"So you said you were just... popping by?" Peter asked again as he returned to the small table with a tea tray ladened with a pot and two sets of cups.

A smirk tugged on my lips as I realized the tea pot's knit-cozy bore a remarkable resemblance to the Infant Emma's knitwear. "Erh, yes."

"And you said Emma was visiting Alice?"

"That's what she told me," I confirmed as I watched him pour us both a cup of tea.

He nodded to the filled cups and I murmured in thanks as I took possession of the one closest to me. Peter's cup and saucer rattled against one another until he brought them to rest on the wooden arm of his chair.

He had sat us in a small room at the back of the shop, furnished only with bookshelves, a rickety-looking table shoved in the corner, and our two wingback chairs with a worn ottoman currently being used as a tea table.

I grinned, as I imagined a vision of Emma hunched over the table so engrossed in her writing she paid no mind to the smudges of ink that tattooed the edge of her hand.

"Well," Peter started, waking me from my daydream. "It is kind of you to come by yourself... without notice."

I grimaced slightly and nodded in acknowledgement. "I do apologize for not calling ahead. I—"

Peter cut me off with a wave of his free hand. "Nonsense. Any acquaintance of Emma's is always welcome."

"Well we're a bit more than acquaintances," I chuckled.

"Friends, then," Peter supplied with an increasingly coy smile.

"Is that how Emma tells it?"

Peter blew on his steaming tea. "Oh, I'm strictly forbidden from telling you how Emma tells it."

His words brought me back to this morning's paper, and the chair subsequently whined in protest to my nervous shifting. "See the thing is, Peter—"

"It is fitting," he smirked, "that you should be as anxious today as you were the day you skittered in here to call on my Emma."

I blinked, momentarily forgetting myself and my purpose. "I—what?"

Peter nodded deeply and then sighed heavily with an equally dramatic wave of his hand. "Get on with is then, lad."

"Today's paper," I finally managed. "It published an interview you gave them... about Emma."

Peter's well-affixed sage visage faltered then as his brows dropped into a low furrow. "And here I was thinking you were seeking out my blessing to marry Emma-dear."

A self-conscious laugh escaped me before I could cover my mouth with my first. "I think you and I have a long wait ahead of us before Emma gives me the blessing to even start such conversations..."

"And if she never were to be ready?" He asked over the edge of his teacup before allowing himself a careful sip. "To marry, I mean. If this... arrangement you have with each now is all, well, if it were all she could offer you."

I frowned. His words were too strategically selected to be casual in meaning, and yet, I couldn't quite parse what apparently less-than-tactful question he was hinting at. "Well..." I started unsurely. "If that's what made her happy the, I suppose it would be fine?"

Peter arched a heavy brow at that. "You suppose?"

"It would be," I repeated more definitively this time.

He pursed his lips into a thin and wrinkled line. "And you would still be happy?"

He wasn't concerned about my happiness, that much at least I could make out. I took a slow sip of tea, biding my time as I tried to trace the sudden turn in questioning.

I nodded slowly before beginning my answer. "Do you remember the day I came round asking after her—the day I practically begged you for her telephone number and spent nearly a half hour penning her that note?"

Peter's expression remained set in stern neutrality, though the glimmer in his eyes easily gave his smirk away. "Aye, I remember."

I grinned slowly as the words came to me. "I was mad for her even then. Completely besotted actually. And every day I get to hold her hand or hear her laugh—I know I'm a lucky bastard to have her in my life, in any way she'll have me."

Peter pinched his saucer with both thumbs and index fingers as he leaned back in his chair, considering my pronouncement. Finally, he asked: "You the one who convinced her to start writing again?"

I hesitated before nodding. "Mrs. Henderson told me about the journal her father gave her."

His brows lifted at that. "You've met Sara?"

I nodded in the affirmative. "Yes, sir. I paid them a visit while Emma was down in Kerry."

Peter's gaze looked me up and down again, clearly reassessing me in light of my acquaintance with Emma's mother. "Emma's the private sort," he said finally, his eyes still scrutinizing me. "Doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve and for good reason."

I sat forward to ask him what he meant by that, but Peter continued on.

"So I'll tell you—and if you ever breathe a word of it to her I'll deny it, mind you—but I'll tell you myself: I've never seen my girl so happy in so many years. Not since the death of her father."

My lips parted as the significance of his words sank in. Eventually, I managed to clear my throat and nod once in a form of response.

"Thank you," I heard my raspy voice say. "For telling me... and for letting me leave that note under the till all those months ago."

"I always was too much of a Casanova in my day to settle down with any one woman. Never started a family of my own in the traditional sense, but the day that girl walked into my shop looking for work..."

I nodded again in understanding. "She's your daughter."

Peter's gaze dropped to the teapot sitting between us. "I know it's a simple shop—"

He started but I unceremoniously cut him off. "Not to Emma it isn't. To her it's home," I assured him. "And it always will be."

He glanced up at that, his eyes surprisingly sad looking. "I didn't mean to give that interview."

"I know," I said, meaning it.

"It's just, I'm so—so bloody proud of her, of who she is, of how brilliant she is!" Peter exploded suddenly. "When someone gets me go'n, I can't seem to stop myself from blithering on!"

"The reporters know better than to come snooping around," I sighed, "and I'll see to it my people remind them of that."

Peter shifted in his chair. "Think she'll be cross?"

"At you?" I shook my head. "Never."

He snorted. "It's been known to happen on occasion."

"Let me guess," I teased, leaning back in my chair and feeling comfortable for the first time since the brass bell clamored above my head. "It had something to do with e-readers?"

"Worse," Peter grimaced as he replaced his now empty cup and saucer on the tray. "I once asked her opinion on adding a DVD section."

I flinched in sympathy. "Here? In Flannigan's?

He sighed rather forlornly and then nodded as he resettled himself in his chair. "T'was a mistake I have not been quick to forget."

I chuckled somewhat ruthfully. "I can only imagine the words Emma had to say about that."

"Oh they were quite colorful mind you me. And loud. And rather preachy come to think of it."

I took a long sip of my now tepid tea and enjoyed the amiable silence between us. Eventually, I could feel Peter's assessing eyes considering me once again but I ignored them.

"He would have liked you," he pronounced.

I glanced up, confused. "Pardon?"

"Her da," he explained. "He would've been pleased she'd found you."

"You knew him?" I asked as I lowered my cup slowly.

Peter nodded. "Her parents used to pop-by now and again while Emma was in uni. Reckon she hasn't told you much in the way of him?"

I merely shook my head.

Peter nodded again. "He was a large burly fellow witha heart equal his size. He was an honest man, too."

I bit my lip as I considered asking the question that had been nagging at my curiosity for weeks. "How did he...?"

Something on a nearby shelf seemed to catch Peter's attention and held it until he could figure his answer to my prying question.

"Drunk driver."

My throat tightened painfully. "He wasn't—"

"No, Harry was sober as priest, but..." Peter finally managed to return his attention my way. "He was ejected from the car."

The back of my tongue ran dry as my lungs began to ache for oxygen. My only visible response to Peter's words came in the form of my eyes, which I could feel widen into saucers.

He seemed only able to offer me a forlorn shrug in explanation, though eventually words came. "It's not uncommon for those living in the country to not wear a seatbelt."

Peter cleared his throat before continuing. "They found him a few meters away from the scene of the accident."

My tongue unfortunately loosened as the gears in my mind began to turn once more. "Emma once said she was the one who had to make decisions concerning her father. I thought she meant funeral arrangements, but do you mean he... survived?"

Peters nodded but then immediately shook his head. "You have to understand—They did everything they could for him, but the life the hospital could offer him, well, it wasn't what he wanted. He'd spoken plainly enough about it when he was alive. He always said he wanted to spend his last days in the sun with his girls, not hooked up to some machine. It's what he wanted, but poor Elizabeth was in too fit a state s-so it was left to Emma to see that her father's wishes were followed."

Overwhelmed, my eyes drifted to the empty table standing alone in the corner. I squinted, as if taking in every detail of the wood could some how blur the details of Emma's pain.

"We, uh..." I cleared my throat and started again. "We have many charitable events in hospitals. I suppose being back there is rather—"

"Like bloody torture for her, yes." Peter succinctly finished for me.

I was swallowed by a pang of guilt for all of the times Emma had silently suffered through hospital-related events when I suddenly remembered Emma's plan to spend the day visiting Alice. It was self-centered, I realized then, to think of Emma's selflessness as anything to do with me and my commitments. Her compassion was who she was.

Peter cleared his throat, as if his thoughts, too, had momentarily drifted off. "Reckon she wouldn't have liked me share'n all that either..."

"No," I practically croaked. "I reckon she wouldn't have."

Peter's eyes squinted in my direction. "She's protective, you know."

I nodded.

"Hates to be thought of as a burden," he added.

"We've had many a conversation on the subject," I muttered as I carefully replaced my own tea things back on the waiting tray.

"She's lost so much."

I glanced up at Peter to be sure the words had come from him and not my own imagination.

"Please," he breathed, his eyes locked onto mine. "Don't ask her to sacrifice herself anymore than she already has. Because if you ask... she'll do it. It's who she is."

My eyes blinked rapidly as I tried to find the words and the steadiness of voice to say them. "If you'll excuse me... I'd like to be at the flat when Emma gets back."

Peter stood and watched silently as I rose and I adjusted the button on my sports coat.

"No more interviews?"

"You have my word," he agreed.

I nodded and then held out my hand for him to take.

He gripped it firmly and held my gaze a moment longer the conventional before dropping both and showing me out the door.

When I retuned to the flat, it was echoing with the cacophony of the clicking and clacking sounds of computer keys. Emma sat at the breakfast table, much as I imagined her earlier in Flannigan's, with her hair an explosion of curls and her journal splayed out before her.

I rested the side of my head against the doorframe as I watched her work, all the while Peter's words floating around me:

Emma's the private sort... Doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve and for good reason.

He always said he wanted to spend his last days in the sun with his girls, not hooked up to some machine.

...Never seen my girl so happy in so many years.

Don't ask her to sacrifice herself anymore than she already has...

I closed my eyes briefly and savored the sounds of her writing. She wouldn't sacrifice another damn thing, especially not this—not her time with Alice, not her writing, and not the joy that came with it. If anyone—my family included—tried to ask it of her, they'd have me to deal with.

Emma's eyes suddenly swung upward to meet mine in a smile. "What?"

I shook my head, suddenly finding myself grinning. "Nothing."

She merely rolled her eyes at my non-answer. "What?"

"Nothing!" I laughed as I pushed myself off of the doorframe and deposited my previously forgotten keys in the nearby dish. "You just look happy is all."

"I am," she murmured as her attention tugged between me and her screen. The tempo of her typing faltered slightly and then began to slow as she dragged her eyes back to mine. Her fingers finally stilled as her dimples bracketed her widening smile. "I am, Tom. So you can stop your brooding."

"Hey now," I teased as I made my way over to her and squeezed her shoulder. "I stopped that weeks ago."

My thumb began prodding into her tensed shoulder muscle and soon both hands were deployed in massaging her taught upper back.

"How's the writing?" I murmured.

"Brilliant—well it feels brilliant, "she amended with a blush. "I had block for so long, but writing with Alice it's so... freeing."

I nodded silently as my fingers continued to work down and across the planes of her back.

"Is that pathetic?" She asked after a minute. "To need a teenage girl to free your inner creativity?"

"I don't think it's pathetic at all. Sometimes we all need a reminder to not abandon our childish side."

Emma laughed and then nodded emphatically. "Well, she certainly reminds me every time I see her. I don't know if it's any good—I doubt it's something I'd ever publish—but it feels good to write again... Thank you, Tom."

I kissed the crown of her head. "Any time. You know I love giving you massages."

Emma turned in her seat, and my hands momentarily stilled.

Her lips tugged in a soft, upward crescent. "No, I mean for everything. For... being you."

My teeth bumped against hers as our smiling lips met and eventually locked together. I took a breath to apologize but she stole it from my lungs as she raised herself from her seat, pressing her chest up and in to mine. Her arms wound around my neck as mine hoisted her up by her hips. Our bodies seemed to move together as one, until our momentary separation when I tossed her on the bed before tumbling down after her.

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