Alec Hardy goes to Gracepoint

Chapter 7

Moving on and telling the truth

"Rose, I'm ready when you are, I feel fine and I'd really like the chance to prove it to you, if you want, tonight. You could try going easy on me though, just to be sure I'm ready, you wouldn't want to have to take me to the local hospital and explain why my pacemaker failed, would you?" he smiled. "There's just one thing though, do you think I'm too old for you? I mean, I have to be at least ten years older than you, it doesn't bother you?" He kissed her forehead and wrapped his arms around her.

"No Alec, I don't think you're too old for me, if you can keep up with me and you're not doing too bad a job so far. That sort of boyfriend I told you about, well he was a lot older than me, older than you but I didn't care, I adored him and I left it too late to tell him or do anything about it, he was gone before I had a chance to tell him how I felt about him and he'll never know. We were just good friends, that was all and I wanted more and I couldn't tell him. You're here Alec, please don't feel that you're too old for me, age makes no difference. My step-dad is older than my mother, my last real boyfriend was older than me and before you ask, no, I haven't got a jealous ex, we just work together now, he has someone else." Well at least she thought he had, he had been interested in a young newly qualified MD that had just joined the team and by now they might be together, who knows?

"Did I tell you I was divorced? That I have a fifteen year old daughter and neither of them want to know me?" He could tell by the look on her face he had failed to mention that part of his life. Well, he'd blown any chances of getting to have any kind of sex with her now. He was surprised when she put her arms around him and kissed him, whispering it was ok.

"We both have our pasts, Alec, everyone moves on eventually, I never expected someone like you wouldn't have been married or at least had a girlfriend before." She smiled at him and said they should be getting back to the hotel to change for dinner and she said she needed a bit of time on her own to sort some things out.

What she actually planned to do was look up Detective Carver and see if he was any relation to Alec and also put in a call to her step-dad and ask if he was ok if she told Alec who she really was, not just she was the heiress to the Vitex corporation, that was bad enough but to tell him where she came from and about Torchwood. She was a bit surprised he didn't already know who she was but only a handful of people knew exactly where her mother, Mickey Smith and she came from and how they got there, the second time for Mickey and herself and more importantly, who her sort of boyfriend was.

Alec left her at her hotel room door, giving her a couple of hours to do what she needed and to get changed. He said he needed to do a few things anyway so he said he would call back for her after kissing her several times, much to the annoyance of an elderly couple who had just arrived on their floor and thought Alec was old enough to know better. Rose found very little about Emmett Carver, not on the official Police website anyway so to avoid wasting time, she logged onto the Torchwood secure network and tried again. She was surprised at the results. Just out of interest, she looked up Alec, she had resisted the temptation to do so earlier but since his revelation about being married before, with a teenage daughter, she wanted to be prepared for any other little surprises. She got plenty when she read the last case he solved had nearly killed him twice.

She placed a conference call to her step-dad, she had got used to actually calling him dad, even before her younger brother had been born, for all intents and purposes, there was no secrets between them, this version of her dad had spent more time with her than her real one and although she would never forget him, the Pete Tyler of this world was her dad now and he was her boss. After saying hello and asking about her mum and brother, she got down to what she wanted to ask him and he agreed but to tell Alec as little as possible about their operations until he'd had chance to speak to Alec himself and he was personally going to check him out. Rose warned him that Alec's past was not important to her and she knew his career had been tarnished lately but it was all sorted and about his current health.