Title: It Almost Happened One Night
Fandom: Who's The Boss (my first WTB fic!)
Summary: Alternate scene for "It Happened One Summer". Tony kisses Angela goodnight, and it becomes a little more.
Rating: PG
Pairings/Characters: Tony/Angela (of course)
Length: 600 words
Genres: angst/romance
A/N: Well, I've been catching reruns on ION and it's reawakened my love for Who's The Boss. So I've finally sat down and written my first WTB fic to get the juices flowing. :) Enjoy!

It Almost Happened One Night

Swallowing against the lump in her throat, Angela forced the words out. "Good night, Tony," she said. Part of her didn't want to say good-night—didn't want to go to sleep tonight—but the other part of her insisted that she had to—she'd had the discussion with Tony; they'd mutually agreed not to go any further.

"Good night, Angela," Tony replied slowly, hesitantly. Then, just as tentatively, he rolled over and brushed a light kiss against Angela's cheek.

He'd kissed her on the cheek before, but this time it made her heart beat faster and her breath catch in her chest. That safe part of her hoped, prayed, and screamed that Tony would simply roll back over and go to sleep.

But that part of her was wrong, and Tony lingered close to Angela after kissing her.

His breath was warm on her cheek, and her own breath was now impossible to draw in and out again. Her throat was dry and she didn't think she could've spoken a word of warning even if she'd wanted to. Angela's mind was running a million miles a minute, flashing through every possible logical reason why she should work up the courage and turn away from Tony.

But somehow, she couldn't hear her own thoughts, her own logic.

Ever so slowly, she turned her face. But not away from Tony's like her mind insisted that she should. No, she turned her face towards his, under his, until her lips lightly brushed against his.

Unbelievably, her breath caught for a third time as time seemed to slow almost to a stop. It hung suspended for a long moment as Angela for once threw all of her caution and logic to the wind.

Then it became a real kiss, lips pressed firmly to each other, and time rushed back to its normal self in a blur. Eyes fluttering closed, Angela's stomach did somersaults. She was giddy with joy, like a child.

She hadn't felt like this since… her first kiss, twenty years ago, with this very same man. Yes, kissing him still stirred all those same places deep inside of her, like nothing at all had changed.

With Tony's hand tangling in her hair, Angela suddenly, roughly, crashed back to reality.

Everything had changed.

He wasn't just Anthony, the cute 11-year-old boy from the YMCA camp across the lake anymore. He was Tony Micelli, the man who she employed as her housekeeper, who she trusted as a friend that she would never want to lose.

And she wasn't "Ingrid," a nervous little 13-year-old, anymore either, but far from it. She had the strength now to swallow her wants, swallow her eagerness, in light of the painful truth. And that's exactly what she did.

Never even hinting at her reluctance, she pulled away from him. She physically swallowed to clear away things that were not physical. And she slowly opened her eyes and met Tony's with a firmness that she secretly wished she didn't have.

"Tony, I… We can't do this," she whispered tightly. "We just can't."

She saw the flash of hurt and pain in his eyes, but it was gone in an instant and he nodded knowingly at her. Disentangling his hand from her hair, he rolled back over to his side of the bed. It didn't escape Angela's notice that he put as much room as physically possible between them now.

Closing her eyes, she once again swallowed the hurt and pain. "Good night, Tony," she murmured.

"Night, Angela."

It also didn't escape her that his mumbled reply didn't include the word good.

End

Be true, please review!