A/N: Alright, all, there are a few bold hints in this one...

2.

Remington translated the question in an instant, as for Laura it had been the roadblock to moving forward since the very beginning:

Will you be here tomorrow? Or the next day?

He'd never dared to ask her, in turn:

Will you send me away tomorrow?

For such a perceptive woman, she was blind to pertinent points in their relationship. He'd never thought, let alone told her, that he'd be better off without her, as she'd done to him, making past and present collide. So many homes, so many people, better off without him. And she wasn't the only one afraid if they offered their heart it would be mishandled. Life had, after all, taught them similar lessons when it came to being abandoned again and again. And the chance it would be he left nursing his wounds seemed far greater than the opposite way around. After all, he'd never left her, as she had him. Twice now. The second time with such finality that it had been too painful for him to stay. Yet, even then she hadn't understood that his departure was not evidence of his lack of durability but proof of what she meant to him.

She was… everything… to him. Hadn't he shown that to her for years through his deeds? He'd stayed. He'd been a solid partner, a steadfast friend, a faithful would-be-lover. He'd freely given her the time she needed to sort things out, and had respected – well, for the most part – the lines she'd drawn in their personal relationship, even though that meant setting aside his own needs and desires.

Yet, still, she persisted in the belief that she was to him, nothing more than a challenge. Damn himself for ever uttering those words… and damn Daniel for having reinforced them.

She was blind to his deeds, demanding the words. She didn't understand an entire lifetime of lessons had taught him how little the words meant. Words he'd said several times in his childhood, only for them – and him – to be rejected. Words uttered to him countless times by Anna, but only, he discovered much later, to bring then keep him to heel. Words that had never brought him comfort, only pain.

Words that left his mouth dry, his pulse racing, his heart pounding, his breath hard to draw.

But only those very same words would convince her she was not little more than a temporary amusement, an enjoyable way to kill a little time before returning to his old life.

A fact that irritated him to no end.

"You're not just time that I'm killing, Laura," he told her, said with a hard enough edge to the words that her back stiffened before she tried to mistake. Instinctively, his arm clamped around her waist, keeping her close.

Bloody hell, old sport. If you bodge this now, you'll likely never get another chance to get it right, he lambasted himself.

"Let me go," she ordered, attempting to pry his arm from her.

"It was no accident… me… finding you," he murmured near her ear. Laura stilled her in her attempts to free herself from his embrace, but offered not a word of encouragement for him to continue. "Once, happiness was only whenever I was on my own, traveling the world, another town another hotel room, nothing to tie me down." His words, similar to what he'd told her upon the beach at Friedlich Spa, captured her reluctant interest. "I was doing just fine, and then I met you. Destiny had brought us face-to-face, and oh," he laughed low in his throat, "It did a number to me." She could feel his tension as he neared the topic of his feelings, a subject he worked studiously to avoid. Making a conscious effort to relax her own frame, she stroked a hand along his arm and linked her fingers with his.

"How so?" she softly encouraged him to continue. His tongue flicked out to moisten suddenly dry lips, and he dug deep to continue on.

"From the moment we met, I knew I had to have you. I was mesmerized… beguiled by you." The question of their attraction to one another had never been a matter of debate between them. Still, she was held spellbound not by the words he said, but by the honesty, strong and true, that threaded through his words. When a pair of fingers urged her to turn her head towards him, she turned it willingly. "The light shining in your eyes," he dropped a kiss along each of her brows, then bent his head further to string kisses along her bared collarbone, "…The freckles that just titter… and tease." Lifting his head again, he waited until her eyes met his, then stroke a thumb over her full, bottom lip. "These lips that were made for kissing…" he hummed, then leaned in to caress her lips tenderly with his, leaving her squeezing the hand she held in hers and her toes curling. When their lips parted, he thumbed her lower lip again. "The first time ever I kissed you…" he shook his head in disbelief, "…I felt the earth move in my hand. And when you touched me?" He laughed a low, sardonic laugh, "Something in me knew what I could have with you." A pair of dazed… and hopeful… brown eyes gazed up at him.

"And what is you could have with me?" she dared to ask. Leaning in, he rested his forehead against hers, and closing his eyes, gave his head a minute shake.

"Everything I never knew I wanted," he breathed, as though the admission came at great cost to him. It took all of her self-control to maintain her silence, sensing they were standing at a precipice of great importance. Lifting his head he peered down at her, then, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear, he cupped her face between his hands. "I found my place, Laura… I found it in you."

Laura's heart fluttered at the naked vulnerability, the aching tenderness she saw in Remington's eyes. It was a look in all their years of association that she'd seen only three times before, both in the months since he'd come home with her from London. First, on Christmas Day as they were being held hostage by a trio of troubled – and in the case of one, deranged – Santas. He'd shared a childhood Christmas memory that had left her heart aching and struggling to find the right words. He was a difficult man when it came to his emotions: Too light of a note, and she risked him thinking she didn't understand he'd handed her his trust, trust that she would care for the piece of his past, his heart he'd gifted her with. But on the other hand, a too serious tone that he might mistake for pity – or worse, derision – and he'd clam up long into the future.

So, on Christmas Day, with her heart in her throat, she could only conjure up five words:

"One Flexible Flyer coming up."

Somehow, she'd found precisely the right note. The proof was in that look, in the way he'd kissed her… and in the way he'd held her head in his hands, while leaning his forehead against hers, for a long while afterward. She'd vowed, then and there, to see that look on his face whenever she could. She'd seen it again on the beach as they tried to right the harm they'd done each other in their spectacular – and very public – argument at the Sensitivity Spa, then again in the homeless shelter when she'd said.

"Stop hogging the bed."

Now, when she felt a tremor pass through him, she blinked once before instinct had her wriggling closer and wrapping her arms around his neck. She prayed in her face he found assurance the words he might be considering would be most welcome and the touch of her fingers that played in his hair both offered comfort and encouragement.

I won't turn you away, Mr. Steele. Not this time.

She never again wished to see the other look, the one she'd been responsible only a year before when she'd suggested they needed to take time apart. The other look – the devastation written over the fine features of his face, and, worse, the faith in her that had always shined in his eyes that been extinguished with her words, to be replaced with the wariness one saw in the eyes of a stray dog who'd been kicked one time too many – had haunted her in the months after he'd disappeared and she'd vowed daily… nightly… if she could only find him and bring him home, she would never see the other look again… at least not caused by her own hand.

The wariness she'd seen in those blue eyes when she'd found him wounded in an alleyway had cut deep. He hadn't quite trusted her to help him so much as he'd feared she'd place the final nail in his coffin by alerting the nearby bobbies she'd found the man they sought. For months after they'd returned home, she'd often found him regarding her with caution, as though he believed one misstep, one wrong word said, and she'd turn him away again. The night his flat had been bombed and they'd ended the harrowing day sleeping in the safety of one another's arms in a room of the Downtowner motel had marked the true turning point, and she'd reaffirmed her vow to never see the other look again.

She had, of course, failed… dismally, at that.

"Well, go on, get out! I was better off without you anyway!

An argument born from their mutual frustration over the static status of their relationship, a dozen angry words, and the other look had reappeared. She'd shaken his faith in her to the core, and despite how they'd worked to repair the damage done as they'd walked along the beach, his trust in her had clearly wavered. Of course, the temporary change of her personality when she'd been seduced by the light of the camera and her secretive disappearance as she trained for the triathlon hadn't helped restore that faith…

"Look, uh, look, Laura, if… if there's another man…"

Then, another turning point: Her decision to stay with him in the homeless shelter. In the days since, she'd made it a point to keep him close, to be more free with her tender affections, if only to remind him how much she wanted him in her life.

The harsh rise and fall of his chest as he held her drew her from her thoughts. With a soft smile, she pressed up on her toes while drawing his head down, then kissed him with a tenderness that hinted at her ardor for him. For a long moment he remained frozen in her arms, then with a groan of her name against her lips clutched her to him, returning tit-for-tat every touch of her lips, every decadent stroke of her tongue.

His body flamed to life, the quiescent need for her that always lived just below the surface of her skin exploding, sending hot lava flowing through his veins. The need that had been eating him whole of late. He needed the pretty dance they'd been doing around each other for years to come to an end. He needed to know that she was finally his... only his. It was the coalescing of all those needs that finally allowed him to summon the courage to give her the words she needed to move ahead.

"I can't imagine one day without you in it," he whispered against her lips, then changed the angle of his mouth to delve deep, her fingers flexing against his head and neck in response to the words. Tearing his mouth from hers, breathing hard and her head still in his hands, his eyes blazed with emotion when he looked down at her. "I need you, Laura…" he leaned in closer "…and you need me," he insisted. His jaw firmed in his resolve. "I won't be the one to let you go," he pledged, then leaned in to kiss her again, whispering in the millisecond before his lips covered hers, "I love you, Laura."

And with those words, she grew still as a statute in his arms…