A/N: I wasn't going to publish this just yet as I have only done 2 Chapters, but it is my antidote to a wobbling CJ of the new season ... as you know the only HEA I'd be happy with is the Molly/CJ one but there are as always a few hurdles to clear along the way. I do hope you enjoy the return of the alpha male that I adore as much as I've enjoyed writing about him, but I'm having my usual bout of stage fright at publishing something new, so would be grateful if you could review for me.

PROLOGUE

"Captain James ... Charles ..." He shook his head ruefully "You do know don't you that this would be a hell of a lot easier on both of us if you would just ... well come at least half way towards meeting me?"

"No doubt"

Daniel bit back the urge to respond with an irritably sharp retort of his own, instead he looked silently and steadily over the top of his glasses at the body language of the man sitting opposite, the man who was determined not to co-operate and thought what a pity it was he'd decided to detach himself so completely from the whole process. Not that it was uncommon for people to do their best to hide their emotions behind a mask of indifference but this was the third session they'd had together and he didn't know the man sitting in front of him any better now than he had at the very outset.

And he was not a miracle worker so couldn't even begin to help someone who was so adamantly rejecting the help on offer, so was now having to ignore the persistent little voice in his head that was telling him to stop wasting his bloody time and that he might as well get off home for all the progress they were making.

But the army wasn't paying him to give up no matter how uncooperative someone was or how much of a pain in the bum they were or how his attempts to create a friendly and convivial atmosphere were falling on stony ground.

Charles was determined that he wasn't going to make the slightest attempt to co-operate with this charade and what was more he knew precisely how difficult he was making things for the counsellor, for Daniel, he was being a pain in the bloody arse and knew it, but couldn't seem to stop. Daniel seemed pleasant enough, well that was what he was being paid for, and he was most certainly working his socks off as he tried to build some sort of relationship between the two of them, but as far as Charles was concerned he might as well give up, he was flogging a dead horse. There was no way these sessions were going to end up with some note stuck on his record somewhere saying just how flaky some counsellor thought he was.

And he'd never tried to make a secret of the fact that he didn't want any part of it anyway. Right from the moment the Major had told him he was booked on these sessions and that he had no choice in the matter, he'd made up his mind not to spill any of his deepest thoughts and demons to this chubby little man with the glasses on the end of his nose. Hell would have to freeze over first. He was prepared to accept that perhaps he had a bit of a bit of a problem, his temper had become a tad unpredictable and he had a short fuse so that he knew people, even the lads in 2 Section had become very wary of him, and he even knew that Beck was concerned about him, but all that and the fact he was finding it hard to sleep was nothing he couldn't handle in his own way. If only everyone would just back off and leave him alone and let him get on with it.

-OG-

Chapter One

The snow certainly wasn't easing off the way the bloody forecasters had predicted, if anything it was getting heavier as Charles eased his foot from the accelerator and slowed right down and then peered through the small patch of windscreen that was being kept clear by the wipers and used his hand to wipe the condensation away. Common sense told him that first chance he got he was going to have to get out and brave the arctic temperatures again to clear it, but he'd been distracted when he'd set off and hadn't even thought about going back to his office to grab his bloody coat or some gloves, and at the time he'd completely forgotten there wasn't even a fleece in the car anymore because he'd cleared it the previous weekend, purely to give himself something to do. So he was going to bloody freeze, combats weren't exactly known for their thermal qualities, and it seemed likely that a journey that usually took about 40 minutes give or take was going to take bloody hours, a perfect end to a perfect day.

As usual the so-called anger management session or whatever they labelled it had left him feeling restless and impatient when he'd finally got out, he could feel the tension in his shoulders and his back and knew that his fists were gripping the steering wheel hard enough to give him cramp. He had to keep making a conscious effort to relax his shoulders and ease off a bit, it was beginning to give him a headache. The blessed witch doctor had said that it was an indication of an excess of too much adrenalin running riot in his body and it was the main reason for his short fuse. Not that he'd ever been violent, he hadn't actually hit anyone, hadn't lost the plot to that degree regardless of provocation, and there'd been plenty of that, but even he could hear how caustic and sarcastic he was these days and that the old Charles James' jovial manner had long since vanished. No-one dared enter into any banter with him these days.

It had disappeared the day his best friend had got blown off the top of a fucking building right in front of him, and ever since that day this little voice in the back of his head had kept telling him it was time to face reality, that it had been his fault, as so many other things had been over the years. He'd been the one supposed to be in charge. There had been so many deaths, Geraint and Smurf and then Azizi, and even Sohail and so many others that he couldn't even name and now the news about Quaseem, that the Government was denying the Afghani a Visa to come to the U.K., even after everything he'd done for them which meant he'd probably be the next. But it was the day Elvis had died that proved to be the icing on the cake of his doubts about his life. It had felt like the culmination of so much uncertainty about whether they were actually achieving anything when they went marching into somewhere that clearly resented their presence. And it had sounded the final death knell of his marriage to Rebecca. Now he was supposed to spend time before his next session with 'Call me Dan' thinking about how he felt about it all, examining what his feelings were when that surge of anger went through him at the waste of so much, the feelings that made him clench his fists and become short tempered and liable to lash out. Homework the witch doctor called it, not that Charles was going to do it, he hadn't got the time and he certainly hadn't got the inclination.

The traffic was virtually at a standstill on the A36 which did nothing to improve his frame of mind, he was already unbelievably bloody late so that sitting in a long line of traffic which was crawling nose to tail at less than 5 miles an hour, that was when it was moving at all, filled him with impatient frustration. He was sick to death of red brake lights stretching into the distance as far as the eye could see and was equally sick of watching the snow swirl in the headlights, but the decision he took to exit the main road and take the cross country option was definitely beginning to look more than a little rash once he was out of the traffic and moving. It no longer seemed like the smart thing to do when the lane was winding and unlit and was rapidly becoming featureless with the snow settling the way it was and he was finding it so unbelievably hard to concentrate. The snow was vaguely mesmeric and there was no traffic to keep him alert and focussed so his mind began to replay the afternoon and just for a minute he was so distracted with his own thoughts that he was driving on auto-pilot, until he realised with a sudden jolt that he didn't know exactly where he was in relation to the turning he needed.

He knew the route like the back of his bloody hand, ay least he thought he did, and could, in fact, practically find his way blindfold but it wasn't something he particularly wanted to put to the test with the weather the way it was, he needed to switch his brain back into gear and keep it there, to stay alert and focussed. He needed to stop the thoughts that were running over and over in his head, to press pause and to leave replay until the middle of another sleepless night, he needed to keep his wits about him unless he wanted to end up in a ditch with incipient hypothermia.

"What the ... ? Ffffuuuuck"

He'd been barely moving, crawling along at less than ten miles an hour because his windscreen was anything but clear, but even so he only just managed to avoid ploughing straight into it. And as it was he ended up fighting with the steering because he had to brake too hard for the state of the road and had gone skidding out of control until he came to a halt facing the wrong way on the wrong side of the road. He'd missed ending up in the ditch by a matter of inches, but it was the last thing he'd expected to see as he came over the brow of the hill. As soon as his breathing returned to something approaching normal he looked over to check, but it wasn't some form of snow blindness or something, it wasn't shadows or an hallucination of some sort, there definitely was a car with its front end resting in the roadside ditch, a car that had a thick blanket of snow on the roof. An old car that had no hazards blinking so it had obviously been abandoned by some prat without any thought for the danger it posed parked where it was, and whoever had been driving must have walked on because a breakdown driver would never have left it in such a dangerous position. But, there was this little voice in his head, in all likelihood a consequence of spending more years than he cared to think about looking out for the welfare of others, even inconsiderate morons, that wouldn't let him just drive off before he'd checked to make absolutely certain that the driver was long gone, he needed to be sure for his own peace of mind that there wasn't someone sitting in that car, hurt or worse. He took a quick glance at his watch and grimaced, but even knowing how late he was going to be, he got out in the icy wind and left the engine running with the headlights on full beam. He had no intention of stumbling around on a glacier in the dark or of getting flattened by someone else taken by surprise by a car that was half in a ditch..

"You okay?"

He'd been wrong ... and right ... there was someone in the car, but she wasn't hurt, well not that he could tell although he couldn't be absolutely sure because she'd hastily locked the door when he'd put his hand down to try the handle and had then leaned across to check that the passenger side was locked as well. She'd pasted a fake smile on her face and shouted that she was fine so thanks but there was no need for him to worry himself and had then continued to avoid looking at him again beyond an occasional little sideways glance as though she was convinced he was standing in a fucking blizzard without a coat but with every intention of doing her some sort of harm.

"You need to put your hazards on ... next time you might not be so lucky"

"Yeah ... okay"

"Well, go on then, what the fuck are you waiting for? Come on, this is dangerous ... in case you hadn't noticed it's dark and it's cold and it's fucking snowing so no-one is going to be expecting to see your car parked here ... I only just missed hitting you myself"

"I'm not parked ... I mean, thanks but I'll be fine ...thanks very much, but there's really no need for you to worry ... or to stop here"

"Hazards?" He took a deep breath and did his best to control his instinct to yell at her "For fuck sake, put the bloody things on then I'll leave you to it"

"Umm ... they are on ...well they were, they seem to 'ave stopped for some reason ... but I'm sure I'll be okay ... so thanks anyway" Charles could read the sub-text of 'now could you do what I asked and fuck right off' so clearly that he was sorely tempted to do just that. He was already sick of conducting a shouted conversation through a closed car window with someone who was reluctant to look at him, but when she did glance his way she looked at him as if he had evil intent.

"Don't be so bloody ridiculous, look..." He ran his hand through his hair which was soaking wet with the snow "You can't just sit there ... I've already told you it's dangerous ..." He took another deep breath and tried not to let his irritability get the better of him "Did the AA say how long they were going to be?"

"Nah"

"Did you tell them that you're here on your own?" He made an involuntary movement to check his watch "How long ago did you phone them?" She glanced at him and then looked away but not before he saw the way she bit her lip and somehow he knew "You did phone them, right?"

"Nah, I 'aven't phoned them ... okay?" She cracked the window open a tiny bit to make sure that he could hear her and then looked at him full in the face for the first time so that part of him registered just how pretty she was "I 'aven't phoned anyone, alright, I'm not a member or whatever it is they call it ... and it's not my car anyway ...and I've lost me phone ... well, not lost it exactly I mean I know where it is, it's just I sort of left it behind ... so I couldn't phone even if I wanted to ... and even if I knew the number ... which I don't, but I'm okay, I'll just wait till this lot stops ... and then I'll sort meself out, so thanks for your help, now goodbye"

"What ... you're going to walk are you?" He gave a derisive snort down his nose "That's if you don't freeze to bloody death first sitting here ... You don't look to me as though you're exactly dressed for a long walk in this weather"

He could only guess at how cold she was, her purple lips could be a trick of the light but there was a distinct lack of condensation on the windows which meant the inside of the car was probably roughly the same temperature as it was outside and she was another one who wasn't wearing a coat. In fact, she was wearing a very minimal black dress so that his eyes were drawn to her thighs, something she obviously noticed as she glared at him and tugged at her skirt, trying in vain to make it appear longer as she shuffled around on the seat.

"Me coat is with me phone ... and anyway you're not either"

"True, but I'm not sitting in a car without any heating in a fucking snowstorm am I?" He scowled "I've got a nice warm car over there and it hasn't broken down, so I'll be fine ... you on the other hand... "

He didn't finish his comment, just raised his eyebrows and shrugged, then took a deep breath and told himself he had to try and make allowances, she was stranded and she didn't know him from Adam, he was a complete stranger who could be anybody and it was very dark and isolated so he did his best to force a more conciliatory tone into his voice. "Look, I'm a Captain in the British Army, I'm not an axe murderer and I've got no intention of raping you either, it's far too bloody cold for that, so are you going to stop being so fucking stupid and go and sit in my car while I try to get this heap of junk going and get it out of the ditch?"

"Nah don't think so ... thanks ... ummm, 'n I 'ave tried, I 'aven't just been sat here twiddling me thumbs waiting for someone to come along and .. look, I can look after meself ... anyway I think I've ran out of petrol now ... or maybe it's the battery's gone a bit dead, dunno ... not sure"

"What? ... Oh shit ... what sort of moron goes out on a night like this without checking they've got enough fuel, checking the bloody gauge would have been a good place to start"

"It don't work"

"For fuck sake... why doesn't that surprise me?" Charles took a deep breath and tried again, he was rapidly getting to the point of leaving her to her own devices, he was frozen and deeply frustrated and getting nowhere fast and could feel his fists clenching so that he silently cursed Daniel for making him so aware of it. But he couldn't begin to imagine how cold she was, in fact if he wasn't mistaken she was actually shivering in the icy draught that was getting through the tiny crack of the open window.

"Who pissed in your Coco-Pops this morning?"

"WHAT? What did you just say?"

"Nothin' ..." She muttered then shrugged and decided to get rid of the bad tempered bugger in any way she could so that she could shut the bloody window and go back to thinking about how unfair it all was, how it should have been her today "Look, Mr Captain in the British Army, it's not my bloody car .. okay? And I didn't know that the thingies, gauges, don't work so I didn't know I 'adn't got enough petrol .. okay? and it wouldn't 'ave 'appened if something hadn't run out in front of me ... I was only doing me best not to hit it, didn't want to kill Bambi did I? And I'm not used to driving in this shit so I didn't know I was gonna skid all over the shop did I? So why don't you go back and get in that nice warm car of yours and go ... wherever it was you was going and leave me alone"

Charles bit back another angry retort and wondered why the fuck he couldn't seem to just walk away, why he couldn't just do as she said and get back in his nice warm car and go home. She wasn't his responsibility and she obviously didn't want his help, even if she did need it. He took a deep breath and made an effort to start again "What's your name?"

"Meghan Markle"

-OG-

It had been the shit day to top all the other shit days she'd had in her life. Everyone had tried to talk her out of going, well Bella had, and Nan had, and even her mum had tried but the bastards had made a point of inviting her specially and she wasn't about to let them know what they'd done to her by not showing up. There was no way she was giving them the satisfaction.

They'd sent the invitation to East Ham so that she couldn't even pretend she'd never got it and even though she'd ripped it into little bits ready to flush it down the bog and had then changed her mind and put a match to it, unfortunately setting fire to the bin at the same time, the details had been imprinted on her brain so that hard as she tried she couldn't forget them.

Tony the Tosspot and Donna the Traitor

Request the pleasure of your Company

At their bleeding wedding

You sad loser

Not even a 'plus one' so that she could have pretended she was over him, over them, could have found someone else to drag along with her so that her boyfriend of over two years, the bloke that she'd thought was 'the one' would know she didn't care anymore. It was a lie of course, when she'd found out he was shagging her best mate from work, she'd wanted to throw things at him and scream and stab him, and her. They were 'in lurve' apparently, couldn't help themselves, well that was according to him and now it looked like it could be a bit true, but the bloody cow had never said a word. Molly knew now that she should never have introduced them she hadn't had a clue that the two of them had started seeing each other behind her back, and it wasn't like the traitor could pretend she didn't know, she'd spent enough time listening to Molly talk about how she felt about him. How she'd thought he was the one and what her plans were and all the time the little tramp had been, well, doing the dirty behind her back. Bloody traitor had known that the good looking man of her dreams was lying to her ... that he was a total turd who couldn't keep it in his pants ...

Oh, she'd gone through all the "It's okay, you can't help who you fall in love with" shit and the "Of course I understand, and no, I'm not angry, I'll live, it's no biggie" crap when it bloody was a big deal and she was angry and what she really wanted was to find a nice sharp stick and poke it in the traitor's eyes ... and then his, make them a matching pair. Bastards. And then they expected her to go and be at the wedding that should have been hers, to admire that bloody great diamond on her finger that should have been hers and to smile and say all the right things and be nice. She was 24 and her life felt like it was well and truly fucked.