Anakin volunteers to enter a dangerous Podrace to win the money Padmé and her friends need to repair the ship - no doubt largely to be able to see and help this beautiful angel again.  Anakin and Padmé become fast friends in the following days, and by the time it comes for Anakin to race, she is genuinely worried for his safety, angry enough about the risk that she lashes out at Qui-Gon for allowing it to begin with.

As he is a source of comfort for her, she is also one for him as he is forced to deal with leaving behind his mother and his home to pursue a life as a Jedi.  He gives her a handmade pendant, carved by him from a japor snippet, in the hopes that no matter what happens, she won't forget him.  She assures him that is not a problem, and that despite the changes all around them, her caring for him will remain.

After a fruitless trip to Coruscant, Anakin returns to Naboo with the Queen and her entourage, and is awhirl when he discovers the Queen and the girl he's come to worship are one and the same.  Once again he plays champion to his lady, piloting a starfighter into the core of the battleship still blockading her world, destroying the ship and freeing Naboo.  Afterwards, the two are parted when Anakin leaves to become a Jedi, but a shared smile at the victory parade is a tiny foreshadowing of things to come...

Ten years later, that lovestruck boy has grown up into an accomplished - if headstrong - Jedi student and a striking young man.  A threat to Padmé, now a Senator, deems her the recipient of Jedi protection, in the form of two old friends she has not seen in ten years.  Anakin still feels as strongly as ever for her, perhaps even more so, and the combination of this as well as the additional surprise at seeing just how much her old friend has grown up begins to stir new feelings in Padmé,. Though she refuses to acknowledge them, because Anakin's status as a Jedi makes him forbidden to pursue attachments - including romance.

The Jedi Council, in perhaps a questionable moment of judgment, send Padmé in hiding to her extremely beautiful and romantic home planet, her assigned protector the guy who wants to be her bodyguard in the total sense.  ;-)  Padmé finds it increasingly difficult to ignore her growing feelings, dressing provocatively around him and accompanying him to romantic locales.  She even allows herself to share a passionate kiss with him.  When one night Anakin confesses just how deep his feelings for her run, it's a jolt back to reality for Padmé, who cuts things off between them: pursuing a relationship with one another would destroy his future and is therefore unfeasible.  Anakin is highly frustrated, but accepts it.

Anakin's nightmares of his mother beckon him to return to Tatooine, and Padmé willingly accompanies him.  It is clear they still feel strongly for one another, but all that becomes secondary when Anakin discovers his mother has been held captive by Tusken Raiders for over a month.  When he goes to find her, only to have her die bloodied and beaten in his arms, he goes on a rampage, destroying the Tusken camp.  Horrified and angry, he later confesses the act to Padmé, who remains with him and comforts him, much as she did ten years before.

As so often happens in love stories, it takes the threat of impending death for one or both of the two involved to suck it up and get their act together.  When they go to rescue the captured Obi-Wan on Geonosis, the two are themselves captured and sentenced to death.  Realizing how trivial duty is at such a time, Padmé confesses her love to Anakin.  After a battle in which Anakin loses his right arm, he is sent to escort Padmé home to Naboo before he himself joins the newly-begun Clone Wars.  There, in defiance of thousands of years of Jedi tradition, Padmé and Anakin secretly marry.  It will be the first of all too few brief moments they manage to steal together with one another over the next three years.

I'd love to say "And they lived happily ever after," but we all know that isn't the case.

Near the end of the Wars, Padmé greets Anakin after a long separation with the news that she's pregnant.  Anakin tells her it's the happiest moment of his life, and the two happily contemplate raising their child back in Naboo's lake country, where they fell in love.  However, Anakin becomes tormented by visions of Padmé dying in childbirth.  She tries to assure him this won't happen, but he's not convinced.  Chancellor Palpatine lures Anakin with the idea that the Sith have the ability to stop death.  Anakin resists at first, especially on learning Palpatine is a Sith. But his desire to keep Padmé alive is too desperate and, in the end, Anakin turns his back on the Jedi (who he's already disgruntled with) to join Palpatine as his apprentice, Darth Vader.  In his tasks to prove his allegiance - killing the Jedi at the Temple, then the last of the Separatists - Anakin slips quickly to the dark side.  When Padmé learns what's happening to Anakin she tries to save him, following him to Mustafar, where he killed the Separatists.  Her heart breaks as she realizes just how far he's gone, that he's on a path she can't follow.  Anakin can't accept this, and when Obi-Wan arrives, the confused and angry Anakin rages that Padmé led Obi-Wan there to kill him (she didn't), that Obi-Wan turned her against him - he lashes out and chokes her until she passes out.

The closest we get to a happy ending for these two is their twin children.  When they are grown, they will become key figures in the Rebel Alliance that will overthrow the Empire.  Luke himself will be the one who brings Anakin back, as his son and the reminder of the life and love he had before (and definitely of Padmé), being able to appeal to the part of Anakin Skywalker that does still exist in Darth Vader.  If all beings end up in the same place in the Force, and in his redemption Anakin was restored to his youth, perhaps it's not naive to assume he was also reunited with his beloved.

Naive or not - that's the story I'm sticking to, dammit. No way did Anakin become hot again as a ghost just to spend eternity with old Jedi geezers. ;)