Author's Note: Ooh, lots of lovely reviews on the last chapter, thank you very much. As always, it's great to hear that you're enjoying where this story is going. I'd love to make it to a hundred reviews with this next instalment, which without further ado, let me offer you. (By the way, it's a great big long chapter, get a cup of tea before you start reading!)

Disclaimer: As before.

Alex stood outside an impressively large red brick building, clutching a bottle of Napa Valley merlot and a bunch of tissue wrapped yellow roses that had seemed like a good idea at the time but was now sorely tempted to simply toss them in the trash, and looked dubiously up at the camera on the video entry system. He had a sinking feeling about tonight. Izzie (who'd called five minutes later demanding to know why his phone line was engaged at eight o'clock – he hadn't told her) and Michael and even Steve, back at the hotel, all seemed to think they knew how the story was going to end, but he still wasn't sure.

They weren't the falling into each others' arms and declaring their love type. It might work for romantic love-conquers-all dreamers like Izzie but he was too damaged to believe in that. And he suspected Addison was as well.

That didn't stop him feeling utterly pathetic in his nervousness though. He was behaving like a teenager, and it was really getting on his nerves. The whole phone call fiasco hadn't helped one little bit. What the Hell must she been thinking now? Especially after his whole damn "let's be friends" speech. Never mind that he'd called her Izzie. Women didn't like it when you called them the wrong name.

Already her name was above the buzzer for 1, The Old Malthouse on a little brass plaque. Posh. He grinned when he saw that she'd had it engraved as Dr A. Montgomery, despite her new consultant status. At the end of the day, she'd always be Doctor Montgomery.

He sighed, with the words here goes running clearly through his mind, and pressed the buzzer.

Almost immediately, her voice came over the intercom. 'Hey. At last. Come on up. I'm on the top floor; the elevator's on your left as you come into the hall.' Then he heard the sound of the door unlocking, and he pushed it open.

The entrance hall was unbelievable. For somewhere that was supposedly an old warehouse (she'd already told him, and anyone else she'd come across who made the mistake of asking about it, all about the apartment over the last month since she'd agreed to buy it), he didn't think he'd ever seen anywhere so luxurious.

The floor was some kind of traditional flagstone but sanded and oiled into an authentic looking uniformity and there were some large framed pictures, cityscapes in black and white, hanging on the crisp white walls. Deep, slate covered windowsills each had a vase of lilies sitting on them and there were green, leafy exotic looking plants in terracotta pots discreetly in corners. Everything looked edgy but classic, fashionable, clean, and so completely Addison. He could see why she loved it.

Following her instructions, he turned left and saw a row of three elevators in front of him. One of them pinged open just then and he stepped inside, noting the marble floors (in an elevator?) He pressed the button for her floor and waited.

The doors slid open into what, at the first look, appeared to be the penthouse version of paradise. The wall opposite him was almost entirely glass, and he could see what felt like the whole of London, lights twinkling in the dark for miles. There was an open fire roaring away and some soft blues was trickling out of unseen speakers. He wouldn't have really pegged Addison as into blues, but it suited him so he wasn't going to complain.

Of Addison though, there was no sign.

'Addison?' he called out, putting the wine and flowers down on the smooth black granite worktop that he saw off to the left.

'I'm here,' a voice came from one of the rooms at the far end of the loftspace. 'Sorry,' she said, emerging and making her way over to him, smiling widely. 'So, what do you think?'

Alex just stared. Not at the apartment, very nice though it seemed, he couldn't give a damn about that. Addison had never looked more beautiful. She was wearing a simple white shirt and a pair of jeans, not at all dressy, the sort of thing you would expect from someone who had been moving house all day, but its casualness, the fact that it was such a new and different side to her, took his breath away. Her hair was loose, a little mussed around her shoulders and all he could think about was how it would look fanned out against the white of a pillow.

'Alex? Hello? What do you think of my new home?'

'I…' he stumbled, then he caught sight of the affronted look on her face at his blatant lack of enthusiasm. Just as on the phone, he realised he was being rude. With a monumental effort, he steered his mind away from undoing those tiny mother of pearl shirt buttons one after the other as she arched beneath him and smiled. 'It looks amazing Addison. That view,' he indicated over towards the window, 'is just incredible. Why don't you show me around?'

Placated, she started to give him the grand tour, but he wasn't really listening. He could just about see the ornate white lace of her bra through her shirt and it was pushing every other thought from his head.

When they came to the end of it, Addison turned to face him and put her hands on her hips and he could tell she wasn't happy.

'Have you listened to a word I've been saying Karev?'

'Ouch. I'm not your intern anymore Addison.'

'Well, you deserved it. I'm so excited, and you haven't even got the courtesy to pretend to be interested. Why did you bother coming round tonight if you were going to be like this?' she snapped, getting angrier as she spoke.

'I'm sorry.' She glared at him. 'I am Addison. I just… I'm embarrassed okay. I made a fool of myself on the phone earlier, thinking you were Izzie. And –' Dude, stop talking. Just stop. Now. 'In all honesty, I can't tell you what I think of the apartment, because I haven't been able to take my eyes off you all evening.'

'Oh.'

Well, at least that shut her up.

Addison was determined not to let the evening be ruined for the sake of awkwardness. By now, they should be far enough down the line not to be awkward, if nothing else. Her eyes alighted on the bottle of wine he'd placed on the counter and relaxed her confrontational stance.

'Do you want a glass of wine?'

He was a little wrong footed by her sudden change but she loved having the upper hand over him.

'Uh, sure.'

She rummaged in a drawer for a corkscrew, then reached for the bottle. As she did so, she saw the label. 'It's Californian,' she said.

'Yeah,' he shrugged. 'You talk about it as if you were happy there, so I thought this might be a nice reminder.'

'Thank you. It is.' She handed him a glass. 'For the record you know, California wasn't all it cracked up to be. It helped me a lot, but it didn't solve everything.'

'What didn't it solve?'

'I was still an adulterous whore who slept with her husband's best friend. You can't erase your past. Even though others didn't know, I still had to live with the knowledge myself, and I didn't like it. And I was still a magnet for emotionally unavailable men. And I was still lonely.'

She walked over, and sat on the new suede couch that she'd been so concerned about in the presence of red wine, tucking her feet beneath her and sinking into the far corner. Alex took that as a limited invitation only, and followed her to the seating area by the vast window but took a seat in an armchair rather than on the sofa itself.

Gently, she trailed a finger around the rim of the glass and looked at it contemplatively. 'You weren't lonely though, were you?'

'What do you mean?'

'Isobel Stevens.'

'We're friends Addison. We were together, and there were times when I thought maybe I would marry her, but it wasn't going to be. I was always second place behind Denny for her, and she knew how I felt about you, even though we never talked about it.'

'You talk about it now though.'

'Izzie talks. I… fend her off.'

Addison couldn't help but break into a smile at his turn of phrase. She wanted, irrationally, to be annoyed at him for his relationship with Izzie but she knew it was unfair of her. And if now all they talked about was her; well, that had to be good, right? To stop herself from saying something she might regret, she looked out over London.

'I love this view, I could look at it all day you know. So many times this afternoon I was meant to be unpacking boxes and moving around furniture –' She was interrupted by his laugh.

'What?' she asked, indignant.

'Well, you, moving furniture.'

She gave him a sideways, haughty look and carried on as if she'd never heard his teasing insult. 'As I was saying, I was up here this afternoon, and the whole time when I was meant to be doing things, I just had to keep stopping and looking at it. It's beautiful.'

She was gazing out over the city as she spoke and her eyes were alight with enthusiasm; she looked enthralled by what she was seeing.

'You're beautiful,' he blurted out.

She snapped her head around to stare at him. 'What did you say?'

Carefully, Alex put his glass on wine down on the floor and moved over to the sofa. He took her glass out of her hand and set it down well out of the way. 'I said,' he repeated slowly, eyes dark with desire, 'you're beautiful.'

He realised for the first time that there were little golden fairy lights wrapped around the beam above their heads, and candles flickering on the low coffee table in front of the window. The lights were dancing in her eyes and shimmering in her hair, and he knew he was lost.

Then, somehow, they were kissing. He knew there must have been a deep look, a closing of the space between them, but he couldn't remember them. All he knew, all her felt like he'd ever known, was that this was so worth the wait. All his countless reasons why this shouldn't be happening that he had been repeating to himself like mantra these last few weeks had melted away.

He felt the need in the way she kissed him, with tongue and teeth already biting his lower lip teasingly. She was snaking her arms around his body, running her hands up his back, pulling his body down to her as she sank backwards into the cushions and he was happy to follow. He could feel her nails scraping his skin through his shirt.

Addison moaned softly; she couldn't help herself, then found herself moaning again as he swallowed the sound she made. Already she was breathing heavily, her body wracked with need for him. She plucked at his shirt, removing it from the waistband of his trousers, and managed to get her hands onto bare skin. It was so satisfying.

His lips were trailing along her jawline to her neck now, and she gasped as she felt his fingers undo the first couple of buttons of her shirt and slip inside. His hand was rough from years upon years of constant scrubbing (nothing less than gallons of expensive hand cream prevented hers from going the same way) and it felt like heaven against her skin. She tipped her head back to expose more of her neck to his kisses and arched her body into him, desperate for more contact.

Alex felt his self control slipping away. It had been such a long time since he'd been with a woman, and even longer since Addison, and every fibre in his body was burning for her. He'd been living, breathing, dreaming, this fantasy for so many years.

'Addison,' he said huskily, trying to convey something of what he was feeling.

'Alex, oh God, Alex…' Both their shirts were hanging open now, and for the first time there was a real contact of flesh. It drove them both crazy. One of her legs came up to hook around his waist and he found himself pressing against her desperately.

Then he broke away for a moment, just to get a little more oxygen into his lungs, and suddenly he froze. What was he doing? What were they doing? They couldn't just have a glass of wine and sex on a sofa and wipe out all those years of pain and loneliness. It didn't get to be this easy.

And even if this was their wave-a-magic-wand romantic moment that he didn't believe in anyway, it would never work. It couldn't. He would screw it up again, like he did the last time, like he did every time, all the time, always. Why should it be different now? Addison deserved so much more.

She looked up at him quizzically. 'What's the matter Alex?'

He levered himself off her and sat up, his head deep in his hands. 'I'm sorry,' he mumbled to the floor.

She sat up too, looking utterly stricken. Her wide eyes looked exactly the same as the night he'd told her she wasn't his girlfriend. Like she'd been slapped, and as if she couldn't believe he was the one to have done it. She pulled the edges of her shirt together, covering her chest, and began to button them with fumbling fingers.

'What's wrong?' she asked, but this time there was hurt rather than confusion in her voice. He chanced a look at her out of the corner of his eye and he could see a tear glistening on her cheek.

'I'm sorry,' he repeated, still out of breath from their passion. 'I… I can't do this.'

And then he fled.