Day 59:

Lisbon glanced over at Jane, who was sprawled out on the couch in her office, napping or pretending to. It was such a familiar sight it made her chest ache - it could have been almost any day from before he left, if she just didn't look too closely. For a second, she missed how things had used to be, when even if they hadn't been good, they had at least been stable. She had understood the world she operated in and the people it contained, she knew what to expect. The CBI had felt like home.

Now, instead of the familiar faces of her fellow agents on the other side of her windows, there were strangers walking the halls, a swarm of FBI personnel flown in from far-flung corners of the country to dismantle the institution she had dedicated her life to. In a single day, the CBI had been shut down, every employee suspended pending criminal investigation. The next day, the Feds had arrived, under the leadership of a Supervisory Agent from Minneapolis, and begun combing through their files for evidence of corruption. Gale Bertram had been arrested at the San Francisco airport, holding a plane ticket for Bangkok. The day after that, Lisbon and her team were cleared to resume their investigations under the temporary auspices of the FBI, and the work began in earnest.

It had not stopped. Bertram had sung like a bird in exchange for having the charges associated with Red John's murders dropped - Lisbon wasn't crazy about that, but the many conspiracy, corruption, and obstruction of justice charges would, in aggregate, result in him going away for a long, long time. With his testimony, the network he called the Blake Association began to unravel rapidly, the arrests piling up even as many in the group decided to evade justice by any means necessary. Some of them turned on each other, killing those co-conspirators who held the most damaging information on them. A few days later, another Blake member had directed them to the maximum security prison where Lorelei had been squirreled away. Lorelei's devastation at being presented with the news of McAllister's death quickly turned to fury when they showed her the evidence found at the Roy Gordred property that conclusively tied him to her sister's murder. She'd agreed to spill everything she knew about McAllister's other followers in exchange for Jane's promise that he would identify and bring to justice whoever else had participated in Miranda's killing.

Many of McAllister's psychopathic friends had gone to ground when his death was splashed all over the news, along with the revelation that he'd been Red John. One of them set off on his own private murder spree, determined to follow in his master's footsteps. The next week was spent chasing them down.

It was only now, two weeks and two days after McAllister died in her parking garage, that Lisbon could begin to catch her breath. Everything too urgent to be postponed until tomorrow had been squared away and it was only 7 p.m. She could take the evening off and - what? That was the problem.

No, she could admit to herself, the problem was the man lying in angelic repose across the room. He'd told her that every day was going to be Wednesday, but this had not turned out to be true. Or at least not entirely true. Things had changed. He had changed. He seemed unburdened, even hopeful. It was only now that it had arrived that she could see how little he'd ever really expected there to be an after for him.

She'd thought that once the Red John case was closed, he might lose his interest in their work entirely, but in fact he seemed to enjoy it more, sparkling with self-satisfied delight at every confession he tricked from a suspect. The frustration and impatience that had dogged him through the long years of failure had fallen away, leaving him present and engaged in a way she hadn't quite known was missing all that time.

And his fondness for her was palpable. He practically radiated pleasure each time they met, and his hand attached itself to the small of her back whenever they walked together. He hugged her with a frequency she would have vetoed on grounds of unprofessionalism if the context had not been the cataclysmic upheaval of both their lives. Van Pelt had shot her more than one inquiring glance about it all, but she could only respond to these with a baffled shrug.

Because other things had not changed at all. He had not crossed any of the lines he'd claimed to be so eager to traverse. There had been no passionate declarations, no romantic surprises, not a single measly kiss. Not that there'd been much time for any of those things, but Jane excelled at creating opportunities for himself. When he wanted to.

So the logical explanation was that he didn't want to. That she'd been appealing so long as she'd also been unavailable, a dream never meant to be fulfilled, a port longed-for in the midst of a hurricane but unnecessary once the sky cleared. Everyone needed hopes to get them through dark times. She could understand that. She wouldn't hold it against him if his affection for her turned out to be more platonic than he had thought.

She could learn to live with it, if she only knew. But she didn't know. Because it had also occurred to her that he might just be unsure of himself. He'd been alone for a very long time. The last woman he'd been with had thrown herself at him at the behest of a serial killer. So it was possible that he did want her, but didn't quite know what to do about it. He had talked a good game about how he planned to romance her, but she knew him well enough to understand that it had been a fantasy about who he wished he could be as much as what he wished he could do with her.

So she had tried to give him space to figure it out. Probably she should just continue doing so, and sooner or later he would make his intentions known. The last thing she wanted to do was push him into something he was uncomfortable with, or would regret later. But it was Wednesday, and she missed him. Because now not even Wednesdays were Wednesdays anymore. The last couple, they'd been neck-deep in work, so it wasn't like she'd expected him to come over for a movie night. They certainly didn't need to carve out a special time anymore to talk about the Red John case - they did that all day, every day now. But he hadn't even taken her aside for a moment to say… what he usually did.

And now he seemed like he'd be content to just sleep the evening away on her couch. But she didn't want that.

She considered balling up a piece of paper and throwing it at him, but decided that would be too childish. Finally achieving clarity about what she wanted had come with the unfortunate side effect of making many of her pettier impulses toward him seem humiliatingly reminiscent of schoolyard flirting.

"Hey Jane," she said instead.

His lips curled upward, though his eyes remained closed. "Yes, my dear?"

"You want to go get some dinner?" Inviting him to her apartment as if it was the old kind of Wednesday seemed like too much, but they still had to eat.

His smile widened. "Are you asking me out on a date?"

She hated how her face heated at that. Maybe suggesting dinner out hadn't been the safe option after all. And surely what he'd said counted as flirting, right? Why would a man ask that if he didn't want the answer to be yes? But, she reminded herself, Jane teased her all the time without meaning anything by it. And he enjoyed making people uncomfortable. "Do you think I'm asking you out on a date?" she replied.

He opened his eyes and rolled into a sitting position. "No," he said after studying her for a moment, "I think you're just hungry."

She thought maybe he sounded disappointed, but she couldn't be sure. She gave him a smile. "And I want a little company," she said.

"Well, far be it from me to deny you anything you desire," he said, rising to his feet and stretching, as she tried not to read anything into that statement.

She cleared her throat. "You in the mood for anything particular?"

They ended up at a Lebanese restaurant, where their conversation remained light until after they'd placed their orders.

But eventually she couldn't keep from blurting out one of the questions that had been weighing on her. "Were Gur and Rivkah lying about what happened in the garage?" The case was officially closed now, with no charges pressed. Asking was as safe as it would ever be.

He shrugged. "If they were, they didn't tell me about it."

She glared at him. "Like you couldn't see it from looking at them."

"They're very good at what they do," he said mildly. When she refused to relent, he sighed. "McAllister really was doing what they said he was to your car. But maybe they could have stopped him without killing him if they'd wanted to."

"If they'd wanted to, or if you'd wanted them to?" she pressed. "Did you hire them to guard me or to kill him?"

"Do you really think those were different things?" he asked, eyes cold. "Their job was to protect you no matter what. I showed them Red John crime scene photos so they knew what failure would look like. I warned them that if he went for you once and got away, he'd just come back again with a better plan and more firepower. I told them the truth."

She could tell by the look on his face that was all she'd be getting from him. "It's interesting, isn't it?" she said instead. "You said you'd never use me as bait in a trap for him, but that's exactly what I was in the end."

"What I meant was I'd never put you at any additional risk. I kept you where you'd be safest - that just happened to be in the middle of a trap." He smiled. "And you said you weren't the princess in the tower, waiting for someone else to slay the dragon."

She lifted a shoulder. "The bait's only effective if it stays in the trap."

"Speaking of your tower," he said lightly, "you can have these back now." He held out her keys.

Well. She'd wanted an answer and now she'd gotten one, she thought as she took them from his hand, feeling like he'd stabbed them straight into her heart. As tactful messages went, he could hardly find a clearer way to say he wanted more distance from her, not more intimacy. She wished he'd at least had the decency to wait until they'd gotten the check to do this. There was no avoiding him reading the pain of this rejection from her face, but then she at least could have left instead of having to sit through a meal with him silently pitying her from across the table.

She turned away to tuck the keys into her purse, trying to get her expression back under control.

"Gur and Rivkah had those," he told her suddenly. "They don't need them anymore. But, uh, I made a copy of your apartment key. I thought maybe if you don't mind I'd keep it - in case of emergency."

She shot a quick, guarded look at him. "What kind of emergency?"

"Oh, any kind. You know - like an ice cream emergency."

"What exactly constitutes an ice cream emergency?" she asked.

"Well, for example if I knew you needed ice cream and I picked some up for you, but I got to your apartment before you came home and had to get it into your freezer so it wouldn't melt."

"I see."

He fidgeted with his cutlery. "So would that be all right with you? If I held onto your key?"

She smiled. "Far be it from me to deny you anything you desire."

Their food arrived then, breaking the tension between them, and they lapsed into the privacy of their own thoughts for a few minutes as they ate.

"Have you thought about what's next for you yet?" Jane asked eventually. "You going to take the FBI up on their offer?"

Supervisory Agent Vanessa Taylor had tried to recruit her, promising to carry over credit for her years of experience at the CBI. She'd start out on someone else's team to get a feel for how the FBI operated, but with a clear path to promotion.

"I'm thinking about it," she conceded. "But it would be a big change. Five months of training at Quantico, and then they might assign me anywhere in the country."

"Change can be good though," he said.

Well, the two of them living thousands of miles apart would certainly be a change, she thought, trying to keep the bitterness off her face. Her gaze dropped to her plate. "What about you?" she asked. "Any plans?"

"I thought a vacation might be in order," he said. "Taking some time off sounds pretty good right now."

That made sense. She didn't know why she'd imagined he'd choose to keep working with her. He'd had more than his fill of death and crime, he deserved to go enjoy himself. Unraveling and repairing the damage the Blake Association had done to the California justice system would take months or more likely years, but he had no obligation to participate in it. He'd done his part.

"You have a destination in mind?" she asked, aiming for casual and probably missing.

"I thought we might go somewhere tropical," he said. "Lounge around on the beach, do some diving. Or we could rent an RV and hit the road, visit some national parks, see some old friends. I've always wanted an Airstream."

"'We?'" she asked, heart in her throat, needing to be sure.

"Of course we," he told her, looking distraught. "Was that not - I told you I wasn't going to leave you again. Unless you don't want -" understanding crossed his face, then regret. "I stopped saying it and you stopped believing it," he muttered. Then he looked up at her. "I just didn't want to pressure you, with everything else going on. I wasn't sure - I thought you might want some time."

"I was giving you time," she said. "I think you should say it, just so we're clear."

He glanced around the restaurant, then pulled out his wallet and tossed some bills onto the table, between their half-eaten meals. "Come on," he said, standing up and taking her hand. "I don't want an audience for this show."

He towed her out of the restaurant and around the corner of the building, away from the entrance. They paused at the edge of the mostly-empty parking lot, in the orange glow of a streetlight.

He took her other hand and they stood there, smiling at each other in expectant silence. His eyes were wide and bright with something that could have been eagerness or fear. It struck her that Patrick Jane might actually be feeling shy, and that made everything suddenly real. The amusement faded from her face. He was about to change both of their lives.

Or maybe now that the moment had arrived, he wouldn't. Maybe he wasn't ready. She'd said before that she wouldn't put her life on hold to wait for him, but she wasn't going to turn away from him now. Not if he'd only just tell her what was in his heart.

"Teresa," he began, saying her name the way no one else did, like it was an endearment, or a magical incantation. "I have a new life because of you, and the only thing I want to do with it is be with you. Will you let me do that? Will you let me take you to Fiji and follow you to Quantico and the Omaha Field Office and go back to Chicago with you for the holidays? Will you let me lie beside you at night and flirt shamelessly with you during the day and kiss you every chance I get? Will you let me bring you food when you forget to eat and rub your back when you've been hunched over a computer for hours and steal your car keys when you're too tired to drive but won't admit it?"

She had no poker face at all. Her smile was so wide it almost hurt and she pulled her hands from his to place them on his shoulders instead, stepping closer to him, the heat of his body through his layers of clothing pulling her in like a magnet. His hands came to sit at her waist, not holding her, just resting against her, but she couldn't have broken away from him for a million dollars.

"I might be able to put up with all that," she said, "but what will I get in exchange for it? Will you let me hold you when you're hurting and yell at you when you get us in trouble and protect you when you make someone want to punch you in the nose? Will you try to believe me when I tell you that you deserve to be happy again? Will you trust that even when I'm so mad at you I want to scream, I still love you more than anything on earth?"

An emotion so strong it resembled agony passed over his face at that, and he seized her, crushing her against him. She wrapped herself around him, wanting there to be no space between them at all, wanting them to climb into each other's skin and keep going so deep that when they came out the other side, there would be no him without her or her without him anymore. She tilted her head and kissed his neck, feeling his skin against her lips for the first time, and both of them gasped.

"You've got yourself a deal," he said, voice rough as gravel.

She couldn't say how long they stood there, holding each other, trying to breathe. As time went on, their embrace shifted. His hands moved up and down her back; her fingers tangled in the curls at the top of his neck. They began to sway gently to an unheard melody.

Then, as if a switch had flipped, they straightened and fit themselves back together and without hesitation or preliminaries they were kissing, mouths open, tasting each other, pulling one another impossibly closer, feeding off each other's obvious desire.

Lisbon's mind went pleasantly blank. There was just too much raw sensory data coming in to think about anything else. There were the things he was doing with his lips and his tongue and - oh God, his teeth too? - and his hands - when had they slipped under her shirt to trace lines of pleasure across the small of her back, how was she ever going to cope with it when he touched her there to guide her along at work after this? - and the little sounds he was making, like he was as undone as she was - and the smell of him, za'atar from their abandoned meal and cologne underlined with just a hint of sweat - the luxury of his hair between her fingers - the hard lines of his body against hers - the warm puffs against her face when he exhaled and she inhaled, breathing in the same air that had been inside him a moment ago -

A car honked from the street and she jerked away, panting, suddenly aware that she'd been about ten seconds away from trying to undress him in public. Jane, oblivious, sought after her, trying to pull her back in. She let him hold her, but angled her head so their foreheads would brush together instead of their lips. Her eyes drifted shut as she enjoyed this different form of closeness.

After a moment, his grip on her lost some of its urgency, though none of its firmness. He chuckled. "Oh, now you're really in trouble," he said.

It took her a second to identify the unfamiliar tone in his voice. He sounded… happy. "Why's that?"

"Now that I know how good that is, I'm never going to give you a moment's peace, you'll be fending me off from morning til night."

"Oh?" she asked, amused. "But after sundown I'll be safe from your advances?"

"No, that's when I expect you to stop fending and let me have my wicked way with you."

She laughed, despite the heat that bloomed in her at his words. "But Jane," she said, "I trust you to understand how important my job is to me and not do anything to undermine me while we're at work."

He took a quick breath and she opened her eyes to find him looking at her with staggering intensity. "Will you say it again?" he asked. "Please?"

She blinked. "I trust you?" she tried, uncertainly.

"No - the other thing. From… before."

She cast her mind back. It was difficult to remember anything past the kiss. Then she understood what he must mean, and though her cheeks flushed, she didn't look away from him while she said, "I love you. So much."

He pulled her closer, into another hug, and mumbled something into her neck. She wanted to know what he'd said, but lacked the heart to detach him from her sufficiently to render him audible. She figured she knew the general idea.

Around the corner of the building, the restaurant door slammed open and a group of people came into view, talking loudly as they made their way to their various cars. It occurred to Lisbon that they should probably do the same.

The reasonable option would be to say goodnight and go their separate ways. They both had a lot to process already. She had no idea how fast or slow Jane wanted to go with her. It would probably be better for them to take their time testing out these new waters. They'd made their positions clear, they'd kissed - that ought to be enough for one day.

But she couldn't stand the thought of being away from him, of not getting to hold him again for twenty-four hours.

"You want to come back to my place?" she asked.

He nodded into her neck, then lifted his head enough to nip her earlobe and whisper, "Let the wickedness commence."

At first, she was glad they'd taken separate cars - she wasn't sure she'd have been able to drive safely with Jane smoldering at her from the passenger seat, maybe even touching her…

But as the minutes passed and her pulse slowed, doubts began to creep in, and she wished he was there, so she could see what he was feeling. Rational thought had returned, and she could see that at the restaurant she'd once again jumped to the wrong conclusion about him, and he'd once again gone overboard trying to persuade and reassure her, and she'd just poured more gasoline onto the emotional conflagration until its flames consumed them both. But what if he was ignoring his own hesitance or reservations in his desperation to keep her at his side? What was going to happen when they calmed down and the pendulum swung back the other way?

By the time she parked her car, she was half-convinced he was going to bail on her, that if she was lucky she'd get a text saying some urgent business had come up and she'd see him tomorrow.

But she found him waiting for her at her front door, staring at her doormat as if it held the secrets of the universe, hands shoved into his pockets, so much tension in his posture he might as well have been pacing back and forth.

She wondered why he hadn't let himself in. She wondered if he was trying to be a gentleman or if he'd decided to tell her in person he'd had second thoughts and wanted to call it a night. He looked up at her approach. Their eyes caught, and she didn't know how to decode the tangle of desire and doubt on his face.

She opened her mouth to ask him something, but the enormity of the situation - what they had said to each other, what they were possibly about to do - struck her again, and she lost all her words.

Instead, she unlocked her door and left it open for him as she went in, flipped on the lights, put down her bag, took off her jacket. She heard the door close and looked up to watch him brush past her and stop a few feet away, his eyes so dark and hungry she could feel their weight on her skin.

The air crackled with the charge between them and her whole body throbbed in response.

But instead of making any move toward her, he looked away, seemingly uncertain, and once again the imperative to devour him gave way to her need to take care of him.

She swallowed and stepped closer. "We don't have to do anything tonight," she said, awkward but certain she had to say it. She could stand him leaving now, but she couldn't stand him looking at her with regret in the morning. "We don't have to rush. You can just sleep on the couch if you want or -"

He brushed a finger across her lips, silencing her, and then cupped her face with his hands and looked into her eyes. "What are you afraid of?" he asked softly.

"I'm afraid I'll ask for too much," she admitted, "and you'll try to give it to me and then flip out and leave me."

"That's not going to happen," he promised, giving her a soft kiss. "There's no such thing as too much. I might - I might be bad for you, I'm arrogant and stubborn and reckless and I lie and play tricks and hide myself, but I'm not going to leave you, or reject you."

"Okay," she said, closing her eyes and trying to believe it. Then she took a breath and looked at him again. "What are you afraid of?"

He shrugged. "I'm afraid of - of what you make me feel. Of having to really live again. Of disappointing you."

She studied him. "What else?"

His face twisted. "I'm afraid I ruin everything I love," he choked out. "That the closer I get to you, the faster I'll destroy you."

Her heart broke a little, and she pulled him against her, his head on her shoulder, her arms around him. "Angela and Charlotte's deaths weren't your fault," she said as plainly as she could. "You didn't kill them. McAllister did, and he's dead now. He can't take anything else away from you."

"I made mistakes, though," he said roughly, holding her tight. "Terrible mistakes."

"And you learned from them, and you changed," she told him. "You're not that man anymore. And people are allowed to make mistakes. You're allowed to make mistakes. It won't be the end of the world if something goes wrong. We'll just - we'll just pick ourselves back up and keep trying." She kissed the top of his golden head, wondering how this sweet, beautiful man could believe his love was a danger to her. Then, her stomach sinking, she remembered that not so long ago she'd thought exactly the same thing. She'd been more afraid of the suggestion that he loved her than the possibility that he might hate her. She'd been convinced he would bring her nothing but pain. And maybe she'd had her reasons, but she resolved that she would never again make him feel less than welcome in her life or her heart. "Being close to you isn't going to destroy me. That's just silly. In fact it's the opposite. You kept me safe, didn't you?"

He nodded against her shoulder, and she found herself remembering it - not the bodyguards or the bulletproof purse or the fear, but the boxes of games and odd delicacies in her closet. Because even if they'd partially been a terror-driven effort to rob her of any excuse to open her door against his instructions, they had mostly just been his way of giving her whatever distractions and small pleasures he could in what he knew would be a difficult time for her. He hadn't just wanted to protect her from being murdered, he had wanted to protect her from getting hungry. She squeezed him tighter.

And she understood that beneath every fear he had named was another, one that stalked him like a lion. "I'm not going to leave you either. You're not going to lose me. We made a deal, remember?"

He took a deep breath, and when he let it out again, he was holding her differently. With intent. "I do remember," he said, shifting his head so she felt the words against her neck, followed by his lips, gentle but insistent, working their way up toward her ear. She tilted her head to give him more room, and he rewarded her by finding an especially tender spot and suckling at it until her knees went weak. She pushed him off and lunged for his mouth, their momentum carrying them on until his back hit the wall mid-kiss. She pressed herself against him, appreciating the additional leverage. He moaned encouragingly and she was surprised to find his hands under her shirt again, more daring this time, venturing up her sides.

She hoped they were done talking because she wasn't sure she could form words anymore. She fumbled blindly at his vest buttons and then his shirt as they kissed, and when her fingers finally found his skin, she broke away to look at him, disheveled and glorious, his lips wet and full, his chest - downed with coarse golden curls - rising sharply with each heavy breath. She lowered her mouth to taste him, scraping his skin delicately with her teeth, and she learned that while arousal cut the link between her thoughts and her vocal chords, it did the opposite to him.

"Teresa, Teresa," he began, the words tumbling out rich with pleasure and urgency, "you're lovely, you're perfect, you're my heart and my soul, let's never stop doing this... Oh, sweetness, mmhm, darling, you're so soft, my tough scary cop, you're like silk and petals, can I - can I -"

His fingers were dancing at the waist of her slacks, and she found she did have one word left after all.

"Yes."

Day 60:

Lisbon felt eyes following her as they walked into the building previously known as CBI headquarters the next morning. She straightened uncomfortably, trying to figure out what they were looking at. It wasn't that odd for her and Jane to arrive at work together, and she was pretty sure there weren't any giant love bites on her neck or anything. Had he taped a sign to her back while she wasn't looking? A quick glance at her reflection in a pane of glass told her this was not the case.

When they got up to their floor, it wasn't just looks anymore, there was a murmur of quiet conversation that stopped as soon as she got too close. She glared at Jane suspiciously, but he gave nothing away.

Then her office came into view and she ground to a halt in the middle of the bullpen, Jane almost running into her back.

There were flowers in her office. Not just a bouquet. From what she could see, there were more flowers than office in her office. She turned to Jane, incredulous. How had he managed it? He hadn't been apart from her for more than a minute since they'd driven back from dinner last night.

"What did you do?" she snapped.

"You appear to have an admirer," he told her, enjoying himself enormously.

"What the hell were you thinking?" They had, she noticed unhappily, acquired a significant audience.

"Me?" he asked, his face the portrait of innocent surprise, except for the twinkle in his eye.

She grabbed his wrist and dragged him into her office. It smelled like a heavily perfumed jungle. Up close, the display was even more overwhelming. Except for the couch, a small area of her desk, and narrow footpaths from the door to those locations, every flat surface was covered with floral arrangements, each one elaborate and beautiful and distinct, lilies and orchids and peonies and gardenias and a dozen things she couldn't name. There was even a vase perched on top of her shredder.

She turned to Jane, trying to hang onto her outrage. No one had ever done anything like this for her before, and she couldn't deny that a significant portion of her was charmed and flattered. But why could he not have had them sent to her apartment?

"You couldn't even wait one full day before announcing it to the whole building?" she demanded.

There was that innocent look again. "I'm sorry Lisbon, was it supposed to be a secret? I had no idea." Then he grinned. "Besides, you're the one who announced it by blaming this on me in front of everyone. There isn't even a single card in here with my name on it."

She smacked him on the arm.

He shrugged, unperturbed. "I'm not ashamed of being with you. Are you ashamed of having people know we're together?"

"Well, no," she conceded grudgingly, "but this is a place of business!"

His eyes narrowed. "Are you kidding me? This is a hotbed of lust and salacious intentions! You think I don't see how the men look at you around here? I have no intention of letting one of these FBI cowboys try to steal you away from me, and I for one am happy for them all to know it."

If anyone but Jane had said that to her, he would have gotten a punch in the face for his trouble. But though she didn't doubt that he would fight tooth and nail to keep her, she also knew he had not actually done this primarily to stake a public claim on her. She knew he respected her in a way she didn't think anyone she'd dated truly had before.

Apparently sensing that she'd begun to relent, he took her hand. "You were promised a florist's shop," he reminded her.

She looked around, remembering. "As I recall, I was also promised a night on the town. And being dragged away from the table halfway through dinner does not count."

"I also said I would tell you…" he began, then paused as if to see whether she'd let him go on. She inched slightly closer to him, eyes wide. His were fathoms deep as he continued, "that you're my whole world. I know you didn't believe me two months ago when I said I was in love with you, but it was true then, and I love you even more now, just as I'll love you more still in another two months, and two years, and so on." He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand.

"I'm sorry it took me so long to believe it," she said. "I'm sorry I was so hard on you."

"Don't be sorry," he said. "I think it was good for us, in the end, to go through that. You made me own up to a lot of things I was hiding from for a very long time. And I think I did the same for you."

She nodded. "I hurt you, though," she said unhappily.

"Being with you like this - it would have been worth so much more than that. It's worth anything."

She found herself leaning into him, her eyes drifting shut, until she remembered where they were. She straightened, eyes narrowing in a different way. Less than half an hour in and he already had her on the verge of breaking her no-kissing-at-work rule. He was good, she had to give him that.

She smirked at him, letting her eyes rove up and down his form with undisguised appreciation. "Tonight," she told him, "I'm going to show you just how much that means to me. But I don't have your way with words, so I'm afraid it'll have to be a very… hands-on demonstration…" she leaned closer, and breathed into his ear, "…Patrick."

Then she turned and strode out of the office with a swing in her step just for him.