Three hours later, in the Wyatt Grange room, the partners were dutifully following Protectors Insurance Senior Vice-President Lee Sylvester as he lead them around, introducing them to various executives in what they liked to refer to as the "Meet and Greet" portion of the evening.

"Ah, Brian, my boy, there's someone I'd like you to meet," Mr. Sylvester was saying to a young man who'd given a speech earlier that night. "Julianne Torrance and Ross Alexander... champion figure skaters, I'm sure you watched them during the Olympics last year?"

"Oh, yes." The young man nodded, obviously trying to please his superior. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Brian Wright..."

"The boy just graduated suma cum laude from Harvard," the Vice-President interrupted proudly. "We're going to make him Vice President of Accounting next year."

Ross shook hands politely, then turned to Julie the second Brian and Mr. Sylvester were engaged in conversation.

"He had absolutely no clue who we are!" he whispered, trying not to laugh. "The poor guy has probably never heard of us before in his life!"

Seeing Mr. Sylvester turning back to them, Julie discreetly gave her partner a kick.

"Behave!" she mouthed, trying her best to keep a straight face.

Standing behind Julie with his hands on her shoulders, Ross immediately turned on his best "I'm so interested in everything you have to say" smile.

"Perhaps you'd like to dance with Ms. Torrance here?" Mr. Sylvester was suggesting to Brian, gesturing to the dance floor where several couples were already dancing.

Wait just a gosh darn second! Ross's mind suddenly jolted awake. That little Harvard yuppie who, from the looks of it, couldn't be a day over 25, dancing with his partner?

Brian, though, was looking very interested in the idea.

"Would you like to?" he asked Julie, looking at her in a way that made Ross fume.

With a dazzling smile, she accepted the hand he offered, and with an apologetic shrug to her partner, followed him out onto the dance floor.

With Julie dancing with Yuppie Boy, Ross found himself not only bereft of his partner and jealous as hell, but almost worse, left alone with the executive of all executives. As Mr. Sylvester droned endlessly about premiums and profits, Ross tried his best to appear interested while keeping track of his partner at the same time.

"...and last year, we took in a profit of 17.3%, which is our best since 1988, you know..."

"Oh, really?" Ross replied, not having a clue what the Vice-President was talking about. "That's remarkable!"

"Yes, isn't it?" Mr. Sylvester beamed. "And we were able to open a brand new info technology headquarters right here in Montreal, with the top computer engineers from across the country working for us, and..."

Tuning out, Ross suspiciously watched his partner dancing with Brian. For a girl who professed not to like these things, she certainly put on a convincing act. As she smiled up at Brian and laughed at something he said, Ross scowled. Maybe a little too convincing...

The few minutes seemed to last forever, but soon Julie returned to his side and Brian was lead off by his boss, leaving the partners alone.

Seeing the look on her partner's face, Julie patted his arm reassuringly.

"It's almost over," she soothed. "Besides, it hasn't been that bad."

"Easy for you to say," he grumbled. "You get to go off and flirt with Yuppie Boy while I get stuck with Mr. Sylvester, hearing all the company statistics of the entire past year."

"You gotta do what you gotta do." She shrugged. "And I was not flirting. I look at dancing with Yuppie Boy the same way you look at putting up with Mr. Mr. Sylvester... as part of the job."

"It certainly didn't look like part of the job." He inadvertently spoke his thoughts out loud.

“Aww.” She smiled comfortingly. “Were you feeling partnerless? Is that it?”

Embarassed at being so easily discovered, Ross didn’t reply. Something a little more than partnerless, he thought, glad she hadn’t yet discovered that. And, he admitted to himself, more than a little jealous.

“I’ll have to make it up to you.” She took his hand and nodded towards the dance floor. “Look, I saved my last dance for you.”

Trying not to look too pathetically grateful, Ross let her lead him onto the dance floor. As the band switched numbers, they began to play an old romantic standard he recognized.

“Someone skated to this once, didn’t they?” he asked his partner as they easily fell into step.

“Yeah, I think so,” she replied. “Don’t remember who, though...”

“Jen and Jason?” he wondered out loud. “No... it wasn’t them. Maybe Pat and Colin?”

“Mm,” she murmured, obviously more interested than dancing than talking skating. “Maybe...”

Sensing her mood shift, he shut up and tentatively pulled her a little closer. Relaxing into his arms, she wrapped her arms around his neck and let him take over.

Just for a few minutes, she told herself, leaning her head against his shoulder. You can give in for just a few minutes. Just one dance, you dance with him every day. For one dance, just feel...

Dear God, this feels so right, he was thinking as they swayed together. Holding her, like this... is this what I’ve been waiting for all this time? Is this what it’s like?

The dance was over far too soon for their liking, though, and they slowly disentangled themselves from each other’s arms and, still slightly dazed, made their way off the dance floor.

“That was... nice,” she said softly, avoiding his eyes and very aware that she was blushing.

“Yeah.” He smiled down at her. “I guess we were made to dance together, weren’t we?”

She nodded wordlessly.

More than you know, she thought to herself. Maybe more than you know.

It was almost midnight when the partners finally made their way out of the Wyatt Grange room, having completed their obligatory appearance. Ross was relieved and ready to get out of his dress clothes, but his partner had other ideas.

“Let’s go out!” she suggested excitedly as they stood waiting for the elevator once again.

“Out?” he asked warily. “Out now? Out where?”

“I don’t know, anywhere!” she replied. “We’re in Montreal, it’s almost midnight, why waste the opportunity?”

“I don’t know...” Ross looked doubtful. “I mean, we still have to drive home, remember?”

“So, we won’t drink.” Catching her partner’s skeptical look, she quickly rephrased her sentence. “Or, okay, we’ll drink responsibly.”

“Wellll...” he hedged.

“C’mon, Ross, lighten up!” She gave him a playful whack. “What are you going to do if this secret admirer chick of yours is a party girl?”

“What are you gonna do if your next boyfriend likes to stay home Friday nights and watch TV?” he retorted, smiling.

“Compromise.” She grinned wickedly. “We’ll stay home... but we’ll do something a lot more interesting than watch TV, if you catch my drift.”

He caught it. She could see reaction written all over his face.

Julie turned away to hide her self-satisfied smirk.

Ah ha, she thought triumphantly. One point for me.

Two hours, three bars, and many drinks later, she wasn’t so sure her idea had been all that great. In fact, she wasn’t quite sure of much of anything...

“We’re drunk, aren’t we?” she asked her partner, trying to sound serious.

Ross, equally unsure, contemplated her question for a second.

“Yeah,” he decided. “Yeah, I think we are.”

She flipped the cherry off the side of her glass and caught it on her tongue. “Really?”

“Really,” he confirmed. “Really... really, really drunk.”

They looked at each other, and Julie struggled to keep a straight face. She couldn’t manage it, and dissolved into a fit of giggles.

“What’s so funny?” her partner asked, looking extremely confused.

“You... me... here...” Julie could not for the life of her stop her giggles. “Oh, I don’t know, it’s just funny!”

Ross looked at her strangely for a second, then joined her laughter. As they laughed without knowing what they were laughing at, a waitress came over to their table.

“Ready for another round?” she asked, looking rather amused at the sight of these two very dressed up people in a Rue St. Catherines bar.

The partners exchanged glances, trying to decide.

“Well, I guess we aren’t driving home tonight...” Julie started.

“Yeah,” Ross finished agreeably. “I guess we aren’t.”

They exchanged another glance and laughed somewhat hysterically once again, then turned back to the waitress.

“Yeah, sure, why not?” Julie told her.

“Yeah, why not?” her partner echoed.

The waitress just shook her head, bemused.

“Okey-dokey,” she replied, and walked off.

A few more drinks later, the partners were so totally gone that they could barely remember their own names. However, they were still managing to carry on quite a lively, if rather incoherent, conversation.

“Do you ever look at people,” Julie wondered, totally out of the blue. “And wonder what they’d be like in bed?”

Ross tried to sound shocked, but it wasn’t working. “Julie!”

“Ah, c’mon, don’t tell me you don’t.” She laughed. “I mean, you can’t tell me you’ve never imagined what any of your partners would be like... what I’d be like.”

“I... uh... I...” Ross recklessly decided to continue. “Okay, so maybe I have. So what?”

“See?”

They looked at each other and both dissolved in laughter yet again.

Very giggly, Julie could barely get her words out. “And what did you think I’d be like?”

“Be like... uh...” Her partner had completely lost his train of thought. “What were we just talking about?”

Julie tried to think. “I don’t know. I just totally forgot!”

Laughter took over once again, but then Ross forced himself to stop laughing and held up a hand to stop her.

“Wait, wait, let’s try to remember...”

They tried extremely hard to concentrate, but feeling exactly the opposite of serious, kept breaking out into laughing fits every few seconds.

“I’ve got it!” Julie suddenly snapped her fingers, then spoke very seriously, as if reciting a lesson. “We were talking about what you thought I’d be like in bed!”

He laughed and tried to dodge the question. “What did you think I’d be like?”

“Uh uh.” She flirtatiously shook a finger at him. “I asked first... you tell me and I’ll tell you.”

“Okay.” He gulped down the remainder of his drink for courage. “You’d be good.”

She looked disappointed. “Just good?”

“Very good,” he corrected. “Now your turn.”

“You’d be good, too.” She leaned closer to him. “We’d be good together. Not just good...” She gestured for him to come closer, and when he did, she whispered in his ear. “Unbelievable.”

He had a vague notion somewhere in what was left of his coherent thoughts that if he wasn’t drunk, he would be blushing. He didn’t have enough thought left in him to figure out why, though, so he just grinned instead.

His partner, however, had taken a sudden mood swing towards the contemplative.

“Why can’t we just figure this out?” she asked suddenly.

Thrown by her sudden subject switch, he shook his head. “Figure what out?”

“Oh, you know...” She gestured broadly. “Just... we search, we find, and we always end up back here.”

“Huh?” He was totally not following her line of thought. “But we’ve never been here before.”

She paused for a split second. “You’re right. We haven’t.” She laughed, then stopped. “No, no, I meant... what did I mean?”

“Don’t ask me.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t even tell you what I meant right now.”

“I... I...” She searched vainly for words. “Like, us. We go away for awhile, but we come back, and we always end up sitting here, or okay, not here, but somewhere like here... you and me... together. Right back where we started.” Seeing her partner’s blank look, she trailed off. “Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”

“Us...” he tried. “How stupid we are... how we’re totally missing what’s going on.”

“Yeah. That.” She was silent for a moment, but felt compelled to go on. “And then I start trying to figure it out and I can’t, or maybe I can but it just makes my head spin and I get so confused and...” She cut herself off mid-sentence. “And I’m babbling, so I should just shut up while I’m ahead.”

He sighed, feeling his formerly carefree mood falling away.

“We should get out of here,” he finally said, leaving some money on the table. “Uh... this might seem like a stupid question, but do you remember where we’re staying?”

“The keys remember.” She dangled the hotel room key in front of him. “Thank God for that, ‘cause I sure don’t. I can barely walk, let alone in these heels. Help me out here.”

He took her arm as she teetered precariously in her less than stable heels, and together, they made their way out into the dark night.