A/N Another quick chapter as you are all so complimentary!!! Enjoy, xxx

Chapter Forty Eight

Oscar looked out at the Pacific Ocean and smiled. Venice Beach was one of his favourite places on the West coast. It had helped that he met a woman years ago who was a native and showed him all the best places to go. Now, it was a place he could wander, enjoy and switch off. Which was hard. Considering he'd just resigned from his job as an almost board member of one of the biggest hotel companies in the world. But it wasn't that action that was making him so uptight, it was the events of the last five days, and the text that had just come through on his phone.

back in Manchester, he didn't know if Lizzie would see his actions in the same light as they were intended, hence the long winded note that he sent her. He knew he needed to act, to show her how he felt, and that was the best thing he could think of. It was his heart on a plate, delivered without him seeing the results. Sort of.

He had been in a cafe opposite the building that housed her lawyers office, watched her go in, head hung, eyes to the floor. She looked devastated, beaten...and that was all his fault. He'd almost held his breath as she disappeared into the reception, then scuttled in after her to give the letter to the security guard there. It was about forty minutes later that she emerged, looking stunned, clutching his letter in her hand.

From his seat he could see her open it, read it, once...twice...three times at least. She looked sad, and he hated that, but it was there, all out in the open. He had to leave, that was part of this, back off and let her see how things were. But with travel and time difference he had only managed one very brief Skype chat with Nate since then, Lizzie almost ridiculous in her absence from the conversation. But he had to have confidence in both her, and his own actions. So he smiled and blew his son a good night kiss.

Now on day three, he had resigned, walked in to his head office and told them he was done...and he felt...liberated. On leaving the office, feeling ten times lighter than when he arrived, he'd had a message from Lizzie.

Oscar slumped to a bench along the boardwalk and pulled out his phone again.

"It's been two days, and I still don't know how to respond. No one has ever trusted, or believed in me as much as you do. And even now I doubt that it's real. Because, maybe I don't feel that I deserve that from someone as wonderful as you."

There had been a ten minute gap to the next one.

"Did I really send that?" He could imagine her blushing; it took a lot to let down that tiny bit of barrier. "Oh well, in for a penny and all that. Oscar. Thank you. For believing in me. I want nothing more than for you to spend as much time with Nate as possible, and I'm sorry forced you in to this. I was wrong about you, I DO trust you, I'd trust you with my life."

He let out a long slow exhale, his eyes starting to believe what he'd read a little earlier. That kind of comment from Lizzie was more symbolic that 'I love you'. He knew her, he got her. No one had loved her the way she deserved it, so why would she think that he loved and wanted her now. He stumbled over the 'L' word. He KNEW that was what he felt, but it still seemed strange, foreign even to think of himself in relation to it and another person....other then Nate, obviously. She wasn't going to accept his feelings easily, but then he wasn't finding it very easy to think them! They were a pair of emotional cripples and he had to make her realise that they were both the same.

It was ridiculously warm in California and he stretched out, turning his face up to the sun, closing his eyes, basking for a moment. But his moment of serenity was disturbed by a cough.

"Thought I'd find you here!"

Opening his eyes it took a moment to acclimatise to the brightness, but he'd know that voice anywhere. Mike. His old boss and previous wingman.

"Mike, I thought you were tied up in San Fran."

The older man laughed pulling him from the bench into a man hug, "never too busy to call and see a friend when they're in town."

Oscar reciprocated the hug, and then laughed, "you mean you want the news. I thought that it was meant to be women who chased gossip, old man."

Mike held his hands up in surrender "have to say hearing that Golden Balls, the biggest things out side of board level is abandoning the company is BIG news."

He nodded slowly, "so you want to know why I resigned?"

Mike wouldn't come out and ask that, but instead he lifted at eyebrow in acknowledgement.

"Well that's an 'over a beer' conversation, come on."

Half an hour later, Mike sat across the table from him, his beer untouched and his jaw hanging open, unable to comprehend what he'd been told. Oscar laughed at his confusion and Mike seemed to snap pit of it.

"So you are leaving a highly paid job, where you're on the border of something huge...for a broad?"

Oscar laughed, and felt such pity for Mike's wife and kids, he just didn't get it and yet he'd been married for almost twenty years.

"No. I'm leaving because I want to concentrate on being the man that Nate and Lizzie need me to be. I can't do that travelling and being away from them so much."

Mike let out a huge puff of air, "you can do both, I do!"

Oscar didn't answer, Mike travelled the world sleeping with as many women as he could, most of them a similar age to his own children. And before Lizzie he hadn't realised himself that it was that wrong. But now, couldn't think of anything worse, he had become a one-woman-man, and it didn't feel like a trap, he didn't feel restricted...he felt enlightened, released. But he knew that Mike wouldn't understand that. So he stayed silent.

"So what are you going to do now?"

Oscar lifted his beer and took a long drink, "I've got to work three months, but as I'm looking to create my own freelance company, advising on internet security systems...well it seems that I'm a threat to the secrets of the company...so I'm being put of garden leave. I'm a threat apparently. I meet HR tomorrow to discuss severance, and then I'm going home."

Home.

A place he'd only known existed for a few months, a place he'd lived in for even less time. But he had already embraced the adage, home is where the heart is...and his was in a small house in Manchester, and he couldn't wait to be back there. He had a lot of contacts; he honestly believed that he could set up a business using his black book and the wiles he'd accrued over the last ten years.

One beer became four, and dinner - great wings and fried shrimp. But Oscar's heart wasn't in it...the beer, the food...or the company that Mike was eyeing up. So at just after nine, he left Mike to it, walking back to his hotel alone. To Skype his son. Well, he'd have a conversation with him in an hour or two, when he woke up.

He had a luxury suite, standard when he travelled within the company, and he was rattling around in it alone, but there was just a few more nights. That was all he had to wait until they were together again.

He'd stayed at this particular branch of the hotel chain many times, a lot of the staff knew him, and the receptionist smiled at him as he entered foyer. He felt sick as he called the lift because he had no idea whether or not he'd done more than smile at her in the past. He was ashamed of his previous life, and seeing Mike STILL acting like that in his fifties...it made him feel nauseous. That was the route he'd been on, that was what his life was going to be, until he was saved by Lizzie.

Slumped against the wall of the moving cart, for the first time in a while he suddenly doubted whether he was good enough for her, he might be waxing lyrical, exaggerating things, but he knew that she was innocent, good, and she would hate the man that he'd been.

The lift delivered him to his floor, and he morosely walked to the room. Sighing he slid the keycard into the lock and kicked open the door.

Then froze.

Because fast asleep on the sofa in the lounge of the suite, was a very cute girl, her hair pulled up in pony tail, a Manchester of University t-shirt tight around her beautiful body, and skinny jeans that did things to his libido, her bare feet the cutest he'd ever seen, but the scarlet polish on each nail was definitely new.

She was there, in LA, in his room, in his life. He had no idea how she's done this. He ran a hand over his face as his body hardened in response to her, he couldn't work it all out, all he knew was that he wanted her, needed her more than anything else in his life. He sighed then stepped towards her dropping to his knees level with her shoulders.

Cupping her cheek in his hand, Oscar sighed at the contact, then his heart lurched at the big innocent eyes that opened to take him in, full of sleep, yet warm, comforting and homely, and sexy...if he had any doubt about her feeling the same way as him, then it disappeared at that moment. She was in this too, he knew that, it might take time to get her to the same page as him, but he had time, he had patience.

All that mattered was that she came.

"You came."

His voice surprised him, harsh, raspy.

Lizzie nodded, her eyes not leaving his, "I missed you. We missed you."

"Nate's here?" he breathed.

She nodded again, tilting her head towards the bedroom, "he cried every night."

Closing his eyes he took a deep breath, they both needed him right back.

"I love you, Lizzie."

Her face contorted and she made to protest, but he placed a finger over her lip, silencing her. "Don't. I do. And it makes me so happy." He let out another big exhale, "you came."

Her lips curled into a smile at his bewilderment, and as he felt relief in that, she opened her lips and slid his finger tip into her mouth.

And just like that he died and went to heaven.