A Prelude to…Something
Firstly, I hope everyone is doing okay after the finale? I haven't seen it yet, I'm still a couple of episodes behind. Today seemed like the perfect time to delve right back in the past and post something that's set pre-series.
Secondly, I'm not quite sure what inspired this. I think it was partly catching up on the new series of Virgin River (I recommend!) which has a similar set-up of a character packing up their life and moving to a small town, but when they arrive it's not ~exactly~ as advertised. I kind of thought "um, wouldn't you go and take a look at the place before you decided to move there?" and my brain randomly replied with: "Sam Radford didn't though, did he?" (It's a lot of fun in my head, guys). Anyway, then I got to wondering what would have happened if Sam *had* decided to take a little trip to Middleton before he decided to move there with Nick…and I love writing Sam & Cassie first meeting each other almost as much as I like writing about them and their various outfits/uniforms/costumes etc, so this… happened.
Thirdly, this was beta read by the always awesome *xfphile*, who helped me give it the "pizzazz" I thought it needed, and the hyphens that it definitely needed! While I'm on the subject, you should all be checking out her fic "Serendipity" which is a re-telling of season 1 if Cassie & Ryan had been a couple. I had the honour & privilege of beta-reading it, and you are really in for a treat, so go check it out!
Now, in the immortal words of Coldplay's Chris Martin, 'oh, take me back to the start...'
For once, Cassie Nightingale, the cool, calm pillar of Middleton could not settle to anything.
And she wasn't sure why.
She was still nervously fussing with the guest room at Grey House, or why this was the third room she had chosen for the incoming traveller. She loved all of the rooms and any one of them would have been suitable for her guest, yet she couldn't seem to make a decision.
Beyond frustrated with herself, she straightened the large throw pillow in the middle of the bed, changed the position of the vase of fresh irises in the window, and finally, for lack of anything else to move or rearrange, she paced the freshly vacuumed carpet a little.
She didn't know – and couldn't tell - why she was going to so much trouble for one guest, especially one who was coming alone and was only staying for a couple of nights. It was faintly ridiculous, because as long as he had clean towels and fresh bedding, he probably wouldn't even spare a thought for the location of the room or the colour of the bedspread.
Before she drove herself completely crazy, Cassie went down to the kitchen to bake some muffins. Making them always calmed her, and the smell of home baking always made Grey House smell extra welcoming and homey.
For some reason, one even her Merriwick insight could not put its finger on, it was important to her that she impressed this guest.
Time could only tell her why.
Tired, irritated, and feeling dirty and gritty, Sam Radford pulled his car to a stop outside the historic-looking property. Unfortunately, he thought, it looked just like the picture on the website. Why, oh why, had he not booked a room at the Holiday Inn in the next town over?
He hated B the anonymity of a faceless, chain hotel was much more suited to the kind of man who couldn't have picked his neighbours from a police lineup, even though he'd lived in the same apartment building for years.
But that man had decided to move to small town America, and now he'd come to investigate what exactly he was signing up for.
A fresh start. A clean slate. That was exactly what he needed – well, it was what his son needed, so that was what he was going to do. He still wasn't sure it was far enough away from the toxic clutches of his ex-wife, but she had made her position clear where Nick was concerned. And Sam was okay with that, as long as his son never, ever, found out that his mother had just…let him go. Without a fight. Without even a protest.
She could go fuck herself for all Sam cared.
He noticed his hands were fisted on the steering wheel, the knuckles of his surgeon's fingers showing white through the skin. Even all these miles away, in another freaking state, his ex could still grind his gears like this.
It had to stop, before it killed him.
That would only make Linda more smug, if such a thing was even possible.
And Nick would be even more screwed.
He was really in no mood to make nice with whoever greeted him at the B it had been hard enough to manipulate his schedule to get these two days off work, so he didn't want to waste that precious time on small talk. But, if he really was going to settle here, or somewhere like it, he was going to need to practice being a little less like, well…Linda.
On that sour note, he killed the engine and scrambled out of the car, his legs stiff from the long ride.
It was time to experience Middleton and, unbeknownst to the city doctor, it was going to rock the foundation of his whole fucking life.
Cassie's hands were unsteady as she set her cup of tea, chamomile, onto its saucer. She could sense he had arrived and that he was not happy to be here.
Strange, she thought, as she moved through the kitchen to the hallway, her heeled boots clicking against the hardwood floor. Even with her abilities, such a strong sense of feeling before actually seeing a person was odd.
She pulled open the front door just as he reached for the bell, and she watched his expression change.
It would be a lie for her to say that she was unaware of the effect she had on men. She knew she couldn't pretend to be ignorant of the feelings of her good friend Ryan for much longer, no matter how strongly she did not return them, but this was new. She had never reciprocated that feeling, not since Jake.
Yes, of course she'd looked the guest up online as soon as he'd booked. And yes, that might be taking a page out of her cousin Abigail's book, but she wasn't ashamed of her curiosity. Especially not when Martha mentioned that the very same man had registered a significant interest in taking over the Middleton medical practice.
She was just doing her due diligence, right?
In person he was more attractive than his picture online, even if he looked more tired - no, make that exhausted - in the flesh.
"You must be Doctor Radford," she greeted softly with an easy smile, despite the hammering of her heart. "Welcome to Grey House."
She held out her hand for him to shake and was faintly shocked at how strongly she felt that this encounter was about to change everything.
"Uhm, nice to meet you," Sam replied, having to force his tired, journey-weary brain to produce small talk for him while he tried not to gape at the beautiful woman before him.
He accepted the hand she offered and was impressed by the strength of her handshake. The way her small, slim fingers moved against his made him feel something else entirely.
He was human. She was beautiful. It didn't mean that he was breaking his promise to never, ever get involved with a woman again. She was probably married anyway, right?
God, he hoped so.
"I'm Cassie Nightingale," she told him, taking his bag despite his protestations and leading the way up to his room.
She asked him generic, easy questions about his journey to Middleton, and he must have given satisfactory answers but he didn't remember what they were.
He told himself it was because he was exhausted.
He did remember being grateful when she left him alone to flop out sideways on the bed and finally close his eyes. He was asleep in minutes, still dressed, his shoes kicked off with the laces still tied.
Cassie had been correct, he didn't even notice the throw pillow. He was too busy having his best night's sleep of the last decade.
Downstairs, Cassie debated making another batch of muffins. She had all of the ingredients and she needed to do something with her hands. The arrival of her guest - of Sam - had shaken her.
It was all too easy to lose yourself in grief, and to stop taking risks, to try and control every aspect of your life so you don't ever have to feel pain like that again. Cassie had tried not to do that - tried to be a rock of support for her three children after Jake died - but though she had encouraged them to follow their dreams and their hearts, she had not been able to apply that advice to her own life.
The biggest change she had made recently was opening Grey House as a B&B again. She had shut herself off from people - from helping people - for too long. She knew the only way to heal herself was to use her gifts the way she was supposed to.
And, even after barely five minutes in his company, she knew that Sam was one of those people. She also could sense that, like her, he preferred to help others whilst neglecting himself and his own needs.
He looked exhausted, and Cassie was surprised by her desire to care for him, to heal what ailed him. But she also knew that he would push her away if she tried. The kindness of strangers was not something he saw a lot of in New York, she supposed.
Covering the second batch of muffins with a cloth, Cassie went up to bed, pausing to look in on Grace before retiring to her own room.
In bed, she opened a novel and took out the bookmark. She didn't expect to sleep well, she never really did, but her eyes started to droop closed, the words on the page blurring.
The dull thump of the book hitting the carpet did not disturb her, and for the first time since Jake's death she slept until her alarm went off.
It was also the very first night she did not dream of her husband.
The smell of freshly baked pastries, frying bacon, and coffee led to Sam following his nose, cartoon-style, down to breakfast the following morning.
It had been the best night's sleep of perhaps his entire adult life, and he had woken refreshed, in exactly the same position, shortly before six.
Now, showered and dressed in a fresh shirt and slacks, he almost felt like a new man.
Almost.
One good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast in the same kitchen as a beautiful brunette would not magically solve any of his other issues. And anyway, Sam Radford did not believe in magic.
Yet.
"Oh, you drink coffee?" Cassie asked in surprise, startling Sam as he poured the dark, heavenly nectar into a large mug, nearly making him spill it over himself and the table.
"Only by the truckload," he laughed, but it faded as Cassie's eyes narrowed. Okay, it wasn't funny, but she was his hostess so she could have given him a polite smile, surely? She'd been nothing but gracious with the other guests who hovered in the kitchen and dining area. Where was her small-town charm now?
"But you're a doctor, aren't you?" she prodded.
"I'm pretty sure that's what I went to medical school for, yeah," he replied, not meaning to sound so bitchy but he usually preferred his first coffee of the day without interrogation. Wasn't that why he was getting divorced?
Well, not entirely, but it would certainly be on the list of reasons.
"So, surely, you know how bad caffeine is for you?"
Sam tried really, really hard not to roll his eyes, but he wasn't convinced he'd succeeded.
"So is telling someone not to drink coffee before they've drunk their coffee," he said with a little more force than he'd intended. It had been supposed to be a joke damn it, but he had to watch as his remark hit home and Cassie excused herself to attend to another guest.
Great. Now, he was an asshole. And a decaffeinated asshole at that.
He honestly wouldn't blame her if he came back to the B&B to find a horse's head in his bed.
It would serve him right.
And it really wasn't the most auspicious start to his Middleton adventure.
Sam's day improved after his less-than-stellar behaviour at breakfast and he slowly but surely found himself succumbing to Middleton's charms. Yes, the space where he'd be setting up his medical practice was unfinished and far from state of the art, and the pretty blonde at the bistro had hit on him so hard he had nearly ricocheted all the way back to New York, and, well… the less said about Mayor Tinsdale, the better.
Still.
Still, it seemed like the perfect place to start over. More importantly, it seemed like the perfect place to finally reconnect with his troubled teenage son.
At the end of the day, that was the most important thing.
Nick needed one parent who was unselfish enough to actually put him and his needs first. And that certainly wasn't Linda. Hell, at this moment she was probably entagled in something other than Pilates with the young and bendy Geoffrey.
Ugh, that was not a mental image he needed.
The man was welcome to her.
Now, he needed to apologise to Cassie. He didn't want her to think that a total dick was moving to her charming little town.
If she was going to think he was a dick, he wanted the chance for her to get to know him so she could make an actual, informed decision on the subject.
Cassie didn't think he was a dick, but she was still smarting from their conversation at breakfast. How dare he? She fumed all the way through clearing away the breakfast things, so absorbed in the task that she ignored George the first two times he tried to get her attention.
By the time she arrived at the Bell, Book, and Candle, she was calmer. In the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter whether Sam drank coffee, tea, or battery acid. It was his body, his life, and he could do what he liked with either. It was none of her concern.
Except.
Except she could sense how much he was hurting - he was giving off a sense of betrayal and misery in waves. And, the incident at breakfast notwithstanding, she could tell he was an honourable, decent man.
Maybe she should apologise.
Maybe she would if she felt she'd actually done something wrong.
The people who saw the calm, serene, eager-to-please Cassie Nightingale, didn't know that she also had a stubborn streak a mile wide. Sam had witnessed it before he'd been in Middleton twenty four hours.
She wondered what that meant.
Ryan popped into the shop at lunchtime, proffering a brown bag of takeout from Stephanie's Bistro. His hopeful, puppy dog eyes seemed even more…hopeful today, but she wasn't sure if he always looked that way or if she was more attuned to it because, as much as she hated to admit it, she had experienced a moment of attraction to someone else, however fleeting, and it had made her realise that she just didn't feel that way about Ryan. If she hadn't felt that bolt-from-the-blue, fiery arrow of lust for him after all this time, she was pretty sure she never would.
With Jake it had been pretty instantaneous.
But he had been her once-in-a-lifetime.
Someday she would have to find a way to explain that to Ryan, but she'd already had enough conflict for today, thank you very much, so she thanked him for lunch and tried not to feel too much relief when he headed back to his office.
She was balling up the empty takeout bag to put in the trash when she felt him. He hadn't opened the door yet, the bell hadn't jangled, yet she could already sense his presence. But the emotion she felt from him was not one she could pin down.
He stepped towards her, his expression somewhere approaching sheepish, and she was hit by the full force of him.
After all, she was grieving, not blind.
That little twist of lust didn't stop her from being cool with him, the memory of their disagreement that morning returning to her afresh.
"Hey, nice place you've got here," he complimented, looking around at… well, he wasn't quite sure what. It sure smelled good, though.
"Thank you," she replied, a little disarmed and trying to cover it by fussing with a display of handmade soaps. "How are you finding Middleton so far?"
"Honestly?" he asked, and Cassie looked up at him, curious about his tone. "It's kind of got me under its spell."
"Oh," Cassie felt herself relax. She could just about accept that he was a caffeine-imbibing medical practitioner, but if he said he hated the very town that was her home and sanctuary, well, she'd go home and grab her torch and pitchfork. "It is pretty special."
Sam nodded. "I think it might just be the perfect place for my son."
Cassie's stomach lurched and she looked down, her gaze automatically moving to his left hand. As she had remembered, there was no wedding ring there, but she did notice a band of lighter skin on his finger, suggesting he had not long stopped wearing one. And he'd been wearing one for a while.
"Divorced," he said, holding his hand up and giving it, he realised with hindsight, a ridiculous waggle in her direction.
Biting her lip, Cassie held up her also bare left hand. God, it had been a wrench removing her wedding and engagement rings, but she had finally done it on the second anniversary of Jake's passing, putting them in a special trinket box with his own wedding ring.
"Widowed," she replied. "Almost three years now."
"Oh shit, I'm so sorry," he said, feeling embarrassed and foolish. He so rarely found himself caught on the back foot like this.
But for Cassie, it might have been the most sincere expression of condolence she'd ever received, and he was basically a stranger.
"Thank you," she replied softly. "It has been particularly hard on our daughter; she was so young at the time."
Sam felt a brief flash of anger toward his son. Yes, he and Linda had been pretty toxic in the parenting department, but Cassie's daughter had lost her father and he'd bet that she had never trashed someone's beach house.
"How old is she?" he asked gently, their altercation from the morning long forgotten.
Hell, they might even laugh about it someday.
"Grace is fourteen," she confirmed.
"Same as Nick," he replied in surprise.
"Well, if you do decide to move here, I'll make sure she keeps an eye out for him, shows him around town and everything," she offered, somewhat to her own surprise.
"Thank you, that's very kind," he replied. "And, look, I'm sorry about this morning…that's what I really came in here to say."
That floored Cassie a little, but there was something very welcome, and dare she say it attractive, about someone who could apologise when they were in the wrong without making it someone else's fault. In fact, it had been something she loved about Jake.
"I shouldn't have lectured you," she replied, accepting the apology. "You are my guest after all. So, I'm sorry, too."
"Well, I won't be your guest for much longer," he replied, and his smile was genuine now they'd properly cleared the matter up - and wasn't she such a breath of fresh air after Linda, who would have used an incident like this morning as a rod to beat him with for months, if not years. "I've put in an offer for the property next to Grey House."
"Oh, how lovely," Cassie replied, and she meant it.
"So, I guess I'll be seeing you around…neighbour."
He gave her a little wink as he delivered the slightly cringe-worthy statement, and she felt an unexpected leap low in her belly.
But even all of her Merriwick insights and gifts combined could not tell her just how much one man's arrival in her sleepy town, and in her equally sleepy life, would change the whole course of her future.
"I'll be seeing you, neighbour."
She had found her heart and her home in Middleton and Sam Radford was about to experience exactly the same phenomena, whether he was ready for it or not.
The following morning, Sam checked out of Grey House and started his journey back to New York. He couldn't wait to see Nick, couldn't wait to tell him about the wonderful town he'd found for them to make their fresh start in. He knew Nick wouldn't share his enthusiasm, but that was okay. He had enough of a good feeling about the place, about the future, for the both of them.
As he pulled onto the freeway, his train of thought switched to his bewitching neighbour-to-be, replaying their limited but certainly not dull conversations over in his mind.
He was smiling, free and easy, for the first time since…no, it would depress him to think about how long ago that was.
It was only when he pulled the car to a stop in the underground parking lot beneath his apartment building that he realised he'd barely spare a thought for Linda all day.
Oh, yes, Middleton was exactly what he needed. He didn't care if he had to duct tape Nick to the passenger seat - they were both about to begin again in Middleton.
And Sam could not wait for his new life to start.
Grey House felt empty after Sam had left even if he had only stayed for two nights. Two couples had checked in since his departure, taking the rooms she had selected but then dismissed for Sam's stay.
She started to clear up the room, pulling off the sheets and pillowcases, adding them to the laundry hamper with the used towels. She picked up the throw pillow - the one that Sam, on pain of death, could not have told you the colour of - and hugged it to her chest.
She had a feeling - a momentous, all-encompassing feeling - that everything was about to change. And, Merriwick though she was, there was nothing in her power that she could do to change, or stop, it.
More surprisingly, she found that she didn't want to.
This felt like a new start, a new beginning, a prelude to…something.
Something good.