Thanks to Kathy!!!
I will say that this *is* a new story all together. With that in mind, this chapter has a fair amount [most of it?] of recounting the previous two stories. Part 2 will move on more
.
Just a guess at 25-30 parts total...
Thanks!
*~*1*~*
Lois rolled over and realized that something was wrong.
She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was definitely wrong.
She rolled, reaching for the warm body she knew should be next to her, but all she found was cold sheets.
She pushed herself into a sitting position, leaning against the headboard and yawning. A figure out on the balcony caught her eye.
There he was.
She slipped out of bed and padded across the large, open room until she reached the French door. She opened it and went to stand behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her cheek on his back.
"I missed you," she murmured. "I woke up and you weren't there."
"Sorry. I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep."
"Bad dream?"
He nodded. "Not as bad as I would have expected normally, but yeah."
"I'm glad."
They stood there for another long moment. "Why don't you go get some more sleep?" he finally asked. "I won't be too much longer, I don't think."
"Do you want to talk some more?"
He shook his head. "I wrote up the Superman story a little while ago. No one else had anyone out there because it's so far out of town – probably a two and a half hour drive – so Perry should be able to use it tomorrow afternoon and have the exclusive. I couldn’t say *I'd* been there, but I had some Superman quotes and some quotes from emergency personnel via Superman – I was careful about how it was worded and I asked the head highway patrolman there what he wanted to have make the newspaper if I 'happened' to run into a reporter who wanted to talk about it so I'm in the clear there but..."
"We can do some follow-ups by phone in the morning," Lois told him practically. "Or did you already send it in?"
"No, not yet. That was my thought, too – that we could make some calls tomorrow." He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly before pushing back from the railing. He turned to put his arms around her. "Thank you for being here tonight."
She leaned up enough to kiss him softly. "I wouldn't be anywhere else."
She turned, taking her hand in his and leading him back to bed.
Lois could feel him relaxing as she spooned behind him, one arm around his stomach holding him to her.
Her mind was wide awake and wandered back over the last week – week! – since she'd first met the man she was now holding in her arms.
He'd shown up at Kent Farms, her family's bed and breakfast, and would have taken her breath away at the first instant if she hadn't been annoyed that he was interrupting her baking for the Corn Festival.
They'd spent two days – apart and then together – hunting down the Irigs and the military men who were tearing up the Irig property. In the process, she'd found herself falling in love with the man behind the cape. She'd figured out his secret identity pretty quickly after they found the spaceship that had brought him to New Troy as a baby, though she admitted that he'd helped by pushing his hair off his face as she asked him if he thought Superman might work at the Daily Planet.
They'd been kidnapped and fought off Colonel Trask, eventually killing him when she and Trask had tumbled over a cliff near Parsons Lake. Clark and one of Trask's men had pulled her up. Clark's parents had come for the Corn Festival and to make sure he was okay after his exposures to the rock she'd dubbed Kryptonite.
Sunday, five days after she'd met him, she'd found herself on the plane his - apparently very wealthy – grandfather had chartered to take the three Lanes back to Metropolis.
Within hours, she had a job as Clark's partner at the Daily Planet and they headed to the Metropolis Grand on their first assignment. They spent two nights in the honeymoon suite trying to figure out what Apocalypse Consulting was up to.
And they did. They were able to use Superman's navy connections as well as the connections to Jimmy's dad at the FBI, who'd already been investigating Congressman Harrington.
They'd come back from her third official day on the job and second day in the newsroom to find that Nathan Lane, Clark's wonderfully quirky and decidedly blunt grandfather, was having a fundraiser for one of his charities. They'd walked down the stairs and to the west wing of the house together, danced one dance, and then Clark had disappeared.
It wasn't until she'd returned to her room several hours later that she found him. He'd spent hours at a horrific crash on one of the turnpikes as it neared the state border. He'd decided earlier in the evening that the authorities could handle the original crash but then...
A big rig had run over three cars, crushing them, apparently without the driver ever touching his brakes. Lois hadn't seen any of the pictures yet, but she knew Clark wouldn’t be this disturbed over something trivial. He'd even started to blame himself for not going when he'd heard about the first accident but she'd nipped that in the bud and knew he actually did agree with her – he did *need* some time off from being Superman and if it hadn't been for the semi-truck, there would have been no real need for Superman at all.
She sighed. He'd asked if he could stay with her, to help keep the dreams away like he'd done for her a couple of times since Trask had dropped over that cliff.
It had been a very interesting first week together and part of her hoped that not all of her life in Metropolis would be as exciting, but the rest of her craved the excitement of the big city. She'd felt truly alive as they'd walked through downtown Metropolis earlier in the day – even if meeting Clark’s Assistant District Attorney ex-girlfriend had put a bit of a damper on it.
She tightened her hold on him but startled slightly as it hit her. It was the eighth night that she'd known him – they'd met late the Tuesday before and now it was sometime early morning the following Wednesday. In those eight nights, they'd slept in the same bed, for one reason or another, for half of them.
She felt safe with him. Even before she'd known he was Superman, she'd felt safe with him.
And she was falling in love with him. She wasn't ready to say the three little words yet – and neither was he – but both were clearly headed in that direction.
When they'd gone to bed initially, he'd been wearing a shirt but it had been discarded at some point and she snuggled closer to his warmth.
She softly kissed his back and willed herself to sleep.
*****
TBC
