A/N: Chapter title borrowed from Stars' song "The Night Starts Here". Gosh, I'm really loving this story -- I'm so happy you all love it as much as I do! I'm just letting the story take me where it wants, so I don't know where any of this will lead... but I have a feeling it's going to take a little while to end. :) I hope you stick with me!


"Jim!" Pam cried as she turned around. She had never before been both so terrified and so happy to see someone as she did at that moment.

Jim put a finger to his lips and pointed to the phone pressed against his collarbone. He brought it back up to his ear. "Yeah, Michael, the reception isn't very good right where I'm standing. Can you repeat that?"

Pam listened in as she dragged her suitcase out of the backseat of the cab and collected her credit card receipt from the driver.

"No Michael, don't do that. Pam hates carnations."

Freezing, Pam smiled to herself at the idea that Jim was so observant of her likes and dislikes. That was the difference – one of the differences – that had led her to Halifax on a Monday night in September to see him, to try. She struggled to remember the last time she had felt so cared about. So loved.

"I'd wait," Jim said, "You never know what could happen."

A series of "mm-hmm"'s and "yup"'s followed, culminating in a cheerful sounding "Will do" and the soft click of Jim's phone closing. Pam straightened herself up and lifted her eyes to meet his.

"Pamela Morgan Beesly," Jim said, "Did you know your boss was just on the line? If he caught you playing hooky… ."

She smiled wide and took a step forward to hug Jim, but stopped short, unsure of what the appropriate gesture would be. Jim seemed hesitant too; he glanced inside the hotel lobby a few time before reaching out and plucking a piece of thread from her coat. She was speechless.

Jim looked around again and then grabbed the handle on Pam's suitcase, "Let's go inside. Do you have a room?"
"No, not yet." She laughed, "I didn't really have a plan at all!"

Jim's broad smile was electric. He shook his head and motioned with it towards the elevators "Come on, Beesly," he said, "before you get me in trouble too."

--

Jim was relieved only when he finally closed the door behind him and locked it against the hallway. He'd not seen a single person he recognized on the impossibly long walk from the lobby to his door. Dwight had not been waiting for him anywhere, which he seriously thought would be the case. And Pam was standing there in the entryway. He watched her with her back to him, oblivious to the attention he lavished upon her. He had never been so happy to see someone in his life.

But there was the inevitable confusion that followed, and the lingering discomfited quality of the silence that enveloped them as they stood on the threshold of Jim's hotel room. All that had happened Friday night was not gone between them; it just made the air they breathed denser and harder to gulp down.

And to top it all off, Jim was having a very hard time not thinking about Karen. How many more layers are you going to add to this cake before it falls over? he asked himself. But seeing Karen, recognizing the things that had first attracted him to her – her assertiveness, her drive and ambition, and – why deny it? – the sheer sexiness she exuded – and combining it with the rejection he surely felt from Pam had made him seriously question the sanity of allowing Karen to leave while he was on the phone with Michael outside the lobby doors.

Of course that had all changed the minute he saw Pam, and realized quite quickly that her ruse was all in an effort to see him. His one-track male mind was having a hard time shifting gears, but Jim banished the thoughts and tried to ease his own discomfort by concentrating on the girl in front of him. "So… what brings you to Halifax?"

Pam laughed, kicking off her shoes and walking into the room with timid steps, "I thought that one was pretty obvious, Halpert," she grinned, clutching her purse with both hands in front of her. "I mean, who would really be able to pass up the North American mid-market office supply convention?"

"It's on the top of my list of things to do every year," Jim countered. "Although I hear the lobster is good here, too."

Pam laughed and put a hand to her head, "I don't know what's come over me! I've never done anything this impulsive before. I'm sure I've maxed my credit card already."

Jim motioned for her to have a seat in the room. She chose to perch on the edge of the bed. Jim sat down across from her in the armchair, and he began taking off his shoes.

"You know, I had no idea if you'd even see me," she admitted. "I thought you'd reject me outright. I didn't really have a plan B."

"What would make you think that I'd reject you?"

She shrugged, "Because I've done it to your three times now. It's time for me to get mine."

Jim shook his head, still feeling her stinging words from Friday night. "You really think I'm that mean?"

"I don't know."

"Well Beesly, after working together this long, you really should."

She laughed. There was a long silence. Jim took off his second shoe and tossed them both towards the door. His feet were killing him and he wanted nothing more than to lie down. But with Pam on one of the beds, and things between them being what they were, he felt more self-conscious than ever about making any kind of move that might suggest his comfort level was other than what it was.

"What's going on between us?"

Jim didn't even recognize the voice as his own, and it startled him. He hadn't intended on bringing things to a head so quickly, and the words he spoke were intended for his inner monologue only. But the carefully constructed dam of propriety he'd built around himself had broken and the river of his thoughts had nothing holding them back anymore. There was no stopping it.

Pam looked shocked, but he thought she looked as if she expected it. "What do you mean?"

"What does it mean that you're here?"

Pam took a long time to consider her reply. "Jim, I made a mistake on Friday. I knew it was a mistake the moment I left your house, but I stupidly and angrily drove home because my pride… or something else equally stupid got in the way of me doing the right thing." Jim knew her mea culpa was more for her benefit, and if he could have visited her inside her head, he would have seen that it was the first time she'd spoken aloud about the weekend's events since they'd happened. "I don't know what it was," she continued, "But it drove me right to Roy and that was an even bigger mistake."

Jim felt his stomach tighten; he could imagine what she meant. The reasons why any girl had been able to elicit such a strong physical response from him had long escaped him. He'd never felt so invested, and thus so jealous, in any relationship he'd been in. It truthfully scared him, and made him wonder at times what separated his passions from Roy's where Pam was concerned.

And then she looked at him, and the act alone was enough to calm the frayed ends of Jim's nerves like a balm. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

"But then I got your message. I sat up all night, Jim, feeling so stupid and dishonest, and then I got the photo you sent. Everything just crystallized in that moment and…,"

Her eyes were watery; when she blinked to clear them, a tear spilled over her lower lashes. Jim leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, wondering whether he should comfort her or let her finish. But she wiped her eyes and rubbed the tip of her nose with her index finger, then reached over to the bedside table behind her for a tissue before continuing.

"When Roy re-proposed to me Thursday night, I said yes but it wasn't true. I don't want to marry him anymore." She was balling up and unfolding the tissue in her hands. Jim could see they were shaking. "I don't care about him the way a wife should care about a husband. I can't remember one good reason why we should be together. For me to want to wait on us–," she motioned between herself and Jim, "in order to see if things change for Roy and I… it's the stupidest thing…."

Jim could hardly contain his elation. Trembling with happiness, he clasped his hands together and pushed down on his knees with his elbows to keep them from quivering.

"That's what I started thinking about on Friday when I was drawing your hand. I was bored, so I started sketching. And you have unbelievably sensual hands, Jim. Almost erotic. It was hard to draw your fingers and not imagine them…," she blushed suddenly and looked down again, "…anyway… the way I felt about your hands, Jim… just your hands… I hadn't felt that way about any part of anyone else's body, let alone someone else's whole being. Before I knew it, I was writing what you and Roy saw that night." She paused to wipe her eyes. "I was going to tell you how I felt when the time was right, and I hoped that you still felt the same, but I couldn't do anything about it until I got to your house after… ."

Jim looked down at his hands. He had never looked at them as sensual before; hearing Pam describe them as such made him shudder.

Once again, Pam's voice broke into his solitary thoughts. "I'm stupid, Jim. I'm naïve and I make mistakes like everyone else. But if you still want to try, with me, I mean… ."

Jim couldn't resist any longer. He stood up and walked over to where Pam was sitting, lifted her hands, and hoped she'd look up at him.

"Beesly," he said, his voice strangled in his throat, "Pam… you could be ten times stupider, ten times more naïve, and make ten times the mistakes ten times bigger, and I would still be utterly, entirely in love with you."

Pam's face contorted as she cried, and she extracted a hand from Jim's grasp so she could cover her face. Jim knelt down in front of her, kissing her other hand.

"Don't cry," Jim said, his voice low.

Pam smiled, then laughed, as more tears streamed down her cheeks. She made no effort to stop them. "See, and then you go and say something like that… you make loving you so easy to do."

He smiled and kissed her gently, and she threw her arms around his neck, pulling him close and letting him melt against her warmth. He pulled away once, to look into her eyes and make sure she was still there, so unbelievable was the turn of events that had just occurred.

"So did you rehearse all that, or was it impulse too?"
She grinned, "A little of both, I think." She kissed him again, "But I meant every word."

--

The midnight maritime sky over Halifax harbour was inky and seemed to blot out the stars Jim knew should be shining down on him. He stared out of the window, past his own reflection and that of the woman sleeping in the bed behind him, and focused on the masts of the schooners and yachts moored in the water.

Hours earlier, he had torn himself from Pam's warm embrace and admitted his deep-seated fear that she would reject him again. Pam had protested, kissing him but after Jim explained himself, she seemed to understand. He – painfully, reluctantly – asked her to wait 24 hours before they went any further.

"I couldn't deal with it if you left me again," he'd told her.

"Let's sleep on it," she suggested. So she did. She slept on the bed nearest to the door, and he had stayed up in the other bed watching television. But the buzzing temptation, made painfully clear to him just under his khakis, wouldn't dissipate. He briefly considered waking Dwight up, just for the distraction it would provide. But in the end, he did what any other man in his situation would do, not really caring that a bathroom door was all that separated him from the love of his life. Following that with a frigid shower, Jim stayed up and wondered how he could ensure that Pam would still love him in the warm light of day. So he perched the complimentary pad of notepaper on his knees and began to write, as the soft sounds of Pam's sleeping sighs filled the room.