back, his hand massaging his own shoulder.

Her giggling stopped as she shifted closer to him. "You have been reaching for your back all afternoon." He shook his head once to indicate that it didn't matter and she pouted. "Were the bags I made you carry very heavy?"

"Yes." She barked her laughter once at his honesty, but he stood his ground, refusing to look embarrassed. She decided to take pity on him on this occasion and clicked her fingers, pointing at the floor.

He feigned ignorance. "I'm sorry, what am I mean to be looking at on the floor?"

She narrowed her eyes and pushed him off the sofa quickly relishing the small squeak of protest that he gave. He was on the verge of a rant, it was his sofa after all, why did he have to be the one that got kicked off it? But then she shifted her legs to either side of his body, her presence looming large behind him and pressed her thumb firmly against the back of his neck. He reflexively pushed back into her, trying to relieve the pain that she had uncovered.

"Is it there?"

"No, more shoulders and lower back."

"I can't do your lower back here."

"I know." He sighed and flexed his shoulders by way of asking her to continue. Using slow, even strokes she went to work with the palms of her hands, running them over the ridge of his shoulders.

"You are very tense..."

"Well, they were really very heavy bags." His breath hitched as she started to include her thumbs with her palms.

"Too hard?"

"No."

She had switched from using her hands to her arms, leaning over him from behind. And suddenly, Richard was being treated to the most wonderful massage he had ever had. One which had absolutely nothing to do with her hands and arms and everything to do with the rolling motion with which her breasts were now kneading his head. His eyes closed with pleasure and he allowed his mind to go blank as Camille continued to talk.

"Richard? Are you even listening to me?" The circular motion had stopped. Richard began to focus again. She had muted the TV.

He hunched his shoulders at her, shrugging his annoyance at the fact she had stopped, that he still had knots that needed attending to. She didn't take the hint.

"Camille, please could you stop staring at my bald spot and give me a massage?"

"What?"

"My bald patch. I can only assume that's what's distracted you into stopping..."

She only just contained the huff of annoyance from his incorrect assumption as she traced her finger around the coin sized space in his hair. Ignoring the fact that he tried to shy away from her touch, she bent down and placed a kiss in his hair, thoughtful.

"Why does it bother you so much?"

He shrugged at a loss as to how to describe it to her. "It's...just my hair." He placed his hand over hers in an effort to get her to remove it from his head, "I've never had that much of it." He failed to add that he'd also never been with anyone he'd wanted to impress so much before and his demonstrative lack of it wasn't exactly working in his favour.

"It doesn't bother me..."

"I know."

"But..." she finished the sentence for him, "it still bothers you." He nodded.

Her hand left his hair as she slid to the floor next to him, all thoughts of a massage abandoned for now as she could see that his thoughts were still consumed by his vanity.

"It's just hair Richard."

"And if it were your hair?"

She looked at him sternly. "Would you leave me? If my hair started falling out?"

"No! Of course not!" Richard was running though some of the awful possibilities which would mean Camille might lose her hair.

"So if you won't leave me then why would I leave you?"

"It's just different Camille. The older I get the more I lose."

"So?"

"So, don't you want to be with someone who still has all their hair?" His thoughts drifted back to the Saturday night television that was still playing in the background and the men Camille had said she liked the look of. They all had masses of hair, he thought bitterly.

"You still have all of your hair, apart from this much," she made a little circle with his thumb and first finger to symbolise his bald spot and he winced. "I don't understand you. We spent all afternoon having fun didn't we?" He gave her a look to signify that in his opinion they certainly hadn't spent all afternoon having fun. She sighed, "Fine, you got bolshie and threw a temper tantrum, but I thought you enjoyed spending time with me?"

He sighed. "I did." It was true, all those little kisses she had snuck on him, the ridiculous arguments she had used to try and persuade him why he needed new cushions that he had already resigned himself to getting, he had loved it. He had thought he'd even been on the receiving end of a couple of envious glances from other men out with their girlfriends too and for the first time in a long time had felt pride in himself.

"But you were thinking about your hair?"

"No, of course I wasn't..." he could see where she was going with this.

"So why are you thinking about it now?"

"You're the one who stopped what you were doing in order to stare at my bald spot! I just wanted a massage and now I'm even more tense than before!"

He looked like he really didn't want to have this conversation again, but knew she wouldn't leave him alone until she was satisfied. He took a deep breath. "I'm just worried...you'll go back, and I'll carry on, same old me, putting my foot in it at every opportunity. The office will probably think I was playing some sort of joke on them and you'll be surrounded by..." He raised his hands to his face his fingers rubbing his temples as he remembered the very real threat that Humphrey presented along with nearly every other male tourist visiting Saint Marie.

Hey..." She had moved closer, trying to ensure that she could look at him properly. "Hey..." She had no idea where his lack of confidence stemmed from, she couldn't imagine his parents inflicting anything this deep rooted in him. Perhaps friendships and past relationships had slowly worn down what little belief he had had in himself. Either way, it had to stop. "I won't ever lie to you. You know I won't." He nodded, so full of trust and she regretted what she was about to do, feeling like she was about to destroy what little trust in her he had left. "But you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself." His eyes widened with shock at the beginning of her pep talk. She tried not to notice.

"Do you really think that after waiting a year to be with you I'd be so fickle throw it all away on some tourist fling, or my boss?" He winced, and she realised how much her last comment had hurt him as she remembered he had once been her boss. "Richard, Humphrey is everything you're not." He gave her a look to say that he knew all this and she shook her head contemptuously at him, aggrieved that he still didn't get it. "He is scruffy and clumsy and incapable of looking after himself. He's like a child, a little boy. And I don't want a little boy. I want a man! I want someone with backbone, someone who's not afraid to stand up to me!" She caught his look and let out a bark of annoyance both at herself for choosing such bad descriptions and at him for not understanding. "You're missing the point! I can't be with someone like that. Can you imagine how boring my life would be with someone that didn't challenge me, someone that always said yes to me?

"I. Have. Passion. We both have passion, although you seem to want to ignore yours. And I like fighting with you. If I fought with Humphrey, he'd probably let me hit him and then ask me if I wanted to do it again!"

He looked scandalised. "I don't want to hit you. I've never wanted to hit you!"

"But you have a breaking point Richard, and you push back." She saw his look of horror and sighed. "I'm not saying you would hit me, but if you thought you were right you would fight back and I love that about you. I love it when you take control. Humphrey's scared of being alone, which is why he's content to let me have my own way all the time."

He thought she was being a little too dismissive of Humphrey, after all he wasn't the only one who knew what it was like to be miles from home with no friends. "I'm scared of being alone too Camille."

She smiled gently at him. "No. You're scared of no one loving you for who you are. You find it easier to avoid pain rather than expose yourself to the possibility of it." He took a sharp breath, uncomfortable that she could expose his flaws so easily, she continued quickly in an effort to spare his blushes. "But you have me now. And I need you just as much as you need me."

She looked for some sort of recognition in his face, her confidence beginning to falter a little. "Don't you think we work better together? Don't you miss me at work as well as here?"

He thought about it. He did miss her. He'd thought at the beginning that he'd missed her beauty, her vivaciousness, her kindness and her smile. But it was more than that. He'd missed her as his foil, missed her slotting so effortlessly into the parts of his personality that were lacking. It was true that he was competent at his job, more than competent. But he had achieved something with Camille that was now totally out of reach. She had compassion, intuition where he did not, she inspired confidence, trust, where he represented the full weight of the law. For everything he was not, there was Camille.

He reached for her, knew all that she had said was true. Knew that he needed to address his own problems in his own time. It would be easier now.

He drew her into a kiss and mumbled an apology, keen to lighten the situation. "But you still think I'm old and bald..." She gave a muffled cry and beat her fists against his chest as he laughingly told her he was joking.

She glared at him, "you really know how to ruin the moment don't you."

He bit back another laugh and gave her the type of look that let her know that there hadn't really been anything to ruin given that he was still exhausted from their last "moment" upstairs and kissed her again.

Never one to shy away from a challenge she deepened their kiss and slid her leg over him so that she was straddling him. Richard thought about protesting, of reiterating that nothing was going to happen for a while, but then took in his situation. He was on the floor eating pizza and watching Saturday night television. His only saving grace was Camille's enthusiastic attempt to get him in to bed again. As he felt the beginnings of arousal swirl through him he realised that as long as she wanted to try and seduce him, then he didn't give a damn about anything else.