Lois could not stop staring at John across this table. "I never took you as a redhead." She smiled.
"I just chose the first picture that came into my mind. As long as I am of the female species , we should be fine, unless Kal-el now thinks you have broadened your horizons in terms of gender." John laughed.
"Don't joke! I hope he does come back for me. I cannot face a 10 hour flight back to Kansas. I would love to run back now."
"He will come back for you although I bet Brainiac is trying to convince him otherwise. He loves you, Lois and I think that is the only thing keeping him from being pulled under at the moment. Jor-el has never been one to give much away but he regards you highly."
Lois blushed. "So I guess I will get on with my in-laws, well at least Jor-el. Tell me about Clark's mother."
"Lara was a beautiful, kind and intelligent women. She made Jor-el the man he was and without him I think he would have been lost. Much like Clark would be without you." John explained.
Just then a familiar face entered the reception area. "Time to kick butt!" Lois announced as she got up. She looked at John. "I may see you at breakfast, Amy. It was nice to meet you."
Clark noticed Lois approaching him. She noticed a sad and very sheepish look on his face. "Come with me, Clark. We need to have a serious talk." She grabbed his hand and took him to their room.
As she closed the door, she waited. "Right… what happened this evening? Did you hurt that man?" she demanded to know.
"No, I scared him but I did not hurt him. I don't think I would have done." He muttered.
"So where have you been all this time?"
"Just thinking about things. About us?"
"Do you want to break up? You seem convinced I was flirting with someone else, when I was not. You need to remember that you are imagining things at the moment. I will never look at another man again. I love you, and only you." She explained. "but if you feel you cannot trust me, let's just chalk it up to a nice few days together and never mention it again. I am not interested in copying the Lana and Clark rollercoaster relationship. We are either a couple or we are not."
Clark was taken aback by her matter of factness. "I don't want to break up, Lois. That would break my heart but you need to understand I am not myself at the moment. It turns out Milton Fine is a Krytonian and he has told me my father was a tyrant who razed my home planet. "
Lois looked at him. "And you believe him? From what you tell me about your father, he may try to dictate over your life, but to destroy the whole planet including himself and his wife, I find that hard to believe. What else did Fine say?"
"He said that you do not love me and that we are only together due to my present instability." Clark seemed upset.
"Look Clark. I am here for you and will help you beat whatever is affecting you but you need to decide where we stand. Maybe it would be better to see how you feel after you recover from your paranoia."
"Lois, you say that like I will recover. Maybe I will be like this forever. We don't even know what or who is causing it?"
"You will recover, I promise. Now, let's just work on helping you and forget about us until then." She smiled.
"I am sorry but I cannot do that." He said with an emotionless face as he walked towards her and started to unbutton her shirt. "I need you now…" He pressed his lips on to hers. She reciprocated immediately, as she started on his shirt. Soon they both fell back on the bed.
Everything was forgotten about that night, except the chance to express their feelings to one another in both a physical and emotional way.
The sun woke them up early next morning as they lay entwined in bed.
"Are you ok? Is everything ok between us?" he whispered gently in her ear.
She looked up at him. "Clark, do you think you need to ask that after last night?"
"Probably not, but I just thought I would ask. What do you think we should do next?" he asked with uncertainty.
"How about breakfast in bed and I forgot to tell you but I booked this room for another night?" Lois announced hoping he would agree to stay so they could let his infection peak with no one else in harm's way.
"You will have to convince me." He grinned as he pulled the duvet over their heads.
Back in Smallville…
Chloe walked past Jonathan as he answered the door and walked over the kitchen table where Martha was sitting in her dressing gown.
"Chloe, it is 2am."
"We have a problem! Lois is missing from the hotel. The maid has just let me into her room and it is a ram shackled mess. There has obviously been some kind of struggle going on and she said she saw a man matching Clark's description entering the room."
"Oh my god. He has Lois, doesn't he?" Martha said in disbelief. "He wouldn't hurt her, would he?"
"We cannot be certain. You saw what he was like and he and Lois don't see eye to eye normally. Why would he take her?" Jonathan asked.
Chloe put her hand to make her admission. "That may have been me. Lois admitted that she had been the one to call the police on Clark. I was going to tell you about it but I wanted to speak to Lois further about why she did it."
"This is such a mess!" Martha replied. "We cannot call the police. Maybe Lois is fine and has just gone away. " she picked up the phone.
"I wouldn't bother. Her phone has been switched off or out of area all day. I have even tried to track her last movements but the last place the phone was active was at the hotel about 2pm yesterday. After that… nothing."
"Do you really believe he has her?" Martha asked in a panic.
"I think we have to assume it is a real possibility. Lois is never one for not answering her cell." Chloe added.
" And I honestly don't know what he is capable of at the moment." Jonathan stressed. "You have seen how erratic and violent his behaviour has become."
Martha was about to ring Lois when she noticed a red flashing light on the phone display. "Maybe Lois has left a message. I will put it on speaker phone."
Hello, Mr and Mrs Kent. This is General Sam Lane. I am ringing with a message for Lo. Will you tell her that I am going to be at Fort Ryan in the next few days and will pop in sometime on Thursday afternoon. For some reason she is not answering her cell. No doubt she has run out of credit on it. It will also be good to catch up with you two as well. Thanks. Bye.
Martha sank into the chair. "Could this get any more complicated?"
Meanwhile in Florence, Lois and Clark were having breakfast on their hotel balcony as they discussed the Milton Fine revelations as well as their plans to deal with Clark's problems.
Suddenly Lois heard her cell ring. "It's your mom. I must have knocked it on by mistake. What should I tell her? Chloe will have our location within a minute of me being on the phone. We need to come up with a reason why am I in Italy. Oh wait a moment…." Her face lit up.
Lois picked up. "Hi Martha! How are you?"
"Worried." Lois could hear the relief as Martha said it. "Chloe went by your hotel room to see you were ok. There were clothes strewn all over the floor as though there had been a struggle."
Lois looked over at a bright red Clark who was well aware of the reason for the bombsite. "Oh, Mrs K. You know how messy I am and I just had to grab clothes and run. I was really pressed for time."
Lois listened into the background noise. She could hear Chloe muttering to Jonathan. "She is in Italy, somewhere between Milan and Rome. How the hell did she get there?"
"Where are you, Lois? It sounds like the other side of the planet, going by the quality of this line." Martha tried to make up an excuse.
"I am in Florence. You wouldn't believe it my fiancé turned up at my hotel yesterday afternoon and whisked me by private jet to Italy so he could propose." Lois heard Clark choke on some toast as she explained her exciting news to Martha.
"Did she say fiancé?" Chloe asked angrily in the background.
"Chloe, what are you doing at the farm in the middle of the night?"
"Looking for you! By the way do we get to meet this mysterious fiancé of yours?" her cousin asked.
Lois paused, looking at Clark for guidance but he just shrugged his shoulders. He still looked whiter than she had ever seen him look.
"You know it is complicated, and we have to pick our time to tell his family and significant others." She said without lying.
"I don't think there will ever be a good time to break it to his wife and children." Chloe snapped back with venom.
Martha intervened. "Look, we will see you when you come back."
"We will be back on Thursday." Lois added. "See you then."
Jonathan looked shocked too. "I just hope she makes it back before her father arrives. I guess we can expect some fireworks, but at least she is well away from Clark."
Lois put her cell down on the table and waited for the blasting from Clark, but it never came.
He just looked at her and smiled, his color returning. "I guess we had better go and get you an engagement ring."
She looked flustered. "Look I will just say he has not had a chance to buy one yet."
He sniggered. "Lo, there is no way your supposed rich boyfriend is going to fly you 1000's of miles across the globe to one of the most romantic cities to propose and then not have a ring. Get real! Give me a moment!" he sped off.
Five minutes later, he returned. "Where have you been?"
"Silesia in Poland. I hope you appreciate the fact that I went down a coal mine for you."
"I can tell." She laughed as she saw the black dust covering the back of his shirt. "But I am not really into coal."
"Yes but you might be into this." He smiled as he opened his hand to show her two tiny but very expensive diamonds. "I made them from the coal. Now all we need to do is exchange one of these diamonds for a ring of your choice and get it set."
Her eyes lit up, but then dimmed a little. "This is a great way of keeping up the pretence."
He looked at her. "Yes it's perfect and we can sell it when this is all over." She listened for some disappointment in his voice but she never heard it, leaving her a little sad. "Let's stop in Paris to buy the ring." He suggested.
"In fact, let's go there now and book a hotel there for tonight. If we stay here, we will have to stay in the hotel in case the man I threatened yesterday is a local and recognises us."
"Ok… great idea." Lois hugged him and gently kissed him. She would never admit but she would be having the best time of her life, had it not been for two worried parents and an extremely angry cousin back in Smallville.