Frederick stood at Lucy's kitchen counter buttering whole-wheat toast while wearing his boxers and nothing else. He smiled inwardly as he watched Lucy trying not to watch him as she scrambled eggs. He was exhausted this morning, but too happy to care. Darrin, his makeup artist, was the only one who needed to know how little sleep Frederick had gotten.

It was worth it. Last night had been one of the most memorable of his life. Lucy had been so miserable when he arrived, he'd been certain that she was going to break it off with him. He was glad that she had given him a chance to explain. If Lucy had simply taken Neva at her word, she might have tossed Frederick to the curb, and last night would never have happened.

He knew now that Lucy had been through so much. The death of her father, the humiliation she'd endured after her last break-up, leaving her life behind to move here. But she never let it crush her. From the moment he'd laid eyes on her, he'd liked her indomitable spirit. Whatever she was warring with inside, she never let it show. And she wasn't like some women he'd met who 'never complained' but moped around desperate for someone to ask them about their troubles.

Lucy spooned eggs onto two plates next to the oranges he'd sliced earlier just as Frederick finished with the toast. Even in the kitchen, they were a good team.

Frederick took the plates to the table while Lucy followed with their steaming mugs. After a few bites, he spoke.

"We should go public," he said. She was strong. She could handle a bit of the spotlight. And he was sick to death of hiding her. She deserved to be seen. The fact that he'd be able to kiss her whenever he wanted was the icing on the cake.

"Public? What public?" Lucy asked, worry written across her usually smooth forehead.

"The movie set. Your friends here in town. The local public."

Lucy set down her toast. "Did you forget my story last night about my last relationship ending very badly, and how public humiliation is one of my least favorite things ever?"

"I remember every word. That's why you should do this. Face your demons. Show ol' Boss Banger that you're stronger than one bad relationship."

Lucy's face fell even further. "Is there even any point? I mean, you're only shooting here for what, a few more weeks?"

That stopped Frederick in his tracks. Since his relationship with Lucy had begun in earnest, he had hardly thought about leaving. It was an artifact of sinking deeply into the character he was playing; the imaginary world started to bleed into the real one. Mr. Darcy had always lived in his ancestral home in Derbyshire, and always would. It was easy to forget that he, Frederick, wasn't so settled.

"All the more reason to enjoy our time here," he said, charming his way through his discomfort.

Lucy looked down into her mug, refusing to meet Frederick's eye. "Maybe," she said. "Can I think about it for a while?"

"Of course. But the sooner you agree, the sooner I can take you out for a proper night on the town."

"On the town?" she asked, one corner of her mouth curling upwards. "Where, The Restaurant, or the gas station?"

"Leave that to me."

Frederick had been wanting to do something special for Lucy for a while. His handful of wildflowers, hastily yanked from the field behind the trailer town, was not nearly enough. Not for her. He'd already set some of the wheels in motion. Now he knew what he had to do.

* * * * *

Lucy had previously managed to reschedule all of her clinic appointments, and the day after her and Frederick's heart-to-heart she was expected on set about the same time Frederick was. Nevertheless, she insisted that he leave before her, saying that she needed a few more minutes to get ready. The skeptical look on Frederick's face told her that he wasn't fooled, but he didn't argue and allowed her the dignity of arriving at the set a discrete ten minutes after he did.

She cheerily greeted the faces that were becoming familiar to her on the way to 'her' corner of a supply tent. Her day passed in a pleasant slow stream of non-emergency patients. One of the stunt men came in cradling his elbow, and Lucy was glad to tell him that the joint was bruised, but not dislocated. Honestly, she could have told him it wasn't dislocated when she first set eyes on him. Dislocations could hurt worse than fractures, and this man wasn't showing nearly that level of pain.

Another patient appeared in full zombie costume so convincing that Lucy did a double take when she realized that his missing arm wasn't special effects; it was really gone. He was concerned that his unbalanced muscle mass was making him look lopsided. Lucy mentioned the stress on his spine when he carried his weight unevenly, and showed him some exercises that would balance his shoulders and strengthen his core.

At what she decided was lunch time—the people who arrived on set at four AM had eaten lunch hours ago—Lucy headed for the makeshift cafeteria. She was standing with a tray in her hand, dithering between the salad bar or a sandwich when a voice murmured in her ear.

"Lunch in my trailer?" asked Frederick. He stood beside her, plastic tray in hand as well. Her skin became warm and her heart gave a quick double thump.

She glanced up at him, nodded her head just enough, then looked back at the platters of food. He walked away without looking back. After his departure, Lucy realized that she wasn't at all hungry. For the sake of appearances, she grabbed a boxed sandwich and a bottle of water, and left.

* * * * *

Lucy lay in bed next to Frederick, gasping and giggling. She stared at the white, textured ceiling of the bedroom in the trailer, waiting for her breathing to slow down.

"That was delicious," Frederick said, propping his head on one elbow. "I could have that for lunch every single day." He put a finger at the hollow of Lucy's throat and ran it in lazy circles down her bare abdomen. "If we told people we were together..."

"Don't you dare tell them what we get up to on our lunch break!" she laughed.

"No, I suppose not," he said. He landed back on his pillow with a whump. "Still, it would be nice to do this every day, wouldn't it?"

"It would," she admitted. Lucy felt like Frederick was leading up to something, but she wasn't sure what. She wasn't going to leave her job at the clinic to work here full-time; she couldn't leave her patients in the lurch.

Before she could ask him what he was hinting at, there was a knock at the door.

"Mr. Asherton, fifteen minutes," called the voice.

"Fifteen, got it," Frederick hollered back. "Damn," he said quietly. "This next scene is a complicated one. I'll be busy for hours."

"Double damn," said Lucy, finishing the thought for him.

He grinned broadly at her, then bounced out of bed. He faced the wall and stretched, still nude, showing all the little muscles in his back and the round tautness of his rear end.

"I will never get tired of that view," Lucy said.

Frederick turned and leaned close to Lucy's face. He looked at her with both contentment and longing, then planted a quick kiss on Lucy's lips. "I'll hold you to that," he said, then gathered his scattered clothes.

* * * * *

The rest of Lucy's week passed in one of two moods: with Frederick, and not with Frederick. She was frustrated by how much time she spent not with Frederick. She left her front door unlocked one night and Frederick crawled into bed with her a few hours after she'd fallen asleep. He, of course, woke her up for a while. Another night, she met him at the set for an extremely late "lunch." But most of her time was spent at the clinic, at her post on the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies set, or talking to a very bored Violet.

"My due date was yesterday, Lucy," Violet complained over the phone line. "Yes-ter-day! And no baby yet. I am losing my freaking mind. What if this kid is pathologically disobedient his entire life? I don't think I can handle eighteen years of this."

Lucy laughed. "The baby doesn't have a calendar in there, Vi. Give the kid time."

"You think I could hurry it up if I managed to smuggle one in there?"

"Don't tell me you're calendar desperate already. The baby might not come for days yet."

"Hmph. You've been talking to Colton, haven't you? You and my husband are just trying to gang up on the crazy pregnant lady."

"Want me to distract you?"

"Nuh-uh. It was a distraction when you didn't know what to do with yourself. Now that you're all disgustingly happy? You're just making me jealous about all that boom-chicka-wow-wow you're getting. Do you know how long it will be until I can jump my husband again? Six weeks freaking weeks, if I'm lucky."

Lucy heard a repetitive shooshing sound that make her think Violet was pacing in her fuzzy slippers while she talked. "Did I tell you I saw Neva Straughter yesterday?"

"Now we're getting somewhere," Violet said happily. "What happened?"

"Nothing."

"You're killing me," complained Violet.

"The nothing was pretty rude, though."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. So I was in the private trailer area, where you have to pass the security guard to get in, right? I was trying to get to Frederick's trailer in a hurry, so there's less chance of someone catching me."

"Which I still think is pointless, by the way. If you were going to get in trouble, it would have happened already. And he's fine with it,"

"But I'm not. Anyways, I came around a corner too fast and almost smacked right into Neva. She stopped in her tracks so fast, she nearly tripped, and I just about landed on my rear end trying not to crash into her."

"And then?"

"I apologized, of course, and asked if she was alright, and... nothing. She didn't say a word, didn't even look at me. She just kept on walking like I wasn't even there."

"Weird."

"Tell me about it. And I'm not sure, because she's so botoxed I don't think she can make people faces anymore, but I think she looked angry."

"Interesting," Violet praised. Lucy heard a clattering noise at Violet's end of the line.

"Oh, thank goodness. They brought me food. I gotta go, Luce. There's a roving band of us pregnant chicks here that go full piranha on any unattended food."

Giggling, Lucy said her goodbyes. She might not have been holding up her end as a distraction for Violet, but Violet was certainly keeping Lucy's spirits up.

* * * * *

Lucy was excited to be back on the movie set that weekend. She knew that the crew was still busy getting caught up on scenes that had had to be moved back when Frederick hurt his knee, which meant that she likely wouldn't get to see much of Frederick today. But the possibility was much higher than it was when she was at work in the clinic in town, so she considered it an improvement. And, even more promising was that he had already invited her back to his hotel room once he was done for the day.

Aside from Neva's hauteur, she was getting along well with the people on the set. Today, everyone seemed to be in a particularly good mood. Several people had given Lucy especially bright smiles today, and asked how she was doing, even though the hadn't before. She chalked it up to becoming a more familiar sight; a trusted person on set.

Late in the afternoon, Lucy had her first real emergency call on the official radio she was so proud to wear on her hip. She hurried to the set only to find that Stanley had beaten her there and was already wrapping a tensor bandage around an ankle strain.

"Ow! Hey, man, does it have to be so tight?" asked the woman sitting on a folding metal chair that had been brought onto the set for the occasion.

"You'll thank me tomorrow when you can fit your foot in your shoe," he promised.

The actress grumbled a bit as he finished his work, but Lucy found no fault in Stanley's treatment, even if it was a bit on the tight side. Lucy spotted Frederick a dozen paces from the injured woman. He caught her eye, but stayed perfectly still. Frederick's face didn't seem to move, but suddenly it seemed to Lucy that he was looking at her like she was the only woman in the world. He stood like a statue of a beautiful immortal god. Lucy threw caution to the wind and gave him a ghost of a smile before she turned away.

After asking Stanley if she could be of help, more to report her arrival than in hopes of being useful, Lucy was dismissed and wandered back toward her corner.

Miranda, the make-up artist who had made Lucy look so wonderfully ghastly her first day on set, came rushing out of the makeup trailer when she saw Lucy walk by.

"Come see me before you leave today, Lucy!" she called.

"I will!" Lucy promised, wondering what Miranda could want. Maybe she had a complaint that she wanted to talk to Lucy about privately.

After a couple hours of no-one needing her in a professional capacity, Lucy decided to patrol the set, which was her way of justifying wandering around to see what was happening. Various people scurried around with bits of equipment, or loops of wires strung over their shoulders. Lucy gasped when she saw two people carrying a dead body, but as they got closer, she realized it was a movie prop and not a real person.

Lucy also saw lots of people wandering around with an air of impatience. Waiting, she assumed, to be needed to set up the scaffolding for the lights, or for their turn in front of the camera, or for any of the other jobs she didn't know about that went into making a movie this size.

Lucy walked quietly to the boundary of a field that edged the forest. In front of the cameras, she saw a man in dress coat and top hat single-handedly fighting off a swarm of zombies. His sword moved with blinding speed, though she saw the actor stop just short of hurting his opponents. He whirled, dispatching a half-dozen monsters before Lucy could even count them all.

Though she couldn't see his face, Lucy knew it was Frederick moving with such power and ease. It was almost chilling to see her gentle lover moving with such ferocity. But it was beautiful to watch, too, as he changed the position of his feet with precision and ducked with split-second timing. It was like watching a dance, in a way. Lucy realized that it was likely choreographed with the same exactitude of a complicated ballet routine. When all the zombies lay on the ground, 'dead', Frederick's posture relaxed. The zombies all stood up again and the group walked out of Lucy's sight.

Not wanting to be away from her little clinic for too long, Lucy returned to her center of operations. On the exam table was a folded piece of paper. "I'll be there at 9:30. X," was all the note said. Lucy recognized Frederick's handwriting and, reading between the lines, knew that he wanted her to meet him at his hotel room at 9:30 that night, and that there was a kiss waiting for her.

With Frederick's note safely tucked into her back pocket, time seemed to slow down even more. She had one patient come in for a brief, unnecessary consultation about an injury she'd declared non-serious the week before. After that small distraction, she tried to read the book she'd brought, but found herself re-reading the same passage several times without taking in a single word. Finally, Lucy decided to track down Miranda and see what she'd wanted to talk to Lucy about.

* * * * *

Lucy knocked on the open door of the makeup trailer and Miranda smiled warmly when she saw her.

"Lucy, come in! I wanted to talk to you."

"Hey, Miranda. Is everything okay?"

"More than okay. Come, come, have a seat."

Lucy sat in the makeup chair at Miranda's station. The long, narrow room was nearly empty. Miranda had told Lucy that many of the makeup and costume people followed the actors around on set, ready to do touch-ups between shots. Miranda filched a chair from an empty station and dragged it next to Lucy.

"Listen," said Miranda, patting Lucy's knee, "I wanted to talk about how things are going between you and Frederick."

"What? Me and Frederick? I don't know what you've heard, but—"

"Hey, I don't judge," Miranda interrupted. "If you two want to keep your private lives private, that's fine with me. I wish more people would, to be honest."

Lucy fought down her rising panic. For a moment, she considered denying everything. Then she decided that getting information she could use for damage control might be better. She leaned towards Miranda. "Who else knows?" she whispered.

"Oh, everyone," said Miranda dismissively.

"Oh, God," said Lucy. She put her head in her hands.

"Save it. You two have been perfectly respectable around other people. But honestly, every time Frederick gets his makeup kissed off, and his tie had been retied badly, and his hair is a mess, where do you think he comes to get put back together? Nobody knows more about what's happening on set than the costume department. Besides," Miranda continued, "If you two are in the same room, it heats up at least ten degrees. It's kind of hard to miss."

"Am I in trouble? Did you bring me here to warn me about something?" Lucy asked, feeling guilty about all the extra work she had caused for these nice people. Not to mention more than a little embarrassed that her and Fredrick's every act was written so plainly on him by those who knew how to read the signs.

"No, no, nothing like that." Miranda reached for a small tablet computer from her work station. "We have to be careful to keep costumes and makeup the same for shots that take several days to complete, or aren't shot back-to-back, right? We do that by taking pictures every morning, every costume change, and every night."

"Okay."

Miranda tapped the screen and opened a file marked "Asherton, Hair and Make-up, Front View." A head-shot of a stone-faced Frederick standing against a blank wall filled the screen. He looked bored, and a bit self-conscious.

"What I want to show you is subtle, but you've been spending so much time with Mr. Asherton, I'm hoping you'll be able to see it. This picture is from the first day of shooting," Miranda said. She then flipped through several nearly identical photos before stopping. "This is the day he hurt his knee."

Lucy could see by the set of Frederick's mouth that he was in pain. His head was at a slight angle, suggesting that he wasn't standing up straight.

"Poor Frederick," Lucy murmured.

Miranda flipped forward a few more pictures. Frederick's face still showed pain, but never as much as the first shot.

"Now here is where it gets interesting," Miranda said, stopping at one where his expression was both pained and pleased. "This, I think, is the day he met you, Lucy."

Lucy checked the date stamp in the lower corner of the photo. It had indeed been taken the evening of the day she'd met Frederick.

"Now, watch," instructed Miranda. She changed the photos rapidly and, like a flip book animation, Lucy saw a twinkle in Frederick's eye get progressively brighter.

"This is one of my favorites," said Miranda, stopping on a picture of Frederick looking positively boyish, grinning from ear to ear. "I don't want to invade your privacy, but I'd say that something happened the night before that Mr. Asherton really liked, if you catch my drift."

Lucy's face flushed, but a little of Frederick's infectious grin spread to her own face, too.

"Now we get to this bit," Miranda said. Frederick's grin was never quite as face-splitting, but Lucy saw picture after picture of Frederick showing various shades of happiness. Lucy wondered why Miranda said that this change was subtle. Lucy thought it was as obvious as a slap in the face.

When she reached the end of the stream of photos, Miranda held up one final image. "This one is from this morning." Miranda passed the tablet to Lucy.

Lucy held the device and let her eyes wander over the perfection that was Frederick. Joy filled every one of his features. He looked happy, but it was more than that, too. Intensely alive, but with a hint of yearning.

"That," said Miranda, "Is the face of a man who is head over heels for you."