The doorbell rang as Tony was hauling a basket of clothes upstairs from the laundry room. Setting them on the landing, he jogged down the steps, pulled open the door and came face-to-face with Kathleen.

"Hi, Tony," she said cheerily.

"Kathleen, hi. Wha- what are you doing here?" he stammered.

"Oh, just thought I'd drop by since I knew you'd be all alone in this big house. Thought you might be lonely," she said, trickling a finger down his bicep. "Are you?"

"Are I what?" Tony gulped.

"Lonely, silly."

"Uh, well, I'm ah ... I'm really busy. Dusting, washing, you know, housekeeper stuff."

Tony didn't know what to do. Why wasn't he thrilled to see Kathleen? Why didn't he greet her with a kiss and an invitation to a romantic dinner that evening?

"Tony, is something wrong?" Kathleen asked as she moved into the living room and Tony shut the door behind her.

Walking toward her, he tried to pull a coherent thought together. "Wrong? No, of course not, no. Where would you get an idea like that?" he said, trying to stall until he thought of how to deal with his feelings. Her pointed look, though, had him back pedaling his denial. "Uh, well, maybe everything isn't as right as it should be."

She met him in front of the stairs and pressed her lips to his. Breaking the kiss, she murmured, "Is that better?"

"Uh-huh," he muttered absently, a little dazed by the kiss as he leaned in for more. Then, like a mirage, Angela's face shimmered in his mind, and it was her lips he imagined were on his. As if a lightening bolt tore through his system, he jerked away from Kathleen with enough force that he staggered backward. "No ... no ... I can't do this. Kathleen, there's something I need to tell you."

"What is it, Tony? You're awfully jumpy."

He walked to the couch and collapsed onto the cushions. "I wasn't honest with you the other night – or myself." He paused, collecting he thoughts as she walked toward him and took a seat. "I let something happen that I shouldn't have, and now I've hurt someone I care about very much."

Like stepping back from a mosaic, Kathleen finally saw the whole picture rather than isolated snapshots of Tony's life. "I assume you're referring to Angela?" she said simply.

Tony nodded somberly. "How'd you know?"

"I'm not blind, Tony. I saw how nervous you were yesterday when I stopped over, and I saw Angela's reaction when she put two and two together about us."

He grimaced. "Was it that obvious?"

She shot him another pointed look that clearly said it was, but then she followed up with, "So why did you say the two of you were just friends?"

"We are, strictly speaking. And I've just gotten so used to saying that over the years that I didn't think twice about it. Then, in the hotel room, I pushed everything else out of my mind because I really did want to be with you."

Kathleen looked at him, torn between sympathy and frustration. He didn't strike her as someone who approached relationships casually or was careless with people's feelings, yet he'd slept with her knowing he had feelings for someone else.

"I feel like I have the right to ask, what exactly is there between you two?"

Tony sighed deeply and searched for words to describe something that had always remained unspoken. Even to his cousin Maurizio he'd only been able to say that maybe "nothing" was too strong of a word.

"That's just it, we've never defined it. Every time it's come up over the years, we shoved it back under the surface because of the kids or the fact that I work for her. But it never went away, and lately, we began to sort of let things move at their own, very slow pace."

It was the most he'd ever said on the subject to anyone.

Kathleen, though, was again, caught between emotions. On one hand, what Tony described seemed both sweet and profoundly deep. On the other, how could two people feel so much while living under the same roof, and not acknowledge it?

"So, in all these years – what, six? You and Angela never once …?" she trailed off hoping her meaning was clear.

It was. And Tony acted utterly affronted. "No, of course not. What kind of a housekeeper do you think I am?"

She rolled her eyes, but she could tell that was a point of pride with him. Angela signed his paycheck and put a roof over his daughter's head. But still …

"Tony, ordinarily, this wouldn't be any of my business, but I'm the one getting dumped because your feelings were so repressed you didn't even realize they were there until it was too late."

He nodded in resigned acknowledgement.

"If you don't make this right with her, and soon, you'll lose whatever chance you have left. But she's not going to jump into your arms just because you broke it off with me," she reminded him.

At least he seemed to understand that fact. "No, right, I get that. But I still need to apologize – to Angela and to you. I'm sorry for misleading you, Kathleen."

She shook her head in bewildered exasperation. With any other man, such a scenario could make her feel like she'd been used as a cheap one-night stand, but from the start, she'd pegged Tony as a genuine person, and she trusted that instinct now. "I'm certainly not going to thank you for it," she admitted honestly as she stood up from the couch, "but we've all made mistakes we wish we could take back."

"You're a good woman, Kathleen Sawyer," he said sincerely, following her lead and standing up.

"And you're a great guy, Tony Micelli. I'm sorry for what we might have had together."

She kissed him lightly on the cheek, before turning and walking to the door. With a soft glance back, she left without another word while Tony stood there absorbing the decisions he had just made about his feelings for Angela.

He couldn't deny any longer that he loved her and had for a long time. But now that he allowed the full force of his feelings to surface, it overwhelmed him to such a degree that he was ready to fly into New York just to tell her. But he knew he couldn't do that. No doubt she was still hurt and angry. First, he owed her an apology and an explanation, and if he waited too long, she might not want to hear either one.

That was a risk he couldn't take.