Chapter 6

Sherlock gathered a handful of snow in his bare hands, and made it into a very hard ball. He took a deep breath and narrowed his eyes to better aim at Molly. They had started throwing snowballs as soon as he stepped onto the porch. In fact, he had thrown the first one, reminding her that the day before she had proclaimed herself unbeatable in the snowball fight.

Molly didn't think twice and immediately accepted the challenge. She had quickly discarded her parka and gloves, and at Sherlock's confused look she had answered saying they would get in her way.

She had then proposed, and he had agreed, to turn the game into a real challenge. The winner would be whoever hit the other at least twenty times. Sherlock could already count the ball he hit her with as a point. "A bit overconfident, Hooper. Huh?" he said as he handed their warm clothes to Tony who walked past them carrying wood for the fireplace into the house, "If I were you, Sherlock, I'd keep my guard up. The girl looks combative" the handyman said laughing out loud.

"She really is!" he whispered looking at her intensely. He found her particularly beautiful that morning, dressed in denim overalls and blush pink turtleneck sweater. Her hair had been pulled back into two braids peeking out from under her yellow bobble hat. Her usually pale skin was pink due to the cold, as were her cheeks and the tip of her nose.

"Come on, Holmes, are you ready or not? Are you having second thoughts?". Sherlock rolled his eyes at Molly's eagerness and as he rubbed his hands he blew a cloud of warm breath on them, "Coming!" aloud he said exchanging a look of feigned annoyance with Tony.

So they started playing, but after the first couple of snowballs, Sherlock quickly realized that Molly was a really tough opponent to beat. She was skilled in planning where to position herself and calculating the best distance for throwing to get the best result – that is, to hit him.

And, damn she was really good! Sherlock would never have imagined she was so nimble and fast in preparing her own snowballs, in dodging his, but above all that she aimed as precisely as a professional sniper. But on the other hand Molly always seemed to go beyond his expectations.

After forty minutes the score was in Molly's favour. 18 to 17. And much to Sherlock's chagrin, he had never been ahead.

"Ha! Ha! Target missed!" she giggled as his snowball hit the snowy surface with a plop, just behind her, "Too bad, Holmes! Try again, you'll be luckier…maybe!" Molly said in a cheerful and playful tone darting with the grace of a fawn to her right, "Watch your mouth, Hooper! I'll mop the floor with you!" he yelled after her as he crouched down and put his frozen, reddened hands on his knees to catch his breath.

Molly's head peeked around the corner of the house, "Hell yeah!" she tauntingly approved mimicking his panting and then as she smiled broadly at him she yelled back "Keep on dreaming!" before disappearing behind the house again.

Sherlock found himself giggling. He loved bickering with her, just as he loved the silly laughs that naturally flowed at every snowball toss, as one tried to outdo the other. It had been ages since he enjoyed himself like that! Sherlock was having a blast with her, he had to admit.

"I'm freezing, Holmes! Shake a leg!" her voice roused him, "So eager to lose, Hooper?" he replied with a grin as he gathered more snow and balled it up. Then waited but got no answer. Molly was smart enough to know that if she answered, for him it would be child's play to locate where she was hiding.

Sherlock walked slowly, his boots halfway into the snow, towards the back of the house. He turned over and over again to make sure she didn't sneak up on him. He had learned the hard way how good she was at ambushing!

He flattened himself against the house's wall and peered around the corner. Molly was nowhere to be seen, but despite been light-weight, it was impossible for her not to leave traces of her passage on the snow-covered ground. And that's where Sherlock focused his attention.

He barely held back a smirk. Her footprints led to the small potting shed, just off the kitchen French door. With cautious steps, shifting the snowball from hand to hand, he approached the door already foretasting the completion of the point that would bring him to a draw.

He had just put his hand on the handle and was about to turn it when something hard and cold hit him on the back of his neck, "19 and…", his head pivoted towards Molly's voice and without even having time to react he found his face completely smeared with a handful of snow, "20! I won, I beat you, Holmes!" Molly cheered laughing her head off as she kept on rubbing snow on his face.

Sherlock, in an attempt to escape her assault, grabbed Molly's right wrist and moved backwards, but his foot sank deeper than he thought and he lost his balance dragging her with him. Her laughter increased as she straddled him and shook the snow residue from her hands, "Don't you dare say that this last point isn't fair because I didn't throw the ball but I smeared it in your face!" she warned him by pointing a finger at him.

"Far be it from me!" Sherlock cleaned his face up as best he could. The feel of her so close to him was intoxicating. He could already feel his body reacting to the contact of their bodies, and for a brief moment he was tempted to wrap himself around her and snog her senseless. But he couldn't, he had to hold back. This was neither the place nor the right time. The handyman and his wife could appear at any time.

"Where the hell did you pop out?" he asked instead propping himself up on his elbows and sliding back just enough so that Molly's bum was no longer in contact with his groin. "I thought those were yours" with a brief nod he pointed past her shoulders.

Molly just swivelled her head to take a look at the footprints on the ground, still straddling him, "Not mine. I took advantage of the kitchen French door being open to hide there". She looked around warily then leaned over him, her face inches from his, resuming her former position on his hips, "Mrs Bailey's wasn't there" she quickly added lowering her tone.

As Molly straightened up she suddenly fell silent. Oh God! Was it…was it the onset of a boner what she felt? She instinctively looked down at Sherlock who gave her a clumsy smile as he was silently praying – when had he ever prayed in his life! – that she hadn't noticed how his body was reacting to the fortuitous rubbing of her hips on his groin.

Molly grinned to herself, immediately averting her gaze so to turn a blind eye. Still she had to bite her lip to prevent herself from humming in approval, just as she had to force herself not to reach out for that slight, tempting bulge enclosed in his trousers.

She was relieved to see that all the ruminations that had been lodging in her head since she had seen Sherlock the previous day, were not a figment of her imagination! Something was really different about him. For the first time, at least it was the first time she noticed it, Sherlock had sexually reacted to her proximity.

Sherlock purposely cleared his throat, "So, if they're not yours, whose footprints are they?". "Hmm?" she gasped startled by his question and fell forward with her hands resting on either side of his head and the tips of their noses touching.

As if by magic, the answer to Sherlock question appeared in the shed's doorway with a potted seedling of cayenne pepper in her hands, "Look at you two!" Mrs Bailey rolled her eyes with a small smile quirking the corner of her lips, "What have you done to yourself?" she then added as Molly slipped out of Sherlock's laps, kneeling in the snow beside him and running her cool hands over her face to freshen up a bit her surely red cheeks.

"Looks like you took a swim in the river! You're completely soaked!" the woman went on to say as she shook her head giggling, "Come on, shower… both of you!" she scolded them with a half-joking expression on her face, retracing her steps to the kitchen, "Breakfast ready in fifteen minutes and...Molly?".

"Yes, Mrs Bailey?" she casted a shy glance at the housekeeper, "Guess you won". Molly nodded with a proud smile glancing quickly at Sherlock who was covering his eyes with a hand in feigned desperation, "Well done, young lady!" she complimented her and after a wink, urged them to get moving.

Sherlock and Molly quickly scrambled off the ground and headed towards the house. Both in silence, lost in their own thoughts about what happened just before. They hadn't even crossed the threshold when Mrs Bailey appeared from the kitchen ordering them to leave everything that was wet there in the hall – except their clothes, of course! – so that she could arrange to dry them.

"Why is that here?" Sherlock asked blankly gesturing at Molly's wheeled suitcase, "Oh! Well, I…I thought…we're going back to London, right?". He frowned answering her question with another question, "Why should we?".

"I thought…well, let's face it, this isn't the vacation your mum promised you, with your friends, your family…So I thought you might want to get back to work. And it suits me perfectly" she added hastily, "Surely there's some tempting case waiting for you in London". Molly looked down briefly at her numb hands, "I'm quite sure with me you'd ended up bored out of your mind".

Sherlock was impressed by her rueful shrug and words of resignation. Did she really think her company wasn't stimulating enough for him, but on the contrary was a burden to him? Hadn't he shown her over the last few months that this wasn't the case?

He had, evidently, once again done something wrong with her and found himself wanting to change that. He wanted her to realize not only how beautiful she was to him, but also how smart, insightful good natured he deemed her, "Do I look bored?" he replied.

"Drenched to the bone and wounded pride? Yep" Sherlock let out a sigh and rolled his eyes ludicrously, his fingers closing around her suitcase's handle, "But not bored. Never with you…". He looked her straight in the eyes and Molly felt her breath caught in her throat, "I say we stay" he whispered softly and started up the stairs with her suitcase on his heels.

Sherlock stopped abruptly, "Unless you…". A name came unbidden into his mind. He swallowed hard before turning to face her, "…you have something better to do or someone special to be with". "Meaning what?" Molly looked confused, a slight grimace on her face as she scanned his face for a moment and then caught up with him halfway up the stairs.

Sherlock had had enough. He had to know. Now. "What about Edwin Jones?" he spat out. There, he had said it.

Molly didn't bat an eyelid, "What does he have to do with it?" she asked as if that name had no effect on her. Sherlock watched her astonished as she gently removed his hand from her suitcase's handle and kept going towards the landing, "You spent a week end with him" he petulantly remarked, following her "And you told my mother...but you didn't tell me. Why did you keep it from me?".

"I didn't keep it from you!" she protested as she opened the door to her room and shoved the wheeling suitcase inside, "I just failed to mention it". He made a snort as he mockingly mumbled back her words, "Failed to mention it…", clearly implying he barely believed her.

Molly felt a little guilty, explaining why she had omitted to tell him about her trip to Scotland meant telling him about the job offer she had received and this was not how she had imagined doing it, standing in the middle of a corridor, shivering and soaked wet.

She was about to tell Sherlock that if he had the patience to wait after showering and changing into dry and more comfortable clothes, she would be happy to explain the whys and wherefores of her trip to Edinburgh over a hot cup of tea and a serving of eggs and bacon.

But she was frozen to the spot, utterly baffled by his question, "Do you love him?".

Molly couldn't stop the gasp from escaping from her lips at Sherlock's words. She blinked at him a couple of times before she managed to pronounce – no, stammer actually – a faltering reverse-ask. "Do I…sorry, what?".

Sherlock sighed and asked again "Do you love him?".