Sue-Ellen turned back in the direction of her car. Her head was swimming with the directness of his approach. "Sue Ellen! Please don't go. There are things that need to be said." There was a desperation in his voice that made her stop in her tracks. She turned to face him. "Haven't we both said and done enough?" she asked. He shook his head sadly. "Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we can't put things right between us." He glanced over to the door of the diner. The sign said it was open but it looked quiet in terms of custom. "Let me buy you a coffee?"

She remained where she was, much to his disappointment. "It's not the best idea. Too much has happened, JR. I feel there's no going back." "Please, just five minutes?" he begged. She sighed before answering. "Alright then, five minutes." As ever, she was giving in to him. She knew it but she just couldn't prevent herself from being drawn back in.

The proprietor looked up from his newspaper as the bell on the inside of the door jangled. He stared as the couple walked in, amused by the incongruity of their dress. He glanced out of the window and noted the two expensive vehicles parked outside, their number plates giving the game away as to their identity. "Good morning" he greeted them. "Please, sit wherever you like." JR held his arm out to Sue Ellen to decide. She chose a booth in the furthest corner and took a seat, watching guardedly as her ex-husband joined her directly opposite. A waitress sauntered over, under instruction to take their order. "Just coffee please?" Sue-Ellen asked. "Right away ma'am" the young woman replied, walking away and then returning with mugs and the percolator jug. JR thanked her politely but pointedly, leaving the waitress in no doubt that, after she had served them, he expected her to make herself scarce.

Sue-Ellen took a sip of her coffee before speaking. "What are we doing?" she enquired rhetorically. "I know full well what I'm doing" JR answered with emphasis. "I'm trying to stop us both from making the biggest mistake of our lives." "You certainly pick your moments" she replied curtly, trying her best not to allow him to read her thoughts. "Oh, this isn't completely spur of the moment, darlin. I've been thinking about this for ages, wondering how I could have let things get this far."

There was a passion in his voice that was all too familiar. It took her back to all the times in the past that he had managed to win her over, to inveigle his way back into her life only to let her down to such devastating effect. "I saw you at Southfork this morning and I knew. You feel exactly the same as I do. Well, honey, we're a long time dead as the saying goes but there is a way back for us if you want that. I certainly do."

She stared into his eyes and knew. He looked just as tired as she did, beaten down almost by the momentum of what was occurring, but still up for one last fight. "You have a lovely young bride waiting for you" she told him. "Like you said that day when you threw me out. It's over, JR, and there's no going back. Don has proposed to me and I intend to accept."

She wanted to hurt him, to make him feel the pain that she had felt when he had started his affair with Kimberley Cryder and, by the expression on his face, it was working. He shook his head and grasped her hand. "He's not right for you and you know it, sugar. If he was, you would have accepted his proposal there and then, like you did with me. You wouldn't have needed to think about it."

His touch and the words that accompanied it sent shivers down her spine. He was right. She had agonised over Don's proposal in a way that unnerved her, weighing up the pros and cons, never completely certain about what she should do. "He must know, the English fella. He's grasping at straws. It'll never work."

"And what about you and Cally?" she countered defensively. JR sighed wearily. "She's a sweet girl but things got way out of hand there. She knows, deep down, that I don't love her. I've tried to think about the future in a positive way, tried to convince myself that there was more in the way that I felt about her but, even with the prospect of the baby, I know it won't work out. It can't because she's not you."

Sue Ellen's expression darkened. She had meddled there and now she was wishing she hadn't. Cally was so in love with JR and so desperate to be married to him she couldn't see that the advice given by her predecessor to deceive him would only lead to disaster. It had been a game but it was going to involve damage to someone who was basically innocent, just a pawn in the twisted game of revenge that she still desired to play where her ex-husband was concerned.

"So why until thirty minutes ago were you going to see it through?" she asked. "Surely not for the sake of Cally's dignity? That would never be you, JR." JR stared into her eyes, still holding onto her hand, relieved that she hadn't yet tried to pull it away. "I don't know, not really. What I do know is that when I saw you at the house, the look on your face as you spoke to my mama, I realised that I couldn't go through with it. Come what may between us, darlin, I'm going home to break it off with her. I will see her right financially and I will do what's right by my child but making a life with the two of them is no longer possible. We would be living a lie and that's not fair to any of us."

Sue Ellen took a deep breath before responding, her mind filled with doubt about what to say to him. If he was, indeed, about to end it with Cally she didn't actually need to say anything. He would find out that there was no pregnancy in due course and she could deal with the revelation that she had been in on it all along further down the line. However, her sense of guilt and responsibility superseded self-preservation.

"What if I told you there is no baby?" she asked.

Tbc