Subj: Collinsport -- 46
Date: 2/12/99 2:10:41 AM Central Standard Time
From: DSRules

Quentin awoke from the first decent sleep he'd had in over a hundred years. {No matter what Rosie said, that wasn't just herbs,} he thought. {It was magic. I'd recognize that feeling anywhere. She knew my name, so I must have met her sometime before. I wonder who she was and why she helped me like that.}

It was then that he realized that, even though he felt as though he'd slept like the dead -- deep and dreamless -- he had done more than sleep. He'd also come to a decision about Azura. He had to return to Collinsport and tell her how he felt about her. It was the only way he'd ever be able to live with his feelings.

* * * * *

Azura had been staring blankly out the window for several hours when she heard Zoe coming down the stairs.

"Azura?" she asked. "Are you all right?"

The governess forced herself to smile. "Yes, Zoe. I'm fine."

The nine-year-old, however, saw the sorrow in the young woman's eyes. "No, you're not. You're sad. Why are you sad, Azura?" Zoe cuddled herself in against Azura, and then she saw the note. "Are you sad because Daddy had to leave?"

Azura was struggling with the answer to that one when Zoe said, "Do you love my father, Azura?"

Azura looked at her charge silently for a moment. "Of course not," she lied. "I don't even know him. How could I love him?"

"All right. I was just wondering." It was obvious that Zoe didn't believe her. Azura wondered briefly how the little girl had become so wise in only nine years, but then she remembered how calm Zoe had been the night that Colin had awoken screaming, and suspected that Zoe had raised her father as much has he had raised her.

Azura decided that she needed to get her mind off of her problems - as well as off of her boss. "Well, since we're both up, do you want to get right to today's studies?"

"Actually, I was wondering if we could take the day off today, Azura. I mean, we have class every day. I want to do something different. Can we go in to Ellsworth and go to the zoo?"

Azura smiled at this evidence that her student wasn't *too* mature. "I think that I need a break, too. Yes, Zoe. We can go to the zoo."

* * * * *

"Where have the two of you been?" Javier asked when Sarah and David returned from the cemetery, where they had visited Jerimiah's grave. "Your," Javier indicated David with a nod of his head, "ex-wife has been ringing the phone off the hook. She was trying to find you to remind you that this is your weekend with your kids."

"Oh, my God! I completely forgot about it! You want to come with me?" He asked Sarah.

She shook her head. "No, thanks. I've got too much to do around here. And besides, I think that you need some time alone with them."

"All right. I'll call you tonight." The couple exchanged a quick kiss and then David headed off to his car. "I love you!" he called out before he climbed in.

"I love you, too!" She called back.

* * * * *

As Quentin waited for them to begin boarding his flight back to Maine, his certainty that this was the right thing to do began to waver. {She's going to find out all of my secrets. The only partner I've ever had who didn't was Louisa, and I've always suspected that she knew more than she let on. What is she going to say when she finds out everything. My age. My sexual history. The fact that I killed Jenny. She'll never forgive me.}

Then his path was suddenly clear. {I'll give her the choice at the beginning. Not hold anything back from her. If she can love me, knowing everything there is to know about me, then . . .} He didn't dare finish the thought. He wanted to have a future with Azura, a desire that was as frightening as anything he'd ever experienced in his life.

* * * * *

David headed south on Route 1 with his car full of children. Actually, there were only the three of them, but Laura and Burke were fighting, which made it seem that there were more children in the car than there were.

Roger, on the other hand, sat beside him in the passenger's seat, his nose pressed firmly into a book. The fifteen-year-old young man was clearly furious about something. David could practically see the smoke pouring from his ears.

"Whatcha reading, there?" His father asked, in an attempt to start a conversation.

Silently, Burke held the cover of the book up for his father's examination. It said, {The Road to Lasting Love, by Ronald Pitt, Ph.D.}

"Why are you reading that?" David chuckled. "Have a new girlfriend?"

Roger merely shot his father an enraged look and returned to his book.

Laura leaned forward and whispered in David's ear, "He's angry because you're going to marry Sarah."

"Why? I thought you all liked Sarah."

"Burke and I like her, but Roger wants you to get back together with Mom. That's why he's reading that book. One of his teachers told him that this book would help him get you back together, or something."

"Thanks a lot, blabbermouth," Roger snarled at his sister. "And for your information, I'm reading this because when I get married, it'll keep me fromdoing the same thing to my children that you're doing to us."

They pulled into the driveway and Burke and Laura went into the living room to watch television. David took his eldest child aside. "You wanna go for a walk and talk for a while?"

Roger, regretfully putting his book down on an end table, shrugged and followed his father outside.

Father and son walked down to the beach and walked along the shore. It was a chilly day, and the wind chill factor made it seem even colder. Eventually, David broke the silence. "I'm sorry that you don't like Sarah, Roger."

His son merely snorted in response.

"Really. I am."

"Then why are you marrying her?"

"Look, I said that I'm sorry that you don't like her. I didn't say that your feelings are going to change my mind about her. I'm marrying her because I want to spend the rest of my life with her."

"You used to feel that way about Mom."

Then David did one of the most difficult things he had ever done. He told his son the truth about his marriage to Hallie. "No, I didn't. I married your mother because I didn't think I'd ever find Sarah again."

"What?" Roger asked, clearly confused.

"I know you won't understand, but I've loved Sarah since long before I met your mother."

"You're right. I don't understand," Roger snapped. "Sarah's gotta be twenty years younger than you. She wasn't even born yet when you met Mom."

David sighed. "Actually, she was. She's older than I am. One of the things that you have to learn about being a Collins is that sometimes things don't make a lot of sense, but that doesn't make them any less true." He could see that Roger wasn't following his train of thought, so he gave him an example. "Like Uncle Jeb."

"Uncle Jeb's not real," Roger scoffed. "He's a fairy tale that you and Aunt Carolyn made up."

"No, Roger. He's not a fairy tale. He's as real as you and I are."

"Like Frosty the Snowman, right?" Roger glared at his father.

"All right, how about Laura?"

"What about her?"

"You remember her imaginary friends?"

Roger laughed. "They all had such strange names. Josette, Daphne, Jamison . . ."

"Well, the thing that neither Laura nor ever told anyone is that they weren't imaginary. They were, and are, very real."

"Like Uncle Jeb."

"Very much the same, yes. Josette was Sarah's. . . " he wavered between telling his son the truth, that Josette and Sarah had been sisters-in-law, and parroting the family canon. He decided on the fiction, "aunt, in fact."

"And what about Daphne?"

"She was your," he paused to count, "great-great-great-great-grandmother.* Jamison was my grandfather. Your great-grandfather."

"Just because we have ancestors with those names doesn't prove anything. She could have gotten the names from overhearing you and Mom talking or something."

David shook his head. "No. Let's just say that her 'imaginary friends' told her things about the family that she *never* would have overheard me talking to your mother about."

David realized that his son had managed to get him off-track with this conversation. "I just wanted you to know that I didn't divorce your mother because of anything she did wrong. It was because of something that I did wrong." Roger looked at his father expectantly, and David knew that he was waiting for him to say that divorcing Hallie had been a mistake. "I gave up too soon on my first love. Sarah."

* * * * *

As soon as Azura stepped into the house upon her return from Ellsworth with Zoe, she noticed that something about the house had changed. At first she thought that Margaret had come over, but she had called Margaret to tell her that they'd be eating dinner in Ellsworth, so that couldn't have been it.

Zoe answered Azura's questions about what had changed when she yelled, "Daddy's home!" and bolted up the stairs to her father's quarters.

Feeling, inexplicably, as if a weight had been lifted from her chest, Azura went back to the classroom and began preparing for Zoe's next lessons. She hadn't even noticed how dark it had become when Zoe returned downstairs, walked into the room, and turned on the light.

"Daddy asked me to tell you that he wants you to come upstairs. He wants to talk to you," she said in a nonplussed tone of voice.

Azura's heart was in her throat as she walked up the steps. She knocked, tentatively, on the door at the top of the stairs.

"Come in," a voice called out from beyond the door.

The door creaked slightly as it swung open on its hinges. There was only one light on in the room behind it, a small ceramic lamp standing on a round table a few feet inside the room.

"M -- Mr. Chance?" It took a couple of tries to get her voice to work.

"Come in, Azura." The voice came from the shadows on the far side of the room.

She stepped into the circle of light cast by the lamp on the table. Just beyond the table was an easel with a canvas of some sort on it, covered by a sheet.

"I'm falling in love with you, Azura," he began. Before she could respond, he followed this thought up with, "And I think that you're under the impression that you're falling in love with me."

Azura was offended by his casual dismissal of her feelings towards him. "I'm not under the impression that I'm falling in love with you, Colin. I *am* falling in love with you."

He had planned to just tell her the truth about his past, but something inside him, some perverse desire to scare her away, so that he wouldn't have to risk loving and being loved again, made him say, "Could you love a murderer?"

"A murderer?" No sound came out as she mouthed the words.

"Yes. I'm a murderer, Azura. I killed my wife."

"Zoe's mother?"

He laughed bitterly. "Louisa and I were never married. My wife's name was Jenny. After I . . . *killed* her," it was clear that this admission was a painful one for him, "I promised myself that I'd never marry again.

"And I never wanted children, except with Jenny. When I found that Louisa was pregnant, do you know what I did? I tried to make her have an abortion. The only good thing I've ever done in my life was create that child, and I tried to kill her."

She could hear the pain in his voice and took a step towards him.

"Stop! Don't come near me. You're falling in love with me, you say. Well, I want you to know exactly what it is that you're falling in love with.

"I can see it in your eyes. You think it's an exaggeration when I say that Zoe's the only good thing I've ever done. Well, it's not. I've lied. I've cheated. I've stolen. I've killed. Jenny wasn't my only victim, you know. I killed my own brother. I didn't do it directly, like I did with Jenny, but I knowingly put him in danger. I killed him as surely as if I had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

"If it's a sin, I've committed it at least once. Leaf through the Bible. See the assortment of sins there are listed in there. Then remember that, whatever it is, I've done it."

Then he began to list his sins, laughing bitterly the whole time. "Adultery! When I was married to Jenny, I made love to two other women. And one of *them* was married to another man at the time.

"Theft! I tried to steal my family home from my sister. I felt that I should have been my grandmother's heir, and so I stole her will and hired someone to forge a new one leaving everything to me.

"Idolatry! Not only idolatry. I used to practice black magic. Not that I was ever any good at it," he said with another bitter laugh, "Nothing came of it but more pain and suffering for everyone involved.

"Because I murdered Jenny, I've condemned more people than I can count to a living death at the whim of the moon, 'the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb,'" he quoted.

"'Lest thy love prove likewise variable,'" Azura finished the line for him.

"Will your love prove variable, Azura?"

She was at a loss to respond to him. "There's only one way to find out, Colin."

"Would you please not call me by that name?" he snapped before he realized how it came out.

"I'm sorry *Mr. Chance.* I'll try not to overstep my boundaries again!" He could almost feel her blood pressure going up as she said this.

"No. No, Azura. That came out wrong. I just don't want you to call me that because it's not my real name. I'm dying here, Azura, and the only thing you can do for me is to call me by my real name. Quentin. Quentin Collins."

She took another step towards him then.

"No. Please, Azura. This is difficult enough. You have to know what you're getting into. Go over there, toward the easel."

She walked over to it.

"Now, take off the sheet. Look at my portrait. Then you'll see what you're so in love with."

Her hands shook as she removed the sheet. Her gasp at first seemed to contain the horror he expected, but then he realized that it wasn't horror. It was pity.

"Quentin," she breathed, her eyes brimming over with tears as she gently touched the oils on the canvas. "How did this happen?"

"Being 134 years old will do that to a person," he said, bitterly. Then, answering her unspoken question, he continued. "Yes, Azura. I'm 134 years old. Now, if you can look at that picture and tell me that you still think that you love me, I might start to believe it."

"Well," she began, noticing the bare teeth of the face in the portrait. "Umm. . . Physically, I'm not so sure. I mean, I get a great deal of pleasure from kissing, and, well, you know, lips are kind of an asset in that situation. . . ."

She paused then, noticing something else missing from the decrepit portrait. "How do you keep your eyes from drying out?"

"What?"

Not even thinking how it might sound to her would-be lover, she said, "Well, it looks like you don't have any eyelids. Don't your eyes dry out?"

With this, Quentin laughed. Really laughed for the first time since she'd walked into the room, without a trace of bitterness in it. He realized, then, that she was still staring at the eyes on the portrait. "What are you thinking, Azura?"

"I've seen those eyes before. I'm trying to remember where." Then, she turned towards him and headed determinedly into the darkness surrounding him. As she approached him, she said, "You don't look like that!"

"What?"

"I said, that I don't know where you got that awful painting, but you don't look a thing like that!" By then, she was nearly close enough to see him. "You're that annoying guy who hit on me at Barrington's!"

"I'm not annoying!" Quentin responded indignantly.

By then, her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and Azura had gotten close enough to see his face. Sure enough, her beloved Colin Chance and that irritating Grant Douglas were the same man, and both of them, apparently, were Quentin Collins.

"Oh? I was in love with *you* Quentin Colin Chance Collins. Haven't you ever had someone hit on you when you're in love with someone else?" She asked him, tears of joy collecting in her eyes at being so close to the man she loved for the first time.

"Yes," he answered in a distant voice, clearly as mesmerized by her closeness as she was by his.

"And how would you describe it?" She kneeled next to his chair, her brown eyes meeting his blue ones.

He smiled. "Annoying." And with this word, he leaned forward, placing one hand at the base of her head and pulling her face towards his and kissing her.

Subj: Collinsport -- Part 47
Date: 2/12/99 11:06:06 PM Central Standard Time
From: DSRules

Azura moved up onto Quentin's lap and they continued kissing. After a few minutes, he disentangled himself from her. "Could you go and sit on the sofa? I need to cover that," he indicated the painting, "up."

She did as he asked her, and after he threw the sheet over the portrait again, he crossed the room and joined her on the sofa. "Where were we?" he asked as he slid over to her.

She very much wanted to continue necking with him, but she needed some answers even more. She pulled her head back and, looking at the sheet-enshrouded painting, said, "Where did you get that thing, anyway?"

"I told you. I'm 134 years old, and that's my portrait. Painted 101 -- almost 102 now -- years ago by one of the world's most reknowned portrait painters, in fact, Charles Delaware Tate."

"You're kidding. I thought you were B.S.'ing me when you said that you're 134 years old."

He crossed his heart. "Scouts' honor," he replied.

"Why does it look so . . . awful?"

"Well, what do you think a 134 year old man who made a career out of debauchery would look like?"

She had to concede this point, but asked, "But why?"

He sighed and sat up straight, steepling his hands between his knees. "Well, I promised myself that I wouldn't hold anything back from you, so here goes.

"Well, when I married Jenny, I didn't know that she was a Rom -- what we called back then a Gypsy. In fact, I didn't find that out until after she died."

"Then how did you find out, if she was dead?"

"Her sister put a curse on me. She cursed me and the first-born son of each of my descendants to become a werewolf."

"A werewolf?" Then his words about his descendants suffering because of the moon made sense. "So Zoe's son, if she has one, will be a werewolf?"

He nodded morosely. "That's why I didn't want her to be born. If she'd been a boy, she would have been safe from the curse personally, because Jenny and I had twins -- a boy and a girl** -- but either way, my grandson born to that child would bear the curse."

The pain in his eyes was almost palpable. Azura reached forward and pulled him to her, resting his head on her shoulder as she rocked him back and forth gently.

"I've looked for a cure, you know. I've left no stone unturned, but it didn't do any good."

"I know. How could you not look for a cure?"

Quentin relaxed into Azura's embrace while he paused to gather himself together, and then he sat back up. "Anyway, Magda, that was Jenny's sister, realized that she'd cursed me in anger and repented of it."

"Curse in haste, repent at leisure," Azura quipped with a gentle smile.

He returned her smile and resumed his story, feeling somewhat better. "She eventually lured a sorcerer to my home who had as a member of his entourage, Charles Delaware Tate, who had the ability to draw things that became real. Tate painted that portrait. It took the curse from me, and has aged for me, freeing me from the curse, and making me immortal."

Something about this tale didn't ring quite true to Azura, but she couldn't quite place what it was that didn't make sense to her, and since it was obvious that he was telling what he thought was the truth, she didn't push him
on the issue.

They sat that way for a long time, her holding him. Comforting him. And after a while, the passion flared up between them again. He kissed her lips, her face, her neck. He kissed his way up her arms.

When his mouth returned to her lips, her hands went to the buttons on his shirt, but he stopped her. "No. I can't."

"You can't?" She wondered if he was confessing that he was impotent.

"Well, maybe I should have said that I shouldn't. I'm sure that I *can*, but I shouldn't. Not yet. You see, I haven't been exactly careful about who I shared a bed with. I'm immortal -- I figured diseases and things didn't matter."

"They probably don't." She eagerly returned to work on the buttons on his shirt.

Quentin was sorely tempted to just go along with the flow of their passion, but he had thought a lot about this development, and he knew that he had to do whatever he could to protect her - from himself, as well as from outside threats. Gently, he placed his hands over hers and didn't let go. He moved their joined hands down to where their thighs rested against each other on the sofa.

"Would you please let me finish? I've never had a symptom of anything, but that doesn't mean that I'm not carrying anything, and if I got you sick, I don't know what I'd do." A nearly infinite sadness touched his eyes when he said this.

He continued. "I'm not just afraid that you'll get the usual stuff, like AIDS and herpes, either. God only *knows* what you could catch from making love with me -- tetanus, typhoid, dengue fever . . . . I'll make an appointment to see a doctor and get checked out. Once I'm sure that I won't make you sick, we can discuss moving to the next level."

His honesty and love for her touched her. "Oh." She said.

"By the way, is your grandmother still a doctor?"

"My grandmother?" Azura's first thought was for her maternal grandmother -- an attorney. Then she realized who he was talking about. "You mean Julia? Yes, she's still practicing."

"Do you have her phone number?"

"Not on me. I can go downstairs and get it if you want . . ."

She leaned forward to stand up, and he placed his hands on her shoulders, pulling her back down onto the sofa. "Oh, no. It took us much too long to get to this point. I'm not planning on letting you out of my sight anytime soon." And with these words, he laid her back on the sofa and began kissing her.

* * * * *

Hours later, still completely clothed, Azura was awakened by Quentin's voice saying, "Zoe? What are you doing?"

Her eyes fluttered open to see her young charge standing beside the easel, clearly embarrassed at having been caught doing something that she shouldn't have been doing, and judging by the way the sheet was swaying gently, Azura suspected that she had been peeking at the portrait.

Zoe walked over to the couch where they were lying, and cocked her head to one side to meet Azura's eyes. "Good morning, Azura," she said, a knowing tone in her voice and a broad smile on her face. "I'm sorry, Daddy. I just wanted to see what it was."

"Trust me," the man replied. "You don't want to see what's under that sheet."

"I'm glad I came up here, though." Zoe smiled at her father and governess. "Is Azura going to be my mother now?"

As they straggled into a sitting position, the two adults looked at each other, nonplussed. A moment of wordless understanding passed between them.

{Do you want to be her mother?} his eyes asked her. {Do you want me to be her mother?} her eyes asked him.

{Of course I do!} They both responded silently.

"Do you want her to be your mother?" Quentin asked her.

Zoe merely nodded, but the light of happiness in her eyes was unmistakable.

With a smile, Quentin and Azura slid over, making room for their daughter to join them.

* * * * *

After Zoe went downstairs to have breakfast, Azura took the opportunity to talk to Quentin again. "How much does Zoe know?"

"About me? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised at how much she does know. She's a very sharp little girl," he said, unmistakable pride in his voice. "The real problem that I've been wrestling for the last nine years with is how to tell her that her son will be a werewolf."

"Who knows? Maybe we'll find a way to break the curse. My dad's kind of an expert on the supernatural. Can I ask him to help?" She could tell that Quentin was going to refuse to let her tell Adam, so she said, by way of convincing him, "My dad's pretty good at keeping secrets, you know. I'm sure he wouldn't tell anyone. And we don't have to tell him everything."

It was still obvious that Quentin was going to refuse her, so she ended her argument with, "All right, if you don't want me to, I won't. But if you ever do decide to bring someone else in to help, just let me know. OK?"

She continued her original line of questioning. "Actually, I was asking if Zoe knows that she's a Collins."

He shook his head. "I don't think so. But then again, I don't know exactly how much about my history she does or doesn't know."

"Wait. I just thought of something. You're a Collins."

"Right . . ."

"Well, so am I, sort of. Would it be incestuous for us to . . . get together?"

"No. Barnabas is something like my third or fourth cousin, and since you're his granddaughter, that puts you even farther away than that. But anyway," he leaned in towards her and whispered in her ear, "even if we were too closely related, it wouldn't keep me from loving you."

* * * * *

Over breakfast, David asked his son to step outside with him again. "I know that you don't like Sarah, and you don't approve of our marriage," he began.

"I guess I like her OK. I just think you should be getting back together with Mom, not marrying someone else."

"I know. I guess that's why I put this off. I figured that there'd be no point to asking if you'd be my best man at our wedding tomorrow."

"Why do you want me to be your best man?"

"Well, you're my eldest son."

"Is that the only reason?"

David sighed. "You really don't want to make this easy, do you? I want you to be my best man because I want you up there with me. You've been my son for nearly sixteen years now, and I hope that you and I can be friends someday."

Roger thought about this. "I'd really like to be your best man, Dad. Just don't think that this means that I'm not still sorry you aren't getting back together with Mom."

"Don't worry," David laughed. "There's no danger that I'd ever think that."

* * * * *

Azura brought her address book up from her room and handed it to Quentin, who looked up Barnabas and Julia's phone number, picked up the phone, and began to dial.

After a minute, he said, "Hello, Julia. It's Quentin.

"Yes. That Quentin.

"Oh. I'm fine. Still immortal. You know how it goes.

"Your phone number? I got it from Azura.

"Yes. Adam's daughter.

"Dating? Well, sort of. It's a long story," with this, he winked at Azura.

"Actually, I was calling to see if you could fit me into your schedule for a physical.

"I don't know what good it'll do me. But I figure it can't hurt.

"Yes, I could come in for an appointment today." He noticed the disappointed expression on Azura's face and put the phone down.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing." She turned to look out the window at the sea beyond it.

"I've been honest with you. Please be honest with me." He put his hand on her chin and turned her to face him.

"Well, I guess I was hoping that we could spend the day together today."

He couldn't believe what she was saying. "Really?"

She nodded. "I was also hoping to show you off at Sarah and David's rehearsal dinner tonight."

Quentin picked the phone back up. "Azura asked me if we could reschedule.

"Yes. So we can attend Sarah and David's rehearsal dinner.

"Oh? I'll tell her that."

He put the phone back down. "Julia's going to the rehearsal dinner tonight, too. How about if I go up to Bangor, have the physical, and then Julia and I can drive down together for the rehearsal dinner?"

She still seemed disappointed, but struggled not to show it. "Yeah. That'd be fine."

He snuggled in closer to her and whispered in her ear, "the sooner I can get a clean bill of health, the sooner you and I can make love," sending shivers down her spine.

"Oh. Well, since you put it that way . . . " She kissed him, then, and they lost track of time.

"Quentin!" a small, tinny voice called out.

Quentin broke away from the kiss. "Oops! I completely forgot about Julia!"

"Julia? Yes. I can make it for an appointment today.

"I'll see you this afternoon. Good-bye." He hung up the phone. "Well, that settles it. I'm set up for a full physical. Hopefully, nothing upsetting will show up, and then next week, or maybe even as early as tonight . . . "

His voice trailed off suggestively.

"I hope so," Azura said, pulling him towards her for another kiss.

* * * * *

So if you're in sight and the day is right
She's the hunter you're the fox
The gentle voice that talks to you
Won't talk forever
It is a night for passion
But the morning means goodbye
Beware of what is flashing in her eyes
She's going to get you

"All That She Wants" -- Ace of Base

Julia Hoffman's new nurse, Laura Radcliffe, stood by Julia's desk, looking at a picture of the physician's son. {Benjamin Hoffman Collins,} she thought, {you will be mine as surely as Jeremiah and Edward were before you.}

Normally, she wouldn't have had any time to spend looking at the picture of her quarry, but Julia had some mysterious patient come in who had made his appointment with the doctor personally that morning. Julia had been keeping the whole thing very quiet and had hustled him into her office before Laura had been able to see him. Laura knew that it was likely that Julia would call for her to assist her, but she wanted to know what was happening. She slinked to the hallway outside of Julia's examining room and put her ear to the door.

She was glad that she hadn't been holding anything in her hands at that moment, because if she had, she would surely have dropped it when she heard his voice.

"You see, Julia. I love her, and I won't take any chances that. . . "

He appeared to be at a loss for words, so Julia finished his thought. "That she'll contract an STD from you."

"Or anything else. That's why I want you to do a *complete* physical on me."

"Blood work? Tissue cultures?"

"Everything."

Laura stepped away from the door, her blood boiling. {'I love her. . .' 'I love her . . .' 'I love her . . .'} The words echoed through her head. She tried to convince herself that, impossible as it seemed, he was talking about that house-ape, what was her name? Zoe. That was his daughter's name. But she couldn't ignore with his desire to not give her, whoever she was, a sexually transmitted disease. It all added up to one thing. Despite all she had done to keep him to herself, he had fallen in love with someone else. {Damn you, Quentin! You *know* you belong to me!}

* * * * *

"You really must feel strongly for this young woman," Julia said with admiration. "Laura!" She called out her nurse's name.

Quentin blanched at the name. "Laura?"

Julia looked at him, silently prompting him to continue.

"I used to have a . . . lover," he hated to use any term that included the word {love} regarding Laura, but the term 'mistress' indicated, to his mind, a more committed relationship than he and Laura had ever had, and he was still too much of a gentleman to describe her by possibly more accurate terms like {whore,} "by that name. She was Edward's wife."

"Oh. That Laura. Jeremiah Collins' first wife," Julia said, as Barnabas had never told her that it was his brother, not his uncle, who had married Josette DuPres. "Well, you don't have to worry about that. I checked this Laura's background thoroughly, at Barnabas' suggestion, before I hired her."

Julia noticed that her nurse hadn't appeared yet. She stepped out into the hallway outside the examining room. Laura was nowhere to be found.

Julia returned to the examining room. "I don't know where she's disappeared to," she explained. "I guess I'm on my own. Roll up your sleeve, please, Quentin."

* * * * *

Scene skipped for the comfort of the squeamish (like the author!)

* * * * *

As Julia placed the final vial filled with Quentin's blood on the table and removed the needle from his arm, she began to feel weak. Breathing heavily, she slumped down into a chair.

"Are you all right, Julia?"

He fully expected her to say that she was, even though it was clear that she wasn't, so he was stunned when she shook her head, {no.} "Pills," she choked out.

"Where are they?"

"Desk.

"Drawer."

Quentin hurried out into the hallway and down to Julia's office. He opened each drawer in her desk until he found the pill bottle. He looked at the label {Take one every six hours,} it read.

By the time he returned with the bottle, Julia's breathing was less labored. She shook two pills out into her hand and choked them down, dry.

"I'll be fine in a minute."

"Are you supposed to be taking those two at a time?"

She fixed him with a withering glare that reassured him that, physical weakness notwithstanding, she was still a force to be reckoned with.

While she waited to recover, she engaged her cousin in conversation. "So, tell me about your daughter."

Quentin glowed as he said, "She's wonderful, Julia. Her name's Zoe, and she's nine years old. Now I can understand what you and Barnabas were so excited about when Ben and Tori were born. They're adults now, aren't they? I completely missed their childhood. But before I had Zoe, I probably wouldn't have cared about things like that.

"Oh!" He continued, "I also meant to tell you that I finally wrote my novel. And another one after that. And then a trilogy. And I'm going to have another novel published next month."

"Really? That's wonderful! Of course, I would have noticed the name Quentin Collins in a bookstore if I had seen it there, so I take it you write under a pseudonym."

He nodded. "Perhaps you've heard of it. Colin Chance."

"Colin Chance! Now that name *does* sound familiar."

"From bookstores?"

"From the shelves at home. Barnabas loves your books. Historical fiction isn't my cup of tea, though."

"Maybe you have to live it before you can appreciate it," Quentin winked at his cousin-in-law.

Julia, fully recovered, looked at the clock. "Why don't you go on home, and I'll start running the tests. I'll tell you what I've found when I see you at the rehearsal dinner tonight."

* * * * *

Laura knocked at the door of David's house in Winter Harbor. Benjamin Collins had been completely forgotten in her madness over Quentin.

No one answered. {Damn it! If I'm going to get Quentin back, I need a way into the family. David's the only way I have in.} Suddenly, she was glad that Vicki had foiled her attempt to make David into her consort. David was going to lead her back to Quentin.

She waited five minutes. When no one came to the door, she walked away, fuming.

====================

*Actually, she's David's step-great-great-great-great-grandmother, but David doesn't know that Geoffrey was actually Tad's son, and not Quentin I and Daphne's.

**Yep. Quentin still doesn't know that the "twins" were actually half-sisters -- one born to Jenny and one born to Beth. Read my Quentin & Jenny story for the full details