Our flight to England in the Tiger Moth had been wonderfully exciting. Days were spent in the cockpit, each of us taking turns piloting. Nights were spent in each other's arms. And though it was as fulfilling physically as it had been three months prior, I sensed something different in Alan, something I couldn't put my finger on until that night at the dinner table with Captain Foster...or, the man who purported himself to be Captain of the airship.

I must admit that at first I was incensed. I couldn't help it. Alan had sat there in front of my best friend and a complete stranger and basically said he'd never marry me. So where had all these years been leading? What of the closeness we'd only just begun to share? I was humiliated, though I am proud of the poise and grace with which I handled the situation. Poise and grace that fell apart as soon as Penny and I were alone.

I think we stayed awake that entire night talking about it. Eventually Penelope led me along the path of trying to understand why he'd done it rather than simply being angry.

"Is it possible he said it in public because he was too afraid to tell you alone?"

Afraid? Alan? He was fearless! Surely that couldn't be the case.

"What if now you're together he's had second thoughts and simply doesn't know how to end what the relationship has become?"

Penelope is as wise as she is beautiful. When I confronted Alan the next day, it turned out her theories had been right on the nose. Before, it had always been just fun and games - two young people with raging hormones who just fell into a role play. A role play that, eventually, advanced for both.

But what I came to understand that day while talking with Alan was this: his problem was that he'd started to think what he felt for me wasn't the "in love" you should be feeling for someone you plan to marry, but instead a deep love borne of spending so much time together, learning so much about each other and risking your lives for one another. Basically, what it boiled down to was that Alan felt he and I loved each other the same way his brothers and I loved each other. It isn't purely platonic, he admits; there's definitely a physical attraction. But for all our huffing and puffing about jealousy and taking our relationship to the next level, Alan said he had discovered that for him it just didn't feel right somehow.

He'd also made another discovery, and I think perhaps it's what got him to thinking about our relationship as seriously as he evidently had been.

That day, in the silence of my guest room aboard the airship, he told me he'd been talking with Brains about two weeks before we left for the trip. Aside from the sadness Brains had been feeling over not being able to make the maiden voyage with us, Alan said he'd known something else was bothering him. It had taken him three days of badgering to get it out of him, but at last Brains had told him the truth.

The truth was, he was depressed about me going away for such a long time. And though those weren't his words, I believed Alan's interpretation of whatever it was he had said, and the way he'd looked. One thing you must know about Alan Tracy: that man is perceptive. Of all his brothers, he is the one who shows emotion the most, and for whom emotions are easiest to read. He's very in tune with people. In fact, he'd always been able to sense my moods and emotions, and had always surprised me with his efforts to improve them when they weren't so good.

Alan then told me that in the next moment after he realized how down Brains was about my impending trip, he suddenly realized why. "I think he's in love with you, Tin-Tin," he'd said, his face serious as he held my hands in his. "He's in love with you or my name isn't Alan Tracy."

At the time it had seemed an impossible idea. I had never before considered it. Not because I didn't like Brains - quite the contrary. I think perhaps of all those on the island, I have spent the most time with Brains and shared the most of who I am. Though he was never really good at small talk, he would always listen, and sometimes offer advice. And we would have such fun talking about women as I tried to help him understand us as a gender, and he would practice his observations on me. I was quite proud of how far he'd come in terms of reading my gender.

That day, after Alan left my room, I began to wonder if it was really all women Brains was good at reading...or if it was just me.

But I never really knew what to do about it. They always teach you that as a woman you should never be the one to chase the man. Well, everything I'd done to that point had flown in the face of that advice. My flirting had gotten me involved with two Tracys, and I was adamant in my own mind that it wouldn't happen again. I know the others noticed a change when we returned from our near-death on the airship and then Alan's Tiger Moth. But the one person I wasn't sure noticed was the one I really wanted to, and that was Brains.

The more I thought about it, the more I really started taking a hard look at what I was feeling deep down inside. It's funny how you think you know yourself until you start looking at your heart through a microscope. You suddenly discover things you didn't know were there, things that sometimes shock you, sometimes terrify you. Things that make you think you've been on the wrong path all along.

Now, once again, all my time was spent with Brains. Though I understood and agreed that Alan and I should stop seeing one another as lovers, that didn't make it any easier to heal the pain of the loss I experienced. After all, we'd been leading up to that point for three whole years and then within three months it had all come crashing down around us. I spent several nights on the vidphone with Penny, and though my father tried to speak with me about it, I couldn't open up to him. Not about my love life. It's a bit like going to one of those Catholic confessionals and telling your priest you've sinned because you've had sex. Not something I want to bring up with my father, who has been celibate since my mother's death.

As time wore on I found the sting of Alan's and my separation less painful, and was seeing the romantic feelings slowly be replaced by a mutual respect and love that I cherish so much. We talked, and talked often. Sometimes we would take a day and just hike the island or head to the mainland to shop. That's one thing that Alan's the only Tracy brother you can take with you for: shopping. He can outshop both me and Penny! He's a bit of a fashion plate, and it's something we always have fun doing together.

There were kisses on the lips, but chaste ones. Nips on the ears, pecks on the cheeks. We did a lot of hand-holding, yes, and sometimes would stand with our arms around one another. But that's just how Alan is. I daresay if his brothers were sisters instead, he'd be just as openly affectionate. But as it is, the only other I've ever seen him act that way with even a little is Gordon, and not nearly so flamboyantly as he does with me. He's a guy through and through, absolutely. But he's also sweet, adorable, funny and my second best friend.

I found that I still craved that contact from him. After all, we are very close. And it was that closeness that convinced me if I made myself seem available to Brains, it wasn't the same as chasing him. Alan explained to me that Brains just doesn't see things the way the rest of us do. Alan has quite a high IQ. As far as we know, he's in the top tenth percentile of IQ scores worldwide, which makes him something of a genius himself. And as such, he sometimes sees in Brains things which the rest of us don't.

"Right now I think he needs someone," he'd said to me after Jeff told us Brains was on his way from Michigan to Foxleyheath. "I can't imagine what he's going through right now, and he's not really close enough to any of us to talk about it."

"Why the concern, Alan?" I'd asked. "What makes you think he needs someone right now?"

And that's when another confession had come. Alan had spoken with Brains the day Brains left for Michigan. He'd helped Brains pack his suitcase, actually, and it was in those twenty minutes that Brains had talked of his reasons for wanting so badly to know about his past.

"He said he couldn't move forward into any sort of future with anyone without first knowing who he was. That he couldn't offer anyone anything or even think about having a family until he became a whole person."

"Does that mean if he doesn't find out who his parents are that he'll never move forward?"

Alan thought so, and he told me that was why he felt now was a critical time. He loved Brains as a brother, he said, and also as somewhat of a kindred spirit in the intelligence department. He also loved me, and he was convinced he knew how Brains felt already, plus he knew I was more than curious as to my own feelings for the man whose assistant I had been for so many years.

And so rather than just sit back and do nothing, he'd felt he had no choice but to offer me some insights and advice. That he could have turned out to be so wrong about Brains' affection for me simply makes me shake my head. It seems that from the moment I met Alan Tracy, he's had my emotions on a roller coaster ride with more twists and turns than the best amusement park has to offer, and in trying to redirect my affections to International Rescue's inventor, he's done it to me yet again.

I left Tracy Island as soon as Brains' father, Mr. Flynn, returned to his top secret undercover assignment for MI-6. I was off to Michigan to visit the home of one Susan Beasley, who I learned background on from Jeff Tracy in the days before my departure. I was curious about her, to be certain, for it seemed quite strange to me that a Records clerk would have gone so far out of her way to help a stranger.

What really made me question everything Alan had been telling me, however, everything he said he believed so firmly, was the conversation I had with Lady Penelope the night before I my trip. "I believe you may find yourself confronted with quite a different young man than the one you last saw," she said to me.

"Different?" I asked. "In what way?"

She smiled. "I believe our friend Brains has fallen in love."

My mind raced, a thrill going through me as at first, I thought perhaps Penny meant with me. But her next words put that thought to rest immediately.

"Oh, Tin-Tin, it's been quite the series of ups and downs for him, but you should see him with Susan." She leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, "I came upon them kissing in the Garden!"

Kissing.

Brains was kissing Susan.

Which meant that Alan had been wrong.

I let it all spill to Lady Penelope, told her everything Alan had been telling me, how I'd been examining my feelings in the aftermath and come to the conclusion that I would very much like to see if Alan's perceptions on the matter were accurate.

Penelope seemed shocked, to say the least, and when she said to me, "Oh, dear, it seems he's gone and done it again," I wasn't entirely certain what she meant. But I felt let down yet again, and it was with a confused mind and a rather heavy heart that I departed the next morning in Ladybird for Michigan.

But what Penny told me about Brains was absolutely true. He has changed. It's a newer, more confident Brains that I left with Susan Beasley four days ago now. And in watching them together I realized quite profoundly that there is someone I love in very much the same way they appear to love one another. Someone who, for some reason, had been trying very hard to convince me he doesn't feel the same way.

Further talks with Penny and quiet looks at my inner self have revealed that what I feel for Alan is no longer that puppy love or 'tinkly' love as Scott once put it. It's a love that has bored into my very marrow. Just picturing us in bed together, or wrapped chastely in one another's arms on the sofa makes my heart melt and yet pick up pace at the same time.

When I returned to Tracy Island I found every island resident waiting to welcome me home. Alan, the last of the group to do so, enveloped me in a hug and held on much longer than any of his brothers had. "I missed you," he whispered into my ear. And that night as we walked along the beach and talked of Brains and Susan, Alan suddenly took my hands in his, gave me a look I haven't ever seen from his eyes, and kissed me with more passion than I'd ever felt with him before.

"I was wrong," he'd said. "I was so wrong, Tin-Tin. I don't know why…I'm sorry."

I was angry with him. Angry for leading me down a road I never would have traveled in wondering about Brains. Angry for him saying publicly he could never marry me. Angry with him, period. I ran from him that night, back to my room to have a good cry and allow some good old-fashioned martial arts to release the pent-up frustration and pain I was feeling.

And he kept trying. Bless Alan, he wouldn't leave me be until at last he convinced me to sit and listen to him. So I did. And by the end of our talk I realized it was that not only had he misinterpreted Brains' sentiments toward me as romantic love, but that he'd seized onto that misconception as his way out of something that was scaring him blind.

That something being a change in his feelings for me. But not a change for the worse. Oh, no. A change for the better. A change that was making him want more with me. That was making him think about engagement rings and children.

That night…two nights ago…he made love to me with a fiery passion that left me breathless, sated, happy beyond reason and admitting to him that while I still held him responsible for toying with my heart - a fact which I made clear he was going to make up for eternally - the truth of it is this: I now know with absolutely certainty that I love him in the exact same way.