Tom watched jealously as Jax and Brenda seemed to meld together in front of his very eyes. He thought he had steeled himself for this reunion, but he was not prepared for the depth of the love that he was seeing between the two of them. He tried to look away, but they mesmerized him.

Jax hugged Brenda tightly and continued kissing her fiercely. Slowly he pulled away, tears in his eyes. "You're here ...you're really here! This isn't a dream, is it?"

Brenda nodded her head, but she was unable to speak because she was crying so hard. She merely held onto Jax for dear life, and sobbed.

Jax gently touched her face, afraid that this very action would make her disappear as she always did from his dreams. But she didn't; she was real, and she was home! The tears were rolling down his cheeks as he lifted her back up into his arms again, and gently kissed the tears from her eyes. "I have dreamed of this every night for the past two weeks...I thought I'd never hold you again or tell you 'I love you' again."

He twirled her gently around, and then set her down slowly. "Are you okay?"

Brenda smiled through her tears and broke away from his arms just long enough to retrieve the ultrasound printout from the coffee table. "I'm better than okay! I'm pregnant, and this is our baby!" she laughed happily as she held the image up for Jax to see.

A huge smile swept across Jax's face as he took the picture from her. "Our baby? This is a day for miracles! Both you and our baby came home safely to me! I prayed that both of you would be safe."

"You knew about the baby?" Brenda asked, puzzled by this.

Jax nodded. "Yes, the night you...the night you disappeared... Jerry and I came back here and there was a message on the machine from Dr. Eckhart's office. It said that they didn't have the results of the genetic test yet, but that they had run another pregnancy test and that this one was positive, and you were definitely pregnant. I wanted to die when I thought I had lost both you and our baby both at the same time."

Brenda caressed his cheek gently with her hand. "I am so sorry that you had to go through all of this."

Tom continued to watch silently, as both Jax and Brenda seemed oblivious to his presence in the room. He felt uncomfortable being here at this intimate moment, like a voyeur, but he had no idea as to how to extricate himself from the situation. But then Brenda remembered he was there.

"Tom," she held out her hand to him as she pulled Jax around the couch toward Tom, who remained frozen by the fireplace, "I'd like you to meet my fiancé, Jasper Jacks, but you can call him..."

"Jax," Tom interrupted, as he extended his right hand to Jax in greeting.

"Tom," Jax murmured, arching his eyebrows warily at the man he had met in Brighton a couple of days before and who had been on a definite mission of love that night. Had Brenda been the object of this man's desires?

Brenda was incredulous. "You two know each other?" she laughed.

"Only briefly," Jax answered, as he silently looked at Tom, signaling that they would discuss the particulars of that meeting another time without Brenda present.

"How?" Brenda pressed. "Through business, or something?"

"Or something," Tom replied, understanding all too well Jax's unspoken message.

Jax spied his angel bear sitting on the coffee table, and bent to pick it up just as Brenda said, "Tom got that for the baby yesterday when he had my prescriptions filled."

"He did?" Jax replied. "That was very nice of Tom, wasn't it?" Jax looked pointedly at Tom, who glanced uneasily at the floor.

Brenda took the bear from Jax, and led him to the couch, where he pulled her onto his lap, and she continued to briefly skim over the highlights of the past couple of days. Tom and Jax merely sat quietly, each smiling at her as they reveled in the joy she was exuding into the room. She mainly talked about the baby and her excitement at being home with Jax, never really touching on the specifics of the accident or how Tom had found her or what had transpired between them. She wanted to know about Jax's family and their arrests, and her mother's condition, and if the hospital had the results of her blood test yet. Jax told her that her mother had survived, and that she was back in the sanitarium in Switzerland under the care of her own doctor, and that he had heard nothing from the hospital yet about her genetic test results. As for the family situation, Jax just said that they would discuss it later, and Brenda understood that he was not comfortable talking about the situation in front of Tom. After about 20 minutes of nonstop chatter, Brenda finally succumbed to exhaustion from the excitement of the morning, and fell asleep in Jax's arms.

Jax smiled down at Brenda's sleeping form in his arms, and then looked up at Tom. "I'm going to take her up to bed. I'll be back down in a minute." He stood and headed toward the stairs.

"That's okay," Tom replied. "I need to be heading back to the cabin anyway. My dog, Charlie's, going to be wondering where I am." He moved toward the front door, but Jax stopped him.

"Please don't leave just yet," Jax said. "I think we need to talk." He turned and headed up the stairs, leaving an uncomfortable Tom standing alone at the foot of the stairs.

Jax kissed Brenda tenderly as he laid her down gently on the bed. She was sleeping soundly, still clutching the ultrasound image of their baby and the angel bear in her hands. "Sleep, my angel," he whispered, smiling as he covered her with a nearby coverlet, and then went back downstairs to join Tom, who was at the fireplace holding a picture of Brenda that had been on the mantle. Jax watched, unnoticed, as Tom tenderly grazed his fingertips across the image of Brenda's smiling face that was in his hands.

"Would you like some coffee?" Jax asked finally, shattering the silent moment of intimacy that he had just witnessed.

Tom looked up, startled to see Jax standing behind him. "Umm...no thanks." He hastily put Brenda's picture back in its proper place on the mantle. "She didn't wake up?"

Jax shook his head and laughed slightly, "No, she's really out right now." He went to join Tom by the fireplace.

Tom looked back at the picture of Brenda that he had been holding and sighed, "Well, it's been an eventful 48 hours for her. Actually, it's been a hectic two weeks," he added with a laugh.

Jax looked at him for a second, and then finally asked the question that had been hanging in the room since Tom and Brenda had arrived, "You can tell me the whole story now. How did you find her, and why did it take you so long to get her back here?"

Tom licked his suddenly dry lips and then looked up at Jax. "Actually my dog, Charlie, found her...she washed up from the Charles River just outside my cabin the night of the big storm. She was in bad shape - in fact, she wasn't breathing, although she had a faint pulse."

"So you saved her life?" Jax interrupted, trying to get everything straight in his head.

Tom nodded, heading for the love seat to sit down. "Yeah, I've had some basic medical training, and I was able to do CPR and get her breathing again. It was touch-and-go even after I got her breathing again and into the cabin because she was so cold, and I was afraid she'd still die from hypothermia. And then she was feverish, and I worried about pneumonia after that."

Jax moved to sit across from Tom on the couch and eyed him suspiciously. "Why didn't you call 911 as soon as she was breathing again?"

"The storm had taken the phone lines out, and I didn't have my cell phone with me," Tom answered.

"Then why didn't you try to drive her to get help as soon as the storm died down?" Jax pressed.

"Well, my car was in the shop at Brighton for over a week. In fact, the day you and I met at Ed's station was only a day or two after it had been returned to me," Tom explained.

"I...we...didn't know who she was. When she finally regained consciousness the next morning, she had no idea who she was. In fact, it wasn't until just a few hours ago that she remembered everything." Tom said.

Jax continued to eye Tom skeptically. "And you didn't hear anything on the news or read anything in the paper about her during this time? You never recognized her face? She's been on hundreds of magazine covers and on countless billboards!"

Tom shifted uncomfortably on the love seat. "I thought she looked familiar, but..." He left the rest of the sentence unfinished, as he recalled thinking that she looked familiar because she had the face of the woman of his dreams. "I didn't have a radio or a TV at the cabin, and Brighton doesn't have any newspaper. Besides, I had gone to the cabin for a vacation and to get away from the rest of the world, so I had no desire to know what was going on in the world."

Jax leaned toward Tom and locked onto his face with a steely gaze. "Not even after a beautiful woman washed up at your feet? Weren't you the least bit curious as to who she was and where she belonged?"

Tom swallowed hard, wondering how to answer this man, when Tom knew that Jax already knew why Tom had not looked high and low for some clue as to Brenda's identity. He could see it in Jax's eyes -- Jax knew how Tom felt about Brenda; he was just waiting for Tom to admit it. But Tom couldn't. "Angel needed some time to heal, and I gave her that."

Jax looked at him sharply. "What did you call her?"

A blush spread over Tom's face as he realized that he had let his special name for her slip out. "Umm..." Tom stammered, "I called her 'Angel' because when I found her she reminded me of the porcelain angels my mom collected when I was a kid."

Jax's face softened somewhat at his explanation, but he was still not sure if he believed Tom. There was something about the way Tom looked at Brenda -- and the way he had touched her picture so tenderly -- that made Jax question Tom's motives in all of this. He knew he should be grateful to Tom for literally breathing life back into Brenda and their child, but a part of him still could not quell this jealousy he felt for Tom and the time that he had spent with her as 'Angel.' And the unsettling dream he had had about Brenda and Tom and the baby was also adding to his feeling of uneasiness. He trusted Brenda implicitly, and he knew that she would not betray him knowingly, but what if, when she was not sure of who she was, that she...No! He pushed the thought from his mind.

"So when exactly did you realize that 'Angel' was Brenda?" Jax asked.

"The night before last when we were in the clinic in Carlisle, where we found out about the baby. I was waiting for the doctor to examine Angel...Brenda...and I was flipping through an old People magazine, and I saw a picture of you and her in that. It was an announcement of your engagement," Tom answered matter-of-factly.

"The night before last?" Jax looked at him, his eyes hardening, as he realized that was the night he had spent outside Brighton, just a few miles from Tom's cabin. "Then why did you wait until this morning to bring her home?"

Because I'm in love with her, and I wanted to prove that you weren't good for her and justify why she'd never need to know about you, Tom thought, but instead he said, "Because I wanted to do some research on you and her before I laid all the information out for her. At that point she still had no conscious memories of who she was."

"So, it was after you had done all this research that you told Brenda who she was and who I was?" Jax asked, never letting his cold gaze move from Tom's face.

"I was going to, but by the time I got around to telling her, she was already remembering on her own. She had seen the picture I had torn from the magazine, and she had read the information I had on my computer screen about the events surrounding her 'death by drowning.' Those things, coupled with the dreams she said she'd been having from the beginning, seemed to bring everything back to her. I told her about your family's troubles with the FBI. I knew you were being arraigned at 6:00 this morning, which is why we opted to come here rather than to the jail to see you," Tom explained. "Besides, I thought you might want this reunion to be private," he added as an afterthought.

"Yeah, I appreciate that," Jax said looking down at the floor, thinking about how hard it would have been to have Brenda see him in jail, then he quickly looked back up at Tom. "How did you know that I was being arraigned this morning at 6:00? The public was told that the arraignment was to be at 9:00 am. The only ones who knew about the earlier time were the police and the court and..."

"And the feds," Tom finished for him, as he pulled his FBI badge out and showed it to Jax. "Pretty ironic, isn't it? I find your fiancée and return a part of your world that you thought you'd lost forever, and the agency I work for is simultaneously taking away the rest of your world," Tom added.

"Yeah, pretty damn coincidental," Jax agreed, still wondering what had happened prior to their trip to the clinic that evening. "How did your evening go the other night -- before you took her to the clinic?" he finally asked, once again looking Tom squarely in the eyes.

"We had dinner, and that was all," Tom said, meeting Jax's steady gaze with one of his own. "She passed out just as we were clearing the dishes, and I rushed her to the clinic right away, and the rest, as they say, is history."

Jax couldn't contain the smile of relief that appeared on his face then. I knew she'd never betray our love, memory or no memory, he thought. His attitude toward Tom softened immediately, and he extended his hand to him. "Thanks for all that you did for Brenda -- for us. I hope I can repay you one day, but for now, your agency seems to have frozen all that I have."

Not the most important thing that you have, Tom thought as he cast a furtive glance up the stairs. "That's not necessary," Tom answered him, shaking Jax's hand as he rose to leave. "I just wish that you and Ang...Brenda...hadn't suffered the way you both did. I need to get going now. I hate to leave Charlie alone for too long, and I have some things I need to attend to elsewhere as well."

Jax ushered him to the door. "Thanks again," he said, as he watched Tom get into his car and drive away. Jax closed the door and leaned against it and sighed. She's home, he thought, a smile curling his lips. I don't give a damn about anything else now that she's home!

Dr. Jim Mooney leaned on the desk at the Carlisle Urgent Care Center and sighed wearily as he finished his charting for the last patient he had seen. It was nearly 9:00 am, and he was just completing a fifteen hour shift at the clinic, having had to work an extra couple of hours as a favor to Dr. Stencil, who had some urgent business to handle before coming in this morning to relieve Jim. It had been a rather slow night, and Jim had been thankful for that. It had allowed him to catch a short nap in the middle of the night in the doctors' lounge. Still, it was not enough sleep to satisfy his constantly sleep-deprived body. He hated working such long hours and doing double duty at both his private practice as well as here at the clinic, but he had no choice. He owed a bundle of money to a lot of people - some of them not-so-nice people - and since he wasn't likely to win the lottery anytime soon, he needed to work as much as possible to pay off all of his debts - and fast.

He finished his charting and handed the orders to one of the nurses, and turned to go to the doctor's lounge to await Stencil's arrival, when the front page of the Carlisle Gazette, that had been laying on the desk beneath the chart, caught his attention. "THE COLLAPSE OF THE HOUSE OF JACKS" the headline blared, but what caught Jim's eye was the sidebar article. That article was titled: "MORE TRAGEDY FOR JASPER JACKS," and the picture that accompanied it showed Mr. Jacks and his recently deceased fiancée, model Brenda Barrett, who was the spitting image of 'Angel,' the Jane Doe Jim had treated there at the clinic just a couple of nights before. Jim picked up the paper and headed toward the lounge, devouring every word on the front page. A smile grew across his face as he felt a sudden burst of energy pass through him with the realization that he may have just won the lottery after all!

Tom glanced at his watch as he passed the sign thanking him for visiting Port Charles. It was just past 9:00 am, and it felt like ages since he had slept. It had been an interminably long last few hours, especially watching his Angel in the arms of her fiancé and definitely head-over-heels in love with him. His head told him he needed to forget about her and move on, but his heart would not let him yet.

He sighed as he pulled his cell phone out of his jacket and hit the speed dial for John at the agency. "John," he said when his friend and partner answered, "I've had enough of the great outdoors, and I'm coming back in today. Tell Assistant Director Sikes I want to get in on the Jacks investigation, and I want to start immediately."

He replaced the phone in his pocket and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. "I just need to know what's going on and that she's really safe," he said aloud to his reflection. "Besides, all's fair in love and war..."

Jax looked longingly at Brenda as she continued to sleep on the bed, ultrasound and bear still firmly in hand. He wanted to lie down beside her and kiss her awake and then make slow, delicious love to her for the rest of the day, but he knew she was drained from the day's events. Besides, he thought, smiling, she's sleeping for two now. He moved the pale cream coverlet up over her shoulders and kissed her gently on the cheek, but she never moved. Sighing softly, he went into the bathroom to wash the stench of the Port Charles City Jail off his body before he joined her for some much-needed sleep.

Jax turned on the water in the shower full force and as hot as he could get it, and let the pulsating streams of water rush over his tired body. What an incredible twenty-four hours this had turned out to be! Just the morning before, he had been sitting in the Pine Cone Motel and Restaurant, eating a huge breakfast and contemplating meeting Tom and his mystery lady, who turns out to be Brenda. He had even visited Tom's cabin and seen the remains of Tom and Brenda's dinner from the previous night, and had lost the bear there and picked up one of the roses that Tom had given to Brenda. He remembered how close he had felt to Brenda when he was there and when he had been in Tom's car. Now he understood why.

And then the frantic call had come from Addie, and he had returned to Port Charles to find his financial empire, which he thought he had built firmly on solid ground, being destroyed by the shifting sands of fate as his family's deceit had finally come to light. He had lost his entire fortune in the blink of an eye, but he didn't care. He had regained something more important than all the gold in the world - the woman he loved more than life itself and their child were both safely home with him again, and that was all the fortune he would ever again need.

Jax stepped out of the shower and dried himself off, wrapping the towel around him as he went back into the bedroom, intent on getting some sleep with Brenda. He rubbed his still damp hair with a second towel, glancing at Brenda's dressing table as he entered. The ultrasound and the bear she had been holding were laying there, and her dress that she'd been wearing when he laid her down was draped across the table next to them. He looked up to see Brenda sitting up in the bed, smiling at him. Her shoulders were bare except for her glorious chestnut hair that cascaded over them. There seemed to be a glow around her, and Jax wasn't sure if it was from the muted sunlight that was escaping into the room through the gauzy material of the drawn curtains, or if the glow came from within Brenda herself. All he knew was that he had never seen her look more breathtakingly beautiful!

"It's been too long," she whispered, extending her right hand out to him as her left hand held up the white linen sheet that scarcely concealed her bare body.

That was all the invitation he needed...