The first time she kissed him was their tenth kiss

The first time she kissed him was their tenth kiss. Back when he could still count the number of times they had kissed on all his fingers and toes, back when he was able to remember each with startling clarity and wonder. She had leaned in to take the bite of ice cream he was offering her, in the golden wash of the summer when they had first met. She had reached up and pulled his shoulder gently but insistently down, then leaned in and claimed a kiss, her mouth still cool, her palm resting over his shirt like a brand, and then she had pulled back. Her blue eyes dancing up into his.

"Oh," he said, the ice cream forgotten.

She is the last girl I will ever kiss. The thought was so clear. She is the only girl I will ever want to kiss.

She smiled and she was blushing faintly and he couldn't stop staring at her mouth. "You okay?"

"Almost," he said, reaching down and claiming another.

The first time he told her he loved her, he hadn't meant to say it at all. They had known each other for six months and had been dating for four, and four months was definitely not long enough for him to be feeling the way he did toward her. Definitely not long enough for him to be able to say it. He'd never said it to any other girl, but he'd never felt this way before, either.

"Teach me," she said, staring at him, the batting helmet covering her red-gold hair, the bat hanging loose in her grip. "How do you do that?"

Ned swung again. The baseball bounced off the fence, hard. "I just... I just do," he said, laughing a little.

"Show me."

"Come here, then," Ned said, and Nancy came to him, the bat swinging under her loose wrist. "Now, hit the next one."

She nodded and put her head down and he gazed at her, his eyes soft. Her mouth was set and determined, her eyes gleaming. She swung and the ball bounced off the fence.

"You did fine."

"Not like you," she said, turning back to catch his eye, and Ned chuckled under his breath.

"You have to," he began, then stepped up behind her, put his arms over hers. "Put your hands like this. Under mine."

She nodded. Even the dust and sweat and softly creeping night could not cover the scent of her, faint and sweet and delicate. He closed his eyes briefly, then shook his head.

"Okay, now, swing," he said, guiding her bat slowly through an arc. "Like this. Do you feel the difference?"

She nodded. "Like," she said, leaning into it, her slender wrists turning. Her back against his chest. "Think we can try one?"

The first ball slammed against the fence, the second harder, the third making it shudder and squeal in protest. He could feel her smile. "You're really good at this," she said, turning, and he took in the curve of her cheek.

"I'm okay," he said modestly, but he had to be glowing, especially when she laughed, gentle and soft.

The next ball came up and he urged her muscles under his, moving in tandem to smack the ball into the fence again. "I've never met a girl like you," he said.

She laughed again, and he could become addicted to that sound, those eyes. He already was. "I hear that a lot," she told him.

"You hit baseballs with all your boyfriends?" he teased her back. "You have a great eye." Eyes. Mouth. I could drown in you.

"I don't," she said, "but I do like it. Another," she said, and they swung together again. His arms against hers. He could feel her breathe.

"I think I might be falling for you."

They swung together at the next ball, the fence shook and Nancy turned, his arms still close around her. She swept the helmet off. "You think?" she said, a trace of humor in her voice, but no trace of a smile on her face. Her blue eyes searched his.

He nodded, speechless, and she laced her fingers between his.

"I think I might be falling for you, too," she told him softly. "I've never met anyone like you either."

He kissed her then, but it was over too soon, and she was putting her helmet back on, back in the proper stance. "One more," she said.

He stepped in close to her, his arms over hers, and they hit the last ball together. He could have hit a million home runs in that moment. He could have done anything she had asked him to do. She was beautiful and fierce and brilliant and fearless, and as powerless as him in the face of that knowledge. Powerless in the face of what was happening between them, just as he was.

He took her back to her father's house, but she lingered in his car, making no move to leave. Her gaze soft on his.

"I love you."

She looked down at their hands, joined and resting on the edge of her seat. She was smiling, her cheeks colored faintly, and then she was kissing him, soft and gentle, her lips trembling.

"I love you too," she said, and then the car door slammed and she was gone.

The first time he saw her with her shirt off, they were in a chemistry lab and she was gently prying open the second prank box Theta Pi had received. Very gently. A TA had let them into the room but he was gone, and Nancy had donned safety glasses and latex gloves, her lips slightly parted as she slipped one blade of the tweezers between the lid and the side.

"Be careful," he breathed.

She murmured something reassuring, her mouth set as she began to work the blade back and forth, her shoulders tensed and rounded, both of them anticipating something terrible. An explosion, a dozen live tarantulas, he knew not what. Ned's pulse was racing.

Suddenly the lid came off with a crack, and a gust of pressurized white powder rose out of the box, covering Nancy, her hair and t-shirt. Ned's heart was in her throat as she backed away quickly, ripping off the glasses, pulling her shirt over her head to reveal a whisper-pink cotton bra. Her skin was already beginning to discolor.

"What is it?"

"It itches," she replied, her voice tight, tinged with just the barest hint of fear. Ned dug through a cabinet until he found a tube of ointment, and brought it to her.

"Thanks," she said, scrubbing her bare arms at one of the deep black sinks, unselfconscious and flushed with adrenaline.

He had seen her in a bikini before but he found himself unable to look away. Pink cotton.

After a very long moment he picked up his jacket and slipped it over her shoulders, against the chill of the lab. "Here," he said softly.

She smiled up at him. "Thanks."

That night he dreamed of pink cotton.

The first time they slept touching wasn't supposed to happen at all. On their third anniversary they went camping, up at the lake, and her father had insisted on separate tents, then relented and settled for separate sleeping bags. On opposite sides of the tent. He had almost expected her father to buy a roll of razor wire to string between them.

On the second night, after toasted marshmallows and s'mores and the obligatory stargazing, they crawled into the tent to escape the cool wind. They stripped to their long underwear, each pointedly not looking at the other, bent inward and deadly serious until they were in the safety of their separate sleeping bags.

She was still freezing. Curled up in a tight ball, fetal, arms wrapped around her bent knees, face tucked into the edge of the sleeping bag.

"Hey," he said softly, and she opened those angel-blue eyes, both of them still smelling of woodsmoke and chocolate.

"Hey," she whispered, and smiled.

He spent another long moment gathering his courage. "Come on," he said, and began to unzip his sleeping bag. "You're freezing. It'll help."

She didn't say anything. She just gazed at him. Then, with the faintest smile on her face, she unzipped her sleeping bag as well, and he zipped them together, not trusting himself to look at her. When he reached for her, his hand was trembling.

"Relax," he breathed.

He could feel her shaking. "I'm relaxed," she said, but her voice trembled a little, from laughter or anticipation he could not tell. She was quiet for a minute. "Thanks."

"Comfortable?"

She slipped an arm over his chest and pulled in close to him, her face to his shoulder. "Yes," she said, and laughed softly, nervously.

He put his arm over her and closed his eyes. "Nan, I love you."

"I love you too," she said, and he could feel her breath through the fabric, against his skin, the warm pressure of it.

She was tilting her head back to look up into his when he kissed her.

She was just over eighteen. In the time he'd known her, she had been abroad dozens of times, faced down ruthless killers and kidnappers and embezzlers, but when she came back, she came to him. He had understood before he'd ever asked her to be his girlfriend that this, what she did, was what she loved, what she always wanted to do. And yet she came back to him, him, just some rising college sophomore who didn't yet have a clue about what he wanted to do with his life. He only knew that he wanted it to be with her.

She leaned into him, running her fingers through his hair, and they lay on their sides, facing each other, their kisses soft and slow and gentle. Almost shaking. Delicate.

He was afraid of what he felt for her, because he knew that they were too young to keep any of the promises they had made, any of the promises he wanted to make to her. The fierce streak of independence in her that had drawn him so strongly could drive them apart. And she would be going to college soon, and he didn't want to start a life with her, not until he could give her something more than a dorm room and frat parties and winter breaks. A real life.

She pulled back, gasping, tilting her face against his chest. Then he felt her smile. "Did you have this in mind, picking out the coldest night we've had in ages? Did you plan all of this?"

He smiled and ran his hand over her hair. "Yeah, before I asked you to be my girlfriend I happened to look up the weather three years in advance, and planned this trip just so I could offer to share a sleeping bag with you."

She chuckled, then, and tilted her face back to look into his, put her palm against his cheek. "You know I care about you," she said softly.

He nodded. "But you want to wait."

She smiled. "Not that I don't really appreciate the warmth," she said, and he started tickling her then. She laughed until she was gasping for breath, writhing and pulling to the other side of the sleeping bag.

Then he leaned over and kissed her forehead. "I'll wait," he said softly. "I'll wait until you're ready."

"It may be a long time, Nickerson," she cautioned him, as he traced his lips down her cheek.

"I'll wait," he repeated, and kissed her, his fingertips finding and gently stroking along the warm band of flesh between her top and waist. I'd wait the rest of my life for you.

When he woke he couldn't imagine spending another night outside the circle of her arms.

The first time he asked with all seriousness, his graduation ceremony was the next day. His parents and Nancy and her father were staying in Emersonville, and he had promised to have her back by midnight.

She was in pearl-grey silk, a single white rose nestled in her hair. He squeezed the fingers laced between his, and she turned her face to smile at him, as they walked through the Emerson woods, in the moonlight.

"Thanks for dinner," she said. "It was great. And beautiful. And you have this look in your eye."

"Do I?" he said, fighting to keep from smiling.

"You do," she said, laughing. "You are graduating, right? That's not your surprise."

"I am graduating," he reassured her. "All the forms are in order, everything's fine. Cap and gown accounted for. And you'll be there."

"As long as there's no crisis in London or anything," she said, shrieking when he tickled her. "Okay, okay," she begged. "Yes, I'll be there. I will. I promise."

He put his arms around her waist. "You'd better," he said. He was smiling as he looked down into her eyes, and she put her palm against his cheek, drawing him down to her for a kiss.

"What did you want to tell me," she breathed, when he pulled back.

He opened his mouth, then reached for her hand, and she followed as they began walking again. "I know, when we were younger," he said softly, then shook his head. "I've been thinking a lot about the two of us. About what's going to happen."

She stopped, and he stopped with her. "Did you get the job?"

He nodded. "I got the job."

"Ned, that's wonderful," she cried, wrapping her arms around him. "That's great. I can't believe it. Everything? The salary?"

"Everything," he nodded again, and reached for her hands when she pulled back. "Almost everything," he amended. "Almost."

"What else is there?"

He looked away, then, and she watched his adam's apple bob in his throat a few times, before he slowly, slowly knelt at her feet.

"You," he said simply.

Nancy's eyes grew damp, but she shook her head. "I have another year of college," she said faintly.

"I know," he said. "A year is a good length of time for an engagement." He smiled, despite his wildly pounding heart. "Plenty of time to plan a wedding."

"Ned," she said, and he reached into his pocket for the black velvet box, slipped his fingers from between hers to open it. She put her hands over her mouth when she saw the ring, her eyes swimming with tears. "My God, Ned."

"I promised myself a long time ago that you'd be the first girl I'd ever propose to," he said. "And I want you to be the last. I know you said before, it wasn't the right time. And it wasn't. But, now..." he smiled. "I was hoping that maybe you'd change your mind."

"You want to marry me."

"Practically since the first second I saw you."

"When," she said. She couldn't stop staring at the ring, she couldn't stop looking at his eyes. There was nothing else on the world. No one else besides the two of them.

"When we're both graduated," he said, and gazed up at her. "Tell me what you're thinking."

"Of what my father will say," she said. "That before I met you, I thought I'd never find someone I could share my life with, someone who would put up with me. That I've never loved anyone the way I love you, Ned," she said, sliding the ring onto her finger and smiling at him, and when he swept her up into his arms and twirled her she laughed up into the sky, up at the stars.

"I'm going to spend every day for the rest of our lives, making you happy," he whispered into her ear, after their kiss.

She laughed, wiping at her wet cheek with the back of her hand, staring down at the ring. "Just love me," she said, pressing her mouth against his cheek, kissing him softly. "Just be you and just love me, and I'll be happy."

"I've never stopped," he said, the color high in his cheeks as he pulled back to look at her. "I'll never stop. And you'll be my wife."

She nodded, and he spun her again, in his arms, and she laughed, her hands clasped at his neck. His heart was so full he felt it would burst if he ever let her go.

"And you'll be my wife."

On the first day of their life, she was dressed in white, yards of it, so pure it was almost blue. Pure as the driven snow.

Between her graduation a week before, and this day, a day just over a year in the making, she had managed to recover a missing girl from kidnappers just before they had crossed into Mexico. He'd talked to her just before she had boarded the plane back. She was exhausted, but jubilant. Swearing that she would be there, not a hair out of place, not a second missed.

Even so, he had barely been able to breathe until they showed up that morning, she and her entourage, Bess and George and Hannah and her father, and had shut themselves into the rooms at the back of the church for the hours of preparation it would take to make her ready.

Not beautiful; she was already beautiful. But now, standing in the back of the church, in a soft slant of indirect sunlight, the veil in fine soft folds over her face, she was radiant.

On this day, seven years ago, he had looked into her blue eyes for the first time. Seven years ago he had lost his heart, only to find it in her.

The processional began, dozens, hundreds of smiling faces turned to the back of the church, to see her when she walked in. George and Bess, radiant in robin's-egg blue satin, gave him reassuring grins, taking their places at the other side of the altar.

Then she stepped in, on her father's arm, in the white so pure it was almost blue, blood-red and ivory roses cascading down from her hand, and he could not pull his gaze from her veiled eyes. He saw her lips curve up in a smile, the shadow of her eyelashes, the pearls in her ears. The engagement ring glittering on her right hand, waiting to take its place again on her left.

"Who gives this woman?"

Carson answered, but he and Ned both knew that no one had given Nancy. She had chosen, every second, of her own free will, and she had chosen him.

Carson put Nancy's hand in Ned's, and he took it, and smiled. She was here, perfect and beautiful. For seven years he had wanted her.

For the rest of their lives. He had already spent the last night he ever would, without her. The last hour he would spend as a single man.

"With this ring, I thee wed."

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The first time she kissed him was their tenth kiss. She and Bess and George had stayed up giggling and discussing each one, and every time, when Nancy reported that he'd been the one to lean down and press his lips to hers, Bess had protested. "Why don't you kiss him?"

"Because he's so tall," she had said, as though that was reason enough.

"Well, next time, just grab him and kiss him," Bess insisted. "You want to, right?"

She did. She did want to. Because sometimes when he was talking all she did was stare at his mouth, wishing that he would lean down the slightest bit, just so that she could stand on her tiptoes and press her lips to his. Just so that when she pulled back, she could see the same shocked, pleased, flushed feeling that flooded over her whenever he did the same.

He was offering her a bite of his ice cream and she had leaned in for it, and with the taste of sugar and cream and chocolate melting cool on her tongue she put her hand on the back of his shoulder and pulled him down, and he leaned down with no hesitation or resistance, until her eyelashes were fluttering against his cheek and she was kissing him.

He looked shocked and pleased and flushed with happiness when she pulled back, his brown eyes searching hers. "Oh," he said, his lips curving up in a smile.

Nothing has ever felt as right as that did. Nothing ever will. "You okay?" she asked, and she could feel the heat rising soft in her cheeks.

"Almost," he said, reaching down and claiming another.

The first time she told him she loved him, she hadn't meant to say it at all. Before she'd met him, she had almost convinced herself that love was a trick, hormones and weakness, momentary lapses of judgement. After she'd met him, she'd known that she had been wrong. And it scared her. After four months of being his girlfriend, she knew that she never wanted to be anyone else's. She never wanted to be with anyone else, ever again, and the strength of that knowledge was more frightening than a hundred kidnappers, than anything else she'd ever experienced.

He hit another ball into the fence and she traced the hard line of his muscles with her eyes, the smooth clean curve of motion, the raw power of his swing. She knew how to hit the ball, had been able to hit a baseball since she'd been strong enough to pick up a bat, but not like that.

"Teach me," she said, letting her own bat fall to her side. "How do you do that?"

Ned swung again, and it looked effortless, like he was born to no other purpose. The baseball bounced off the fence, hard. "I just... I just do," he said, laughing a little.

"Show me."

"Come here, then," Ned said, and Nancy took a deep breath before she came to him. She wanted to show him. She wanted him to be proud of her, the same way she of him was every time someone cheered him on during a ballgame. "Now, hit the next one."

She set her mouth, determined, and when the next ball came she swung, but she knew she hadn't done so well as him before she had even dropped her arm back to her side.

"You did fine."

"Not like you," she said. Turning to him, willing him even as he chuckled to come put his arms around her.

"You have to," he began, and when he obeyed her unspoken wish she felt her heart begin to pound, and wondered if he could hear it too. His palms cupped over the backs of her hands, and her skin tingled faintly where it touched his. "Put your hands like this. Under mine."

She nodded. This close, she could smell him, his cologne and the faint masculine aura of him. Safe. She closed her eyes for a moment.

"Okay, now, swing," he said, guiding her bat slowly through an arc. "Like this. Do you feel the difference?"

She nodded. "Like," she agreed, mimicking his motion. Her back against his chest. "Think we can try one?"

The first ball slammed against the fence, the second harder, the third making it shudder and squeal in protest. She couldn't hold back the wide grin. "You're really good at this," she told him, looking back to see his face.

"I'm okay," he said, but he was flushed with pride and satisfaction, and she couldn't help but laugh. He knew how talented he was.

The next ball came up and she felt his muscles tighten against hers, and now she could almost anticipate and predict it, the way he would swing, meeting the ball with the hard smack of the bat. "I've never met a girl like you," he said.

Her heart skipped a beat, but she played it off with a laugh. "I hear that a lot," she told him. But it's never meant as much, until you said it.

"You hit baseballs with all your boyfriends?" he teased her back. "You have a great eye."

"I don't," she protested, blushing faintly in pleasure, "but I do like it. Another." His arms moving with hers. Perfect cooperation. One will.

"I think I might be falling for you."

She froze, but the next ball came and she forced herself to follow his movements again, willing her pulse to slow, but her heart, her heart could never fall, not after those words. She turned, sweeping her helmet off to keep her hands occupied, to keep them from sliding around him, in the middle of the batting cage and in front of everyone. "You think?" she said, her voice miraculously steady as she searched his eyes.

He nodded, speechless, and she laced her fingers between his.

"I think I might be falling for you, too," she told him softly. "I've never met anyone like you either." I think I might be falling in love with you, and Bess and George are already sure. When they want to tease me they call me by your name. I think I might love you and it's the scariest thing I've ever felt, in my entire life.

He leaned down and kissed her and her heart was in her throat, and she pulled back far before she wanted to, afraid he could feel her tremble. "One more," she said.

He stepped in close to her, his arms over hers, and they hit the last ball together, but the words were still on her lips, and if she opened her mouth, if she let them out... she couldn't. It was too soon. Even if he thought he was falling for her, it didn't mean...

"I love you."

She was in his car, at her father's house, and when he said those words, when he echoed the ones she was afraid to say, a tremendous weight left her chest. No more doubt, no more fear. She couldn't stop the smile, couldn't stop herself from leaning over to kiss him.

"I love you too," she told him, and then she was running to her father's door, but she couldn't feel the ground.

The first time she saw him in his boxers, she was visiting him at Omega Chi for the first time and Howie, without announcing her arrival, had told her Ned's room number. She skipped up the stairs, returning appreciative stares with a disinterested smile, counting the doors until she reached his.

She knew she should knock, but she couldn't stop herself from trying the doorknob, just in case.

The door was unlocked and when she swung it halfway open he was standing next to his bed, pulling his shirt off and over his head, leaving him in only a pair of charcoal-grey boxers. Tanned flesh, defined abs, the hard muscle of his upper arms. She drank him in for that moment before he saw her, before he was conscious of her presence, a blush creeping faintly over her cheeks.

"Nan."

She smiled. He was smiling and unselfconscious and she dragged her gaze to his face. She had seen him in swim trunks, but this.

"Sorry," she said. "I-- wanted to surprise you."

He held her gaze for a moment before he picked up a pair of jeans, vanishing behind the open door of his bathroom, still smiling faintly. "Give me just a minute."

That night she dreamed of charcoal-grey cotton.

The first time they slept touching wasn't supposed to happen at all. On their third anniversary he suggested they go camping, overnight, on the edge of a lake still frozen and dull with ice. Very romantic and very alone. Her father had insisted on separate tents, then relented and settled for separate sleeping bags. On opposite sides of the tent. She almost expected him to buy her a roll of razor wire to string between them.

On the second night, after toasted marshmallows and s'mores and the obligatory stargazing, they crawled into the tent to escape the cool wind. Out of the corner of her eye she watched as he stripped down to waffle-knit cotton, she into the thinnest softest silk long johns. Even the tent wasn't enough to keep the chill out of the air. When she climbed into her sleeping bag, obediently placed as far from his as it possibly could be, she curled up in on herself immediately, shaking, her feet almost numb. Her cheeks stung as the feeling came back, and she nestled her face into her sleeping bag, her body turned toward his. Looking forward to another night that she would spend hating the few feet of space between them.

But to cross those inches, until only the space of breath separated them... she had told him that she wanted to wait, and she did, but sometimes when she looked into the face she knew so well, the reasons seemed insignificant.

"Hey," he said softly, and she opened her eyes, her shoulders still trembling slightly.

"Hey," she whispered, and smiled.

She put her folded arm under her head, under the shallow pillow, as she waited, drowsy and numb with cold. "Come on," he said, and began to unzip his sleeping bag. "You're freezing. It'll help."

Does this mean, she thought, but cut it off immediately. He wouldn't. He knew. But she was freezing and he was warm and...

With the faintest smile on her face, she unzipped her sleeping bag as well, and he zipped them together, and she wasn't sure if she was even breathing anymore. All her attempts to convince herself that this was nothing different, nothing special, were all falling away in the soft trembling glow of her quickened heart. Especially when she felt his hand on her arm.

"Relax," he breathed.

"I'm relaxed," she told him. If relaxed meant giving in to the euphoria that swept over her when she realized how close they were. "Thanks."

"Comfortable?"

She slipped an arm over his chest and pulled in close to him, her face to his shoulder. "Yes," she said, and laughed softly, nervously.

He put his arm over her and closed his eyes. "Nan, I love you."

"I love you too," she said. Oh yes, her father would kill her, if he ever knew. But she would have regretted it, if she hadn't, if she had turned down the opportunity to feel his arms around her.

She was tilting her head back to look up into his when he kissed her.

She was too young for this. She was too young to know that he was the one. Every now and then, she did forget. Every now and then, someone else caught her eye, and she felt again the soft instinctual rush of attraction, but it was never like this. She was drunk in him. With him, it all made sense; when he was around, to listen to her hunches, to save her when she took a step too far, she knew that she could do it. She need never fear his will, his wrath, his insistence that she change who she was for him, because he never would. He had seen every dark corner and he hadn't turned away. She had finally found someone she could share the insanity of her life with.

She leaned into him, running her fingers through his hair, and they lay on their sides, facing each other, their kisses soft and slow and gentle. Almost shaking. Delicate.

Not that they would have much of a life, once they were in separate colleges, hours and miles apart, linked by telephone wire and the hope of their next meeting. Still. The taste of him in her mouth, even as she knew, knew that she had to stop, even though every time it grew more and more difficult to remember why.

She pulled back, gasping, tilting her face against his chest. "Did you have this in mind, picking out the coldest night we've had in ages? Did you plan all of this?"

She chuckled, then, and tilted her face back to look into his, put her palm against his cheek. "You know I care about you," she said softly.

He nodded. "But you want to wait."

She smiled. "Not that I don't really appreciate the warmth," she said, and her heart was pounding as his fingertips trailed over her, digging into her ticklish flesh, until she was writhing out of his grasp, laughing, shrieking for him to stop. His fingers against her flesh. She almost groaned her disappointment when he pulled away.

Then he leaned over and kissed her forehead. "I'll wait," he said softly. "I'll wait until you're ready."

"It may be a long time, Nickerson," she cautioned him, closing her eyes as he traced his lips down her cheek.

"I'll wait," he repeated, and kissed her, his fingertips finding and gently stroking along the warm band of flesh between her top and waist, and she was speechless.

When she woke she couldn't imagine spending another night outside the circle of his arms.

She and her father and Ned's parents were staying in Emersonville, the night before his college graduation, and she had known something was in his mind since he had visited the week before. Something in the look in his eye. He had been quiet the whole night, over their lavish expensive meal, when he had offered her a single white rose, and she had nestled it in her hair and watched him smile. She wished he would just say it, whatever it was. Preferably before midnight, when he'd promised to have her back at the hotel. He'd suggested a walk through Emerson woods and she had agreed, hoping that once they were alone he'd feel comfortable enough to talk.

"Thanks for dinner," she said. "It was great. And beautiful. And you have this look in your eye."

"Do I?" he said.

"You do," she said, and laughed at the shocked look on his face. "You are graduating, right? That's not your surprise."

"I am graduating," he replied. "All the forms are in order, everything's fine. Cap and gown accounted for. And you'll be there."

"As long as there's no crisis in London or anything," she teased him, shrieking when he tickled her. "Okay, okay," she begged. "Yes, I'll be there. I will. I promise."

He put his arms around her waist, and she relaxed into his embrace. "You'd better," he said. He was smiling as he looked down into her eyes, and she put her palm against his cheek, drawing him down to her for a kiss.

"What did you want to tell me," she breathed, when he pulled back, gazing up at him.

She stopped, and he stopped with her. He had been going through extensive interviews with a firm, one he really wanted to join, and they had talked about it so much she almost felt like she was the one waiting on pins and needles for that final phone call. "Did you get the job?"

He nodded. "I got the job."

"Ned, that's wonderful," she cried, wrapping her arms around him. "That's great. I can't believe it. Everything? The salary?"

"Everything," he nodded again, and reached for her hands when she pulled back. "Almost everything," he amended. "Almost."

"What else is there?" Besides finals, and how much he missed her, he had talked about little else. If he was graduating, it couldn't be finals. Thinking about the two of them...?

He looked away, then, and she watched his adam's apple bob in his throat a few times, before he slowly, slowly knelt at her feet.

"You," he said simply.

On his knees. He had never, he'd never been on his knees, not... not before. He couldn't... Her eyes started to fill. "I have another year of college," she said faintly.

"I know," he said. "A year is a good length of time for an engagement." He smiled. "Plenty of time to plan a wedding."

"Ned," she said. Watching incredulously as he reached into his pocket, as he pulled out the box. He'd never done this before, either. So it was real. So this was real. The diamond was beautiful, perfect, brilliant. She put her hands over her mouth when she saw it, her eyes swimming with tears. "My God, Ned."

"You want to marry me."

"Practically since the first second I saw you."

He looked so beautiful. Soft-eyed with the wind ruffling his brown hair. She knew these weren't just words with him. This wasn't some prelude to a new case. This was the rest of her life. And all she could think was, "When."

"When we're both graduated," he said, and gazed up at her. "Tell me what you're thinking."

"Of what my father will say," she said. "That before I met you, I thought I'd never find someone I could share my life with, someone who would put up with me. That I've never loved anyone the way I love you, Ned," she said. The ring, the second she put it on, she wouldn't be alone anymore, she wouldn't be able to follow her heart on some whim at the interested glance of another guy, and she had never wanted that assurance more. She put the ring on and smiled at him, her heart so full she felt like it could burst, and when he swept her up into his arms and twirled her she laughed up into the sky, up at the stars.

"I'm going to spend every day for the rest of our lives, making you happy," he whispered into her ear, after their kiss.

He had never done anything else. She laughed, wiping at her wet cheek with the back of her hand, staring down at the ring. "Just love me," she said, pressing her mouth against his cheek, kissing him softly. "Just be you and just love me, and I'll be happy."

"I've never stopped," he said, the color high in his cheeks as he pulled back to look at her. "I'll never stop. And you'll be my wife."

She nodded, and he spun her again, in his arms, and she laughed, her hands clasped at his neck. Never, ever again would she let him go.

"And you'll be my wife."

On the first day of their life, she was dressed in white, yards of it, so pure it was almost blue. Pure as the driven snow.

Twenty-four hours ago, after she'd recovered the kidnapped girl just this side of the Texas border, she had been burning up the phone wires, pleading her way onto a flight. No one could refuse her long, once she explained the urgency. She wouldn't be able to bear the look on Ned's face, if she didn't make it. And now she'd never have to.

Seven years ago, he'd swept her off her feet, with his easy smile, his cool intelligence. Now he was standing at the altar in his black suit, tails, a rose at his lapel, shoes and cheek gleaming. She could read the faint nervousness in his stance and bearing. Waiting for her. For seven years he had waited for her.

For seven years, he'd had her heart.

The music swelled and startled her from her reverie. Bess giggled, nervous, waiting for George to step out before she followed, giving her best friend one last reassuring glance. Her father linked his arm through his, and she took a long last deep breath.

He was indistinct, through the haze of her veil, but she could still make out the gleam of his eyes, the flash of his teeth as he grinned at her. He was her best friend. Familiar and safe and comfortable. Her heart refused to listen, and kept throbbing erratically in her chest. He was her best friend and he would put a ring on her finger in front of all the people they had invited, he would become her husband.

"Who gives this woman?"

Her father answered, and she smiled as he folded her veil behind her hair, leaving her to Ned's proffered arm. Since the night she'd told her father that she'd agreed to become Ned's wife, he'd looked forward to having him as a son-in-law, without a moment of doubt or hesitation.

She slipped her arm through Ned's and smiled at him, already feeling the pressure of tears gathering behind her eyes. He was beautiful, and perfect, and hers. For the rest of their lives. She would never wake up alone again, never again be without him, her confidant, her protector, her love.

"With this ring, I thee wed."