Even over the phone line Lee could hear the way she took in a deep breath and made that humming noise that said she was about to launch another attempt to persuade him to take her along.

"Well then, I'll come with you and watch your tail. And that way you won't have to come all the way over afterward to pick me up; we can just go straight to the bank for my appointment."

"No you won't come with me, Amanda – my tail doesn't need watching for a simple trade-off – and you don't need to explain to your mother why you're leaving the house at four in the morning!"

"I could just tell her we have to be on set early."

"Amanda, she knows you have that appointment with the loan officer! She must know you're not going anywhere."

"I hate it when you're right," Amanda grumbled after a long silence.

"Can I get that in writing?" he teased her.

"I still think you shouldn't be down there by yourself at that time of day. You know any friend of Augie's is just bound to be trouble."

"And yet somehow, I feel like you might stick out like a sore thumb among the girls down on 14th Street, Mrs. King."

"Well then, take Francine. Don't-tell-her-I-said-that!" she added in a rush as Lee shouted with laughter.

"I don't need Francine either," he switched to a reassuring tone. "It's a simple switcheroo. I'll be done in ten minutes and I'll pick you up at nine after I take everything back to the Agency, ok? Look, Billy's just walked in and I gotta go, I'll see you in the morning, Amanda."

"Lee, I-" All she could hear was the dial tone.

"You alright, Lady?" The cab driver was gruff but concerned as he looked at Amanda in the rear view mirror.

"Oh yes, I'm fine," she answered trying to smile. "It's just been one of those mornings, you know? My car's broken down, I missed an appointment and now I'm late for work!"

And Lee promised it was a simple switcheroo and that he'd be at my house an hour ago.

She'd managed to hold it together in front of her mother and the boys but now in the safety of the back of the cab, she'd given in a little bit to the worry that had been gnawing at her since Lee hadn't shown up, but trying not to give into full-blown fear. Calling the office hadn't helped – Mrs. Marston wouldn't say anything beyond "Mr. Stetson is not currently available" – which she knew all too well could mean anything from Lee being in a debrief meeting to a hospital. Except he would have called, she knew he would have called if there'd been any way he could have, because he'd know she'd worry.

I should have gone with him. If anyone knows better than me that the simplest courier run can go wrong…

"Here ya go, safe and sound." The cab driver's voice broke through her trance and she looked up at the front door of the Agency, with something akin to dread. What if all her fears came true? She paid the driver, thanked him robotically before taking a deep breath to try and quiet her racing pulse, then pushed the door open to greet the receptionist with some semblance of calm only to find… Lee scurrying up the stairs, apparently without a care in the world.

As he stuttered to a stop at the sight of her, guilt written all over his face, she let the overwhelming relief funnel out of her in a blast of outrage. "Don't you say anything that might make me say something I would soon regret!" Even as she began to yell, she was scanning him, looking for signs of torn clothes, gunpowder burns, blood – anything that might explain why he'd never shown up. It was only when he'd come back down the stairs, with an expression that suggested that if he had a tail, it would be between his legs, that she'd seen the telltale smudges of lipstick on his cheek and one spot in the middle of his shirt that was missing a button.

I was worried sick and you didn't show up because you got tangled up with one of Augie's friends?

She knew – probably better than anyone – that he wouldn't have been tangled up that way but somehow, knowing that she'd let herself work herself up for nothing, made her feel foolish and the fact that Lee kept giving sidelong glances at Mrs. Marston, as if he were more concerned about what she might overhear than anything else, gave her fury with him extra fuel.

"I have a property tax bill that's going to be due in a few days, my lawnmower and my station wagon have made a suicide pact with each other, and my two small boys are going to have to put their tiny little goldfish on the auction block, all because somebody who was supposed to give me a ride to the bank this morning to see the loan officer, forgot to pick me up!"

Lee knew she was angry, and knew her well enough to know that she wasn't angry about the fact he hadn't picked her up. God knows, he'd been on the other side of it often enough, worrying when she didn't show up somewhere on time, especially given how often she actually had been delayed by kidnappers, KGB agents, arrests… And he had every intention of apologizing, grovelling even – once they were out from under the eagle eye of Mrs. Marston who was displaying every sign of enjoying this little contretemps in front of her desk.

"Why don't you try the Agency credit union?" he asked desperately, trying to distract her long enough to get her out of the lobby and their audience. "Better rates…"

"They won't give me a loan!" said Amanda, her sing-sing tone emphasizing the exaggerated patience, well-aware of what he was trying to do. "You have to be a full-time agent!"

"We could work it out," he interrupted her.

Amanda rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on!" she answered, and started to suck in a breath to launch at him again, a breath that she suddenly couldn't find when he blurted out his Hail Mary pass.

"I'll co-sign."

In the sudden complete silence that followed, Amanda heard the tiny gasp from Mrs. Marston and turned to look at her. The older woman beamed at her and Amanda was overcome with a sudden desperate desire to laugh. Lee seemed to have no idea what he'd done, but she did, and it was only with great difficulty that she was keeping something like a straight face now.

"You would?"

"I sure would!" Lee's face had lit up, certain he'd derailed the argument that had been burgeoning.

"Well, thank you very much," she began to answer but then Lee cut her off, trying to sidetrack her with the case Billy had just assigned him. She was willing to let him as long as it got them out of the foyer and the fond look on Mrs. Marston's face. Coming to a sudden decision, she tried to find her righteous outrage of a few minutes before.

"You have lipstick on your face."

Lee, who had thought he was in the clear, began to look panicked as he realized the argument had simply shifted to a new topic. "It's not what it looks like."

Amanda shooed him up the stairs. "Yeah, well, it isn't your color anyway." She waited until they were almost at the top of the stairs and added for the receptionist's benefit. "You really gotta tell that girlfriend of yours to check you for stuff like that before you leave your apartment in the morning."

When Lee slowed down and looked like he was about to ask her what she meant, she gave him a small shove and forced him into the small hallway that led to the Q Bureau.

"What girlfriend? What are you talking about?" he asked after she closed the door behind them.

Amanda rolled her eyes at him. "I was just trying to distract the dragon downstairs. Honestly, I love that you want to help me out by co-signing on my loan, but that pregnancy rumor was just finally starting to die and now she's going to be down on her coffee break telling everyone that you're my sugar daddy!"

"Oh my God, I never even thought of that," admitted Lee with a sheepish look. "Sorry."

"Well, it's not any worse than any of the other things they've thought," she answered, with a smile. "So what's the real story with the lipstick and the button?"

"Button?" Lee looked confused and peered down at his shirt. "Oh man, I almost forgot that. That was Beaman."

"The button? Or the lipstick?" she joked.

Lee looked up at her, laughing. "Pretty sure this isn't his color either. No, he's such a klutz, he pulled the button off my shirt while he was trying to take off my transmitter. I swear I don't know how that kid ever got a job here."

"Really? He seems like a pretty smart guy," answered Amanda, hanging her sweater up. "I heard Billy was even going to ask him to teach some of the rookie classes."

"Are you kidding? He's like some kind of nervous poodle – he starts shaking any time he has to say two words to me. The only time I've seen him close to coherent is when he was drunk and hitting on Francine at the party last year. Like he'd even stand a chance there," he added with a laugh.

"Well, maybe that's because he's-" Amanda stopped herself from finishing that sentence. If Lee hadn't figured out Efraim Beaman had the world's biggest crush on him, she wasn't going to draw his attention to it, in case it made him uncomfortable. For an agency full of observant people, it still amazed her that people missed things that seemed so obvious to her. Like how Efraim had immediately made everyone in the place think he was mooning over the most unattainable woman in the joint so that no one would ever question why they never saw him date. You'd think Lee of all people would recognize the trick, having honed it to a skill, but he was remarkably oblivious.

"He's what?" asked Lee, looking up from his desk where he'd pulled out a map of the city.

"He's aiming high," she answered diplomatically. "Nothing wrong with that."

"Well, he's never going to get Francine into bed or even onto a Greek island, no matter how hard he tries," said Lee, starting to look for the first address on his list.

"I'm sure you're right," she agreed, still trying not to laugh. "Do you at least still have the button? I can fix it before we go back out if you want – I have a sewing kit in my purse."

"Of course you do." Lee looked up at her half admiringly, half laughing. "Nah, it'll be fine – I'll just keep my jacket zipped up for now."

"It's no trouble," she started to insist.

"Amanda, it's fine," he said firmly. "I don't need-"

"To be mothered," she finished for him. "I know."

"Actually I was going to say I don't need to worry about a button when we have a dead guy to identify."

"Oh. Well, yes, you're right."

It wasn't until they were back downstairs and climbing into the Corvette that Lee began to tell her what had really gone on earlier that morning.

"…So I got stuck fighting with the vice cops and then by the time I got back and Beaman had done his worst on my shirt, Billy had me by the ear and was hauling me into his office to discuss this guy." He waved the photo of their John Doe at her, before putting it down on the dashboard.

"That reminds me," she answered, pulling out a tissue. "C'mere." She took his chin in her hand and turned him so she could start wiping off the last traces of the lipstick with a Kleenex she'd produced from thin air, as near as Lee could tell. "Vice cops, huh? You really need to start having your simple switcheroos in better neighborhoods."

"Yeah," he agreed, grabbing her hand to stop her. "Amanda? I really am sorry about this morning. I know you were worried but I just couldn't get anywhere near a phone to call you in time."

She looked at his hand where it was still holding hers and ran a finger over the scraped knuckles that were the evidence of the mess he'd been in this morning. "Well, I'm not going to lie – of course I was worried. But you know what I hated the most? That something worse might have happened and I should have been there to watch your tail, no matter how simple it was supposed to be. What if this had been worse, and you didn't have backup?"

"What would you have done if you'd been there?" he teased. "Because I bet you wouldn't have stayed in the car."

"I don't know," she confessed. "But it would have been better than sitting at home worrying."

When he laughed softly, she pulled her hand from his and shook her head. "No Lee – I know you think I'm just being silly and mother-y, but it's not that." She paused to collect her thoughts. "Did I ever tell you anything about my dad? Ok, well he and Mother met when they were really young – when she was 15 and he was 17, but they were one of those teenage romances that lasted, you know? The war broke out right about the same time and when he turned 18, he signed up right away because that was what you did, right?"

He nodded, not really sure where this story was going.

"So once he got shipped overseas, it was years before they saw each other again – they only had letters for years and years, but somehow, when he finally got home again, they still managed to make it work, even though now he was this 22-year-old who'd been through too much and she'd gone from a teenager in high school to a college sophomore. And they'd talk about it sometimes, how the separation was hard, and he'd tell stories about freezing in trenches, but Mother always said she had the worst part of the deal because at least he was actually doing something and all she could do was sit home and worry."

Lee nodded again, watching her face as she got lost in the memories of those family stories.

"When my dad was alive, he and Mother never left the house without kissing the other one goodbye. They'd lost too many people, you see. Boys from their families, friends from school, people they never got to say goodbye to because the war had everyone all over the world faster than they could imagine – and that kind of hung over both of them, I think. They always had to make sure there'd been nothing left unsaid. It was really important to my mother that she was with Daddy when he died, so they could say goodbye properly." She glanced at Lee, seeing the understanding in his expressive eyes. "And when J.C. was in the hospice, it was just the same – every night when we left to go home, we made sure to hug him and give him a kiss goodnight and tell him we loved him because we never knew if he'd still be there the next day."

"I'm so sorry," Lee said softly.

"I know," she smiled at him, although he could tell she'd teared up a bit thinking about her brother. "But I told you all that so you'd understand…"

"Why you won't stay in the car?" When she nodded with a faint smile, it suddenly clicked. "That's why you gave me that speech that night in the swamp, isn't it? Just in case."

"Yes," she admitted. "I needed to know I did everything I could, and look, I know you're perfectly capable of looking after yourself, but you know I'm going to worry about you, so can we make a deal? You try to stop telling me to wait in the car and I'll try to stop worrying so much."

"Sometimes there's a good reason for you to wait in the car," he pointed out.

"And when there is, I'll do it," she promised. "But if there's something I can do, I want to be doing something to help- and I could have helped this morning, and you know it!"

"And there was a lot of good reasons you weren't there this morning, Amanda! You need to be home with your family at that time of day, not trailing me around the red light district!"

"Fine. But you could have taken backup. Efraim Beaman could have gone with you."

"And done what? Trembled the vice squad loose?"

"He might surprise you," said Amanda. "You didn't expect a housewife to show up and rescue you from Mrs. Welch, did you? He's a trained agent, Lee – just because you frighten him to death doesn't mean he couldn't be useful. Anyway, you're getting me off topic. Just…whether I'm your partner… or something… either way… if you have to go off and do these things without me, can we not leave it like we did last night, with you giving me the brush-off..."

"I wasn't giving you the bru-"

Amanda kept talking as if he hadn't tried to interrupt. "So that I never have to wonder if it would have been different if I'd been there?"

They stared at each other for a moment, Amanda expectantly, Lee thoughtful. Suddenly his face lit up with the easy grin she loved even though she knew it meant he was up to something.

"What?" she asked, trying to hide the tremor of laughter in her voice.

"If I agree, does it make a difference whether you're my partner or something? Or will I get a hug and a kiss every time I leave the office either way?" he asked, eyes dancing.

"Lee!"

"Couldn't hurt to ask," he grinned, turning the car engine over and starting to pull out of the Agency garage.

Amanda was blushing and staring out the car window so he only barely heard her grumble under her breath. "Couldn't hurt to try either."