My appreciation to all the readers who've put this story on their favorites and alerts list, and specifically the readers who posted reviews, garnet86, MaliceArchangela, Pati G W Black, , Guest, Adamantium Rose, spiffymac0617, KaseyJ, Penny Tortoiseshell, blown-transistor, GhibliGirl91, Arrows the Wolf, and Shiori92.

This chapter was originally planned to not happen until the end of the story, but sometimes your characters take on a life of their own and don't behave the way you –wish- they would behave. Perhaps it's because the –last- chapter featured Tony Stark and we all know the Iron Man rarely does as he's told. Or maybe it's because readers have expressed a desire to pull our heroine further into the action and that has sparked a whole –new- range of possibilities. Or maybe it's a little bit of both?

Thanks for reading!

X

Chapter 29

"He's an asshole," Jacquie said. "Don't tell me I didn't warn you! A guy like that can get any girl he wants."

"Steve's not like that," Bernice said, tipping her spoon upside-down and sticking it in her mouth, not even the decadence of Chunky Monkey enough to make her feel better.

"Just give me the address of this gym of his you said he owns," Jacquie said, her black eyes fierce with righteous indignation. "I'll have a whole dump truck full of dead fish delivered to his doorstep."

That got a hint of a smirk out of Bernice, but only for a second. First she had made excuses for his late arrival, telling all her friends it wasn't like Steve to be late and he had a very important job. Then she'd gotten angry, silently fuming as her friends had given her that knowing look and told her she deserved better. When her friends had begun to leave the exhibit and she realized he wasn't coming, she had cried. Then she'd gotten angry again, leaving three messages on Steve's voicemail, the last one telling him what an asshole he was and informing him she was going home. Then she'd thought better of it, remembering that in his line of work sometimes you have to save the world, and called back, leaving a message apologizing. And then she had cried some more. Right now, her eyes were so red-rimmed from crying that she didn't have any tears left to shed. So now it was on to every jilted girlfriend's Plan B … Ben and Jerry's.

Bernice stuck the spoon back into the pint and half-heartedly scooped out another bite. She and Ben and Jerry had developed quite the friendly little ménage au trois back when Mike had dumped her for a new job at the biggest law firm in town. Although at least Mike had the decency to dump her in the privacy of their apartment. Not in front of fifty of her closest friends, art students, and former professors at a digital art exhibit which featured some of her concept art for video games.

"He wouldn't just not show up like that without a reason," Bernice said, her heart screaming 'please please please please' but the sick feeling in her gut calling her a loser.

"What?" Jacquie said in her usual blunt style. "What could have been so important that the guy couldn't at least pick up the phone and call you?"

"He's ….um…" Bernice trailed off.

How could she tell her best friend why she was so willing to give Steve the benefit of the doubt without spilling classified information? Not that Jacquie knew a lot, but she did know Steve Rogers was one of the soldiers who'd saved New York. She hadn't been working for Stark Industries the first time she'd bumped into him at her grandmother's nursing home. She'd told Jacquie all about hot guy who'd shown up to speak to her grandmother instead of the geriatric they'd been expecting. After that, Grandma Peggy had given her a stern lecture about protecting people's identities so the bad guys didn't show up at their doorstep. Bernice had been evasive about the mystery man ever since, not willing to lie to Jacquie, but not volunteering what little truth she knew, either.

What if Steve had deliberately blown her off? It wouldn't be the first time some guy she'd been seeing suddenly broke things off. As a matter of fact, right about now was usually when that sort of thing happened, although usually it didn't happen until after the third date. The curse of the third date. What was it with guys, always expecting to get laid on the third date? Not that Steve…

"He's gay," Bernice said, sitting upright in her chair. All the puzzle pieces fell into place. Now that she thought about it, all the signs had been there all along. Buff guy obsessed about working out all the time. Meticulous attention to what he wore, just a little too dressy for the occasion. Obsessively neat … well … she'd never been into his personal quarters but the gym itself had been obsessively tidy. And an artist. Art had more than its fair share of queens. And in the end, it had been her chasing after him the whole time, not the other way around.

"Has he ever tried …" Jacquie asked.

"No," Bernice said. "Not even a kiss goodnight. He didn't even hold my hand until our last date, and then he always kept a safe distance between us, as though … I don't know. He doesn't act normal."

Jacquie grabbed a second spoon.

"Pass over that pint," Jacquie said. "Damn. Something that nice looking goes over to the dark side, makes me want to snarf down some Ben and Jerry's, too. How'd you miss that one, girlfriend?"

"I dunno," Bernice said. "Blind lust? My 'gaydar' is usually more alert."

The door buzzer rang. The girls looked at each other, and then the clock. It was well after midnight.

"It's him!" Bernice said, leaping out of her chair.

"No you don't!" Jacquie said, standing in front of the door with her arms crossed, her red and black striped hair making her look like an angry tiger. "Unless that's the police come to tell you they need you to identify his body in the morgue, the only way he's getting anywhere near you is if he suitably grovels to my satisfaction. And that means flowers and candy and some good old-fashioned boot-licking!"

"But he…" Bernice protested.

The door buzzer rang again.

"You know The Rules," Jacquie said. She held out her hand, her pinky finger extended. "You took an oath! From now on, you're going to follow The Rules!"

The buzzer rang a third time. Bernice looked at Jacquie, and then the empty containers of Cherry Garcia, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and the nearly empty container of Chunky Monkey. After Mike had dumped her, Jacquie had showed up with this book of dating advice called The Rules. It was archaic advice your grandmother would have given you. In fact, it was dating advice her grandmother had given to her! Make the guy chase you. Make the guy wait until he's ready to marry you before you jump into bed with him. It had saved her many a broken heart when she'd gotten dumped after refusing to put out after the third date, before she was too emotionally invested in a guy who turned out to be a jerk.

Although, until tonight, Steve had seemed every bit as much of a Rules Guy as she was a Rules Girl…

"I'll get the door!" Jacquie said. Before Bernice could decide either way, Jacquie had bolted out into the stairwell, slamming the door behind her.

Was it him? It had to be him. Who else would it be at this hour? Should she overrule Jacquie and go downstairs? No. She looked terrible. She'd been crying her eyes out for hours and come home and put on her ugliest, most threadbare comfy pajamas. She rushed in front of the mirror, frantically trying to rub the smudged mascara that made her look like a raccoon and straighten out her hair. Oh! God! She looked absolutely awful! Don't let him come up, she prayed. Please don't let him see me like this!

The sound of footsteps came up the stairs. One set? Or two? Bernice held her breath, freezing as she waited to see if it was even him. The door swung open. Bernice stared in disbelief.

"Mr. Stark?" she stammered.

Jacquie came in behind him, her expression perplexed.

"If you don't mind, Miss Gyeong," Mr. Stark gestured to Jacquie. "I need to speak to Bernice."

Jacquie shot Bernice a 'you must tell all' look and scooted into her bedroom without protest. It appeared Tony Stark's mere presence was enough to convince her Steve must have a very good excuse. Bernice took a deep breath and tried to calm herself so she wouldn't stutter like an idiot. Why couldn't she be more self-confident like her grandmother?

Why the hell was Tony Stark himself coming out in the middle of the night to make excuses for …

Oh, god!

"Steve," Bernice said, her voice high-pitched and strangled. "Is he alright?"

Mr. Stark pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers as though he had a pounding headache.

"Got any of that Chunky Monkey left?" he asked.

Bernice blinked, surprised at this strange request from her bosses boss's boss.

"It's almost … um …" she stammered. "I could get you your own spoon?"

Mr. Stark snorted, a weary kind of snort that was supposed to have come out as a laugh, but he was so tired it came out more of a pathetic sigh.

"Get some sleep, kid," Mr. Stark said. "There will be a car waiting for you at 10:00 a.m. on the nose. What Steve has got to tell you, he's just going to have to tell you in person."

"What?" Bernice asked.

Mr. Stark shook his head, rubbing his eyebrows and his temples. Everybody always commented on how virile Tony Stark always appeared, but this was the first time she'd ever seen her boss exhibit the weariness she'd seen in some of the pictures snapped after the Avengers had taken down the alien armada. He looked almost as exhausted as … Steve.

"He didn't mean to miss your date," Mr. Stark said, his voice weary. "Really. He didn't. Sometimes … it takes a special kind of woman to love a superhero. I just hope you're that woman, Miss Rosenthal, 'cause if anybody needs that kind of thing right now, its Steve Rogers."

Mr. Stark picked up what was left of the Chunky Monkey and left without saying another word. Jacquie rushed out of her bedroom the moment the door clicked behind him, pumping her for information Bernice knew she could not, under all the classified information waivers she'd signed for both the government and also Stark Industries, tell her.

Was this what it had been like for her grandmother?

X

Bernice stared out the window, her face impassive as the Lincoln Town Car glided through the streets of Brooklyn. He hadn't meant to miss their date. It was the answer she'd been hoping to hear, but the weariness in Mr. Stark's voice indicated he thought she might not want to know whatever truth Steve Rogers needed to tell her.

The car slid through a pair of enormous stone gates which was familiar.

"Are we in the right place?" Bernice asked.

"This is the address I was given," the driver said. He was one of the many Stark Industries drivers sent to run VIP's around town. Bernice had crossed paths with the drivers, giving them a friendly smile on her way into the building each morning, but she'd never had any reason to talk to them. She didn't even know this one's name. Another anonymous cog in the enormous machinery of Stark Industries.

The car stopped at the place she'd expected it to stop the minute they'd passed through the gates of Green-Wood Cemetery. Her connection to Steve and all the weirdness which had come with that, including her new job, had all started with her grandmother. Bernice swallowed. What was it her grandmother had told her the day before she had died? There were secrets she was glad to be taking with her into the grave so they wouldn't ghost around, haunting people anymore. Was Steve one of those ghosts?

It was getting late in the season to be riding a motorcycle, but Steve's vintage 1938 Indian was parked at the side of the driveway, gleaming blue and whitish-grey just like the armor he wore into battle. He stood in front of her grandmother's gravestone, wearing the beige khaki's, vintage-style brown leather jacket, and button down shirt he always wore. Bernice got out of the car and thanked the driver, not sure whether to be concerned or relieved when the car slid out of the graveyard every bit as silently as it had arrived. She knew he heard her approach even though he didn't turn to see her face. She paused, waiting to hear what he had to say.

"I loved your grandmother," Steve said softly, one hand caressing the gravestone of both Bernice's grandmother and also her grandfather. "I would have asked her to marry me if I'd come back from that last mission alive."

He didn't turn, letting his words sink in even though they made no sense. Bernice opened her mouth and shut it again, sensing this was something he needed to tell her without being interrupted. Steve got tongue-tied around women whenever he tried to speak whatever was in his heart. For some reason, with her grandmother he had overcome those inhibitions.

"For two years I dreamed of kissing those lips," Steve continued, his voice almost a whisper. "Peggy wouldn't give me the time of day. Said I wasn't good enough. Not even after they turned me into super-soldier."

Bernice's mouth formed into a surprised 'o' even as her brain refused to acknowledge the truth her heart knew he was trying to tell her. Breadcrumbs dropped by her grandmother. The pictures. The way he dressed. His manners. Everything about him screamed 1945 except for his physical age.

"Sixty-seven years I was asleep," Steve said, his back still turned to her. "Sixty-seven years that your grandmother went on to live her life and I did not. I shouldn't be alive. But for some reason, God thought it would be funny to bring back some guy who for all intents and purposes died back in 1945."

Steve turned to her then and she saw that he had tears in his eyes.

"I just wanted to make sure that the first time I ever kissed you," Steve whispered, taking a step towards her and raising one hand to touch the corner of her lips. "That it was you I was kissing, and not the echo of something that never existed."

Bernice stood still, unable to do anything but stare up at the beautiful, tormented face which had inhabited every waking thought since the day she had first laid eyes upon him. Pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. The archaic uniform. The ring he had thrown into the grave. The way he had diligently come out to visit her grandmother at the nursing home almost every single day. Sixty-seven years? He had been frozen in time for sixty-seven years? What would it be like, to go to sleep in one century and wake up in another, everything and everyone you had ever known gone?

She reached up to touch the hand he had over her cheek, nodding her understanding. There were no words to express her tangle of emotions as questions burst into her mind. Tears welled in her eyes as she realized what it must have been like for him, to be cast out of time like some ship adrift at sea.

He pulled her into an embrace then, so very much like the one he had pulled her into after that first dance the night of the party, the reason for his hesitation. Self-doubt waged war with the little voice in her heart that whispered tales of hope. That it wasn't her he wanted, but her grandmother who was dead and in the grave!

"I understand," Bernice choked out. "You … um … I'm not the one you want."

The arms that held her trembled, no longer strong. He tightened the embrace he held her in, his breath a gasp of pain as he kissed the top of her hair.

"I wanted to look you up after your grandmother died," Steve said, tugging her towards a stone bench the cemetery had placed under a little tree next to her grandmother's grave. "I really did. But I didn't think it was fair to explore a new relationship until I was certain I was over the old one. The one which had never been."

He pulled her down to sit next to him, his strong arms wrapping around her as he pulled her into his side. They sat there, only the late-autumn chit-chit-chit of a chickadee breaking the silence as they leaned into each other's warmth and stared at the gravestone of the woman who had brought them together.

"I think she loved you," Bernice said at last.

"She did," Steve said. He tilted her chin up with his thumb and forefinger so that he could look into her eyes. "But she loved your grandfather even more. And for the first time, I'm okay with that."

His lips brushed hers, the softest whisper of a kiss so soft she wasn't sure it had even happened. He pulled her back into his side, wrapping his arms around her as he rested his chin on the top of her head. Bernice waited, the faint sound of his beating heart a clock ticking away the seconds. Waited to hear the rest of what he had to say. Had she not spent the last six months piecing together alien technology, what he was telling her was so bizarre she probably would have run screaming.

"She made me promise I would shield you from the ugly reality of the things we both had seen," Steve said. He kissed the top of her hair a second time, the kiss lingering and thoughtful, neither passion nor pity. It was the comfortable embrace somebody gives someone they have known a very long time. "I don't think I can do that anymore."

He sighed, but it was not the sad sigh of earlier, but one of resignation. Bernice sensed he was not finished saying what he had come here to say. Not to her. But to her dead grandmother. He touched her hair, one finger pushing back a strand which had fallen across her face so he could look into her eyes.

"I'm not used to breaking promises," Steve said at last. "I just thought it fitting that when I broke my promise to Peggy to not to get you tangled up in all of this, that I should do it here."

Tugging her to her feet, his hand in hers, he led her towards the motorcycle which sat waiting. A relic. Like he was a relic of a time long dead and gone. He handed her a helmet, having come prepared with two, and helped her onto the motorcycle, his broad back stepping into place in front of her to kick it off its stand.

"Steve?" Bernice asked. She swallowed. "How come you didn't come?"

She paused, waiting for the inevitable words she knew he was legally obligated to say. That's classified. Steve didn't turn to speak to her, but took one of the hands she had tentatively wrapped around his waist and brought it up to his lips, opening her fingers to lay a kiss upon her palm, and then pressing it over his heart.

"My alien friend got sick," Steve said.

Kicking the Indian to life with a single kick of his heel, he guided the motorcycle out of the cemetery, through the traffic, and onto the freeway beyond. Bernice melded into his warm back, relishing the feel of his abdominal muscles flexing beneath her fingers as they leaned together into the curves, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. She didn't know where he was taking her, and she didn't care. All that mattered was that it was with him.

X

Note: 'The Rules' is a book written by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider. The seemingly archaic rules are some of the best dating advice you will ever get. While some people accuse 'Rules Girls' of being manipulative, nothing could be further than the truth. Rules Girls learn to spot troublesome behavior and avoid those guys. If you're a gal, read The Rules. Steve is definitely a 'Rules Guy.'

Be sure to drop me your thoughts in the comments box below. Accolades or criticism … one feeds my ego … the other makes me a better writer.