Uncomfortable as Missy may be, she's counting her blessings that the cold sore is about all that's wrong with her life. In the seven years she's lived in Hollywood, Missy has suffered enough ups and downs to qualify for the Olympic ski team. Somehow, she got through SANTA BARBARA's nerve racking first season, only to have her character go on a date and never return.

Offscreen, Missy endured a private hell when her fiancé (now-husband), Scott Reeves, underwent emergency brain surgery on the eve of their 1990 wedding. And, despite her current status as a very popular DAYS OF OUR LIVES star, the talented actress spent years knocking around in teen storylines before clicking with Matthew Ashford (Jack) as a soap super couple.

Jack and Jennifer's humorous banter has helped make them one of DAYS's most engaging romantic pairs. Hard as it may be to believe, Missy was once terrified of doing comedy. "Matt said, 'Just do it,' and I said, 'Oh, no, no, I can't. I'll screw it up. I'll start crying. I'll be so scared,'" Missy recalls as she settles cross-legged onto the floor of her small dressing room. Clad in a white T-shirt and Gap flowered leggings, the actress looks far younger than her twenty-four years.

Luckily, Matt had total faith in his co-star. "I'd always watch her from afar because she was a cute girl and there's a really good vibe about her as a person," Matt explains. "The show kept allowing her to do the same thing over and over again, and it killed me to watch sometimes. I think she has unlimited potential and I'm lust so glad we got the chance to work together because she pulled more out of me and I pulled more out of her."

Today, Missy sounds like a pro when she discusses comedy. "Working with Matt has made me so comfortable that I'm not as scared anymore," she says. "You try stuff, and, if it doesn't work, it's no big deal."

She's matured as an actress in many ways; Missy's even grown nonchalant about doing love scenes. "When I first had to do them, it was uncomfortable. Eventually, I realized love scenes are so technical that they don't bother me anymore," she declares with a shrug. "There you are, kissing someone you're not in love with. It's so silly it's hysterical."

She's a far cry from the seventeen-year-old novice who made her acting debut in 1984 as SB's tortured teen, Jade Perkins. Missy -- whose prior experience consisted of commercials -- was summoned to California for a screen test.

"For people from New Jersey, California is like another world," observes Missy. "Coming here was a big deal." Since her father couldn't get away from his job as a DJ for an Asbury Park radio station -- "My dad actually met Bruce [Springsteen]" -- Missy's mom went with her on the trek west. "We didn't know anybody here, so my agent drove us around and helped me find an apartment," she says. (Since Missy made the move after her junior year in high school, she had a tutor on the SB set and graduated by taking the GED.)

Housing was the least of her problems. "I told my agent, 'I'll never get anywhere here, there are no taxis around,' and she said, 'You don't take taxis in California. You have to get a car,'" recalls Missy. "I'd only gotten my license three months before. For the first five years I was here, I was so afraid of the freeways that I wouldn't drive on them. I don't know if I ever would have driven on them if I hadn't met Scott. I lived in Sherman Oaks and he lived in Woodland Hills, which was around eleven miles away. I took Ventura Boulevard all the way to his house until he finally convinced me to take the freeway. But I would only go to his house on off hours. I was so afraid of the freeways that I'd get up at six AM to make sure I didn't hit traffic!"

Missy is diplomatic about SB: "Working there was fun and the cast was great. It was so exciting just to be there. But there are always going to be problems with a new show." She had other concerns, including weight gain. "It's funny because every girl goes through that stage where you eat at MacDonald's every day. You just naturally gain weight," Missy points out, adding, "In this business, you're not allowed to look like that, so there was this pressure of 'Oh God, you have to be thin,' plus my family being three thousand miles away, plus being at a job that I knew wasn't going to work out." DAYS cast Melissa a month after Jade disappeared. Initially paired with Billy Warlock (Frankie) in a teen romance, Missy's character moved on to Emilio (Billy Hufsey) before striking gold with Jack. But no matter what curves the writers throw at the couple, one thing is certain -- nothing Jennifer and Jack go through can match Missy and Scott's real-life ordeal.

The couple met when Scott briefly played the role of Jake on DAYS, but since both were involved with other people at the time, romance didn't bloom until after he left the show. "He called and invited me to a get-together he was having at his house," Missy recalls. "We were just friends at first, but we started hanging out more and became very attracted to each other."

One afternoon, about six months after the couple began officially dating, Scott took a nap after complaining of a headache. "He was sleeping and he suddenly had a seizure,' Missy shares. "Then he went back to sleep. He jokes with me all the time, so I thought maybe he was fooling. But when he woke up and I told him what happened, he had no memory of it."

The incident didn't recur, so the couple shrugged it off. Scott proposed while he was on location in Vancouver, Canada, shooting a sequel to Friday the Thirteenth. "He didn't know he'd have to pay all these taxes on the engagement ring to get it into Canada," Missy chuckles, "so he ended up spending half the price of the ring in taxes. And by the time he actually got the ring into Canada, it was April Fool's Day."

"He took me for a romantic dinner, then on a limo ride through Stanley Park. At the park, we got out of the limo and Scott asked me to marry him. I was totally surprised. When we first got into the limo, I was so tired I didn't even want to go. But it was so great. I was showing my ring to the limo driver and saying, 'Look, we're engaged!'"

The couple prepared for an elaborate wedding. Then in January of 1990, Scott had another seizure. The couple rushed to a doctor, who put Scott through a battery of brain tests. "I was so scared," Missy says, her voice thick with emotion. "After the tests, we were lust waiting to see what was wrong. The doctor finally called and left a message on my answering machine -- on my machine! -- saying they had found something in the scans. We couldn't sleep the whole night. The next day the doctor told us he wouldn't be able to tell what was wrong until he opened Scott's head up. He didn't even know whether or not it was a tumor, which was our greatest fear. We canceled all our wedding plans and Scott went into the hospital."

Close as they already were, the terrifying experience intensified the couple's commitment to each other. "Ignorant people actually asked my mother-in-law, 'Well, is Missy going to leave Scott now?'" Missy says angrily. "It was amazing to me that anybody could think that. I adore Scott. I'd die if anything happened to him."

While Scott underwent a grueling operation, his family worried. "It was awful,' Missy declares. "We couldn't believe he had to go through this kind of surgery. I think we were bigger wrecks about it than Scott was. He was great." Scott's problem proved to be a freaky fluke. A sinus infection had traveled to his forehead and lodged there, creating an abscess. "The doctors removed the abscess and he was totally fine," Missy explains. "He's been completely fine ever since."

After a brief recuperative period, the couple wed on March 23, 1990, in front of an intimate group -- "just family and a few friends" -- at the Lake Manor Chapel in Chatsworth, California. Missy believes Scott's brush with death taught them a big lesson: "Whenever we start to get cranky and complain about stuff, we remember what he went through and think about how precious life is. It's really scary. You just never think something like this is going to happen to you."

Marrying young doesn't faze Missy. "We both come from strong families," she explains. "That's what's real to us. We're both Christians. We come from religious backgrounds." Missy believes marriage has made her more responsible: "You can't be selfish. That's what I like - the commitment of working together to build a life. Maybe I'm biased, but he's an exceptional person. I'm so lucky to be married to him because he's so easy. He's also gorgeous!"

The newlyweds avoid the Hollywood scene, spending their spare time remodeling a new home, and hanging out with their pets. "We're real animal buffs," notes Missy. "We have a parrot [Pepe], two Chihuahuas [Ricky and Ethel], three cats [Suki and her kittens] and a horse [Jagger] we keep at a ranch."

Despite her popularity, Missy seems refreshingly unaffected by flame. "If I ever changed, my family would be the first ones to call me on it," she laughs, then adds thoughtfully, "I've grown up and learned a lot in the last seven years. Everything has worked out so nicely and I'm really thankful. I'm sure things will happen that throw us a curve and we'll have to work through them, but right now, my life is exactly where I want it to be. I have a great job, a great husband -- what more could I want?"