Ellie
Paul sends the list of Directors to Ellie, and Hardy parcels out the names to each of the task force sites before they even get out of Stonebridge. As she drives to Broadchurch with Hardy in his car behind her, Ellie's stomach churns at the thought of once again interrogating someone she knows about a heinous crime.
Beth has been working closely with Paul on Danny's charity, and he'll be at her house at ten in the morning on Saturday, which is where and when she'll take Hardy to question him, even if she has to tape Hardy to the floor to keep him from interrogating the Reverend Paul Coates on Good Friday.
She needn't have worried. Daisy drags her father away early the next morning and they don't return until the evening, windswept and glowing with fresh air, Daisy wrapped in smiles and Hardy in bemused affection.
"She likes it here," he tells Ellie that night after the kids have gone to bed.
Ellie laughs. "Don't sound so surprised!"
"She's lived her whole life in a city. I was worried she'd be bored." He shakes his head. "Tabitha's keeping her busy with extra school work, while Chloe's been introducing her to kids more her own age. Tom's been teaching her how to play football-which she's always hated before, by the way-and wee Fred keeps trying to escape from them so she says she's learning to be quick on her feet. She even likes Lucy and Ollie!" He glowers at Ellie. "Not that I like that last bit. Ollie, I mean."
"That's my nephew!"
"Who's always been a bit of knob."
"Well, you would certainly recognize one when you see one."
He rolls his eyes.
She wakes in the morning to the sound of Fred's happily babbling voice, answered by Hardy's low growl. She rolls over and is about to slide back into sleep when she sits bolt upright, realizing she's hearing Fred's happily babbling voice and Hardy's low growl.
She creeps downstairs and cautiously peeks into the now silent living room and finds Hardy curled up on his side on the sofa, eyes closed, and tucked up against him is Fred, now also sleeping peacefully. She closes her eyes against the sharp, bittersweet memory of watching Joe sleeping with Tom, then opens them again. This time she notices the sofa is much too short for Hardy's long legs and she thinks it may be time to invest in that sofa bed she's always talked about.
"Go back to bed, Miller, he's fine," Hardy mumbles without opening his eyes, and she jumps a little.
She hesitates, watching them with a soft yearning, and then her eyes widen as she realizes she's actually wondering if she could fit on the sofa as well, snuggle up with her back against Hardy's chest and Fred tucked safely against her, all of them soft and warm and sleepy.
The revelation sends her scurrying to her bedroom where she plops onto the bed with a pounding heart, wondering where the hell that thought had come from, especially with Hardy, of all people. As she calms, she decides the sudden desire to join them on the sofa has nothing to do with the man himself but is rather a symptom of her continuing deep loneliness left behind by the loss of the perfect man she'd thought she'd married. It's an emptiness that's still so aching and so deep that she'd snuggle with anybody, even Hardy.
She shakes her head and resolves to tell her friends to set her up with as many dates as they can find. Somewhere there's a man who really is the way Joe appeared to be, and by God, she's going to find him.
Hardy obviously didn't notice anything unusual in her rapid departure from the living room, because he gives her a sleepy scowl when she returns forty-five minutes later to find him making breakfast for the kids. The only one who seems happy to be awake is Fred, who's beaming and chattering happily at the others who respond with an occasional grunt, growl or muttered 'yah'.
Hardy glances at her as he places a small plate of scrambled eggs in front of Fred and ruffles his hair.
"Breakfast?" he asks in a sleep-roughened burr, his hair sticking up on one side and his face covered with scruff. "Miller?" he asks, frowning, and she's jolted back to reality.
"Just cereal," she says, "and coffee."
He nods and she finds herself watching as he reaches up to the top shelf for the cereal box, admiring the long line of his arm and how it flows into his torso to his hips to his legs. He seems taller somehow although not quite as skinny as she's always thought.
She closes her eyes and opens them and thankfully he's just Hardy again, the grumpy knob and wanker who stole her job and has a tendency to take over her life whether she wants him to or not.
"Never thought of you as all that domestic, Hardy," she says with forced casualness as she kisses Fred and Tom, smiles at Daisy and sits at the table.
"I was outnumbered," he grumbles as he puts the cereal and milk on the table.
His toast pops and he butters the pieces then turns and leans against the counter, plate in hand as he takes a bite. Ellie frowns, irritated that he doesn't want to join them at the table, then realizes the table only seats four. She makes a note to extend the table and put another chair in the room. Either that, or they start to eat breakfast in the dining room only she doesn't think this lot could function long enough to make it that far.
Everyone's a bit more sociable once breakfast is over, and Hardy leaves them to clear up while he takes a shower and gets dressed in fresh clothes Ellie is impressed to see he actually brought with him. When he's ready, they leave the kids behind and walk over to Beth's.
"I know you have jeans," she says as they stride across the green, "why don't you ever wear them?"
He gives her a surprised look. "Because I'm on official business."
Ellie just shakes her head and gives Beth a wide, genuinely happy smile when she answers the door.
Beth's startled but happy enough to see them and Ellie makes small talk while they wait for Paul to arrive. When he does, he walks into the living room and looks resigned when he sees them waiting for him.
"I thought you'd be wanting to talk to me," he sighs.
Hardy and Ellie exchange a glance then Hardy says, "Let's go outside."
They're silent until they're in the garden, then, deliberately ignoring Hardy and the notebook he's pulled out, Paul says to Ellie, "This is about the South Coast Killer, isn't it?"
Ellie says, "Tell us more about these shelters you've set up."
"We started the first one five years ago to provide a safe place for people living on the streets. They're open 24-7 and anyone who walks in can get a hot meal, a place to warm up, as well as short-term housing and long-term counselling, if they want it. We've expanded to seven locations since then-just opened our latest last month. We run on donations and volunteers."
"How often do your volunteers or staff move between locations?"
"Why...I don't know. There's a lot of communication, especially when we're setting one up. And, of course, our regular meetings. To keep it fair, we rotate through each site."
"Do you have a schedule of the meetings for the last five years?" Hardy asks.
Paul glances from one to the other.
"You can't be serious!"
"We need to eliminate suspects," Ellie says soothingly.
"We are men of God! We're trying to help!"
"I know," Ellie says, "but we need that schedule. Besides, if there's an overlap then, if nothing else, maybe somebody noticed something."
Paul gives her a disbelieving stare then shrugs helplessly. "I'll go through my calendar and send you the dates."
"And all the dates you were at each site, Reverend, whether there was a meeting or not," Hardy says, looking up from his notebook.
Paul gives him a disbelieving glare. "Really? Haven't you learned by now that I'm not that kind of man?"
Hardy's expression remains impassive. "We still need the dates."
"Oh, yes-I forgot," Paul says, angry sarcasm dripping off his words. "You have no faith, no trust, no forgiveness. What a horrible place your head must be!"
Hardy's mouth twists and Ellie blinks at the sudden angry fire in his eyes.
"Do you want to know what's in my head, Reverend?" he growls softly. "I grew up with a man who raged at my mother because she burnt the toast. I have seen women and men battered or shot or stabbed, and usually for nothing more than a few quid or imagined jealousy. I've carried a murdered child from a river and I've been looking at far too many bodies of women who deserved better than what life handed them. Trust? Faith? Forgiveness? Those are all easy to give when you haven't seen. Aye, stand up high in your pulpit and preach for all of it, but you should also pray for the strength of people like me, Reverend. We're the ones who stand in front of you, so you don't have to see."
Paul's face is pale, his eyes wide as Hardy glares and presses his lips into a tight, thin line before he says, "The dates, Reverend."
Paul swallows. "I'll send them along with the others."
Hardy leaves Ellie to smooth any ruffled feathers and she goes home with a simmering desire to once more tell him just how much of a bloody wanker he is. Only he's gone to Tabitha Jones' place with Daisy, and Tom says he's then on to the Broadchurch Echo for his promised interview with Ollie and Maggie. By the time they return, he's smiling the smile he only gives his daughter, and somehow her annoyance with him doesn't seem as important, and she lets it go.
By the time he leaves on Monday, the list of dates is already sent on to wee Sal and Webster to begin cross-checking them against the known dates of the women's disappearances. By the time his car is out of sight, she's already caught up in the whirl of her usual life in Broadchurch. That night, Joan-from-the-newsagent phones to set her up with a blind date on Thursday night and she's cautiously optimistic about it.
When Hardy calls Daisy to let her know he's home, she realizes she almost misses the skinny wanker, and the week seems to stretch endlessly in front of her until the weekend.
Hardy
Their promising lead quickly stalls. There's a brief moment of euphoria when they confirm that all of the victims had gone to the shelter at one time or another, but they can't prove they went to their local shelter on the dates they were last seen. The dates and locations of the board meetings overlap two of the cases they've identified, but not the others, and the DSs are currently working their way through the schedules for all the Directors, staff and volunteers. Wee Sal and Webster work late each night reviewing and cross-checking the interviews and background checks as they come in but there's little real evidence or progress.
Well, Hardy thinks as he trudges along the river bank, it's been less than a week and these things take time.
He scowls as he assesses the landscape. It's Thursday evening, Miller's on a date and he's…scouting for locations where a serial killer might want to leave another victim. He shakes his head, feeling momentarily disgruntled before he remembers the photo in his wallet, a picture of a smiling, optimistic new mother who ended up murdered and discarded as if she was of no value.
He pushes on.
Life quickly falls into a routine. During the week he's alone, and without Daisy or Miller to keep him in check, Hardy works on the South Coast Killer case with the same obsessive focus with which he'd once pursued Lee Ashworth. He meets Missy once a week, and the bartender with the sweet smile has finally stopped glowering when they sit together, although she still can't seem to ever remember what he drinks.
They've narrowed the possible suspects among the shelter personnel to six men whose schedules significantly overlap with the dates the women disappeared. But there's no physical evidence tying any of them to the women, and nothing else that supports their theory that the shelter is a common factor connecting the murders.
Marney remains unidentified, her picture set in his wallet where he sees her every day and repeats his promise that he won't stop until he's identified her and her killer.
He dreams of the water, of his desperate struggle against the current, of Pippa's body hanging heavy in his arms. Only now Marney joins him in the river, beaming and sweat soaked as she begs him to help her even as her weight pulls him under.
When Miller's in town, he finds there's an awkward tension between them-well, even more awkward and tense than before-and every now and then she watches him with an almost appalled fascination he hasn't seen in her eyes since the early days of investigating Danny's murder. As far as he can tell, he hasn't done anything worse than he usually does and if she isn't used to his abrasiveness by now, she never will be.
As the days drift into weeks and the weeks into months, Hardy feels they've become trapped in some kind of strange limbo. The stalker-no, prankster-has gone silent, and none of the computers they confiscated had anything on them. They finally tracked Joe to France where he's been living since shortly after his acquittal, and Hardy's request to interrogate Lee, Claire and Ricky is still on hold until they finally come to some sort of plea deal with the Crown or else decide to go to trial. Knowing Claire, he thinks sourly, he'll be a grandfather before she finally agrees to a deal and sticks with it. It would have been easier to meet with them if he hadn't been the investigating officer in the cases against them, or if they could prove the prankster was tied to them, or if his life had been threatened in some way.
He sighs as he drives back to Stonebridge almost two months after the video was posted online.
Something somewhere has got to give.
Ellie
Ellie puts her feelings of vague nervousness and tension down to having to leave her boys behind every other week and go to Stonebridge. She knows Hardy didn't ask her to do it, but she likes to tell herself it's all his fault anyway.
Not that it's been completely unpleasant. Daisy's a great girl, just turned sixteen, and both she and Tom take care of Fred and the house with a little help from family and friends. Ellie's also achieved a certain uneasy balance with Hardy. They're blessedly both relatively neat, and while Hardy isn't a morning person...or an afternoon person...or an evening person, really, he at least lets her babble cheerfully and just watches her with a disbelieving, unblinking stare. The table in her kitchen now fits five, and she bought a sofa bed that's at least long enough for him. The argument over his insistence on paying for half of it lasted the entire week she was in Stonebridge and into his weekend in Broadchurch. In the end, he simply added more to the money he gives her for Daisy's room and board and was on the road back to Stonebridge before she realized what he'd done.
It's Tuesday night of her fourth week in Stonebridge, almost two months since the video was released, and as she settles in for the night she acknowledges that her vague sense of restlessness is due to the fact that everything has slowed down. Oh, she's busy every day she's at the station with Hardy, advising her DSs long distance and going over the evidence for the South Coast Killer case with Sal and Webster and Hardy, and even assisting on other cases when asked. But the main reason she's in Stonebridge and staying in Hardy's flat-tracking down the stalker-has gone nowhere fast.
She pulls the blankets over her and scowls up at the ceiling. Spending all this time with Hardy is starting to do strange things to her mind, too. She's been noticing things about him she doesn't want to think about and she's been trying to purge those thoughts with blind date after blind date but with no relief in sight. The men she's been set up with have ranged from sweet but no spark, to downright impossible, and even if there's a small flare of hope for a second date, Hardy shows up to spend the weekend with Daisy, and she's suddenly distracted by the length of his legs or the angles of his face or the colour of his eyes, and for some reason, she never seems to go out on a second date.
She knows she's just lonely and struggling with unfulfilled sexual need, and Hardy's the only man she sees on a regular basis who is relatively her age and single. It's nothing personal.
She scowls, thinking she's never going to get to sleep. Which is why she hears a familiar, muffled noise from Hardy's bedroom followed by coughing, then his door opening and the soft padding of his footsteps to the kitchen.
Well, she thinks as she flings off the covers and steps out of bed, this at least is something she can do something about.
Hardy
Hardy wakes, gasping and choking, coughing as he tries to get the remembered water out of his lungs. He stumbles out of bed, sweat-soaked and clammy. He strips off his t-shirt and uses it to wipe the sweat from his face and chest before he tosses it on the end of the bed and heads to the kitchen.
He's drinking water with a trembling hand when he realizes he's no longer alone. He glances over his shoulder to see Miller leaning against the door jamb, her arms crossed, an angry scowl on her face. He turns back to the sink and hangs his head.
Ellie
"Go back to bed, Miller," he growls.
Ellie rolls her eyes. "As if I've ever listened to you before."
He grunts.
They stand in tense silence, and Ellie finds she's looking at his back, following the long, ropy muscles from where they disappear below his pajama bottoms, up the small of his back to his shoulders and the tense muscles that flex as he grips the sink and the glass of water.
"You all right?" Ellie finally asks when it seems he's quite content to stand there with his back towards her and his head hanging for the rest of the night.
"I'm fine. Don't fuss," he mutters and straightens, gulping down the glass of water and placing it in the sink before he turns and leans against the cupboard, his hands gripping the counter on either side of him. It takes all her training as a copper to keep her eyes focused on his face rather than to let them blatantly wander over his bare chest and stomach, although she automatically notes the small scar just over his heart and a larger one on his right side that follows the curve of his hip.
"I heard you," she says flatly. "Is your heart acting up again?"
That gets him to look at her with startled confusion. "My heart's fine. The doctor said so just last week."
"Then what happened? It's not the first time I've heard you, you know, I've been hearing you for weeks. Coughing and choking." Her eyes narrow. "You're not doing anything sexual in there, are you?"
That earns her a stare from wide, dark eyes that show an amusing amount of horrified confusion.
She nods. "Didn't think so. Now tell me what's going on."
He looks away.
She re-crosses her arms and fixes him with an intense glare.
"Do you really think you're going to get out of this kitchen without telling me?"
He sighs wearily and runs a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up in tufts.
"I have dreams," he says, meeting her eyes with an effort. "About Pippa. About the river. I told you I got pulled under? I would have drowned if I hadn't managed to get my feet under me after I was tumbled downstream by the current. I've dreamed about it ever since. Not every night, and they eased a lot once I had the surgery and we closed Sandbrook. But every now and then, they come back. Between this case and the prankster's tricks..." he shrugs helplessly. "Sometimes they come back."
He blinks and bows his head, staring at his feet.
She takes a step towards him, then stops as he softly says, "Lately, Marney's been there, too. She's with me in the river, begging me to help her, only she pulls me under no matter what I do."
Ellie frowns. "She's always been the one you focused on the most," she says. "Why has she gotten to you like this?"
He doesn't raise his head as he looks up at her from beneath his brows, his wide eyes filled with empathy and despair. "Because someone, somewhere, once loved her. She had a child. She deserves an identity other than that of victim. Her family deserves to know what happened to her. Her child needs to know their mother didn't simply desert them, needs to know that the only thing that was personal in her room was a picture of them."
He looks at her, amber eyes wide and pained but with stubborn resolve beneath it all, and she's rocked by a rush of emotion: empathy mixed with affection mixed with something much deeper and stronger that terrifies her, sets her heart racing and catches her breath in her throat and it's all she can do not to turn tail and run from the room as if all the devils in hell were on her heels.
He must see something in her face because he straightens with a concerned frown.
"Miller?" he asks and takes a step towards her. She shies away and he freezes and they stand in tense silence, a concerned, bewildered look on his face but she sees something else in his eyes as he watches her, something familiar, something she recognizes because she's seen it before in a women's loo, in a little blue shack, in a courtroom, looking up at her from a relieved face in a hospital bed.
It breaks her out of her frozen state and she forces a shrug, tugging her housecoat closer around her as she mumbles, "Well, you should maybe talk to somebody about that," before her courage breaks and she turns and hurries to her bedroom.
She doesn't feel safe until she's inside, leaning against the closed door, her eyes wide in panic, and she doesn't give a shit if she's confused the hell out of him because it's nothing compared to how confused and terrified she's feeling right now.
Because she's here in Stonebridge for the week, and he's going to be at her house for the weekend, and she needs time, and if there's one thing Hardy has never been good at doing, is giving her time to pull herself together, or giving her space.
She hears him slowly return to his bedroom and the sound of the door clicking shut snaps her out of her shock and galvanizes her into action.
She hastily dresses and packs then creeps out. She leaves a note on the kitchen table and is on the road to Broadchurch before she can change her mind.
Ellie's mind is whirling as she drives and she can't remember the last time she was this dismayed by something that didn't have to do with Joe or Danny or a case she was working. It's a different kind of dismay, a different kind of panic, because she's damned if she's-
He's bloody Alec bloody Hardy, for God's sake! He stole her job; shattered her world; ran roughshod over her needs and feelings in his obsessive determination to solve Sandbrook; disappeared from her life for eight months without a word then reappeared as suddenly as before; saddled her with keeping his daughter safe and roped her into helping him solve yet another case and keeping him safe from an unknown stalker!
There's a small voice whispering in her head, telling her she's being a wee bit unreasonable, but it sounds like it has a Scottish accent so she tells it to sod off. There is no way, no way, she's looking at bloody Alec bloody Hardy and seriously wanting to find out what his lips feel like, or how his scruff feels against her skin, or if that torso of his is as endless as it looks, or if his legs really are that long, and she definitely does not want to press kisses against the scar on his chest to show her gratitude that he's alive and to soothe scars that can't be seen.
She grips the steering wheel and screams through gritted teeth.
For God's sake! She doesn't even like tall men, or men with a lot of hair, or men who look at the world like it's some fucking chore to get through and never smile or crack a joke or know how to chat or even have a good time. She doesn't like men who are grumpy in the mornings and, really, all the fucking time. She doesn't like men who define themselves by their jobs and make it their sole reason for being. She doesn't like men who are wankers and knobs and just plain arseholes to everyone around them.
Tears prick at her eyes and she furiously shakes them away.
She doesn't feel anything for bloody Alec bloody Hardy except exasperated tolerance and the sympathy she'd feel for any poor sod dealing with what he's dealing with.
She clenches her teeth and pounds the steering wheel for good measure.
She doesn't feel like this.
She won't.
Hardy
Hardy's worried as he drives into Broadchurch for the weekend. He'd heard Miller bolt out of his flat like a cat with its tail on fire and her note had said absolutely nothing about the real reason she'd left. Their subsequent conversations on the phone have been stilted and not just because he's not a very talkative man. Of course he knows the fact she ran immediately after their conversation in his kitchen wasn't a coincidence.
He stops the car outside Miller's house and sits for a moment, closing his eyes, his mouth twisting into a sad grimace. He let Miller see too much that night and now she's trying to get as far away from him as possible, given the circumstances.
He understands.
He sighs, opens his eyes and gets out of the car.
But he doesn't have to be happy about it.
"Dad!" Daisy cries as she rushes to greet him.
He hugs her tight, then sets her apart from him with a suspicious glare.
"What's going on?"
She laughs. "Awright, you figured it out. Tabitha's pulling together a drama group for the summer. Anyone who participates is going to get extra school credit. Can I audition?"
"Are you any good?"
She rolls her eyes. "No, but that's not the point! If I don't get a part, I'll get to be one of the stagehands."
He scowls. "Awright, I don't see why you'd need my permission..."
"You're not going to make me go back to Stonebridge for the summer?"
He slings an arm around her shoulders as they walk into the house. "About that...it's time we made some plans, yah?"
She nods eagerly. "I want to live with you, Dad, but..." she hesitates and bites her lip.
"But you really like it here, in Broadchurch."
She nods again. "I like knowing almost everyone in school, and I have friends and there's always something to do, and in spite of what happened to Danny, we're really, really safe here. Becca's offered me a job at Traders for the summer, too, if I want it."
Hardy winces inside and makes a note to take Becca aside and make sure she never asks his daughter to source drugs for her hotel guests.
"Will that interfere with this...this thing with Tabitha?"
"It shouldn't, at least I hope not." She frowns. "If it does, well, I'll make a decision then, right?"
They sit on the couch and Hardy says, "Do you want to stay here at least until you finish school?"
Daisy hesitates, then says, "I want to be with you, Dad, but I didn't really like Stonebridge, and Sandbrook is out of the question."
He sighs. "You need to forgive your mother," he says. "You'll regret it forever if you don't."
Daisy's mouth turns down at the corners. "I'll call her after you leave on Sunday," she mutters, "but I'm not making any promises."
He smiles. "Awright. Now, what if we look for a place for us? I won't be living here since I still have a job in Stonebridge, but what if we get you a place of your own that's big enough for both of us when I'm here on weekends."
"Mum will never allow it."
"Well, let me talk to your mum about it. Understand, though, if you start to fail school or there are boys and parties all the time, I'll yank you back to Stonebridge so fast your head will spin."
She rolls her eyes. "Yes, Dad."
They spend a pleasant evening alone together, and he admits her cooking has vastly improved. But everything feels empty since Tom and Fred are spending the night at Lucy's, and Miller went out on a date right after work. Hardy putters around the house after Daisy goes go to bed and wonders if Miller's enjoying herself. He hopes she is, even as the thought makes his stomach twist.
He wanders into the kitchen, grabs a beer out of the fridge, and sprawls on the sofa before taking a healthy gulp. She's been running scared now for almost a week and he knows it's because he's shown her too much and somehow managed to cross that invisible line she'd drawn when they met again at Joe's trial.
He takes another swig of beer as he admits that she's at least trying to let him save what little pride he has left, but staying with him in Stonebridge every other week isn't going to make things easier for either of them. If truth be known, it's not going to help them discover the prankster, either. They may have gone silent, but Hardy's been a detective for too long to believe that means they've gone away. Something tells him they're just biding their time, waiting for Miller to be gone, waiting for him to relax.
Well, he thinks as he finishes his beer, he can use this fuck up with Miller to his advantage. He doesn't know about the prankster, but he's definitely tired of waiting.
In the morning, over breakfast with Miller, he broaches the subject of moving Daisy into a rental place. He's taken aback at her vehement resistance to the idea.
"Miller," he says with an exasperated sigh, "she wants to stay in Broadchurch and finish her school. What? You want her living in your attic and me sleeping on your sofa for the next two years?"
"Well, you can always sleep on the floor if my sofa offends you so bloody much," she snaps and he rolls his eyes.
"Stop picking a fight," he growls and runs a hand through his sleep-ruffled hair and scratches at the scruff on his cheek. He looks at her, his eyes puzzled and sad. "I think you splitting your time between here and Stonebridge is taking a toll. The South Coast Killer case is stalled, and my prankster-"
"Stalker, Hardy. Your stalker."
"Well, whatever you want to call them, they seem to have disappeared, so we can stop worrying about them, too. I'd take Daisy back to Stonebridge, except she's too happy here, plus she doesn't want to go. You don't need to come to Stonebridge every other week anymore. Stay here, raise your children, help us solve the South Coast Killer case, and-and move on with your life."
"Oh, what? I'm not good enough for you now?"
"I'm trying to be kind."
Miller stands, scraping back her chair. "Don't be kind, it doesn't suite you," she snaps, "and you're not putting that poor, defenseless sixteen-year-old in some rental shack down by the ocean! She's staying here, with me, and Tom, and Fred, and we'll take care of her, and you can damn well sleep on my damn sofa every damn weekend!"
He stares unblinkingly at her. "Date didn't go well last night, then?" he says cautiously.
She glares then crumples as she plops back into her chair. "Disastrous. I'd forgotten how horrible dating can be."
"Oi. What went wrong?"
"Bloody everything, from him yelling at the waiter to groping me in the parking lot."
He raises an eyebrow. "Is he in the hospital then?"
"Just a sprained wrist and wrenched shoulder," she mutters sheepishly, "he'll be fine."
Hardy nods, wide eyes never leaving her face. "So...no second date then, aye?"
She makes a face and he dodges the piece of toast she throws at him.
They're both still chuckling when Daisy shuffles into the kitchen with a yawn and says, "Why's this toast on the floor?" which sends them off into another burst of laughter.
"I meant what I said, Miller," Hardy says later that afternoon, once Tom and Daisy have left and Fred is down for his nap.
Miller gives him a puzzled frown.
"About coming to Stonebridge every other week. It's taking time away from your life here for no good reason."
She looks at him with unfathomable dark eyes, her face drawn.
"Maybe you're right," she says slowly.
"I know I am," he murmurs and glances away.