Fanfiction Chapter 1

It was another night where Nathan couldn't sleep. He lay in his bed listening to the steady drops of late fall rain on the roof. Instead of being lulled by the sound, each drop felt like it amplified all the thoughts going through his head.

It had been three weeks since Elizabeth had come into the Mountie office. Though Nathan knew she and Lucas were courting he had still held out hope that Elizabeth would finally break through her fear of being in a relationship with a Mountie and acknowledge the strong feelings he was certain she had for him. Instead she told him she loved him, but she wasn't in love with him. She told him that she'd been looking for Jack in him. The memory of that meeting still haunted him.

Nathan was remembering the many times he and Elizabeth had spent time together since he'd arrived in Hope Valley three years earlier. Nathan had a very analytical mind. It was one of the reasons he was so widely sought after by Mountie HQ to track criminals who managed to move from town to town wreaking havoc on small frontier communities but leaving little trace. Nathan's ability to pick up on clues that might seem insignificant to others was another of the reasons he often found himself being pulled into ongoing investigations that had seemingly gone cold.

Given his ability to read situations better than most, Mountie or otherwise, Nathan was at a complete loss to understand where he went wrong in his assessment of Elizabeth's feelings for him. As another night of sleeplessness crept on Nathan again told himself to stop. Quite honestly he was tired of trying to figure it out. He knew he wasn't wrong. He thought the tide was turning in his favor the morning of the failed prisoner transport. He'd finally worked up the courage to ask Elizabeth to dinner. She smiled in response but didn't say yes. He told her to let him know when she'd figured it out. But then Jenny O'Rourke had pulled a rifle on the prisoner transport caravan. While Nathan was close to talking her down and getting her to turn over her rifle, Rookie Constable Nelson had pulled his personal rifle, cocked it, and alerted Elias O'Rourke to the danger his sister was facing. He called out to Jenny and in her surprise she discharged the rifle, hitting Constable Nelson, killing him with a bullet to the heart.

Nathan returned to Hope Valley walking Newton primarily because he needed time to gain some composure before facing the residents he was responsible to protect. As he approached the prisoner transport wagon he could hear Carson pronouncing that the rookie Mountie was gone. In that moment he could see Elizabeth in her purple coat turn as she heard the horse's hooves behind her. In a split second she ran to Nathan wrapping him in her arms with a force that knocked the breath out of him.

Once the shock of the situation had worn off, Nathan reflected on Elizabeth's reaction to his return. Certainly her emotional embrace meant that she had deeper feelings for him than either of them realized.

While the events of that day had spurred Nathan to change his approach to his life by taking on a "seize the day" attitude, it seemed to have pushed Elizabeth into a place of making decisions based on the fears she'd held ever since the death of her late husband Jack Thornton. Jack had also been a Mountie but had been one to take on many more risks than Nathan ever would, given his responsibility to his niece, now daughter, Allie. Jack always felt the need to take on the most dangerous assignments under the guise of serving and protecting his country. Ironically, it was the "safe" assignment that ultimately took Jack's life. Was that the reason that she routinely told Nathan to be safe whenever he left on an assignment? Could Nathan blame her for her fears? He didn't but he had hoped that over time she had realized that Nathan wasn't Jack.

That thought sent Nathan into another night of recalling the many moments they'd shared beginning with the attention Elizabeth had paid to Allie as she tried to settle into life and school in Hope Valley. Elizabeth was the one who had voiced that Allie was likely pushing people away in order to protect her heart from the pain of eventually losing them when Nathan was likely to get transferred again. Nathan acknowledged that at the time but in retrospect he wondered if Elizabeth wasn't speaking from her own experience. Is that why she had pushed him away? Was she afraid of losing him?

When Nathan had found Elizabeth waiting on the side of the road after he'd been up to check out Bill's land, he'd been so excited to share with her that he'd found the perfect place to settle down. She quickly threw cold water on his excitement by telling him that she thought he wanted more than what she could give him. He tried to talk to her but she was adamant that she couldn't give him what he wanted. He told her he knew that she felt the same way he did but her response was simply "I can't." It was then that he boldly and unabashedly professed his love for her, telling Elizabeth he was in love with her. With a look of shock she had jumped on her horse and rode off leaving him by the side of the road with a pain that his heart had never thought possible.

That day had run through Nathan's mind so many times. It wasn't long after that day that he'd found out Elizabeth was dating Lucas. Nathan wasn't sure what was more painful, the fact that Elizabeth couldn't overcome her fears to be with him or that she'd decided that Lucas was the better choice for her.

Nathan fell into a fitful sleep vowing to move on if not for his sake then for Allie's. Before he could do that he needed to establish some ground rules that he would have to follow when it came to Elizabeth Thornton.