It's not that he had expected it to be easy. Patrick Jane was more than adequately self-aware and had studied Teresa Lisbon for years, after all. He was hopeful but not assured.

But it surprised him just how difficult it turned out to be, how hesitant and slow. Exquisitely slow, with each word and move and countermove igniting love and care and growing heat.

So maybe "difficult" wasn't the right word, with the connotations it carried. Because what was happening between them was beautiful, made all the moreso by the halting pace. It hadn't been a light switch, a sudden admission of feelings sending them tumbling into bed. Despite their deep and abiding friendship, in many ways they were circling each other like people who had just met. But with so much HOPE of something more to come.

Yes, it was beautiful. And emerging from a world where beauty had been tinged red for so long, Jane was deliriously happy.