Subj: Collinsport -- 42
Date: 1/26/99 7:29:42 AM Central Standard Time
From: DSRules

NEW YEAR'S EVE

"Do you feel like getting out of town for a while?" Neil asked Rosario over dinner.

"What do you have in mind?"

"There's a convention in Chicago next week that I want to attend, and I was thinking that it has been a long time since we've been to Chicago."

"One hundred and," she paused while she did the math, "twenty-seven years this past October, in fact. You know what my mother would say if I told her that I was going out of town with you."

"So that's a no?"

"Not necessarily." She thought for a while. "You're right. I *do* need to get away. I think I'll take you up on it. Mama will just have to adjust."

"It's just a good thing they shut Buckingham Fountain down for the winter," Neil said, grinning "I don't want to be responsible for the kind of damage you did to the Trevi Fountain that time in Rome."

* * * * *

As she concluded her lessons for the day, Azura said, "You'd better go get cleaned up to go over to my father's house."

Zoe bolted from the room. Azura knew that Colin Chance had been there behind the mirror, watching them. She had come to recognize the sounds of him walking into the room and the sound of him leaving it again. It was this sound she waited for, pretending to look over Zoe's work. Eventually, she heard the receding shuffle of his footsteps and the click of the latch as he
closed the door that she knew must be behind that mirror.

Only then did she face the mirror. "Happy New Year, Mr. Chance."

Was it her imagination, or did she hear an answering "Happy New Year to you, too, Azura"?

* * * * *

As the night wore on, Azura continually heard Colin Chance's voice -- or, rather, saw his handwriting -- in any number of situations throughout the night. When Adam's employees got to trading jokes, Azura even chimed in with a joke that Colin Chance had told her in one of his notes to her.

After she finished telling the joke, Zoe took her aside. "That's one of my daddy's jokes."

"I know it is, sweetie. You don't think he'd mind, do you?"

Zoe shook her head. "I was just surprised that you knew it."

"Well, I happen to think that your daddy has a really good sense of humor."

"Really?"

Azura nodded. "Really."

* * * * *

The man who for the previous 15 years had called himself Colin Chance had been increasingly captivated by Azura Von Stein, and he knew that he had to do something to rid himself of that fascination once and for all, or be irretrievably lost. Then, one Saturday night, after Azura left to go out to dinner at Barrington's restaurant in Logansport with Sarah, he saw his
opportunity. After all, once she proved to be just like all of the others, he couldn't possibly stay interested in her any longer.

He walked down the stairs to where Margaret was fixing dinner. "Margaret," he called out to her.

"Yes, Mr. Chance?"

"I'm going to be -- busy -- for a while. Could you keep an eye on Zoe until I'm -- available -- again?"

The chef was perplexed by this request, but she acquiesced. "I'd be happy to, Mr. Chance."

"Thank you, Margaret."

* * * * *

About a half hour after they arrived at the restaurant, Sarah's attention was caught by a tall man with striking blue eyes who entered the restaurant and walked to the bar area. "Azura! The best looking guy just walked in!" She whispered to her niece.

Azura just shrugged and continued picking at her fried onion strips. "I'm just not sure what to do about Colin, you know?"

In the bar, the tall, handsome stranger leaned in toward the bartender, an attractive redhead. Giving her his most charming smile, he said, "Look. I'm driving, and I haven't had anything to eat yet today. Can you make me something that looks alcoholic but isn't?"

She nodded and winked at him, then set to work. What she put in front of him looked remarkably like whiskey and soda. He sipped at it cautiously. "Root beer?" He asked, astonished. He winked at her and then looked around the restaurant for his quarry. He saw her sitting at one of the tables just outside the bar area. He studied her for a while, biding his time until he
made his next move.

"Azura! He's *really* handsome! And he's looking at you!" Sarah whispered at Azura again.

"What?" Azura looked behind herself, where she saw him. He was every bit as good-looking as Sarah had said, and he carried a self-assured air, as if he were very well aware of how handsome he was. "Eh." She shrugged.

"Well, I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers, if you know what I mean." Sarah said.

When she turned to look at him, her brown eyes unsettled him, though he struggled not to show it. He took a sip of the root beer concoction the bartender had made for him, wishing it really was whiskey. This was the first time he'd ever been this close to her. He didn't want to go through with this, but he knew that he had to. For her sake, as well as for his.

He continued watching her throughout their meal. Just as they were finishing up, and he was on his third root beer, he knew he had to make his move. He handed the bartender who'd been supplying him with root beer a hundred-dollar bill. "Keep the change," he told her with a smile and a wink as he headed across the restaurant.

Sarah handed the money to the waitress. The waitress spun around, nearly running into the man. "Pardon me," he said in an appealing way, smiling and twinkling his blue eyes at her.

"That's quite all right," the waitress responded, a blush creeping up her neck onto her cheeks.

"I've been watching you," he said to Azura, "and I just had to come over and introduce myself. Grant Douglas, at your service."

Azura tried to deny the palpitations of her heart as she looked into his eyes. "Azura," she said flatly.

He chose to ignore the omission of her last name. After all, it wasn't important. "Azura," he relished the feel of her name on his tongue more than he really ought to, "that's a pretty name."

"Thank you. I'm sorry, Mr. Douglas," Azura looked pointedly at Sarah, "but we really have to go."

"Are you sure you have to leave, Azura?"

When he said her name butterflies started in her stomach. She ruthlessly squashed them into submission. "Yes. My husband," she shoved her left hand into the pocket of her jeans so that he couldn't see that she wasn't wearing a wedding ring, even though she knew that he had already noticed the absence of that particular piece of jewelry, "is watching our daughter by himself, and I really have to leave. It was very nice meeting you, Mr. Douglas." Then Azura grabbed Sarah's arm and tugged her out of the restaurant after her.

{Damn!} The man swore silently as he watched the pair exit the restaurant, wondering what he was going to do now.

Collinsport -- Part 43
From: DSRules

When he returned to his quarters, the man who called himself Colin Chance kicked over a chair and knocked a table over roughly. "Dammit! I shut myself away for nine years! And *still* love managed to find me! *Damn* *It*!" He threw a hardcover copy of {The Stand} against the wall, enjoying the thump it made when it struck.

"*That* was a miserable damn failure," he said, thinking back over the events of the evening. "I was so certain it would work. Flirt with her a little, she flirts back, come on to her, she jumps me, we go to a hotel, and then it's over. She'd be just another conquest. Just another notch on my bedpost. Not that she'd ever see my bed, of course . . . ."

He was then distracted by the very arousing thought of Azura lying beneath him on the narrow extra-long twin bed he slept on up here, but he forced himself to think about the matter at hand again. "It worked on the bartender. It worked on the waitress. It even worked on Sarah," he said with a twinge of guilt; fortunately he didn't have to worry about leading her on -- his cousin's sister was happily engaged. "Why the hell didn't it work on her?"

He remembered hearing her talking about Colin Chance. "She's in love with me," he realized with awe. "Him. Us. Whoever." Leading a double life could certainly be confusing. Now he knew how Clark Kent must have felt when Lois Lane fell for Superman.

"Daddy?"

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he hadn't heard his daughter's footsteps on the stairs. He hoped that she hadn't heard his temper tantrum. "Yes, Zoe?"

"Where have you been? I came up to find you a little while ago but you were gone!"

She threw herself into his arms and as he held her, he reminded himself that in his entire, protracted existence, the only thing he had ever done right was father Zoe. She was the child of his heart, as well as his loins, and he loved her with a fervor that he had never felt toward anyone -- not even toward Jamison, whom he'd wanted to be his son for so long. Nothing would ever hurt Zoe so long as he was on this Earth. And he wasn't going anywhere.

"I just had to step out for a minute to take care of some business," he assured her, sitting in one of the upholstered chairs and pulling her up onto his lap.

"I didn't think you ever left the house."

"I haven't -- not during your lifetime, at least. But I had something very, very important to take care of."

"And did you?"

He got a faraway look in his blue eyes. "I hope so, sweetie. I surely hope so."

* * * * *

Azura sat, pen in hand, trying to find the right words to write in her note to her employer. He had asked her for details of her dinner with Sarah, and she was at a loss to describe it. She wasn't sure whether to say anything about the man who had flirted with her, but she was certain that she wouldn't say anything about how it was thoughts of Colin, waiting for her here at the house, that helped her resist his charm. The last thing she needed was to tell him how attracted she was to him, how eagerly she awaited his latest missive -- she'd probably end up losing her job, and then she wouldn't be able to write to him and spend time near him anymore.

{Dinner was uneventful.} She lied. {You know, just a girls' night out sort of thing. We spent a lot of time talking about Sarah's wedding plans.} This, at least was the truth. At last, Azura came up with something to write to him about, so she regaled him with Sarah's tales of trying to find florists and halls and such things.

* * * * *

"David!" Sarah giggled, rolling away from the lips of her amorous fiance. "Be serious. We've got to make a decision about the menu for the reception!"

"Come on, Sarah. Just one little, tiny kiss."

"No. One 'little, tiny kiss' could lead to a whole lot more, and we don't have a lot of time left to plan our wedding. Now, chicken or beef?"

"Chicken," David said without giving the matter too much thought.

Sarah looked at him pointedly.

"Beef? Why don't you make all of the decisions and I'll just lay here looking decorative." David suggested, getting more comfortable on Sarah's bed. Bubbles jumped up and landed on his abdomen, and David began petting him absently. "You know, once we get married, we're going to need a bigger bedroom than this one."

Sarah sighed, "I know. But this is the only bedroom I've ever had at Collinwood. It feels like home."

"But it doesn't feel like home to me. I grew up in this house, remember, and this wasn't my bedroom."

She swiveled around to face him. "Which one was your bedroom?"

"The last one down on the right."

"That tiny one? The one that . . ."

"The one that what?"

"Never mind."

"Don't give me that. 'The one that' what?"

"I was going to say that it was the one that doesn't have a side window, but then I realized that none of the rooms have their eastward- or westward-facing windows anymore, ever since Daniel added the East and West wings to the house."

"Mmm-*hmmm*. Why don't you just come right out and say that my room was the one that the staircase to the tower room passes through?"

Sarah's eyes widened, and then she blushed. "I wasn't supposed to know about the tower room. I guess that old habits really do die hard, don't they? Barnabas told me about it when they first built the house. He said that I should know about it just in case."

"Speaking of knowing things, just in case," Sarah said, becoming serious. "There's something we need to talk about."

David sat up, concern etched into his features.

"No, it's nothing bad. Really," she assured him with a smile that didn't touch her eyes. "It's just that . . . Certain tales that have made it into the family history do my brother a disservice."

"Barnabas?"

She shook her head. "Not Barnabas. Jerimiah."

* * * * *

He stood in her bedroom, breathing the scent of her. He knew that he was running a terrible risk of being caught, there in her room, especially since she was across the hallway reading to Zoe at the moment. She'd be there any minute. The thought of being caught in her room terrified him, but the lure of this room was too strong to resist. Oh! How he wanted to touch her! To hold her!

She entered the room then, and he quickly ducked into the shadows in the far corner of the room. "Hello? Mr. Chance?"

{Damn!} He swore silently. {I don't know how she knows, but she knows that I'm here.}

"I'm sure I'm not alone," Azura mumbled, half to herself. It never even occurred to her to be upset that he was here, in her private quarters. She peered into the darkness, and was just able to make out his shape. "I'm not going to turn on the light, Mr. Chance," she didn't say it aloud, of course, but she was afraid that he'd run away, like a frightened rabbit. "I'll lie down and close my eyes. I promise that I won't look when you leave the room."

She did just as she promised she would, and he watched her for another minute. He wanted so much to cross that little bit of space between them and press his lips to hers. But he knew that he couldn't. He had already given her his heart, and he was now certain that if he gave her his body, his soul would go with it. That was an investment that he wasn't willing to make.

With great reluctance, he crossed the room to the door. He had decided that he had to get as far away from this dangerous young woman as he could. He opened the door and, with one last, longing glance at her, stepped out into the hallway.