His phone rang first.

In that no-man's land before dawn, the sound of someone's cell phone insistently ringing pulled Amrita and Jack out of the limb-tangled, post-orgasmic slumber into which they'd collapsed, a few hours before. Foggily, reluctantly, Amrita disengaged one long arm from where it cradled his head and groped for her phone before she realized it couldn't be her phone. There was only one ringtone her phone would sound just then and the one they were hearing wasn't it.

His phone. It was his. Who would be calling him at this hour?

She wanted to speak his name -- nice way to wake up, with his name in her mouth -- but her vocal chords wouldn't quite work. It was all right though. He was already rolling over toward the other nightstand, groping for his phone with the same reluctant murkiness.

Jack's roll towards the bed side had left him pleasantly face-down in a pillow. His hand blindly flopped about on the nightstand until it found...his alarm clock. His hand tossed it aside and felt around some more until it found the source of the disturbance. His thumb flipped the phone open and he brought it to his ear but there was a pillow in the way.

He rolled onto his back and cleared his throat before finally answering it with all the enthusiasm he could muster, which wasn't much.

"Jack Tyler."

**Jack...Rod Bellar. Sorry for the late call.**

That woke him up, and he stole a glance over at his semi-slumbering companion. Of all the...

"Go ahead."

**We've got a situation. Paladin needs to report in at the mansion ASAP. I'm in the process of calling the entire team. Everybody should be here within the hour.**

Jack thought quickly. Amrita's phone would be ringing shortly, and unlike him she didn't need to worry about travel time, so he couldn't count on her making a hasty exit. That meant he would have to leave. His internal dialogue shifted to an R-rated level. This was exactly the type of situation he'd wanted to avoid when he'd considered letting her stay the night.

"Okay, I'm on it," he replied before flipping the phone shut.

"You have to go," Amrita murmured, voice thick with not-enough sleep. She wiped her eyes daintily with the tips of her fingers, then blinked several times in a valiant effort to wake up. "Must be some `special project', if they're calling you in the middle of the night on it."

Those last words were out of her mouth before she could bite down to stop them. It was a cornerstone for this stage of their relationship, one they'd settled in the first days. They both had secrets -- Jack's were related to his career with AEGIS, Amrita's ostensibly to the research AEGIS was conducting on her new body. She was so grateful he didn't press her on that half-truth that she had never pressed him about his work. A moment later, when she was just that much more awake, she knew she didn't want to start it then.

"I'm sorry, Jack. I shouldn't have said that. Not really awake." The apology was sincere, even if the excuse wasn't. "Can I make you some coffee before I go?"

"No coffee," he answered her while rolling back to wrap his arms around her and draw her close, "but I will take some sugar."

She giggled softly and melted into him. He smiled and kissed her - God, he really enjoyed kissing this woman. She knew how to kiss, and it never failed to get him excited no matter where they were. It was like there was magic - or maybe Viagra - in her full, wonderful lips. It made him feel like he was eighteen again, and that alone was worth any risk of potential embarrassment.

Jack gave in to the feelings inside and felt himself melting in a way he hadn't realized he could feel. For the first time in his life he knew he was really falling for someone. He could feel it, more than just a passing infatuation. It wasn't just that she was more beautiful than just about any woman he'd ever met or that she rocked his world on a regular basis. He'd been with pretty faces and sexual olympians aplenty. This was different.

Maybe it was the fact that he'd lived his entire life as a happy bachelor, or that he'd made a career in a profession where emotions were tightly regulated and rugged machismo was a strong virtue, but the ongoing realization of what he might be feeling and what those feelings might mean had built a nest of fear in the pit of his stomach. Every time he began to melt, his mind would think these thoughts and he would quickly feel like he had eaten a bad piece of tuna sashimi.

He felt it now, and it was enough to make him break off the kiss. Staring into his lover's - his love's? - perfect, entrancing eyes, Jack Tyler cursed his fear and doubly cursed the phone call which he knew was only minutes from taking her away from him again.

Amrita didn't see well in low light, but she felt it when he pulled back, the way he always pulled back when things got too intimate between them. She understood it, not completely but perhaps moreso than he realized. To love someone completely it was necessary to sacrifice something of the self, a hurdle she'd faced years ago before her first marriage. What one received in the aftermath more than replaced what had been lost, she knew that -- but it wasn't possible to explain it to someone who'd never experienced it before.

Jack Tyler was everything she'd ever wanted in a friend, a lover... a partner perhaps, one day. Handsome, strong, principled, generous, funny... he was worth waiting for. And perfect, in her eyes. She hoped they always told him so.

But... for as long as there are things that must remain unspoken between us, there is only so far this can go, anyway, she mused, sighing privately. I cannot tell him until... until I'm sure of him... for his own protection, as well as mine.

"I am the luckiest woman in the world," she said softly, smiling a little as her fingers traced the sexy curve of his lower lip. "When I'm with you, I know there's nowhere else--"

**BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP**

**BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP**

Panic blossomed on her face, Jack saw and felt it clearly. Amrita was an intrinsically honest woman, one who wore her feelings openly on her face and was really awful at lying. She knew what the call was, who was on the other end -- and that she couldn't tell him. He could sense it all in that horrifed moment of paralyzation before she rolled away with an incoherent apology.

The phone clicked open. "Yes?"

**Amrita, sorry for the late call. It's Rod. I need Wild Lotus at HQ in about an hour.**

She sighed, closed her eyes. "Is it an emergency?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end. **Sort of. Not really. But yes. Can you be here?**

What kind of an answer is that, anyway?

"That's what I signed up for," she murmured, something like grief and shame curling around the base of her spine, reaching up to clot in her throat. "I'll be there."

The phone clicked closed. She didn't speak. She couldn't.

Jack watched the signs of her struggle, familiar to him now, and winced internally. It was unfair that he knew and she didn't. He didn't like it, but then again he didn't have to. It just was.

He laughed, both because in its own weird way it was sincerely funny but also to relieve her mind. He didn't want her feeling bad about the situation. It wouldn't have been right. He wished he could tell her, just dump this whole charade, but... then what?

"I think it's a conspiracy," he joked lightly instead. He played with a strand of her long hair between his fingers. "Shall we agree on a mutual rain check?"

He could see her face turn toward his, regarding him thoughtfully. "Conspiracy is a better theory than coincidence," she said, striving to match his light tone. Then she rolled toward him, into his arms, burying her face in the curve of his neck. "Sometimes I think you're too good to be true, Jack."

Jack winced inside. "I wish it were true, kid."

She tensed a little at that pet name again, but made herself relax. It was doubtless just a "guy thing," but still, the only two men in her life that used that with her were the man she was sprawled over at the moment... and a suit of body armor, whose face she'd never seen...

He quickly covered his guilt with humor. He moved her so her face was in front of his and added with a fake hauteur and a wink, "Then again, if I were too good to be true, I'd still be the adoring idol of millions with no time for my fans."

Amrita grinned, then kissed his nose. "You'll just have to settle for being adored by me -- but I promise to adore you lots. Up close and personal even. Without clothing, as often as possible."

That had a predictable effect. A peck on the nose became another kiss, and a longer kiss, and caresses and breathing rates mounted... until reality and responsibility kicked in for them both. She bit his lip regretfully, but rolled off him, thinking about what it would take to get vertical...

"Now go on, git." Jack swatted her rump with a pillow before rolling off the bed to make his way to the master bath. "I won't have you be late on my account," he told her as he disappeared into the adjoining room.

Some time later...
Jack let his fingers run through her wet hair, letting them stop at the base of her skull where he started softly rubbing her neck. The feeling of her body pressed against him gave him a sense of security, and he returned it with his strong arms holding her tightly. He was still hard, such was the effect she had on him, and despite having the fitness level of a professional athlete he knew her stamina was easily greater than his. Yet the circumstances which put them in the shower together had also conspired to make this unexpected luxury an unfortunately brief one by necessity.

After a minute more, he chuckled and said, "We're going to be late."

These were the moments when it was most difficult not to blurt out her more unusual truths. They were so open to one another that holding back the `we don't have to be' caused a momentary pang of discomfort in her throat. Amrita swallowed that, literally swallowed the words, then laughed with him, and cleared her throat.

"At least, this early we shouldn't have to worry much about traffic," was all she said, pulling his face around to kiss once more. "You are an amazing lover, Jack Tyler. Thank you. This has been the best shower I've had in years."

What traffic? Jack asked himself. I fly and you...do the tree thing.

So much went unsaid between them, but he knew for the time being it had to be. And now he had to move or he really would be late.

"Me too," he replied with a kiss. Letting go of her naked body was difficult, but he forced himself to release her and stepped out of the shower. She'd have to leave before he could begin donning the Paladin suit, a routine which he had down to just under six minutes now. Thomas Morgan had told him it should only take five minutes, no longer. Jack sighed - it was a work in progress.

The point was that he now had to look busy for as long as it took Amrita to leave. Might as well make it look good, he thought as he started to lather his face with shaving gel.

Without distractions, she finished the shower rather quickly, drying the hair she hadn't exactly intended to wash just then (no regrets!) and using the hair sticks in her purse to wind it up atop her head. Though she smiled at him when she met his eyes in the mirror, Amrita didn't speak. In truth, she was in her head watching months of odd little events, occurrences, eccentricities, and "coincidences" (if one wanted to call them that) combine, break apart, and recombine where Jack Tyler and her relationship with him was concerned.

It wasn't any one thing, not his (remarkably rare and exceptional) understanding of the things she couldn't tell him, nor the things he couldn't (or wouldn't) tell her. It wasn't the uncanny timing in phone calls like the ones this morning, nor the similarities in the speech patterns between him and whoever that was inside the Paladin suit. It wasn't the odd expression on Thomas Morgan's face whenever Jack's name came up, nor Rod Bellar's strange attitude when she'd asked what could or should be done to protect Jack, once she started seeing him last fall. Nor was it Paladin's (remarkably rare and exceptional) supportiveness where her feelings for Jack Tyler were concerned...

It wasn't any one of them. And even altogether, they were only suggestive, not conclusive. What was bothering her more and more was, until all these mysteries were shared, there was only so far this relationship could possibly go.

That thought, more than any other, troubled her deeply. She felt a strong urge to visit with her father, to lay it all out for him and hear his wisdom on the matter. He was in India at the moment, visiting relatives in Bengal -- such travel was no barrier to her, but with the possibility of being busy with Wild Lotus for the next little while, time certainly could be.

Ah well. It is nothing which can be resolved now. All things are revealed in their own time, according to universal purpose, Amrita sighed to herself. I can only pray I didn't give myself too quickly, after all...

By the time Amrita was done with her shower Jack had managed to stretch out the process of shaving and styling his hair enough that he was still in his underwear, standing in his walk-in closet as if considering what to wear. She shimmied into her jeans and top, positioning herself so he could watch her reflection in the mirror -- he would, she knew him that well, at least.

A moment later, her arms wrapped around his chest from behind, just long enough for her to plant a kiss on his ear. "Even I don't take so long to get dressed," she told him, humor riffling through the words. "I have to go, lover. Have a good d---..."

That was when she saw it, the large metal box with the AEGIS crest prominently displayed along its side. "Day," she finished, tearing her eyes away from it with a quickly pasted-on smile. "A good day, sweetheart. Call me when you're clear of your emergency, okay?"

Something was eating her, Jack noticed. "Sure... you okay?" he asked.

"Um, yes. Sure." She was a horrible liar, just awful at it, truly. "Big day, gotta go. Bye!"

"Bye," he said back, but she was already halfway to the door. It closed behind her but he didn't take his eyes off of it until he heard the security latch engage.

Jack's brows furrowed in thought as to what had suddenly gotten to her to make her act so out of sorts. Was it something in the shower? He looked around the closet until his eyes came to rest on the large metal case that held his Paladin suit, and the realization of something bad dawned on his face.

"Oh, piss."

In the grip of inner turmoil, Amrita Singh couldn't leave Jack's building fast enough. That box could mean anything. Anything! He works for AEGIS after all, it could contain.... In the predawn light, she dove for the hedges just outside the entrance to the parking garage, emerging from the cluster of aspens in the private courtyard near the back entrance to HQ -- fully costumed, hair dry. It was a new thing for her, discovering that the plants could "hold" her costume for her -- one of several somethings she hadn't shared with any of the others yet.

What? If it held anything that was any of your business, he would have told you, Amrita.

Not wanting to enter the building just then, she flipped open her phone and brought up the "last received call list." Bellar's was at the top, Jack's just beneath. Her thumb pressed the dial button on Bellar, waited for him to pick up.

"I'm here," she said without preamble.

"You're the first," he said. "Meeting'll be in the conference room as usual. I'll ring you when the others get here."

"You do that," she said. It was uncharacteristically impolite for her, so she added a quick "Thank you, Rod."

"No problem, WiLo."

Jack would have told me. He would have. I can't imagine him not telling me, if it were true... He would tell me.... wouldn't he?

She'd traded in the handset for the earpiece comm unit by the time she entered the building, having taken some radical steps to restore her usual calm serenity. She walked through the mansion's large high-ceilinged foyer to the main hall, and had started up the large sweeping staircase that led upstairs to the second floor when her eyes caught a sight which stoped her cold. Coming down the stairs was Paladin.

But Rod said... I was the first...?

"Hey, Wilo," was his modulated but casual greeting as he moved past her, continuing down. "Go on up, Rod's waiting. I'll join you in a little while."

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she watched him, studying the walk and movement fruitlessly. Jack Tyler simply could not have gotten here before her. It wasn't possible.

What was it Holmes had said? Once you'd eliminated the impossible... but had she really?

"Good morning," she said, after a noticeable hesitation, then added "don't be late." Rather than pass him on the stairs (she honestly didn't trust herself at that moment not to do something irredeemably stupid), she reached out to touch one of the large potted palms in the entry foyer, and disappeared.

The armored Guardian stopped at that, clearly not expecting it. He looked to his left, then studied the plant for a moment before continuing on down the steps.

He walked through the main hall to the corridor that led to the labs on the west side of the ground floor. Once inside the secured area, the blue and white figure found the empty biomechanics lab and sealed himself inside. Then he reached up and worked a series of security catches to remove his helmet.

Jack was in his bedroom, the large metal case open on the bed in front of him. In the top half was a computer screen with various systems diagnostic readouts. The bottom half was a series of empty cushioned slots for the various components which made up the Paladin Suit.

He had his helmet in his hands, and was about to put it on when the phone rang. He picked up quickly.

"Jack Tyler."

**It's done.** The heavy tone in Thomas Morgan's voice carried over the phone line. **We met on the stairs, said hello, and then she vanished into the fern. I think she bought it, but... well, I think she bought it.**

Jack ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes before letting out a long-held breath. "Okay, good. Thanks, Tom. I owe you one."

**Look, Jack, this is a really bad idea. There's no way this is going to end well. If she finds out, she doesn't trust you and it hurts the team. If she doesn't find out, you're going to be playing these games for a long time, and then what? Where does it go? You need to break it off, or at least tell her.**

"Just..." Jack made a fist and gnashed his teeth. He wasn't a man used to anger. "Look, I'll handle it, Okay? You told me when we started this thing that I could still have a life. That was the deal."

**A life, yes, but I honestly didn't expect you to jump right into banging one of your teammates like some chippie on the cheerleading squad.**

A pregnant pause followed that one. Jack was at first to stunned to respond, and then afterwards too livid to respond reasonably.

Back in the lab, Morgan winced at his own words, regretting them almost as fast as he'd spoken them.

"Jack... I'm sorry. That was out of line. You know I have the utmost respect for her. You've exceeded my expectations and done everything I've asked of you and more. It's just...there's a lot at stake here, Jack. If this goes sideways, it's more than just you and her who gets hurt. Just think about it, and get here quickly."

Morgan closed his phone and then closed his eyes. He hadn't been lying. Jack was so far beyond where Morgan thought he'd be that even Bellar had been impressed enough to mention it at their last meeting together. His potential as the new Paladin was limitless. He just couldn't make Jack understand how delicate these teams could be.

He felt tired as he walked into the rear of the lab where stood an empty Paladin suit case. Slowly, with deliberate effort and practiced hands, he began to remove the components from his body.

Jack heard the line go dead and he threw the phone across the room where it left a jagged dent in the sheetrock wall.

"This whole situation stinks," he said to himself before placing his helmet over his head and securing it in place. He closed the case and tossed it back into the closet and then activated the signal within his comms suite.

The brick-faced gas fireplace in the living room slid out on a pivot and Paladin stepped inside the open flue. His jets kicked in as it closed up around him and three seconds later he was shooting out the top of his building into the Mile High sky. He oriented towards Aspen and shot off at top speed. The mansion was six minutes away.

In the conference room, Wild Lotus sat in full lotus in one of the chairs, a cup of fragrant darjeeling tea cradled in her hands. On the surface, she nodded at Iron Maiden and Shimmer when they arrived, made small talk with Rod Bellar while they all waited for Paladin to reappear.

Just under that, in the place that was Amrita's center, she was deep in contemplation. She thought about what she knew of Jack's history, everything she could dredge up from memory, no matter how small or insignficant. Then she considered everything she knew of the history of the superhero Paladin... and suddenly went very cold, inside.