Rose smiled Alec was jealous! "No Alec, you've got it all wrong. Jake and Mickey, they're my friends from London, they brought my stuff from home. I didn't know they were coming down they just surprised me. Were you jealous Alec?" she smiled.
Alec looked down at his cup, forgetting his cold meal that was still half finished, anything than face her. Jealousy didn't come even close when he had seen her holding someone on the patio, a dozen other words sprang to mind but he was too polite to repeat them in public in and front of a woman.
Rose changed the subject. "So you're not just here on business?" Alec shook his head and drank his tea. "So do you live here?" He nodded, trying to finish his drink before that went cold as well. She was getting close. "And you work here too, don't you? You never said you were leaving, it was me that assumed you were because you said you had business to take care of and I've been a complete idiot, haven't I?"
He couldn't deny they have both been idiots, he hadn't dare hoped she would be staying so he had convinced himself she wasn't. Some detective he was.
"I'm sorry Rose, I assumed you were leaving too. Why don't we get out of here and talk? Unless you'd rather be with your friends?"
"No, I'd rather be talking with you, I have some explaining to do as do you Alec Hardy. Just one thing, Jake, he's not my boyfriend. So, do you have anyone back in Scotland waiting for you?" Alec looked slightly surprised at her question but shook his head and said no. Rose got up and walked across to Jake. "Jake, looks like you'll be going home after all and thanks, you were right."
Alec came up behind her. "Are you going to introduce us? he asked. Rose did the introductions. Then to Jake she said, "Why don't you two head back to my house and collect the van and meet me later?"
Jake shook his head. "We know when we're not needed Rose, you and Alec have a lot to talk about. We'll head back to London and catch up with you later, right Mickey?"
Mickey could only nod his head in agreement, what else could he do? Rose had found a new bloke.
They went to sit down by the harbour, Alec didn't find it so uncomfortable there as it wasn't the open sea. Rose thought she owed him an explanation. She turned to face him and put her hand on his cheek.
"I'm sorry Alec, I really am, I should have told you. Can you forgive me?"
Alec took hold of her hand and kissed the back of it.
"There's nothing to forgive Rose, I know who you are and I know why you never told me you were staying and I don't blame you."
Rose looked at him, how did he know who she was?
"Rose, I'm a police detective. I was trying to work this morning and I couldn't concentrate because I was thinking about you so I looked you up. It's true I was only looking for a one night stand and when you said you were moving out, well I thought you were going home and then this morning, well it all seemed so final. I was going to ask you to stay but you left. I thought that was all you wanted last night, then when you woke up this morning and you'd asked if you could stay, you'd changed my mind for me. No-one has wanted to stay the night with me before. So what about you? What made you change your mind?"
"You were nice to me, you didn't take advantage of me and you seemed as lonely as I was. I thought I just needed one night Alec but I didn't and you looked so sad this morning when I kissed you goodbye, I almost changed my mind then but I thought you'd be leaving and I didn't want a long distance relationship. I was talking to Jake out on my patio, I was crying, that's when he told me I should go try and find you and that's what I was going to do after lunch, he said you might not yet have left."
"So Jake was the one on the patio you were holding onto, because you were crying?" Rose nodded. Alec kissed her cheek and said, "Oh Rose, I'm sorry but from where I was sitting, I swear it was purely by coincidence I ended up sitting near your new house but I thought you were moving in with your boyfriend and you were, well you know, happy to see him and you'd just used me last night as a last minute fling. Rose, let's start again shall we? Why don't we go get a drink and we can talk some more?"
He gestured to the pub just at the edge of the harbour. He helped Rose up and took her hand and she let him lead the way.
They had a lot to talk about as they sat in a quiet corner of the pub, Alec explained all about why he was in Broadchurch in the first place but left out the part that he was seriously ill and Rose told him about her family, well this part of her family, she omitted the whole from another universe part, did he really need to know? Perhaps one day but not now anyway and perhaps it was best he didn't know about it, Pete and Jake had come up with a foolproof cover story for both her and her mother and it had passed many a test so maybe she would just leave it there.
She trusted Alec but the few people who knew the whole truth the better, if there ever was an alien invasion on such a scale that it endangered both universes then the less people outside Torchwood who knew about them, the less likely it would be used against them to gain knowledge of the other universe. Rose truly hoped that day would never come when she had to give up her secrets.
Rose looked at him and took his hand.
"There's something else, isn't there Alec? Something you're holding back?"
Alec's sad eyes had given the game away, Rose was not going to settle for half a tale, he had to tell her about his bitter divorce and the fact he was gravely ill and what had caused it and was trying to cover it up so his new boss wouldn't find out. Being a detective inspector was his life, it was all he had that kept him sane and from giving in to the inevitable, forced retirement and he wasn't even forty yet and a life or maybe a few years on sick pay and a quiet cottage by the sea. He couldn't go back to a big city and he knew it, that would surely finish him off and Rose had made him realise he needed to trust someone with his deadly secret but not here in the pub, where people could overhear.
He finished his non-alcoholic drink and noticed Rose was looking at the contents of his drink, she surely suspected something.
"Let's get out of here Rose, can we talk at your place? Since I've only seen your patio," he smiled.
Rose thought he still looked sad, he had more than one thing to hide and didn't want to tell her his secrets in public.
"Sure, Jake and Mickey will have gone now. Admit it Alec, you were jealous when Jake and I can't be anything other than friends, I'm not his type and Mickey, well about ten years ago we used to go out together but he went away for a long time and when he came back we had both moved on. We're just friends now, he works for my step-father as does Jake."
She had to decide if she was even going to tell him about Torchwood yet but he was in the police and so he had probably heard they were a very covert undercover operation that helped the police now and then, she would test his knowledge of them, covertly of course, she was good at that. They got up and walked hand in hand across the bridge and passing a food stall, Rose's tummy was rumbling and so they stopped to get some fish and chips, taking them over to the harbour wall. Rose was teasing him because he said he didn't like eating food out of paper and she pointed out they were in a food carton, there was a difference. Alec just put his arm around her as she sneaked a kiss on his cheek and put her head on his shoulder.
Ironically, unaware to Rose, they were sat on a wall across from the police station, Alec just didn't care that people going in and out could see him sat eating food with a strange young blonde woman but DS Miller noticed as she stood on the second floor balcony looking across and she smiled to herself, that's why he had snapped at her earlier, he'd probably had a lover's tiff with his girlfriend and now they had made up.
That would explain why he had been so grumpy when he'd arrived, maybe he'd had to leave her behind when he'd come here and she had just arrived. She hadn't seen the woman around town before and they looked quite comfortable with each other even from the other side of the road as they were facing each other, the woman seemed to be teasing the DI then she had sneakily kissed him on his cheek and Miller swore even at that distance the DI had blushed and put his arm around the blonde. Perhaps having him around wasn't going to be to bad after all, he now seemed a lot more human than he had done earlier.
Rose and Alec finished their food and walked along arm in arm, stopping further down to get ice cream and sat down again, just about where Alec had sat earlier and Rose could clearly see her house and her garden umbrella and knew now how Alec had seen her with Jake. Alec seemed miles away, probably recalling a few hours earlier when he thought he had lost Rose for good, that she would never contact him now even though he had given her his name in case she wanted to find him again, he never gave his full name to women he had picked up, he had made his first exception to Rose.
Rose looked at him as they finished their ice creams, Alec wiping some away from Rose's chin with the tissue the cone came with and put his arm around her.
"You can't really blame me for thinking the worse Rose, I saw you quite clearly holding onto Jake, you should get a screen or something put up, I could have got really jealous if you hadn't walked into the caf and explained things to me."
Rose smiled, the green eyed monster was rearing its ugly head and she felt flattered that he had cared enough to actually get jealous but she owed him an explanation.
"If I put a fence up, it will spoil the view which is why I rented the house in the first place but I suppose I could get one of those one-way screens. So you were jealous then?"
Alec looked at her, pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear and kissing her cheek.
"Jake knows me, he knew there was something bothering me and he made me tell him and that's when I realised, I didn't know if you were still here or you'd gone away. Jake said I should try to find you and that if you hadn't wanted me to, you wouldn't have told me your name. I had absolutely no idea you were sat down here watching us. Jake's the one I go to when I'm upset, he doesn't judge me or pity me, he helps me resolve things and before you say anything, it's not like that, he's a really good friend and I trust him with my life, he looks after me."
Alec was about to say something but thought better of it as he realised what Rose meant, Jake was no threat to his ambitions of seeing Rose on a permanent basis, he got what she meant.
"So you were really coming to find me eh?" he asked, holding her hand. Rose nodded and touched his cheek. "What if I'd already left town? Would you have tracked me down?"
Rose blushed, would she? "I don't know Alec, I didn't know if you were married or had a girlfriend wherever you had come from or if you were still travelling, I didn't know what I would do. Jake offered to help me find you, I suppose I would have let him but I didn't want to be let down if I found out you had someone else."
"But now you know I don't have anyone Rose, not for a while. I don't make a habit of making women faint then inviting them to my room you know," he smiled. "You were the first one who actually wanted to come with me and then not leave right afterwards but even that has been a while, far too long. I admit Rose, I thought that was all I wanted from you but you, you actually cared enough to stay and it was more than just nice waking up with you this morning, feeling you laying across me. I was a wreck when you walked out of my hotel room, I tried to work but all I could think about was that you had gone and were probably never coming back. Then I decided to look you up and when I found out who you were, I knew I never stood a chance with you from the start, then when I saw you up there with Jake, well, feeling jealous wasn't a strong enough word and I was deciding what to do about it when you walked into the caf ."
Rose got up, pulling Alec with her. "Let's continue this inside Alec, there are things you need to know about me I can't tell you out here."
She looked around and although there was hardly anyone walking past, she couldn't risk it.
They crossed the road, dodging the barrier that she really must see about getting a key for. Alec asked why there was a even barrier there in the first place but said it was probably to keep the tourists from parking and said he could probably get her a key for it after she said even the rental agency didn't know about it. He said it really shouldn't be there at all and double yellow lines would do the job just as well and promised to look into it on Monday. He even told her how he had snapped at his DS earlier when he thought he was never going to see Rose again.
Rose made some tea and they sat on the sofa, one thing leading to another as Rose drew the blinds on the patio window and they began with just kissing, happy they hadn't really lost each other in the end. One thing though had not escaped Rose's attention, Alec's reluctance to get physical. She was quite used to fending men off when they got assertive but both times they had made love, she had noticed his hesitation and he had opted for the gentle approach which although was nice, it bothered her that he might be having some difficulties in showing his true needs to be with her. She needed to know if she was right, if he was ill.