This is part of a series relating the adventures of Fraser and Thatcher on a training tour in Disney World. The due South characters belong to Alliance, not me. Disney World belongs to some huge publicly owned conglomerate, not me.

This series assumes that season 3/4 did not take place; that Ray and the Riv are still around; that Thatcher never cut her hair or got as strange as she did toward the end, but that Fraser's apartment was burned down and he did live for a while at the Consulate.

Thanks to Jo March & MagsyB for editorial and emotional support.

PAIRINGS: Fraser/Thatcher

RATING: R

Spoilers: We re the Eggmen, All The Queens Horses

Comments should be directed to tomato_3@email.com

She heard him leave.

~ GOOD, he's gone out! This buys you a little time, Margaret, to figure out how you are going to face him this morning, after virtually seducing him last night! ~

Mortified anew at her actions of the previous evening, Meg rolled over on her stomach and buried her head under her pillow, wishing with all her might that she could undo her actions from the night before. Unfortunately, intermixed with her mortification and adding to her misery was the memory of how his lips captured hers, the feel of his arms around her, the taste of him on her tongue.

She hadn't felt this wretched since that time in college when she'd had about four too many Tequila Sunrises at a dorm party and decided that it would be a good idea to kiss every guy in the room at least once. She had not come out of her dorm room for two days after that, between throwing up and wanting to die of embarrassment. She had briefly toyed with trying to complete the remainder of the semester by correspondence, from her dorm room. Her room mate had finally convinced Meg that holing up in their room like some kind of wounded sloth was cramping Peggy's social life, and since she had the Nelson Twins coming over to 'study' that night, Meg had better make herself scarce. Where was Peggy when she needed her now???

~ Oh God, this is so much worse than the train. Oh, Meg, how could you do this to yourself! How could you throw yourself at him like that! ~

She burrowed further down in her bed, now only a quivering mound under the pale pink quilt decorated with little Jane Porter parasols. If she could have gone into some womb - any womb - she would have done it in a heart beat. She couldn't even excuse her behavior by saying she had been drinking. No, it was nothing more than the powerful aphrodisiac of being in Benton Fraser's presence on a hot summer night with no distractions and no escape.

~ God, I have no willpower where that man is concerned. Heaven only knows what he thinks about what happened last night. He didn't say anything, but I suspect that this is not exactly his regular kind of activity. I hope he doesn't think I do this kind of thing all the time, either. Well, Meg, you have managed to royally screw things up in only one day. What can you do for an encore? Strip naked on a tabletop and throw yourself on him in the middle of lunch? ~

Moaning, she burrowed down even further in the bed, discovering that if you stuck your head down in the covers at the foot of the bed, you couldn't see any daylight and could pretend that the night would never end. Unfortunately, you also couldn't breathe after about five minutes. Finally, she came up for air, driven by the horrifying picture of Fraser ripping the covers from her unconscious body.

~ Why him? Rationally, you didn't do anything all that horrible. So, why are you mortified done to the marrow of your being? Why does it matter so much that you let go of yourself with him? ~

Pausing in her frantic effort to hide from herself, Meg let that thought percolate to the top of her awareness.

Meg had her share of one-night stands lurking in her past. That was before AIDS, of course. Once the virus hit, she would have been a fool to be quite so abandoned as she had been in college. Early in her career in the RCMP there had been a couple of involvements with fellow officers. She'd been in her early twenties, at the start of her career, and it wasn't unusual to date people one met through work. Her rapid promotions through the ranks had, however, distanced her from her cohort. She quickly realized that becoming involved with one of her peers could lead to unwanted attention and criticism. So, she had dated men outside of the RCMP, when she had dated at all. Coming to Chicago had seemed like liberation after the constraints and hostility of Ottawa. At first she had gone a little wild, flirting with strange men as the opportunity arose. That had tapered off for a variety of reasons, one of which she was trying desperately to not think about right now.

She wondered for a moment if she was going into early menopause and that all of this might be due to hormone storms. She didn't like to think that this was her biological alarm clock ringing, trying to tell her to go after the nearest Alpha Male she could find in the pack.

Deep down, in those places where you don't try to kid yourself, she knew why it mattered so much. Because Benton Fraser's opinion of her mattered to her. Meg held Ben Fraser in high regard as both a police officer and a man. She wanted him to hold her in a similar regard. She thought that he might. He at least acted as though he respected her, unlike some of the other men in the RCMP. She shivered at the recollection of that repellent toad, Henri Clothier. Meg also recalled how Fraser supported her when she'd used him as an excuse to escape Clothier. Even when he hadn't understood her motives, he had tried to help. She knew that was when she started to have real feelings for him.

~ So, you demonstrate your great respect for him by daring him to kiss you in a public place! Way to go, Meg. The question is, did he kiss you because you are his commanding office or in spite of it? ~

Of course the larger question was whether she would be able to figure any of this out without actually talking to him, since she couldn't conceive of carrying on such a conversation. She was well and truly stuck.

She also had to face the fact that she no longer knew how to act around him. Should she act as Inspector Thatcher RCMP, currently assigned to an off-site training assignment and reluctantly forced to associate with a subordinate with whom she felt less than comfortable? OR, should she continue to act as she had yesterday, as Meg Thatcher, assigned to attend a training seminar with a valued associate, who together were supposed to create a new and improved working relationship based on a better understanding of each other?

Inspector Thatcher knew how to act: take command of the situation, maintain business-like protocols and minimize all out of class interactions. Meg knew that course of action was patently impossible, now. She couldn't pretend that last night hadn't happened, or at least not convincingly. But, Meg Thatcher could make sure that she didn't do anything stupid like that again. She would resist; she would be vigilant and avoid dangerous situations.

She could also pray that teleportation would suddenly be possible and that she could disappear to a mountaintop in Tibet. Otherwise, she'd have to face him this morning, and she didn't know what in the Hell she was going to do!!!

~ There's just no way around it. You are going to have to just gut it through this morning. I mean, what more could happen? You are on your guard now. You will not give into these dangerous impulses. You will treat him with detachment. You can do this. You have had to do harder things in your life. ~

She thought the last bordered on extreme delusion. She could not think of anything in her past that approached the degree of difficulty she seemed to have in dealing with Benton Fraser. Perhaps, reincarnation was the explanation. But God only knew what she could have done in a previous life to merit this kind of emotional confusion.

In the long run, she hoped that the intensity of her memories of their time together in the cable car would gradually erode like a pebble on a storm tossed beach. Of course, it had taken her months before she stopped waking up in the middle of the night, shaking with the emotional residue left by another dream of Fraser kissing her, and that had been after one measly (compared to last night) kiss on the top of a train! Last night, by her reckoning, they'd kissed, caressed, sort of fondled each other for close to 50 minutes!!!

~ I'll need a lobotomy to erase the memory of last night! Fry my brain until I have the intellect of a carrot. Anything less and I'll be flashing back to that cable car every night for the next year. ~

Deciding that she'd better get a move on if she wasn't going to get caught in her bedroom when he came back - cowering like a frightened mouse - she finally crawled out of bed. However, instead of getting into the shower, she stepped out onto her balcony. The morning was comfortably cool and she could try to deny that by 1:00 p.m. she would feel as though she was a steamed chicken.

The balcony reached into the trees surrounding the building and for one moment, she wanted to be able to pretend that she wasn't here; that she was really at some Caribbean resort, alone and not guilty. Looking down through the trees, she could see the pool, partially shrouded in the jungle of trees surrounding it. Someone was swimming. Looking at the figure in the pool, she somehow knew that it was Fraser.

She watched him swimming lap after lap, like a machine. The steady rhythm of his arms cutting the water mesmerized her. She could see his dark head moving to the side as he took a breath once every five strokes, the smooth line of his shoulder and back blending into the steady rhythm of his legs propelling him through the water. The sun glistened on his wet shoulders and back, making it seem for a moment as if he'd been painted with diamonds. Tactile memories swept over her. Her whole body seemed to remember the feel of his shoulders as she ran her hands over them . . . the tips of her fingers running through the thick silky mass of his hair . . . the shape of his neck under her palm . . . the contours of his tongue as it curled around hers. She sagged under the impact of her recollection.

~ A Shower! A long, cold shower. I will feel like a new person after I have brushed my teeth and taken a shower. All of this will seem like a dream and I will be able to face my day and Benton Fraser with calm and detachment. Oh God, what I wouldn't give for a bottle of Prozac! ~

With a firm air composed of equal parts of commitment and denial, Meg went to prepare for her day.

Fraser, while not flagellating himself like Meg, was not without concerns regarding the events of the previous evening. Rosy-fingered Dawn had clawed her way over the horizon only to find him, once again, staring at the ceiling mentally wrestling with himself.

Try as he might, he could not stop thinking about what had happened last night, about what he had done. . .about what he had done with Meg. . . about what he really wanted to do with Meg. He lay there in the predawn darkness, reliving the wild abandon with which he had kissed his commanding officer. Deep in his heart he knew that he hadn't been kissing Inspector Thatcher, he had been kissing Meg. The Meg that he was only now glimpsing. This beautiful woman who was suddenly not only approachable but also accessible, who he could reach out and touch. And he wanted to touch her. His problem was that he wanted to touch her a lot, in fact her he wanted to do a whole lot more than just touch her. Before, he had felt some inexplicable attraction to her, an attraction that seemed to be molecular. He realized that was actually quite mild compared to how he felt about her now. And he had no idea what to do about it.

Until now, he had never felt that his heightened sensory sensitivity was a problem. He could marshal his ability to see, hear, taste, smell and touch as needed and dismiss those abilities pretty much at will. In bed this morning, however, the full sensory load from last night surfaced like Godzilla in the Tokyo surf and would not be ignored. Lying there in the quiet of the morning, he once more experienced the sensation of the rose-petal softness of her lips first on his lips, then moving to discover his ear, her teeth biting his earlobe as gently as Diefenbaker might hold a child's wrist in his mouth.

Determined to resist the temptation to remember all of the vivid details - and failing miserably, Ben once more felt her body pressed against his, the weight of her on his lap, pressing against him in the most amazing ways. Trying to blank out the recollections, he turned on his side to stare out the window. It was no help, he could still hear the small soft moans that escaped from deep in her throat as he held her tightly and kissed her until he felt dizzy with oxygen depletion. He still tasted her on his lips, and worse yet, he craved her even more.

Groaning, he realized that once again, the intensity of his memories had aroused him to the point where he could not lie still any longer or he would go absolutely crazy with wanting her!

~ Exercise! That's what I need to do. I'm just loosing my edge because of the environmental conditions and lack of exercise. Swimming! I'll swim before breakfast and clear out my sinuses and all of this will be put back in appropriate perspective once more. And you will be able to be in the same room with her and will be able to resist running your fingertips down the curve of her neck, to once more experience how her head turns toward you and her shoulder curves into your touch. Oh, God . . . .~

Having adopted a strategy for dealing with what he now decided was a runaway libido, Fraser leaped out of bed and got ready to exhaust himself.

Unable to detect any movement from Meg's room, he left as soon as he'd showered and shaved. Just to make sure, (that he wasn't disturbing her he told himself) he stood for five minutes with his ear pressed to the wall in his bathroom, trying to detect any sound from her room. Other than what he thought might be faint moans, he'd been unable to identify any sounds of her moving around. Taking advantage of the fact that she still seemed to be sleeping, he'd bolted for the relative inaccessibility of the swimming pool.

~ I am not actually avoiding her. Rather, I am choosing to exercise the option of partaking of the swimming facilities at the earliest available hour. ~ He told himself as he trotted down the path to the pool.

Actually, he was more than a little concerned about how she'd feel toward him this morning. Depending on her frame of mind, she might decide to act as if nothing had happened (Option A) or she might try to bulldoze him into denying that anything had happened (Option B).

From Fraser's observation, primarily based on their 'contact' on the train, Meg tended to try to deny any personal action she took which could jeopardize her feeling of security. It wasn't that she was irresponsible. Rather, she seemed to fear exposing her feelings to others. In the more than two years that they had worked together, Fraser had repeatedly observed that she would take one step forward in opening up with him, and then immediately take two steps back, trying to shut the door as quickly as she could.

While Option A was unfortunate and tended to be discouraging, Option B was far worse. With Option B, Meg usually reverted to the more dominating aspects of her personality. While she was able to exercise those behaviors quite effectively while on duty at the consulate, it would be extremely unfortunate should she revert to them in this situation. Fraser hoped that she was not so unnerved by the events of the previous evening that she went that far. Option B was how he characterized her reaction to the Train Contact.

Diving into the cool pool, Fraser started swimming as if he were training for a marathon. Back and forth, lap after lap, his attention was totally engaged with pondering the complexities of the situation. It was, therefore, with a touch of alarm that he noticed a shape floating beside him in the pool. Stilling his forward motion he looked up to find his father, contentedly paddling a canoe beside him.

Today, apparently in keeping with the mood of the moment, he wore some type of deep purple sports shirt, accompanied by a quite dashing Panama Planter's hat. Peering more closely at his father's apparel, Fraser detected what appeared to be dozens of tiny pairs of figures. Closer inspection revealed Donald Duck running around Daisy Duck who seemed to be tied to a stake. Benton could not image where his father had come up with such an image. And, he would absolutely deny the possibility that he was responsible for how his father looked and when his father appeared, based on this morning's apparition alone.

"Good morning, son. Lovely morning for a swim. Glad to see you are getting some exercise. You know, after a certain age men can get a little paunchy. Need to stay on top of it or you will run into trouble and one day there will be hell to pay when you go to put on the serge. I've seen it happen and it can be quite nasty, my oh my, quite a nasty piece of business." The elder Fraser always knew how to tap into the well springs of uncertainty bubbly beneath the surface of his son's normally placid disposition. Said son chose to ignore these observations.

"So how is this training coming along? I must say, this is quite a change from two weeks in Churchill for the annual polar bear run. These Yanks sure do know how to make learning fun."

His father actually seemed to be beaming this morning, clearly delighted with some aspect of his universe. Given his current thoughts, Ben was sure that this delight must emanate from somewhere in the great beyond, since it was clearly not related to what was going on in his son's life.

"Dad, what are you doing here?" Fraser had shifted to the backstroke in order to continue his conversation with is father. He was determined to keep to his exercise, as well as attempting to forestall any shift toward certain personal topics. His efforts, as always, were hopelessly inadequate. It is extraordinarily difficult to out fox a ghost. Robert Fraser paddled along happily, keeping pace with his son's strokes.

"Why I'm paddling son, that should be obvious even to you. I am sitting in a canoe, lifting this paddle in and out of the water in order to move forward." And here he demonstrated this maneuver, amazed that it was needed.

"No, I mean here in Florida. Why are you here, right now?"

"Ah, well, that. I haven't a clue. You must have thought of something that somehow included me, so here I am. Nothing better to do, except of course cleaning that caribou. Can't stay too long, you know how they tend to get when left out in the sun. I must say, it is extremely fortunate that there are no caribou around here. It would be virtually impossible to get the animal gutted before it would start decomposing in this heat. The vultures would have a field day. I suppose that's why they migrated north. This heat is quite incredible. Perhaps you think that the heat explains last night, eh?"

Fraser was sufficiently shocked at his father's question to lose his rhythm, resulting in an embarrassing flailing of arms and legs and gulping of significant quantities of highly chlorinated water. Struggling to regain his equilibrium, the younger man chose to take a break at this point and swung himself up on the side of the pool. Tilting his head, he proceeded to bang his hand against his ear, hoping by some strange miracle that this procedure would make his father leave. While it did clear his ears, it had no effect on the unwanted presence.

"I don't think we need to discuss last night, Dad. I cannot think of any context in which the events of last evening concern you." Fraser wanted desperately to avoid any discussion of last night with his father and, come to think of it, with anybody else, either. Right now, Option A was looking very attractive all the way around.

"Ah, a little edgy are we. Well, I can understand that, son. I know I encouraged you to go after your girl. But really, trapping her in a gondola suspended above an amusement park! Good God, Benton, don't you think that was a little extreme! Heavens, son, I'm sure she would have kissed you at some point along the line, you needn't have gone to such lengths to have your way with her!"

Having appropriately scolded his son, Robert Fraser proceeded to step from the canoe onto the side of the pool.

"I did not, as you so quaintly put it, 'have my way with her'. It was merely a unique set of circumstances." Ben racked his brains to think of another place he could go to be alone and think. Then he realized that escape from his father was impossible. Instead, bowing to the inevitable, he decided that perhaps it would help to have a sounding board. He chose for the moment to forget that most of the previous discussions of his love life that he had held with his father had tended to end in frustration and confusion.

"Well, if you didn't have your way with her, was it because she wasn't interested? Or was it because you. . . ." Here his father appeared to think that waving his hand around the horizontal plane of the ecliptic and wiggling his shoulders was some meaningful form of communication.

"I don't know what you mean by -" and here Benton imitated his father's strange combination of gestures. "But it was not a case of failure so much as a recognition that there are times and places for everything, and we had run out of time and that was not the place to continue --- ." Since the apple does not necessarily fall very far from the tree, Benton too appeared to think some strange combination of hand gestures was effective communication. Regardless of how it might appear to mere mortals, Father and Son seemed to understand each other.

"Ah, of course. Well, that puts everything in a different light. I must say, however, I thought that was a very fine spot for an assignation, if I do say so. I particularly liked the way the fireworks seemed to glow behind your heads, not that you paid any notice. You really must try to pay attention next time you are at one of the parks at night. The laser lights are quite stunning. Not the Aurora Borealis, mind you, but quite attractive nonetheless".

Ben didn't quite know how to react to the knowledge that his father had been observing them.

"In the future, could you forgo your voyeuristic proclivities?" Ben requested as he watched his father lift the canoe out of the water in a single smooth movement and lean the dripping vessel against the life guard platform.

"I was merely reconnoitering the area to determine if you and your Margaret were safe. Gondolas can be damn dangerous. Why I remember the time Buck and I were ---"

"Don't! Don't remember and don't talk about when you and Buck were stuck somewhere. I really would rather not hear about that right now. And another thing - as I have told you before - she is not 'My Margaret'! She is her own person. I have no desire to own her, as that term would tend to indicate."

Ben picked up his towel and slinging over his shoulders he started walking down one of the paths that snaked around the swimming area. His father shrugged and proceeded to follow. Benton could get huffy just like Caroline had on occasion. Robert recalled that there was usually something behind the huffiness, so he must be close to pay dirt.

He hadn't meant to intrude on his son, he had come upon them somewhat unexpectedly. However, once there, he had decided to observe quietly, to see where things would lead, so to speak. Perching on the bench recently vacated by Benton, Robert was frankly quite surprised that his son failed to notice him. Benton, to give him credit, seemed to be completely engrossed in the situation at hand. The older man had to admit that he had blushed a little when he had actually figured out where all of those hands were. The lighting was poor and visibility was impaired, but once the fireworks started, well there had certainly been more going on then just red, white and blue starbursts. He was pleased that Benton was finally showing his feelings for Margaret. Robert also thought that Margaret was a fine figure of a woman, but he felt that out of concern for his son's sense of propriety, he would forego making that observation.

"Ah, well, son. Perhaps own is too strong a word. Perhaps possess, or have, or there's that new term that I hear empower. I don't really understand what they mean by that, but perhaps that's what you want - to be empowered. I like the ring of that."

Fraser turned to stare at his father, as the older man seemed to test the way the word rolled off the tongue, noting the added gesture of the right hook. Ben had no idea what tangent the man was on, but hoped that it would take him back to his butchered caribou. Shaking his head he tried to ignore his father as the two continued down the path.

"Regardless of all that, you are going to have to woo your Margaret in order to get her, if that's what you want. And from what I can see, you have your task cut out for yourself."

"WOO! Dad, men don't woo women anymore. I'm not even sure what the word means in today's parlance. Did you woo Mother?"

Ben had always been a little curious about how his father had actually gotten his mother to marry him. Since his father insisted on having these little chats, Ben thought it might be useful opportunity to get some of his questions answered.

"Ah, well, humph. Times were different then, son. Although I do recall your mother liked bittersweet orange peels." Robert smiled fondly at the recollection. Turning once more to his son, he continued to impart the wisdom of the ages.

"I remember it as if it were yesterday. I had to convince your mother that marrying me was worth the risk. Her parents were dead set against it, mind you. They thought she should marry someone better. She had to stand against her own people when she went with me. It was no easy thing, especially when she found out some of the places where we could be assigned. It was very hard on her and I loved her dearly for putting up with it." The memory danced through his thoughts as he remembered their early struggles as a young couple in the Yukon.

"I think the trick was to get your mother to see me as a man, not a Mountie. Of course, you could also just view your Margaret as a target to be hunted down and brought in. As you said, she does have a mind of her own. You might want to view her as a friendly fugitive. I seem to recall you saying one time that you never give up. Now might be a good time to think along those lines."

Robert having said his piece, proceeded down the tangential path of his memories, recalling to himself -

"All in all it finally came down to a single shot. It was a near thing as to who your mother would marry. Why if I hadn't been lucky that day, your father could have been Buck Frobisher. Yes, a very near thing. Why I don't know what your mother would have done if we'd told her that Buck had won the shot. She might have been quite upset with me. And your mother had quite a temper when she got upset. My oh my, I remember . . . . " and so he wandered off, for now.

Perhaps his father had a point. Perseverance could be applied to a number of situations. . . .

 Fishing his key out of the velcroed pocket of his trunks, Ben quietly opened the door to the apartment, unsure of what lay beyond. Anger, fear, rejection? Whistling!

Stepping fully inside, he discovered Meg Thatcher standing at the sink, whistling to herself as she washed the apples and grapes they had purchased their first night in town. Without turning around she proceeded to place them in the bowl she'd set out for that purpose. He stood for a moment, captivated by her. The early morning sun beaming in through the window over the sink caught the mahogany highlights of her hair, held back today in a yellow headband. The deep yellow slacks and a softly tailored matching flowered blouse reminded him of a garden full of tulips. As always, she looked beautiful even before she turned around.

"Good Morning. We can eat whenever you're ready. I just ---" She turned to put the bowl on the table and seemed to choke for a moment staring at him, her eyes huge, her mouth slightly ajar.

"I'll be ready in a moment. Let me just go and get on some clothes." She nodded mutely.

Smiling and mentally crossing his fingers he headed for his bedroom anxious to keep moving should the wind suddenly change.

"Idle hands are the devil's playthings." She muttered to herself, dredging up this truism from some dank hole in her memory.

Turning back to the sink, she finished putting the cinnamon buns in the toaster oven to warm. Juice, tea, buns and fruit - breakfast without fire. It could be done and she could do it! Feeling better with her contribution to their continued sustainment, Meg looked around for something to keep herself occupied until Fraser emerged from his bedroom.

~ Do not think about him dressing in there. Do not imagine him pulling a shirt over his head, or combing his hair. There is a world of information out there. Find it!!! ~

If she had been alone, she would have had CNN going nonstop, falling asleep to it at night after having turned her brain to pudding watching the all Romance movie channel. That was the way she operated when she was alone. Somehow, she just couldn't imagine turning the television on around Benton Fraser. There was something about him that just didn't seem to fit with the jangling glare of modern media.

Finally, her eye settled on the model of the Parliament Building. Sitting down at the coffee table she took out of the box what looked like hundreds of model pieces and 5 pages of diagrams. Putting on her glasses, she studied the intricate assembly directions. She was still doing this when she felt a presence. Surprised, she almost jumped through her skin.

"How does it look? Do you think we will have any difficulty assembling it?"

Ben asked quietly. He didn't attempt to get any closer to her, standing instead on the other side of the coffee table. He still wasn't sure how to read her mood. She was not reacting as he had come to expect. Once more, she was surprising him. For a person that relied on his ability to interpret people's actions, this was all very disconcerting.

He'd come out of the bedroom to see the breakfast table already set and Meg sitting on the couch studying the diagrams. He was glad that she had given up trying to pretend that she didn't wear glasses. Although she would have scoffed, he thought she look just as attractive with them on as off. Of course, he had yet to find a situation in which he did not think she looked beautiful, so perhaps he was not the most critical judge in these matters. He had, of course, never confessed to her that he found her beautiful. It would have been most inappropriate.

"Oh I think we can do it, but we may have terminal eyestrain by the time we are done. We will probably need to buy some tweezers to hold the smaller parts. I think we should try to start working on it tonight, if possible."

Taking off her glasses, she smiled a little uncertainly at him as she walked back to the kitchen. She was proud of herself for having been able to get through these initial interchanges without falling apart, or doing what she typically did when she was uncomfortable with Fraser - going into hostile denial. Perhaps they would be able to get away with pretending that nothing had happened the previous night. They were adults, this could work if both were willing to entertain a certain degree of self deception.

"As I recall from the schedule, I believe we have an evening event tonight, the "All American Barbecue."

"I'm not sure I am ready to consider what that might entail. " She said with a grimace.

Following Meg into the kitchen, Ben too, was beginning to think that they might get through this morning without running into any rapids. It appeared that she was adopting a modified Option A response - pretend nothing had happened without being obvious about it. Although some part of him did want to pursue the issue, he was determined to let her set the pace of their interactions.

Everything would have probably worked as they intended if it weren't for the rug. Ben and Meg had each headed to the sink to get one last item for breakfast. She headed for the toaster oven to get the cinnamon buns she'd left to warm. He went for a glass of water. Preoccupied with thoughts of avoidance and denial, each lost track of where the other was in the small area. (They were both more than a little distracted, each obsessing on acting normal. If only they could figure out what that was . . . .)

Turning at the same time, they discovered that they were within inches of each other. The scatter rug on which they both stood shifted and twisted under them as they dodged out of each other's way. Meg tried to save the buns while Ben reached for her, trying to forestall her crashing into him. Water flew in one direction, buns in the other.

"Oh Dear!" They said in unison.

Suddenly, Meg found herself once more in the solid embrace of Benton Fraser. Snuggled up close to his chest, his arms wrapped securely around her; her arms draped over his shoulders, with the plate still held in her hand. All they could do was stare at each other, unprepared to find themselves in such intimate contact after their individual struggles of the morning. For a moment, it seemed as though the world stopped, their faces inches from each other.

She could feel his heart pounding through the thin layers of their clothing. Déjà vu flashing through her brain, Meg was swept back to the time when they were handcuffed together. They had stood then as they stood now, their arms wrapped around each other, each trying not to respond to the proximity of each other. Only before, they hadn't kissed even once. They hadn't experienced the electric intensity discovered the previous evening. Now, the thin veneer of restraint was threadbare.

Meg's eyes were huge with surprise and something else Ben couldn't name. Ben found himself drawn into them like deep chocolate whirlpools, fascinated as she briefly chewed her lip, a habit she had when she was unsure of herself. He doubted she knew what that told him, but it communicated a lot. Now, he was surprised to discover how petite she felt in his arms. He had held her like this on the train but the circumstances had been so distracting that he hadn't registered all he was able to sense now. Then it had been her scent. Last night it had been the feel of her hair in his hands, thick masses of soft hair that sent tingles all through him as it brushed against his skin. Now it was the shape and size of her body. Before he knew how to stop, he felt himself respond to her nearness, to the presence of her body pressed against his.

She could feel the heat radiating off him like a manhole cover in the center of Main Street at noon. She could feel other things, too. Meg realized that his quick reflexes did not stop with his hands, he responded quite rapidly to a variety of situations. She swallowed audibly, desperately trying to gather her wits, which seemed to be dribbling away like marbles. She was torn with knowing that she should extricate herself from his embrace, and wanting nothing more than to press her body against his to feel him respond even more than she was feeling right now. She was losing herself in the thought of feeling his lips once more . . . .

Ben held is breath. He didn't want to let her go, but if he didn't and soon something would happen. He was trying to breathe normally, but had forgotten how.

Finally, she summoned the shreds of thought and was able to piece together something to say.

"We should . . . ." Gone. The thought left her head as she stared into Ben eyes, now the deep blue of the ocean. Meg was floating away on those eyes. Did the warmth of his body have some strange effect on her intellectual processes? She could feel his breath on her face, his hand moving up her back. All she could think of was how he had kissed her last night. Showers of gentle kisses all down her neck, caressing her head as he was doing now. She felt dizzy and a little weak in the knees. Her heart was pounding. She could feel her hands shaking with reaction to being this close to him.

"We should . . . ." He, repeated, and also lost all contact with the rest of the sentence. He knew logically that he should try to change the direction of whatever was happening. The thing was, Ben just couldn't think of any place he would rather be at the moment. Without thinking about it, his hand reached up to cup her head, once more captured by the sensation of her hair brushing across his skin. All he could think about was kissing her, right here, right now. Kissing her until she knew that making love was the only thing left for them. He was besotted and he didn't care. He barely realized that his had was bending toward hers, ready to capture those lips once more.

They probably would still be there, locked in an embrace, balanced like a gyroscope on a glass rim. Or their concerned classmates could have found them sometime later, awash in a pool of passion on the kitchen floor. It was Meg's loss of muscle control that turned the tide and saved them from their rampaging drives.

Focused as she was on the feel of his arms around her, the way an errant sunbeam illuminated the depths of his eyes, the warmth of his body pulsing against hers, the memory of his kisses which had stolen her reason last night and would surely do it again if his lips were to touch hers for the barest fraction of a moment . . . she forgot about the dinner plate that she was holding. It was, therefore, something of a shock to both of them when she dropped it.

"Sorry."

"Pardon me."

They stood for a moment more, trapped in the mutual realization that they did not want to move. Finally, reluctantly, they tore themselves out of each other's arms. Thinking with what seemed to be a single mind, they both stooped to pick up the pieces of the shattered plate. This was more than a little dangerous since both of them were shaking like birches in a spring breeze. Adrenaline surges will do that to you. Add sleep deprivation and emotional overloads, and it is a wonder that either of them avoided slicing an artery with a chunk of ironstone.

Finally, the intrepid pair were able to sit down together to eat. They were too worn out by the emotional slalom course they had already traveled since waking to be tense with each other. In that regard, the events of the morning had probably been constructive.

On the other had, such a workout does not set one up very well for the rest of the day.