A/N: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for all your reviews. They made me really happy! Hope you like this chapter as well. Don't worry, the proposal is coming. I just need to set the mood a little.

Booth sighed as he pushed the door of the Jeffersonian and stepped into the warmness of the August air. He had tried his best, after his conversation with his girlfriend, the previous night, to sound casual and normal around her but he found it harder than he had expected it to be. He already felt rejected even though he hadn't even proposed yet. Maybe Angela was right after all. Maybe he shouldn't propose. He thought of the ring in his drawer at home and sighed once again.

"Booth!"

The sound of his name stopped him just as he was getting into his car. He looked up to see Angela jogging towards him, her bag flung over her shoulder. She walked quickly and Booth glanced at his watch. She was on time. Why was she in a hurry?

" 'Morning Angela." He replied, casually.

As if on cue, butterflies suddenly began dancing around in the pit of his stomach. He knew what was coming. He knew what Angela was going to talk to him about. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry.

He didn't feel like talking about it. He had spent the night tossing and turning, unable to stop thinking about his conversation with Temperance. She was almost against marriage. She had compared real marriages to the Hollywood fake ones. He still couldn't believe everything he had heard and he definetely didn't want to relive this conversation by talking about it to Angela.

He forced a smile as the artist stopped in front of him.

"You're here early." She told him.

"I came to drop of Temperance. Her car wouldn't start this morning for some reason. But I could have been earlier than that. She wanted to leave the house at six-thirty."

Angela giggled.

"You got her to stay home an extra forty-five minutes?"

Booth nodded, proudly.

Angela replied with a smile of her own before turning serious once again.

"Did you talk to her?"

The smile on Booth's face faded also.

"Yeah."

Barely audible response but Angela caught it.

"Ahd? What did she say?"

Stupid question. She already knew the answer.

Booth looked away, uncomfortable.

"Look, Angela. It's not even eight in the morning. I didn't sleep well last night and I have a lot of work waiting for me at the Bureau. Could we talk about this some other time? I'm not really up to it right now."

Angela ignored him.

"She hasn't changed her mind, has she?"

Booth sighed.

"Nope."

Booth could tell by her expression that Angela felt sorry for him. He felt a bit of anger rise inside of him. He didn't need anybody's pity.

"So? What are you going to do?"

The same tone that told him poor you, are you okay?. He suddenly felt rebellious. His answer took the artist aback.

"You'll do it anyway? Are you crazy?"

Her eyes were round in astonishment. Booth suppressed a chuckle.

"Crazy about her, yeah."

Angela rolled her eyes.

"That is not what I meant. Booth, if you propose, you're going to get shot down."

"Not necessarily."

She rolled her eyes once again. Booth wondered how many times it would take for her eyes to get stuck upwards. Maybe if he got her to roll her eyes just once more... He smiled.

"What's so funny?"

Booth shook his head, trying to get the mental picture out of his mind.

"Nothing. Listen, Ange. I have to go. We'll talk later, okay?"

"You sure bet we'll talk later. I'm not letting you do this."

Booth shrugged before getting into the SUV. Angela stepped back and watched as he turned the ignition and drove out of the parking lot.

" 'Morning, Sweetie." Angela said as she passed her best friend's office on her way to her own.

"Oh hey Angela." Temperance replied, her eyes and concentration not leaving the file she was holding in her hands.

Temperance heard mouvement in her office and she knew that it was Angela walking in and settling herself on her couch. She still didn't look up. She didn't need to.

Several minutes of silence passed during which Temperance reread the file to make sure she had gotten everything right before finally applying the red Case Closed stamp. She sighed in relief as she closed the folder. Yet another family had gotten the closure they had desperately needed for years.

Temperance sat down on her chair and stared at her best friend.

"Are you going to talk or are you going to sit in my office all day?" she asked as she grabbed another file and opened it.

Angela opened her mouth to reply before changing her mind. She waited a few seconds, debating how to present this without sounding too obvious or revealing Booth's secret intentions.

"I ran into Booth in the parking lot this morning."

Yes, this was the right way to start.

"He sounded and acted a bit off. Did you two have a fight or something?"

Temperance looked up.

"No. Why?"

"Well I'm just saying. He was acting a bit weird, I thought maybe things were just awkward after fight that you guys have had. Did anything else happen last night?"

I don't believe in marriage. Her words echoed in her mind. But no, it couldn't be that. They had talked about it before and Booth had already known her views on marriage. She told Angela.

"We did talk about marriage last night after Booth told me about his cousin Mark's wedding. But he couldn't have been acted weird about that since he already knew how I felt towards marriage."

Angela shook her head, as if surprised by what she was hearing.

"Sweetie, Booth is all for marriage. He wants to get married and have kids. That's what he's looking for in a relationship. I think he's just starting to doubt your own."

"You mean doubting our relationship?"

Angela nodded.

"But why would he do that?"

"I don't know, Bren. Maybe because he feels like your relationship is going nowhere. Maybe there's another reason. Booth is not getting any younger. You know as much as I do that Booth wants a big family, that Parker, as much as he loves him, isn't enough. You two want so many different things. Opposite things. Maybe he feels that your relationship together isn't worth it."

She knew she was being harsh by lying. Harsh for him and harsh for her best friend but she felt like this was the only way that Temperance would react. She didn't want neither of them to get hurt by all of this but she knew what was coming. She could almost portray Booth on one knee, holding out the ring and Temperance saying she was sorry before getting up and walking out of the room.

Tears shot up her eyes at the image. She turned to find Temperance staring weirdly at her.

"Sorry." She replied, sniffling. "Allergies."

"To what?" Temperance asked, her curious scientific mind wanting to know.

Angela replied the first thing that popped in her mind.

"Dust."

Temperance was about to reply that there weren't any dust in her office when a knock interrupted them. They turned to see Hodgins standing outside the office.

"The local PD just dropped by a body. They need you to identify it." He told the doctor.

Temperance nodded sharply before getting up and walking out of her office.

It had taken thirty minutes before she had finished the examination and filled out the file. The body had belong to a caucasian female, aged between the ages of 20 and 25 though Temperance believed it was more 25 than 20, and had died from strangulation. A weird cut on one of the rib had also indicated that the victim had been stabbed, probably before she had gotten strangled. Temperance had written that all down in her file before handing it to the police officer standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for the quick ID to be over. Temperance had then walked back to her office.

Her conversation with Angela echoed in her mind. Booth was doubting their relationship? She couldn't understand why. He had been so happy to see her after coming back from Seattle and he had still been happy the previous morning. She frowned. It had been after he had gone to the Bureau with Angela that things had changed, if in fact things had changed and before Booth's new weird attitude hadn't been a figment over Angela's imagination. What could have gone down over there that had gotten Booth all worked up? She needed to talk to Angela.

She found the artist working on the victim's face on the Angelator. She knocked softly before walking in. She didn't beat around the bush. She went straight to her question.

"Booth started acting weird after you two went down to the Bureau yesterday. Why is that?"

Angela dropped her pencil.

Busted. A voice told her in her mind that sounded awfully like Hodgins.

She told it to pipe down.

"I don't know what you mean, Sweetie."

"You said that Booth was acting weird this morning when he acted perfectly normal yesterday morning. Something happened between the time he left my office with you and this morning when you spoke to him. It can't be the conversation we had last night because he already knew that I didn't believe in marriage. So it had to be something that happened while you two were down at the Bureau."

Actually it's a little bit of both. Angela thought. She kept quiet.

"Nothing happened at the Bureau yesterday, Bren. I think you should talk to Booth about all of this and see what he has to say. I'm sorry I can't be of more help."

Temperance looked away and set her gaze on the woman spinning around in the Angelator.

"That the new victim?"

Angela nodded.

"Don't forget, Booth." Cullen said, popping his head in the Agent's office. "We have a meeting in ten minutes."

"Yes, Sir." Booth replied before applying his signature to the form he had been reading.

He looked up to see his boss nod sharply at him and walking away. Booth sighed and leaned back against his chair, his fingers crossed behind his head. Not any amount of paperwork could keep his mind off the woman working ten blocks away from here. His heart ached every time he thought about her. How could she be against marriage? What example of failed marriages had occured in her life to make her believe such ideas? He suddenly realized that even though he had dating her for a year, he didn't know much about her.

He sighed. No, he couldn't be thinking about that right now. He had some work to do. There was a pile of files on his desk that demanded his attention. He picked up another one and opened it in front of him.

Martine Dussault, 23. French-canadian. Disappeared last January during a trip to Vermont. Was last seen in a sky resort January 27th. Long brown hair, hazel eyes, 5'5", 130 lbs. Booth sighed. Another body they would never recover.

His phone rang. He picked it up.

"Agent Booth."

"Yes. This is Ian Storm, from the Washington PD. We have just recovered a body outside of the city and have brought it to the Jeffersonian. The forensic anthropologist IDed the victim as female, aged 20 to 25 years old. The artist had drawn the victim's face."

Booth knew what the officer wanted to ask him. He replied before the man at the other end of the line asked his question.

"Fax me the drawing." Booth replied.

He could tell by the silence that the man was surprised. Neverthless, five minutes later, Booth was pulling out an amazingly well drawn picture Angela had made of the victim. But Booth wouldn't even have to run it in his computer. Sitting back down, he grabbed the phone.

"Martine Dussault." He said.

Minutes later, after filling in the officer, Booth hung up. He looked at his clock. The meeting was to start in two minutes and he still had to go to the bathroom. He got up and was about to walk out of his office when he felt his cellphone vibrate. He snatched it from his pocket and opened it.

"Booth." He stated.

"You're doubting our relationship?"

What is Booth going to say about this? Is Angela in trouble for lying? Are Booth's secret intentions going to be revealed? Tune in in the next chapter to find out! Coming soon to a computer screen near you.

Okay yeah, I admit. This was cheesy as hell! lol