A/N: Things approach M rating in this chapter, but don't quite get there, so rating stays the same.
Birchington-on-Sea – Friday 16th August 2013:
When he gets back to his B&B Harry showers, shampoos his hair, and shaves. He stands in front of the bathroom mirror, a towel wrapped around his waist, while he examines his image. For a man approaching 60 he is not all that bad. He knows he had lost quite a lot of weight in the months following Ruth's `death', and since spending time with Roxy, he has gained only a few pounds. He will never again have the body he had at 40, but that's the way it is. The one and only time Ruth had seen him naked he'd not been in the best shape of his life, and she had worshipped his body with her fingers and her mouth. He'd apologised for the flabbiness around his middle, and she had said, "Shut up, Harry, and kiss me." That had been a special evening, their desperation for one another highlighted by his uncertain future, their eyes perceiving the other as unflawed and near perfect.
He dresses in black slacks, a pale blue shirt, and a summer weight dark grey jacket. He takes one last look at himself in the cheval mirror in his bedroom, and decides that his appearance is about as good as it can be, given his many limitations.
When he knocks on Ruth's front door, Indian meal in a bag in one hand, and two bottles of wine in a bag in the other, she opens the door almost immediately.
"You're on time, as usual, Harry. I should have asked you to come a bit later. I still need to shower and change."
Harry enters her flat, and leans over to give her a quick kiss. "I can wait," he says. "Where shall I put these?"
Ruth shows him how to use the oven, and indicates the wine can go in the refrigerator for now.
When Ruth comes back into the living area, Harry can't take his eyes from her. It has been a warm day, and it is a mild evening. Ruth wears a pale blue sleeveless summer dress, with straps over her shoulders and leather sandals on her feet. He can see she is braless, and he feels a slight stirring in his groin at the possibility that this evening may end with him once again tasting the skin under the fabric of her dress.
"Close your mouth, Harry," she says. When he lifts his eyes to hers he can see that she is smiling. So far, so good.
She leads him through to the kitchen, and hands him a bottle of wine to open and pour, while she takes the foil containers of the Indian meal from the oven, and places them on a heat proof mat in the middle of the table. Then she puts dinner plates in front of them, along with a selection of cutlery before sitting down opposite him. Harry smiles across the space between them. This is nice. A domestic interlude with Ruth. No matter what happens next, he will have shared this evening with her.
While they eat, Harry fills Ruth in on the goings on in MI5.
"You do realise that I have had a degree of knowledge of everything you've told me," Ruth says, between mouthfuls of the excellent Chardonnay. "One of my jobs while in the US was to keep tabs on MI5."
"Yes, but you would not have had the luxury of context, Ruth."
"True. And how is my replacement? Justin? Jason?"
"Josh Greenaway, as you no doubt already know. He's on secondment from GCHQ …... as you once were."
"Is he good?"
"Not as good as you, but he'll do."
"Harry ….."
"Yes?"
"What happens to me if I come back to live in London?"
"What do you want to have happen, Ruth?"
"I don't know. I don't want to analyse another thing. I did enough analysis while in the US to last me a lifetime. You're almost 60, and you must be considering retiring."
"What are you saying, Ruth?"
"It's just that ….. before I was stabbed, I can remember you agreeing to leave the service and live with me …. in my cottage."
"I suspect that cottage is gone, but I'm sure there are other cottages."
Ruth doesn't answer immediately. She watches Harry for a moment. "I …. thought you might have bought that cottage. I even hoped you might already be living in it. While in the US I imagined you living in it."
"I thought about buying it. I even went to look at it. I couldn't, Ruth. Had I retired on my own to live in that cottage, I would have drunk myself to death by now."
Ruth has no answer to that. She may have been in exile for almost eighteen months, but at least she'd known all along that Harry was still alive.
"Ruth …... we have to spend some time getting to know one another again …... before we can decide whether we have a future together. When we are sure we do – and I really hope we do - then we can decide the where and the when and the how."
"And you'll have to choose between me and Roxy." This time it is Ruth who wants her words back. "I'm sorry, Harry. I wish I hadn't said that."
"There is no decision to be made there, Ruth. It will always be you."
"Have you told her that?"
"Not in so many words." Harry looks down at his plate, now almost empty. "I ... rang her today."
"And?"
"I told her I was staying another night ... to spend time with you."
"And I'm sure she took that well," Ruth says, her voiced laced with sarcasm.
"Not very well, no. She hung up on me."
"As would I have done, Harry. Can't you see how cruel that was?"
"I ... I suppose so. She told me she wanted me to let her know ... how things went with you. I hadn't expected her to be so angry."
"Why? She already knows you'd rather be with me than with her. No woman wants to be rung just to be reminded of that."
Harry sits back and takes a sip of wine, his eyes focused upon Ruth's face. "I thought she and I were ... close companions who had sex."
"That's what you thought. I suspect she had other ideas, regardless of what she'd told you." Harry frowns, his expression one of confusion. "Any woman staying with a man who is still getting over his ex - dead or alive - is waiting for him to learn to love her more than he loves the memory of his ex-loved one. She's not with him to help him get back with his ex. Roxy is hurt, Harry, and possibly rather pissed off with you."
"So I owe her an apology."
"At the very least. Perhaps dinner would be a good idea, although I'm not sure she'd want to sit across a dinner table from you, knowing you'd rather be with me."
"Flowers?"
"That might make you feel better, but I'm not sure she'll be happy with that."
"I can't believe you feel this strongly about a woman you've never met."
"I've been dumped before, Harry. It's humiliating. Roxy knows she's being dumped, and her natural response is to fight it."
"I've been dumped, too. It's par for the course for me."
Ruth thinks: why does that not surprise me, but chooses to keep the observation to herself.
The subject of Roxy is closed, and once the meal is eaten, Harry opens the second bottle of wine - a Sauvignon Blanc, which he knows is just a fancy name for white burgundy – and they move into the living room and sit side by side on the sofa, the wine and their glasses on the coffee table only an arm's length away. Harry turns and rests his arm along the back of the sofa, inviting Ruth to slide closer to him, close enough for their bodies to be touching.
For a while they sit in quiet companionship, sipping their wine. There is still much to be said, but it can wait.
"It's supposed to rain tonight," Ruth says, as much to break the silence as to inform.
"That's good," Harry replies. He keeps his eyes on her, and when she lifts her face to look at him, he can't stop himself. He reaches down to place a soft kiss on her lips.
"Where is this headed, Harry?" she says, once the kiss has ended.
"Wherever you want it to," he answers obliquely. "You must know what I want to have happen."
Ruth nods as she reaches across and glances a fingertip across the back of his hand – back and forth, back and forth. Harry is mesmerised, and his whole body begins to tingle with anticipation. He grasps her hand, and then again leans in for the next kiss. The kiss is longer, and their mouths open so that they can explore inside one another's mouths. The kiss feels familiar, exciting, a prelude to something more intimate. Harry feels his body stirring, and he pulls away. This should not be happening so fast.
Ruth pulls back from him, her face serious. "There's something I should have told you yesterday," she says. "I wasn't going to tell you, but you have a right to know."
"Ruth, if you've been with someone else, I understand. We've been apart a long time."
"It's not that. It's us. It's what we did together that night in your house. There were …... consequences."
"Consequences?" Harry is confused at first, but then the penny drops for him. "Ruth …... you were pregnant?"
She nods, but her expression is still serious, even sad. "I only found out once I reached Washington, and a doctor did some blood tests. By that time I was around 5 weeks pregnant."
"So, what happened to …... ?"
"I was both devastated and elated. The doctor assured me that my medical needs would be taken care of, and that I'd be able to keep the baby and care for it myself. When I was asked about the father of my child, I said I'd had a one-night stand, and I wasn't planning to see him again." Seeing the wave of pain passing across Harry's face, Ruth quickly continues. "I was protecting you, Harry. I was protecting our child. Once I knew about it, I so desperately wanted that child. The best of you and the best of me ….. it would have been a wonderful child."
"Would have?"
"I miscarried. Nothing caused it as such. The doctor said it may have been because of the drugs I'd had to take after I was stabbed. I wanted it so badly, but it didn't stay in my body. At nine weeks I began bleeding, and then I had cramps. I ….. I lost our baby." Ruth can say no more. She is having to re-live the loss, and this time she is living through it with her baby's father. She looks up at him to see tears in his eyes.
"I needed to have been there with you, Ruth. I am so, so sorry."
He reaches both arms around her and pulls her against him. Ruth has already cried all the tears she can for her loss, but Harry hasn't. They hold one another for a long time. Ruth can hear the distant rumbling of thunder as Harry holds her tightly against him, while he rubs his palm up and down her back. When he relaxes his hold on her and pulls away a little, he then reaches down to kiss her. It is not a passionate kiss, but is one of reverence. Ruth reaches around his neck and pulls him closer to her. This time the kiss is passionate, and deep and loving and tender. Harry turns a little on the sofa, pulling Ruth against him, so that he can feel her breasts against his chest. At that same moment they hear a clap of thunder, loud and right above them.
"Bloody hell, that scared me," he says, quickly pulling out of the kiss, but still holding Ruth close. He has left his jacket hanging over the back of a chair in the kitchen. They have both tossed their shoes aside, and now he can feel Ruth's fingers pushing between the buttons of his shirt in search of bare skin. "I'm happy for you to undo my buttons, Ruth," he says, smiling.
"All of them?" She looks up at him mischievously.
"If you're referring to my trouser buttons, then yes, I'm happy for you to undo them also."
"You see," she says cheekily, "I suspect your trousers might be a bit tight on you, so I'm offering to loosen them."
"As a favour."
"Yes …. just as a favour … to you."
"Then, perhaps I can loosen your dress for you. It looks rather tight around your …. chest."
"Yes, I suspect my breasts have increased in size in the last half hour."
Another clap of thunder has Ruth burrowing close to Harry's chest, her nose pressed against the flesh of his neck. "God, you smell wonderful," she breathes against his skin. Very slowly Ruth pushes her fingers behind one of the buttons on Harry's shirt. Quickly and skillfully she opens that button, and then she slowly moves onto the next button, until Harry's shirt is open all the way down the front. Very slowly, Ruth moves her hand down to the top button of Harry's trousers, but before she can go any further he grabs her fingers in his, and pulls them up to his lips. As he kisses her fingertips he looks into her eyes, just as another clap of thunder crashes overhead. Ruth again pushes her face into his neck.
"Does this flat have a bedroom, Ruth?"
"Is that you way of asking me can you stay the night?"
"I don't wish to get caught in the storm. Besides, I'd much rather stay here."
Ruth stands and reaches out to take his hand, and then leads him to her bedroom. As she closes the bedroom door behind them, the clouds open, and rain splashes on the pavement outside the house. Soon the gutters overflow, and water streams down the outside of the window pane. Harry is busy sliding the straps of Ruth's dress down her arms, and reacquainting himself with the taste of her skin, her breasts, her nipples hardening against his tongue, while Ruth manages to open every single button on Harry's clothing, and then the zipper on his trousers. "At last," she says, sliding her hand inside his underwear and wrapping her hand around him. She is as gentle with him that night as she had been almost two years before. He gasps, and then breathes more easily as he remembers her touch from before. Everything from that moment on is down to memory. It's been almost two years, but for them it feels like two days.
By the time the storm abates, an hour has passed and they are both asleep, two heads close together, fingers stilled at last, their bodies satisfied. They know they only have a few hours together until Harry must return to London.