Ill Conceived Plans

The condemned man

NEVILLE parked his large Range Rover in front of his cousin's house and trepidatiously got out and headed to her door.

Trepidatiously because he knew his cousin well - better than anyone else, well other than Dane but it didn't count - his friend knew Sarah in the biblical sense and well he wasn't going there.

Trepidatiously because she was now almost five months pregnant (because of Dane and his biblical sense), and if she was anything like his wife, would be horny as hell but unlike his wife - Fox had no outlet - and she could be testy at the best of times but horny, tired and frustrated - she would be full on, grumpy as hell, bear with a sore head proportions.

Trepidatiously because he'd seen the pictures of Dane and Sabine in Paris and if she had too...........Vesuvius was about to erupt and he was standing at the top with a wine cork in his hand.

Neville Huntington was a dead man walking, walking into the Lion's Den - willingly (well not that willingly). He was driving her to Devon for Christmas with his mother-in-law, her mother-in-law too if you thought about - though he'd never suggest it, never suggest what he'd always known and what was obvious to everyone but Dane and Sarah - that they were and had always been a couple. Not in the formal sense. But in the ying/yang, other -side of one coin. It had always been obvious to anyone who knew them; they were just such emotional driven fuck-ups that they hadn't put two and two together - might not ever. But nature had - yeah nature had recognised it and had taken it to the natural conclusion - Bean.

Neville sighed. He loved his cousin, he loved his friend and he didn't really relish being caught between them. And he had chosen the more volatile of the dynamic duo to spend several hours trapped in a car with. Well, not chosen. Lizzie and Ruby had gone to grandmas already; yesterday. He had to work back, on a Saturday, on Christmas Eve - he had put his work first, and now he was paying the piper. Margaret didn't want her pregnant stepdaughter/grandbaby mama driving down on her own (though she'd done it a million trillion times) and so this was the perfect solution (apparently).

The perfect solution would be that Dane drove Fox to Margaret's for Christmas, let's face it, it was Dane's fault she was pregnant, he should pay the consequences. But Dane had flown in from Europe, from the Czech Republic he'd thought. But not judging by the pictures that were splashed all over the place this morning. The pictures that had been brought to his attention by Petra, Sarah's best friend, and his own guardian angel; Petra who had never been his lover, like he'd once hoped, no she was too smart to get wrapped up with him. But she had been his friend, was his friend, particularly today, ringing him, alerting him to the grainy fan shots from Paris of Dane and Sabine hand in hand shopping in the crazy last-minute rush of Christmas. He'd be forever grateful for the heads up. It shouldn't matter to Sarah, she would insist it didn't. But deep down, well not so deep down for the fiery, unpredictable, hormonal Fox, it must be hurting.

He was going to kill Dane - he got to have a romp with a nubile young French actress with a body that defied logic and Neville was left to pick up the pieces while he swanned about with his family in Devon. He'd arrived there already - first thing this morning, surprisingly chipper according to Lizzie -now Neville knew why - he hadn't then though. The pictures were yet to surface then.

He wondered if Dane knew now, perhaps he'd rung Fox, perhaps he'd smoothed it all over and he wouldn't be trapped in a car with a pissed off and hormonal intellectual.

Yeah right.

Dane was often oblivious, particularly coming off a shoot.

Maybe she hadn't seen them?

Well, that was Neville's forlorn hope as he rang the bell at Sarah's "Tardis Blue" front door.

He heard movement straight away like she'd been waiting for him - laying in wait. It wasn't like Sarah to be that organised.