At least she wanted to spend some time with him, which relieved Giles. “Perhaps on Saturday we can go. If the weather is nice, I could take you on one of the walking tours, without a tour guide of course,” he said with a smile. There was another pause, something Giles was beginning to hate. He wished he better conversationalist.
“The room has changed a bit since the last time I was here,” Giles said, stepping away from her. “Quentin Travers’ nephew came home on holiday and didn’t want to spend time with his parents so he stayed here, in this very suite. Most dreadful week I’ve ever had. All he wanted to do was drink in one of the pubs or go fox hunting. How anyone expects to shoot a fox while under the influence…”
Giles stopped talking and gave her a sheepish look. He was quite sure she didn’t want to hear about such things. “Pylea. I actually did some research on it once,” Giles said before taking a seat. “After Willow came back from first meeting you. She mentioned it so I looked it up. Quite extraordinary that you survived. You must have strong will, Fred.”
The idea of going to Bath with Giles excited Fred a great deal, so even if the job situation somehow didn't turn out to be in the end what she hoped, she was looking forward to that, and she had a feeling that having him giving her a tour was going to be better than any professional tour, especially since it appeared he knew the area very well. She was so excited about the prospect that she almost missed his comment about this Travers' nephew and his apparent prediliction for shooting foxes.
"The guy sounds like a jerk," she said although the image of some guy falling over himself while trying to shoot a gun was pretty amusing. "Hopefully, I'll be a better...companion over the weekend. I promise I won't get drunk and ask for a gun or anything."
She suddenly felt a bit embarrassed at her lame attempt for a joke, so she was actually sort of glad when he asked her about Pylea, which was ironic considering what had happened to her there. But time had allowed her to put some of it behind her, and in the last two years, she had found it easier to talk about it.
"I don't know if it was a strong will or just dumb luck sometimes," she told him, crossing over to the couch and sitting down. "I saw opportunities and took them when I could, like figuring out how to take apart that damn collar without killing myself first and running when my...when the Pyleans who enslaved me accidentally didn't latch the door to our sleeping quarters one night. I was also really lucky that Angel and the others showed up with they did...and that Wesley figured out how we could get back." She paused for a moment, remembering that first time she had worked with Wesley at the castle after the slaves had been freed and bit her lip for a moment before continuing, "Sometimes, before they arrived, I felt more insane than strong."
The more Fred spoke, the more Giles admired her. He didn’t know of many people who could survive such an ordeal. Buffy and Willow probably could, but they had powers that Fred didn’t. She used her brain to survive. Most people would’ve given up but not her. “You’re quite amazing, Fred,” he said, looking at her.
He reached out and carefully took her hand into his. “You miss him, don’t you? Wesley that is. I will admit that the news of his death was a bit of a shock,” Giles said before he looked down. “That last time I saw him was in Sunnydale. He was being put into an ambulance and I remember thinking what a bloody fool he was. I was never very nice to him and now I regret it. He was a good man.”
Giles continued to hold her hand as he thought about how annoying Wesley was at times. But he was also honest in what he’d told Fred. Giles never wanted any ill-will to come to the other man and had been sadden when he’d heard of his death. “He’s buried near his family’s home. If you would like to visit before you go home I could take you,” he suggested.
Somehow, while he was talking, Giles’ fingers had interlinked with Fred’s. He glanced down at their hands, knowing he should pull away but his body wouldn’t let him. It was nice holding her soft hand and he quite liked it.
Fred looked down for a moment. Amazing. He had called her amazing even though there were times where she didn't think she was at all amazing - she was just plain ol' Fred Burkle from Texas who used to get teased for being smart and rambling about things no one else cared about. Giles, however, he seemed to like that about her. He liked her.
And he seemed to see right through her, even though they hadn't known each other long. "Wesley was...the best. He stayed with me the first summer I was back when Angel was gone and I was so scared about the real world and just wanted to hide. He didn't say anything about it. He just did it. And then..." She shook her head, trying for a moment to remember what had exactly happened because sometimes it was hard. "And then Holtz showed up, brought forward in time or something by that ugly demon Sahjahn, and his psycho follower killed Wesley as a message to Angel." She looked up into his eyes. "Sometimes I wonder if I couldn't have stopped it if I hadn't been so...so focused on someone else."
It was a guilt she wasn't sure she would ever get rid of, wondering if there had been a way she could have made sure Wesley hadn't been where he had been that night when Justine had attacked him. But when Giles suggested that they could go visit where Wesley was buried, she felt tears come to her eyes.
"You would really do that?" she asked, feeling his hand tighten around her, their fingers interlacing. It made her heart beat a bit faster - a weird combination considering what they were talking about. But still it made her feel better...and it made her feel good. "I'd really like to do that. We didn't...we didn't really have a funeral for him, and I never got to say goodbye."
Her words about Wesley touched Giles. He had never allowed himself to see Wesley in a personal light. Giles only regarded him as the prat who’d taken over the position he’d once held. He was too busy acting as if Buffy couldn’t take care of herself and needed him to be there every step of the way. Giles couldn’t help but to wonder what would’ve happened if he would have embraced Wesley instead of pushing him away.
Giles had known Roger refused to allow Angel and the rest of them a funeral. He had demanded Wesley’s body be sent back to England shortly after his death and had made it clear none of his Los Angeles friends were to come to Wesley’s funeral in England. The thought that Fred had never been given the chance to say goodbye to her friend made him frown.
“We can do it tomorrow,” he quietly said, his hand still connected with his. “After your interview I’ll drive you up there. It’s about an hour drive. I would suggest this weekend but his parents might be there and I don’t get along well with his father.” No one really got along with Roger.
There was a loud knock on the door and Giles figured it was their dinner. “I’ll answer it,” he said. He slowly released her hand and stood from the sofa. When he answered the door, a younger man was standing there with a cart. Giles signed the paper and stopped the man from stepping into the room. Instead he brought the cart in himself.
“It’s common practice not to allow strangers into hotel rooms when it comes to the Council. We’re still rebuilding and we’ve upset quite a few people,” he explained as he took the dishes off the cart and sat them down on the table. “And I do suppose that’s the wrong thing to say to someone I want to give a job too. It’s only for the time being and only strangers. I’m sure you did the same thing in Los Angeles, yes?” he asked as he pulled out one of the chairs for her.
"Thank you," she told him softly, glad for the fact that she would finally get to say a proper goodbye to Wesley. Since his death, she had gotten used to carrying around a little knot in her heart and now she could finally deal with it. "I...I met his father very briefly at the...at the morgue in L.A. I had been the one to identify him and, when I went back to see about arranging for a funeral, found his father there. I can understand why you don't like him."
The arrival of their food, thankfully, gave them a chance to change the subject since talking about Roger Wyndam-Pryce was not something she enjoyed. She much preferred to forget that man even existed. After she had met him, she had understood why Wesley had always changed the subject when she asked him about his family.
Standing up, she joined Giles at the table, smiling when he pulled out the chair for her, and sat down. While Giles sat down, she looked down at the plate that the hotel had prepared and felt her stomach rumbled - it looked and smelled wonderful. "We...well, the hotel was sort of open because of the walk-in nature of some of the business we got." She could still remember the times some of the lawyers from Wolfram and Hart had just waltzed into the place. "But after Holtz showed up, we sort of went into lockdown, so I can understand why the Council would want to be the same way." As they picked up their utensils to begin eating, Fred considered Giles for a moment. "Can I ask...what exactly happened to the Council? We heard bits and pieces from Willow, but she really didn't tell us fully what had happened. It sounded...well, it sounded pretty bad all around - something about ancient evil and somethings called the Bringers and a plot against the Slayer line?"
The story of the Bringers, and the First was one Giles had told hundreds of times already. Everyone at the Council had wanted to know more, even though he’d written a detailed account of it for the Council’s archives. Of course that account was impersonal and just filled with facts. The whole experience had been tired some and emotional, something Giles would never write about.
“The Bringers were sent by the First to kill off the potentials - girls who could one day become the Slayer - because he needed all of them dead in order to take power,” he began before setting his fork down on his plate. It was going to be a long story. “It took the Council a few months to figure out what was going on but they acted. The placed Watchers with potentials but it didn’t help. Eventually someone blew the old headquarters up, killing several Council employees. Those of us left decided I needed to get the potentials together and take them to Sunnydale.”
Giles stopped for a moment and pondered all that happened next. It felt as if it’d happened just a week ago instead of several. “We put a call out for all potentials to come to Sunnydale to be placed under Buffy’s protection. It was hard. The First had minions that were the original vampires. Nasty little buggers. They were the vampires that vampires like Angel and Spike feared. And not only did the First have strength but he was good at psychological warfare too.”
He stopped again and took a drink of water before cutting off a piece of chicken. “The First had the ability to take on the shape of dead people, usually the ones we loved the most. It did it to all of us.” Giles had never told anyone about how he’d woke up one night to find Jenny standing at the end of his bed. He never thought it was worth mentioning. “The First tried to turn us against one another but it never worked. Instead, Buffy decided that her power should be everyone’s power. Willow found the spell and cast it when we went to the Hellmouth to fight the First. Every girl who had the potential of becoming a Slayer, became one that day. It was the only way we could win. And now it’s the Council’s responsibility to find all the Slayers we made and properly train them.”
Giles gave her a small smile and took another bite of food. “I did write an article about it. It’s a bit more technical than what I’ve told you. I have a copy of it in my office somewhere if you ever wanted to read it,” he said.
Fred listened to Giles' story, horrified and amazed at the same time. What bits and pieces she had heard before were nothing compared to the entire thing, to the emotion in his voice as he spoke about it. It was obvious that it was hard to speak about - she imagined he lost several friends when the headquarters were blown up...plus who knew what form the First had taken for him. He had said it had appeared to all of them, which meant he had to deal with the reappearance of a loved one. She couldn't imagine having that happen to her since it had been bad enough having her own hallucinations on occasion during her time on Pylea.
Setting her fork down, she reached over and took his hand in hers. "I'd very much like to see that article," she told him. "Thank you for sharing that with me, Rupert. I know it must have been hard to talk about."
Suddenly, she realized that she had just called him by his first name when he hadn't actually invited her to do so. She actually didn't know if he liked people calling him that or not - most everyone else who had talked about him had always called him by his last name.
"I--I'm sorry. That just slipped out. I'm not sure whether to call you Rupert or Giles."
The feel of Fred’s slender on his made Giles smile despite the current topic of conversation. “I can have you a copy to read by tomorrow. There’s plenty of copies lying about at the Council.” He turned his hand over so he could wrap his fingers around her hand. “Rupert is fine. I rather like you calling me that.”
Giles continued to hold her hand, his heart beating wildly in his chest. It’d been some time since he felt these sort of emotion for a female. The last one was Jenny, he was sure of it. There’d been Olivia but that was nothing like this. She didn’t make him feel like Fred made him feel. She was beautiful, intelligent, wonderful to be around, and had he mentioned beautiful yet?
He pulled his hand away, suddenly feeling like a schoolboy with a crush. It was a wonderful feeling though and he didn’t want it to end. “Is the food to your liking?” Giles asked, taking another bite. The chicken had started to get cold and he tried hard not to make a face. “Is there anything else you want to do while you’re here? I don’t know how much you know about England. I could take you to one of the shopping districts. There’s a charming little book store down there. It’s rather old and musky, not at all like the big chain bookstores.” Giles paused. Perhaps she liked the big chain bookstores. “But if you rather go to one of the bigger chains we could go to one.”
Fred sighed softly in relief, glad that he didn't mind her calling him Rupert. She actually liked his name quite a lot - it seemed to fit him.
She also liked that he hadn't let her hand go yet. It had been a long time since she had just held hands with someone, and it was nice to hold hands with him. When he did finally pull away, she worried for a moment, wondering if she had done something, but then saw him picking up his fork again and realized that she had all but forgotten that they were eating dinner. Her stomach had seemed to forget as well, having gone from rumbling to flip-flops in the space of a few seconds.
"The food's very good," she said, looking down at what she had eaten so far. It really was some of the best chicken she had tasted recently although she was starting to wonder if she would actually be able to finish it. Part of her wanted to just sit with Giles instead and talk to him, but she took another bite of her chicken and scooped up a bit of potato while she tried to think whether there was anything in England she had really, really ever wanted to do.
If she got the job, there was going to be plenty of time to visit all the places she might ever want to go. Right then, seeing Bath with Giles seemed more than enough.
"If I want to go to a big chain, I can go in San Antonio," she said, shaking her head at the thought of coming all the way to England and going to a place like Borders. "The bookstore you're talking about sounds wonderful. I'd love to see what kind of books they might have in a place like that." She gave him a smile. "I think Bath and the bookstore are more than plenty for this weekend. Don't want to cram too much in because otherwise, there might be nothing else for us to do when I come back."
Giles was glad Fred wanted to go to the small bookstore. It was a favorite of his and he’d been wanting to go back and have another look around. “We can go on Saturday. It’s on the way to Bath,” he explained as he finished off his potato. “And I agree, the meal is quite good. It’s sometimes hard to know if the hotel’s food is going to be like. They have a habit of going through quite a few chefs.”
Giles picked the napkin up from his lap and softly wiped his mouth off. He was about to cut into the chicken again when Fred said something that caught his attention. Ticking his eyes up, he glanced across the table at her. His chest tightened at the fact that she may like him enough to come back to England if she didn’t take the job.
“You would really come back, even if you didn’t take the job?” he quietly asked. He was almost afraid that saying out loud would make it untrue or that he’d just misheard her. Giles looked down at his plate again and smiled. “I’m sorry if I’m sounding a bit eager. I have terrible luck with dates and women, especially when they find out who I am and what I do. Nothing kills a date more than having a demon attack in the middle of dessert.”
His mouth dropped open when he realized what he’d just said. “Not that this is a date,” Giles quickly added as he looked at her again. “I would never take a woman to a hotel room for a date. And I apologize for assuming you’d want to date me. For all I know, you’re coming back to see Willow since I seem to be taking too much of your time up already this weekend.”
"At least this hotel has a chef," Fred told him with a slight chuckle before finishing off what was left of her chicken. "When I lived at the Hyperion, if I wanted something that wasn't take-out, I usually had to cook it myself since Angel isn't exactly a food connoisseur or anything anymore."
When Giles asked her whether she would really come back even without getting the job, Fred put her fork down and pushed what little was left away before turning to him. It sounded like he could get just like her sometimes when he got flustered or uncertain. Reaching out, she rested her hand on his.
"I would love to come back to see you even if I didn't get the job. I've had a great time tonight whether or not this is a date - and I did ask you up here, remember, so it's not like you took me here on purpose, you know." She thought back to the last time she had actually been on a date-date and realized that she and Charles had never even really been on a date during the time they were together unless she counted their breakfasts at the diner. Their relationship hadn't lasted much beyond Wesley's death due to the stress of everything else that happened that night and afterwards. "And truth be told, this is closest thing I've had to a date in years. But...I would--if you wanted to go on an actual date out to an actual somewhere sometime...I'd really like that too."
“The room has changed a bit since the last time I was here,” Giles said, stepping away from her. “Quentin Travers’ nephew came home on holiday and didn’t want to spend time with his parents so he stayed here, in this very suite. Most dreadful week I’ve ever had. All he wanted to do was drink in one of the pubs or go fox hunting. How anyone expects to shoot a fox while under the influence…”
Giles stopped talking and gave her a sheepish look. He was quite sure she didn’t want to hear about such things. “Pylea. I actually did some research on it once,” Giles said before taking a seat. “After Willow came back from first meeting you. She mentioned it so I looked it up. Quite extraordinary that you survived. You must have strong will, Fred.”
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"The guy sounds like a jerk," she said although the image of some guy falling over himself while trying to shoot a gun was pretty amusing. "Hopefully, I'll be a better...companion over the weekend. I promise I won't get drunk and ask for a gun or anything."
She suddenly felt a bit embarrassed at her lame attempt for a joke, so she was actually sort of glad when he asked her about Pylea, which was ironic considering what had happened to her there. But time had allowed her to put some of it behind her, and in the last two years, she had found it easier to talk about it.
"I don't know if it was a strong will or just dumb luck sometimes," she told him, crossing over to the couch and sitting down. "I saw opportunities and took them when I could, like figuring out how to take apart that damn collar without killing myself first and running when my...when the Pyleans who enslaved me accidentally didn't latch the door to our sleeping quarters one night. I was also really lucky that Angel and the others showed up with they did...and that Wesley figured out how we could get back." She paused for a moment, remembering that first time she had worked with Wesley at the castle after the slaves had been freed and bit her lip for a moment before continuing, "Sometimes, before they arrived, I felt more insane than strong."
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He reached out and carefully took her hand into his. “You miss him, don’t you? Wesley that is. I will admit that the news of his death was a bit of a shock,” Giles said before he looked down. “That last time I saw him was in Sunnydale. He was being put into an ambulance and I remember thinking what a bloody fool he was. I was never very nice to him and now I regret it. He was a good man.”
Giles continued to hold her hand as he thought about how annoying Wesley was at times. But he was also honest in what he’d told Fred. Giles never wanted any ill-will to come to the other man and had been sadden when he’d heard of his death. “He’s buried near his family’s home. If you would like to visit before you go home I could take you,” he suggested.
Somehow, while he was talking, Giles’ fingers had interlinked with Fred’s. He glanced down at their hands, knowing he should pull away but his body wouldn’t let him. It was nice holding her soft hand and he quite liked it.
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And he seemed to see right through her, even though they hadn't known each other long. "Wesley was...the best. He stayed with me the first summer I was back when Angel was gone and I was so scared about the real world and just wanted to hide. He didn't say anything about it. He just did it. And then..." She shook her head, trying for a moment to remember what had exactly happened because sometimes it was hard. "And then Holtz showed up, brought forward in time or something by that ugly demon Sahjahn, and his psycho follower killed Wesley as a message to Angel." She looked up into his eyes. "Sometimes I wonder if I couldn't have stopped it if I hadn't been so...so focused on someone else."
It was a guilt she wasn't sure she would ever get rid of, wondering if there had been a way she could have made sure Wesley hadn't been where he had been that night when Justine had attacked him. But when Giles suggested that they could go visit where Wesley was buried, she felt tears come to her eyes.
"You would really do that?" she asked, feeling his hand tighten around her, their fingers interlacing. It made her heart beat a bit faster - a weird combination considering what they were talking about. But still it made her feel better...and it made her feel good. "I'd really like to do that. We didn't...we didn't really have a funeral for him, and I never got to say goodbye."
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Giles had known Roger refused to allow Angel and the rest of them a funeral. He had demanded Wesley’s body be sent back to England shortly after his death and had made it clear none of his Los Angeles friends were to come to Wesley’s funeral in England. The thought that Fred had never been given the chance to say goodbye to her friend made him frown.
“We can do it tomorrow,” he quietly said, his hand still connected with his. “After your interview I’ll drive you up there. It’s about an hour drive. I would suggest this weekend but his parents might be there and I don’t get along well with his father.” No one really got along with Roger.
There was a loud knock on the door and Giles figured it was their dinner. “I’ll answer it,” he said. He slowly released her hand and stood from the sofa. When he answered the door, a younger man was standing there with a cart. Giles signed the paper and stopped the man from stepping into the room. Instead he brought the cart in himself.
“It’s common practice not to allow strangers into hotel rooms when it comes to the Council. We’re still rebuilding and we’ve upset quite a few people,” he explained as he took the dishes off the cart and sat them down on the table. “And I do suppose that’s the wrong thing to say to someone I want to give a job too. It’s only for the time being and only strangers. I’m sure you did the same thing in Los Angeles, yes?” he asked as he pulled out one of the chairs for her.
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The arrival of their food, thankfully, gave them a chance to change the subject since talking about Roger Wyndam-Pryce was not something she enjoyed. She much preferred to forget that man even existed. After she had met him, she had understood why Wesley had always changed the subject when she asked him about his family.
Standing up, she joined Giles at the table, smiling when he pulled out the chair for her, and sat down. While Giles sat down, she looked down at the plate that the hotel had prepared and felt her stomach rumbled - it looked and smelled wonderful. "We...well, the hotel was sort of open because of the walk-in nature of some of the business we got." She could still remember the times some of the lawyers from Wolfram and Hart had just waltzed into the place. "But after Holtz showed up, we sort of went into lockdown, so I can understand why the Council would want to be the same way." As they picked up their utensils to begin eating, Fred considered Giles for a moment. "Can I ask...what exactly happened to the Council? We heard bits and pieces from Willow, but she really didn't tell us fully what had happened. It sounded...well, it sounded pretty bad all around - something about ancient evil and somethings called the Bringers and a plot against the Slayer line?"
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“The Bringers were sent by the First to kill off the potentials - girls who could one day become the Slayer - because he needed all of them dead in order to take power,” he began before setting his fork down on his plate. It was going to be a long story. “It took the Council a few months to figure out what was going on but they acted. The placed Watchers with potentials but it didn’t help. Eventually someone blew the old headquarters up, killing several Council employees. Those of us left decided I needed to get the potentials together and take them to Sunnydale.”
Giles stopped for a moment and pondered all that happened next. It felt as if it’d happened just a week ago instead of several. “We put a call out for all potentials to come to Sunnydale to be placed under Buffy’s protection. It was hard. The First had minions that were the original vampires. Nasty little buggers. They were the vampires that vampires like Angel and Spike feared. And not only did the First have strength but he was good at psychological warfare too.”
He stopped again and took a drink of water before cutting off a piece of chicken. “The First had the ability to take on the shape of dead people, usually the ones we loved the most. It did it to all of us.” Giles had never told anyone about how he’d woke up one night to find Jenny standing at the end of his bed. He never thought it was worth mentioning. “The First tried to turn us against one another but it never worked. Instead, Buffy decided that her power should be everyone’s power. Willow found the spell and cast it when we went to the Hellmouth to fight the First. Every girl who had the potential of becoming a Slayer, became one that day. It was the only way we could win. And now it’s the Council’s responsibility to find all the Slayers we made and properly train them.”
Giles gave her a small smile and took another bite of food. “I did write an article about it. It’s a bit more technical than what I’ve told you. I have a copy of it in my office somewhere if you ever wanted to read it,” he said.
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Setting her fork down, she reached over and took his hand in hers. "I'd very much like to see that article," she told him. "Thank you for sharing that with me, Rupert. I know it must have been hard to talk about."
Suddenly, she realized that she had just called him by his first name when he hadn't actually invited her to do so. She actually didn't know if he liked people calling him that or not - most everyone else who had talked about him had always called him by his last name.
"I--I'm sorry. That just slipped out. I'm not sure whether to call you Rupert or Giles."
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Giles continued to hold her hand, his heart beating wildly in his chest. It’d been some time since he felt these sort of emotion for a female. The last one was Jenny, he was sure of it. There’d been Olivia but that was nothing like this. She didn’t make him feel like Fred made him feel. She was beautiful, intelligent, wonderful to be around, and had he mentioned beautiful yet?
He pulled his hand away, suddenly feeling like a schoolboy with a crush. It was a wonderful feeling though and he didn’t want it to end. “Is the food to your liking?” Giles asked, taking another bite. The chicken had started to get cold and he tried hard not to make a face. “Is there anything else you want to do while you’re here? I don’t know how much you know about England. I could take you to one of the shopping districts. There’s a charming little book store down there. It’s rather old and musky, not at all like the big chain bookstores.” Giles paused. Perhaps she liked the big chain bookstores. “But if you rather go to one of the bigger chains we could go to one.”
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She also liked that he hadn't let her hand go yet. It had been a long time since she had just held hands with someone, and it was nice to hold hands with him. When he did finally pull away, she worried for a moment, wondering if she had done something, but then saw him picking up his fork again and realized that she had all but forgotten that they were eating dinner. Her stomach had seemed to forget as well, having gone from rumbling to flip-flops in the space of a few seconds.
"The food's very good," she said, looking down at what she had eaten so far. It really was some of the best chicken she had tasted recently although she was starting to wonder if she would actually be able to finish it. Part of her wanted to just sit with Giles instead and talk to him, but she took another bite of her chicken and scooped up a bit of potato while she tried to think whether there was anything in England she had really, really ever wanted to do.
If she got the job, there was going to be plenty of time to visit all the places she might ever want to go. Right then, seeing Bath with Giles seemed more than enough.
"If I want to go to a big chain, I can go in San Antonio," she said, shaking her head at the thought of coming all the way to England and going to a place like Borders. "The bookstore you're talking about sounds wonderful. I'd love to see what kind of books they might have in a place like that." She gave him a smile. "I think Bath and the bookstore are more than plenty for this weekend. Don't want to cram too much in because otherwise, there might be nothing else for us to do when I come back."
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Giles picked the napkin up from his lap and softly wiped his mouth off. He was about to cut into the chicken again when Fred said something that caught his attention. Ticking his eyes up, he glanced across the table at her. His chest tightened at the fact that she may like him enough to come back to England if she didn’t take the job.
“You would really come back, even if you didn’t take the job?” he quietly asked. He was almost afraid that saying out loud would make it untrue or that he’d just misheard her. Giles looked down at his plate again and smiled. “I’m sorry if I’m sounding a bit eager. I have terrible luck with dates and women, especially when they find out who I am and what I do. Nothing kills a date more than having a demon attack in the middle of dessert.”
His mouth dropped open when he realized what he’d just said. “Not that this is a date,” Giles quickly added as he looked at her again. “I would never take a woman to a hotel room for a date. And I apologize for assuming you’d want to date me. For all I know, you’re coming back to see Willow since I seem to be taking too much of your time up already this weekend.”
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When Giles asked her whether she would really come back even without getting the job, Fred put her fork down and pushed what little was left away before turning to him. It sounded like he could get just like her sometimes when he got flustered or uncertain. Reaching out, she rested her hand on his.
"I would love to come back to see you even if I didn't get the job. I've had a great time tonight whether or not this is a date - and I did ask you up here, remember, so it's not like you took me here on purpose, you know." She thought back to the last time she had actually been on a date-date and realized that she and Charles had never even really been on a date during the time they were together unless she counted their breakfasts at the diner. Their relationship hadn't lasted much beyond Wesley's death due to the stress of everything else that happened that night and afterwards. "And truth be told, this is closest thing I've had to a date in years. But...I would--if you wanted to go on an actual date out to an actual somewhere sometime...I'd really like that too."
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