The Story of Us - Part SIX!

The day before we were supposed to meet, I emailed Patrick to ask him if he might send me a photo. You see, he didn't have one posted on his profile and I wanted to know who to look for, though at 6'6" tall, he would have been hard to miss.

The photo he sent me was from his sister's wedding a few months earlier.

He was wearing a kilt, but he was cute and had a friendly face.

Anxious to meet the guy who was so confident that he'd send me a picture of himself in a kilt as my first image of him, I left a little early to get to our meeting.

(I'm an early person. I don't like to rush. I like to have time to find where I'm going, park, and get there without feeling stressed.)

Fifteen minutes before we were supposed to meet, Patrick called to tell me he was running about 30 minutes late.

(I'd come to learn that he's a late person.)

I killed time by driving around Concord and checking out all of the Christmas decorations. Concord is a beautiful little town - the epitome of New England charm - but I'd looped around twice and still had 15 minutes to waste. I ended up calling my friend and was talking to her on my cell when I saw Patrick walking up.

I can remember exactly what he was wearing, and he was much more handsome in person than in his photograph.

We went inside to the quaint little pub, sat by the fire, listened to the jazz band playing, and got to know each other.

I wouldn't say it was love at first sight, but he was charming, intelligent, funny, handsome. It wasn't like pulling teeth trying to maintain a conversation with him. I found myself wanting to put my arms around his waist and hug him because he was so tall. I definitely wanted to get to know him more.

When he walked me to my car at the end of the evening, we parted with a hug and a "Let's do this again sometime," and I hoped to myself that we really would.

The next morning, he sent me an email thanking me for a lovely evening.

We went out again the following weekend. He was late, but he brought me a huge bouquet of beautiful flowers.

It was the little things that told me this guy was different from the guys I usually spent time with. He held my coat for me while we waited for a table in a restaurant in the North End. He opened doors, pulled out chairs. I was used to being treated like "one of the guys," but he was making me feel like a princess.

There was just one little thing: he smoked. As he lit up on our second date, I was shocked. I wondered how on earth I had missed that fact on his profile. Smoking, for me, was definitely a deal-breaker. I had lost two grandfathers to smoking-related illnesses. I think God somehow kept me from seeing it because he didn't want me to write him off. I'm so glad I missed it. (He's since quit.)

We went out a few times before I went home to Pennsylvania for Christmas, and he picked me up at the airport when I went back to New England for a New Year's Eve party at his house. It would be my first chance to see him among his family and friends, and they could not have spoken more highly of him.

It was evident that he was a diamond in the rough. A genuinely good guy.

It was just a few weeks later that we brought up the "L" word and started talking about marriage. I couldn't believe that I'd finally found the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with!