Several hours later, feeling much more refreshed, they reheated the previous night's leftovers for lunch. Natalie thought the chicken was even better the second day.

The phone rang as they were finishing, and Adrian picked it up. "Hello?"

"Adrian Monk, please," an unfamiliar female voice said.

"Speaking."

"Mr. Monk, this is Susanne Campana at the San Francisco Dispatch."

He stiffened. "Yes?" he said guardedly. He recognized the name – for the last several years, whenever an article about him or one of his cases appeared in the Dispatch, she had been the author. Perhaps she was writing a story about the body that had washed up on shore this morning, and wanted a comment. She wouldn't get one; he rarely, if ever, commented to the press regarding an ongoing investigation.

"Rumor has it that you've recently become engaged to your assistant, Natalie Teeger. Is that true?"

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "No comment."

"Have you — "

Adrian sighed. He didn't like being rude to reporters, given Trudy's profession, but neither did he want his personal life splashed all over the newspapers. "Ms. Campana, whatever you ask me, I can promise that the answer is going to be 'no comment'."

"Can you at least confirm or deny?" she pressed.

"No comment," he said again, firmly, and hung up the phone.

"Was that a reporter?" Natalie asked.

"Yes," he admitted reluctantly. "From the Dispatch."

"About the case from this morning?"

"No." He sighed, giving her an apologetic glance. "About us."

"Us?" She looked blank for a second. "You mean… about us being engaged?"

He nodded.

She was completely flummoxed. "Why would they care?"

"I'm a semi-public figure," he shrugged. "Must be a slow news day."

"How did they know?" Natalie said, still baffled. "It hasn't even been twenty-four hours yet."

"She probably has a source at the police department," Adrian mused. "I'm sure the news spread through there like wildfire this morning."

Natalie slumped against her chair. "It's not that I want this to be a secret," she said, "it's just…" She trailed off.

"…you wanted us to announce it ourselves, in our own way?" he finished, understanding perfectly.

"Yeah." She tunneled her hands through her hair. "I can't believe I forgot I was wearing my ring this morning. I wouldn't have taken off my gloves if I'd remembered."

"Well, in your defense, you were pretty tired," he pointed out.

"And whose fault is that?" she smirked.

He grinned. "Guilty as charged."

Her smile faded. "It's going to be a media circus when the news about Wally Dougal breaks, isn't it?" Given what had happened to the last witness set to testify against Biederbeck, a judge had issued a gag order pertaining to all aspects of Dougal's case, and the district attorney's office was keeping his involvement highly confidential. All the police had said about his attack on Natalie was that it had been a B&E gone wrong, which hadn't gotten much media play.

"Probably," Adrian said soberly. "It'll be a sensational story, what with Trudy's case being solved and Biederbeck's involvement. Add the angle about Trudy and Mitch working together, and you unknowingly becoming my assistant after the fact… and the news that we're getting married… the media will have a field day."

"I guess I better get used to it," she said, resigned.

"Do you want to elope?"

She stared at him. He certainly looked serious. "Excuse me?"

"It'd help the news blow over more quickly. We could just go to the courthouse, or even Las Vegas if you want, and get it over with."

She laughed humorlessly. "You make it sound like dental work."

He winced and sat down at the table next to her, taking her hand in his. "I didn't mean it to sound that way," he said quietly. "I'm sorry. I just meant that with everything that's happened so far… Ambrose, and your mother… and what might happen with eventual media attention, it might be easier and less stressful just to get married quickly and quietly, with no fuss."

"You have a point," she admitted.

"But?" he prompted, hearing the reluctance in her voice.

"You know that Mitch and I eloped?" she asked after a minute or two of silence.

He nodded. "Because of your parents' opposition."

"Yeah." She sighed. "Don't get me wrong," she continued quickly, "I don't regret marrying him that way for an instant. We didn't have money for a wedding anyway. He was just starting out in the Navy, and I'd dropped out of college and was working odd jobs. It seemed like the best thing to do. But…" She gazed at their joined hands, her expression turning wistful. "I guess I'd sort of started thinking that this time, maybe, I could have a real wedding. A white dress, bridesmaids, pictures, a reception or a dance… all the things I didn't have the first time around."

As someone who'd already had a big wedding, he was far more inclined to go the quick and quiet route, but he understood her longing. He remembered Trudy had been in her element planning their wedding. She'd even shown him scrapbooks with magazine and newspaper clippings of wedding ideas she'd been saving since she was a teenager. He could hear the yearning in Natalie's voice, and guessed that she might have similar scrapbooks hidden in her childhood bedroom.

"If that's what you want, then that's what we'll do," he said determinedly.

She stared at him, a glimmer of hope in her eyes. "Really?"

"Really." He wasn't entirely sure how they'd pay for it, but he decided to leave that discussion for another time. To lighten the mood, he said, "In fact, I happen to know a young lady who is really good at helping to plan fancy events."

Natalie brightened, looking happier than she had all day. He inwardly resolved to give her the wedding of her dreams, if it would keep that smile on her face.

She kissed him, and when they drew apart she looked down at her ring. "This is my first engagement ring, you know," she confessed shyly.

"What?" he said, genuinely taken aback.

"We were so poor… I told Mitch not to bother, that I'd rather spend our money on plane tickets for our honeymoon. He said he'd buy me one for our tenth anniversary instead." She smiled sadly. Their tenth anniversary had never come. "I had a wedding ring, of course, but it was a plain gold band," she continued absently, watching her engagement ring sparkle in the light. "I was thinking of having it made into a necklace or something for Julie."

She looked up at him then, and saw that he had tears in his eyes. It was such a rare sight that she become instantly concerned. "Adrian, are you okay?"

He was so deeply moved by her revelation that that he couldn't speak at first. "It's just…" he finally managed, his voice gravelly with emotion, "I'm so very honored to have given you your first engagement ring."

Her worried expression softened. "You truly are a romantic, you know that?" She reached up and touched his cheek. "I bet you pulled out all the stops for Trudy when you proposed to her."

"Oh yeah," he said, smiling over the memory. "I wanted to ask her in the library at Berkeley, where we first met, but there'd been some sort of water leak, and it was shut down for a few weeks."

"That's unfortunate," Natalie sympathized. "What'd you do instead?"

"I asked her at that bench in the Berkeley quad, the one where I'd told her I loved her for the first time." He gave Natalie a bashful grin. "It's also where I took Julie Teeger to ask permission to marry her mom."

"Oh, Adrian," Natalie said softly, remembering that bench very well. "Did you get down on one knee with Trudy, too?"

"Of course," he said, and then grimaced. "The ground was wet because it'd been raining earlier in the day, and my knee got soaked."

"I bet you didn't care at all after she said yes," Natalie said knowingly.

"Not a bit," he confirmed, grinning. "We had dinner with her parents afterward, to celebrate — they were in town for business. I was over the moon. We all were." He realized that for the first time in a long time, memories of Trudy were sweet instead of bittersweet. He could think of her and their life together with happiness instead of misery. That was one of the many gifts Natalie had given him.

"How about you?" he asked, squeezing her hand. "Did Mitch get down on one knee even though he didn't have a ring?"

"No," she said, and, although it seemed faintly disloyal to Mitch's memory, she was absurdly pleased to have received such a proposal from Adrian. "We were in his car, parked outside the base housing where he was living at the time. He asked me, and I said yes." She let her eyes twinkle at him. "I didn't almost faint from shock before saying yes to him, though."

"That's good, for his sake. I thought I'd given you food poisoning or something, at first," he admitted. "It was a very scary few minutes."

"But with a happy ending," she reminded him.

He kissed her hand, right above her ring. "A very happy ending."