A few of the usual disclaimers - all characters from Law & Order:CI (and any subsequent crossover characters) are owned by Dick Wolf, not by me. Other characters, such as the heroine Emily Ryan and so forth, are created and owned by me. This story deals with some real life events, and there will be reference to a few "real life" people, such as news commentators and such, however in some instances I have altered names and details in the interest of creativity and because I do not have enough information about some of those real life people to use their actual names. I've done extensive research on the events in NYC on 9/11, but it is impossible to get everything exactly right. I hope that my descriptions of the events will be realistic enough and that any flubs may be gently looked upon. I don't live in NYC, so I employ the Internet for a great deal of my research. Google Maps rocks!
I write romantic fiction and relational stories, so my main thrust here is the heart of the characters and how they relate to one another. This won't be a whodunnit or a "whydunnit", though the cases will be peppered throughout, as they relate to my characters' lives and to the storyline. Things happen in the CI "alternate universe" a little differently at times, so please forgive any meanderings from actual episodes and dialogue. And if you have gotten past all my "disclaimers" without going to sleep - ENJOY! :)
Chapter 1
The room was coming along nicely. Taking a step back from the window she had been working on, Emily surveyed the paintjob and decided that she was just as good on walls and trim as on canvas.
The old brownstone had just needed some tender loving care. She had been giving it just that, despite the protestations of her mother, who didn't understand what her daughter would want with an old brownstone in Brooklyn when she could have a penthouse in Manhattan.
It was an old argument, and one that had followed her from her roots in Charleston, South Carolina all the way to New York. It didn't matter that she had followed her heart, that she was doing what she loved. Her mother had never understood, but her father had.
His last request to her, before the cancer had taken him away, was that she would follow her dreams to Juilliard and be the prima ballerina she had always wanted to be.
She had done exactly that. Four years at Juilliard and then she had been asked to join the Romanoff Ballet Company by Madame Galina Romanoff herself. She had worked hard for that position, and realized the dream of her life. Music and dance were as much a part of her life as her own heart.
The name Emily Ryan was well known in the ballet world now, though it wasn't that which had been her goal. She only wanted to dance, and to teach. It was a gift she could give to the younger girls, her ability to encourage and to mentor each of them as they strived to find the beauty of the dance within themselves.
If dancing was her first love, painting and drawing came in a close second. She did those things mostly for herself, because she loved to put the things she saw on paper or canvas. Bobby had told her often enough that she should think about selling it, and she had thought about it a time or two, but she'd never pursued it.
Bobby. The very thought of him had her heart tripping. She'd been living next door to him for the past four months and during that time they'd become the best of friends. She knew he had no idea how she felt about him, which often struck her funny because he was one of the most astute people she had ever known.
A few months before she had met him, he'd been promoted to Detective First Grade and joined the Major Case Squad, which was the most prestigious department in the NYPD. Not for nothing had he earned a reputation for being brilliant at closing cases. He'd worked undercover in the Narcotics division in Brooklyn and run twenty-seven operations, which had led to twenty-seven convictions. A closed-case rating like that was something to be proud of, and he was, but not so anyone would ever know it.
Emily knew it, though. Four months had given her time enough to study him, to know him, and she had already deduced that, for him, being a cop wasn't just a way to make a living. He was dedicated to it. To the pursuit of truth, the pursuit of the evil that men do. And he was dedicated to bringing justice to the crime victims and their families.
She set her paint brush aside and moved back to the window, looked down at the tiny yard in back where she had been planting flowers and shrubs, turning the overgrown space into an oasis of colorful blooms and soothing scents.
It was how she'd met Bobby one day in mid-April. She'd been digging up old shrubs and tossing them into a wheelbarrow near the chain link fence that bordered her yard when she'd heard a voice call out a greeting.
She'd looked up, and into a handsome face with the most intense pair of brown eyes she had ever seen. He'd been leaning companionably on the fence, smiling at her, and introduced himself as Robert Goren, but it wasn't long before formalities were abandoned and she was calling him Bobby.
The brownstone next to hers had been converted into apartments and he lived in one of them, on the first floor. The yard behind his building was mostly dirt and gravel, and used as highly coveted off-street parking. He was often out there, tinkering with his car, or washing and waxing it.
He was there now, she saw, as she walked to the other window and looked down. The top was down and she stood for a moment admiring both man and car.
The car was a classic. A '65 Mustang GT with a shiny black paint job and a white ragtop. Lewis, his best friend since childhood, owned a body shop in Long Island City and Bobby had told her that he'd worked with him now and then, when the shop had first opened, before Lewis could afford full-time help. He had pitched in when he could, helped with oil changes and this and that.
"Lewis always did the 'real' stuff," he'd told her. "He swears he can't trust me with body work, but I did manage to keep more than one engine from falling on his head while he tried to adjust the mounts."
When he'd told her that, it had made him all the more appealing to her. She loved a man who could work on his car. Those in her world would never dream of dirtying their hands underneath the hood, much less sliding under the car to change the oil.
Was it fate or God's sense of humor that had given her into a family of wealth and status, and then given her a heart for the simple things in life? Her father had always said she had a true Irish heart, given over to romance and magic, and though she had great wealth, she didn't allow it to harden her, or make her into a snob. She knew what was important in life and treated her wealth as a gift she'd been given. Thinking of it that way made it impossible not to share what she had with others and when she gave to charities and to her parish, it was always with a simple heart that the money be used for whatever was needed most.
She spent it on herself as well, and had a closet full of shoes to prove it. And that made her smile and look down at Bobby again. He was forever teasing her about her obsession with shoes.
"Must be a girl thing," he had said one day, when he saw her struggling to unlock her front door while juggling three shopping bags, two of which were filled with shoe boxes. And then he'd taken two of the bags from her, his lips curving into that devastating smile he had that always turned her knees to mush.
She sighed, watching him now as he got out of his car, where he'd been wiping down the dash, and stood back, admiring his handiwork, she knew. There wasn't a man alive who didn't love to stare at his car. At least, that was her unqualified opinion.
He was so tall and good-looking. She couldn't help sighing again as he turned and she caught his profile as he pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans and answered it.
Every bit of six-four, he had mile long legs and size thirteen feet. His arms were long, as were the fingers on those big hands that often touched her, mindless of the effect he had on her when he did. He was a big man, not lanky or even very slender, but there was a leanness to him, even with the broad chest and shoulders, the strong build that didn't narrow much at the hips, and he exuded a powerful energy that surrounded him like an aura.
He was quick on his feet, too. He moved like a big cat – like a sleek black panther, all fluid grace and long limbs. He was roguishly handsome with black hair that he kept in a Roman cut that left it long enough to curl, though he often tried to tame it. His face had a boyish quality to it, what her grandmother would have termed a baby face, with a jawline just strong enough to keep his face from being too rounded. His nose was short and straight, and his mouth had a nice shape to it with a bottom lip that was just a bit fuller than the top one.
It was a mouth that knew how to smile, she thought now as she watched him flip his phone shut and stuff it back into his pocket. And oh, did she love his smile.
Face it, girl, she told herself. You just plain love him.
And she did, though she didn't know what the heck to do about it. What could she do about it? He didn't see her that way. He saw her as a friend. She wasn't exactly "one of the guys"; she was too much of a girl for that, but what they had was an easygoing friendship and that was all.
She had no illusions about taming him and she knew he had a reputation as a ladies man, but from what she had seen he treated the women he dated very well. He wasn't one for serious relationships, though, and when his last relationship had ended, he'd lamented that fact to her even while she wished he could look at her and see the love in her eyes.
It wasn't that he didn't ever want to be serious, he had said, but he wondered sometimes if he could do it. And then there was the little matter of never finding the right woman. Women, he said, were forever trying to change him and he hadn't dated one yet that didn't try to mold him after they graduated past the casual stage.
She would never try to mold him. She loved him just like he was. Brilliant and funny, a tad compulsive and often distracted, he was so many things wrapped up in one wonderful package. He liked American muscle cars and Motown, had a fondness for light jazz and rock and roll. Being half-Italian, he also had a fondness for good food and good wine, and he was whiz in the kitchen, which had surprised her.
He had played basketball in school and would still occasionally shoot hoops with Lewis and a couple of other guys, though he was just as likely to take in an opera as a sporting event. He was a Yankee fan, but not a rabid one, though he did love to go to the games whenever he could.
Which, she thought as she came back to the present, he was supposed to do that evening. It was already four o'clock and, with tip-off at seven, he was still fiddling with his car and making no move to go in and shower or change out of his torn jeans.
She opened the window then and, as there was no screen at the moment, leaned out to call down to him. "Hey handsome, don't you have somewhere to be tonight?"
At the sound of her voice Bobby turned around and looked up, saw her leaning on the windowsill, smiling down at him. "I did," he called back. "She cancelled on me."
"Did you tell her she was going to miss out on all those hot dogs and Cracker Jacks?"
He laughed. "I don't think Rachel's much on baseball anyway." And then he had a thought. "You wanna go? Hot dogs and Cracker Jacks on me."
It was just the habit of their friendship that had him asking, she knew, but she didn't care. It would be fun and she always liked spending time with him. "Sure. Let me wash this paint off and change my clothes."
"I'll walk over and get you in about an hour," he told her, and when she nodded and then pulled back inside and shut the window, he put the top back up on his car and went inside to shower and change his clothes.
She'd looked so cute with a streak of paint on one cheek and her auburn curls pulled back in a thick tail. "Handsome" she'd called him, and he chuckled as he tossed his phone on the table near the door and headed for the bathroom.
It was that accent of hers that made it sound so nice when she said it. She was forever giving him pet names like that, calling him "honey" and "sugar" and "sweetie". He had long since decided he liked it, even as he wondered if it was such a good idea to like it quite so much.
But then, lately, he'd been thinking of her entirely too much, and in ways that would probably shock her right down to her pretty little feet if she knew.
Her feet. Oh yeah, they were pretty, just like the rest of her. And strong as steel, or at least he thought so. They'd have to be to handle the workouts she gave them when she danced. He'd thought more than once about getting his hands on them and playing with those pretty little toes that she kept painted any number of colors.
That's what had done it, he thought as he stripped off his jeans and t-shirt, turned on the shower. It was seeing her dance last month in the closing performance of the summer season. She'd danced the part of Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, and it had been the first time he had ever seen her perform.
Even thinking about it gave him goosebumps. That tiny, lithe body of hers moved with such grace, and so much emotion, he had found his eyes filled with tears as he watched her and Ivan Petrov perform the passionate pas de deux as Aurora and Prince Phillip.
The emotion her performance had evoked in him was unsettling. More than that, it was scaring him a little. There was something between them, something he couldn't put his finger on, and he was beginning to realize that he wasn't thinking of her as a friend so much as he was now beginning to think of her as a woman. And one that he wanted.
She was a beautiful woman, that was for sure. Her face was a classic oval with fine features, delicately drawn, so that she looked as though she should have been molded in marble. She had a peaches-and-cream complexion and tended to tan easily, though she always wore sunscreen, and there was a tiny smattering of freckles than ran across the bridge of her nose.
A pretty little fairy, he always thought, as she was all of five-two, with shoulder-length auburn curls and blue-green eyes that shifted and shimmered from smoky blue to sea-goddess green, seemingly on a whim. Mermaid eyes, he thought, and had to laugh at himself.
It was hardly fair of him to be thinking of her this way when she had no intention of returning the favor. At least, he didn't think she did. He had never thought to ask her. It wasn't a subject he was eager to broach with her. Maybe because, by virtue of their friendship, they were already close enough for her to have seen his many flaws when it came to relationships. Enough so that she would probably back slowly away and then run like hell if he ever suggested they move beyond what they had now.
Add to that, he wasn't sure if he could handle moving beyond that because he wasn't sure if he could handle how he felt about her. There was much more to his feelings than physical attraction and the ease of companionship. She tugged at his heart in a way that made him nervous. Very nervous.
And that, he thought as he toweled off and then picked up his shaving cream, was just another reason why he could never tell her how he felt. Because he was certain that he was falling in love with her and if he didn't stop it, if he didn't get a handle on his feelings, there was only pain ahead.
Their worlds couldn't have been more different. Emily had grown up in the wealth and privilege of southern society while he had been born into the Italian-Jewish makeup of Canarsie. While she had been taking ballet lessons and learning how to be a lady, he'd been playing ball in the street and learning how to deal with a mother whose behavior was increasingly erratic and a father who either wasn't around, or was drinking himself into a mean temper when he was.
He'd been nine when his mother was diagnosed schizophrenic, eleven when his father decided he'd had enough and walked out on them. He'd learned quickly how to see his mother's episodes coming and did his best to head them off, all the while resenting her for driving his father away. His brother Frank hadn't had it any easier, though their father had at least treated him like he was there. Bobby had always felt like an afterthought in his father's life, and he never understood why.
Frank had spiraled out of control while in college. He had never graduated and had acquired their father's penchant for gambling. Add to that an affinity for drugs, and his brother's life went downhill fast.
He hadn't let his go that way, though. No way. He'd stayed in school, graduated, attended college and joined the Army. His eye for detail and his penchant for investigation he put to use in the CID Unit, but after four years he decided that being so far from home wasn't such a good thing and leaving his grandmother to look after his mother wasn't working out very well. So he hadn't re-enlisted and had come home to enter the police academy, intent on putting his profiling and investigative skills to good use.
He'd had to put his mother in an institution eventually, and it had been hell getting her there at first. She hadn't wanted to go and said she hated it, hated the doctors, hated him. But she wouldn't stay on her medications and his grandmother had gotten too old to keep up with her wild behavior and her hallucinations. Of course, now that she'd been there a few years, his mother was much happier at Carmel Ridge than she had once been. It didn't make the memory of those first few months any easier, but he didn't dwell overmuch on that.
The life Emily had lived, and still did, was eons away from his own.
And then, as he finished shaving and took a good, long look at himself, he realized he wasn't being fair to Emily by thinking that way. True, she had never wanted for anything materially, and her family had stayed together. But she had suffered her share of loss, too.
A car accident had taken her older brother's life when she was fourteen and cancer had claimed her father when she was barely seventeen. Her mother had responded to both tragedies by becoming even more inflexible when it came to Emily, and to her obligations to family and society.
Sabrina Ryan had wanted her daughter to be a proper young lady, a debutante with no aspirations beyond marrying the right man and giving him a family. Emily had wanted to become a ballerina and had no patience for tea parties and fussy society events.
Emily considered her great wealth to be a gift and treated it just that way, which never ceased to touch him when she talked about it. She wasn't pretentious, and never put on airs. If it wasn't for the fact that she could well afford the mortgage and renovations on the brownstone next door, he wouldn't have guessed how wealthy she was.
Her late father's shipping business was one of the largest on the East Coast and her Uncle Patrick ran it now, from the Boston office. He'd met him once when he had been in town to see to a problem in the New York office. A tall, black-haired-blue-eyed Irishman who had left his home in Dublin to see to his older brother's family and take over Ryan Enterprises. Nearly ten years in the States had not dimmed the Irish in his voice one bit and Bobby had noted with some interest that Emily picked up that same lilt when she was around him.
Long ago her father and her uncle had taught Emily and her brother Steven to speak Gaelic. She had taught him a little of it one night when they were sitting out in her garden, and he could at least say "hello", "good-bye", and "a thousand welcomes".
Ceade mile failte. It was the first phrase she'd taught him because it was on her welcome mat and he had wanted to know how to pronounce it correctly.
The sound of the south in her voice was all but covered by the lilt of Irish when she spoke Gaelic. Both were enough to give him pleasant little shivers.
Enough already! He pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a black t-shirt and forced himself to stop thinking about her that way. Then he walked into his living room and his gaze fell on the painting she had given him for his fortieth birthday a few days before, and he knew it was useless.
It was too late to stop it, too late to do anything to save himself from the heartbreak that would certainly come when she met the right guy and rode off into the sunset with him.
Another dancer maybe, someone who could share her life, someone who wouldn't wonder, as he often did, whether or not he was capable of giving her what she needed.
The thought depressed him and the realization that he was falling headlong into love with her clung like a burr, though he tried throwing it off.
By the time he rang her bell a little after five, he had managed to compose himself, though he almost lost his hold on it when she opened the door. She wore denim capris and a purple t-shirt, with her hair pulled back in a clip so that her curls tumbled and danced at the back of her head. Instead of sneakers she wore flip-flops and he smiled to see her toenails painted the same color as her shirt.
With a grin, she handed him her car keys. "Here. . .you drive," she said and watched his face light up. She'd just bought the jewel-blue Mustang convertible a week ago and he'd been drooling over it for days.
"Oh. . .wow." He took the keys from her with a grin as they walked toward the garage where she kept her car.
They rode with the top down and soaked up the late summer sunshine while the radio pumped out a classic tune by Billy Squier. It was the last weekend of August. The following weekend was Labor Day and Emily had the nostalgic feeling of saying good-bye to summer.
What a summer it had been, too. The summer she had fallen in love for the first time since her high school days. To be sure, teenage love was a world away from what she felt for Bobby.
It would have shocked him, she knew, to know that she had visions of marriage and babies in her head when she looked at him. It was only natural to think that way when you were in love, and her Irish Catholic upbringing encouraged it, in any case. And she wasn't a child anymore. She was twenty-eight and longing for the permanence of marriage. Children would come a little later, after she had a few more years of dancing, and then she would retire from full-time performance and teach while she raised her family.
It was a dream she had held since she was a girl and the only man to ever stir her heart at all was Bobby. The pity of it was, he didn't know and likely wouldn't want to. He was gun-shy about relationships, though she knew that with a little love and patience, he could get past that. All he needed, she thought, was someone to love him enough to show him what it was to trust.
True, their backgrounds were very different, and her mother would likely have a stroke when she realized that her daughter wanted to marry a detective instead of a doctor or a wealthy businessman. Her uncle liked him, though, and that counted more in Emily's mind because he was "normal", that was to say that despite the wealth, he had his brother's down-to-earth morals and good sense.
And Bobby had told her once that his mother was forever after him to find a nice Catholic girl and settle down. A lapsed alter boy, he had called himself, and admitted that he did his best to make it to Mass at least a few times a year, but he wasn't a regular attendee. And he was a man who loved his mother, too, despite the illness that made their relationship so difficult sometimes.
She looked over at him as they drove up the expressway toward Yankee Stadium and thought again how handsome he was, and how unbelievably sexy he looked in that black t-shirt and jeans, with wire-rimmed sunglasses on and a smile curving his lips.
Lips she longed to kiss.
Heat flushed her face and she looked away, glad for the music and the wind that covered the sigh that managed to escape.
He bought them both hot dogs and Cracker Jacks, as promised, plus a beer for himself and a Coke for her. They sat in the stands and ate while watching the pre-game antics on the field and Emily nudged Bobby and pointed at the electronic billboard.
"Fireworks after the game," she said, even while she was popping another Cracker Jack into her mouth. "You'll have to tell Rachel what she missed."
"I don't know if I'll see her to tell her that," he answered and took a quick swallow of his beer. "I think she's going out with someone else tonight. That's why she backed out."
"Oh?" Emily tilted her head curiously. "What makes you think that?"
He shrugged. "She's been distracted lately."
This had Emily hooting with laughter and giving him a playful shove. "This from the Absent-Minded Professor!" she chuckled. "She really must be distracted if you noticed it."
"Very funny." He shoved her back, just as playful. "And I'm not absent-minded. I just get busy and forget things."
"Uh-huh." She drank some of her soda and downed another handful of Cracker Jacks. "Mr.-where-did-I-put-my-keys and oops-I-forgot-to-eat-dinner. It's a wonder you don't run out of the house half-naked some days."
"I wouldn't want to make the neighbors jealous," he quipped and she tossed her head back on a laugh.
"Good golly day, how do you fit an ego that size into your head?" she giggled, secretly loving that sexy arrogance that reared itself now and then.
There was another of her expressions that he found endearing and he forgot himself for a moment and hooked his arm around her shoulders. "It's not ego if it's true," he joked.
"You're impossible!" She shoved at him, but he didn't let go right away and she indulged for a moment or two in the feeling of his arm around her and the way it felt to lean against that strong, solid body.
The Yankees took the field then and amidst the shouts and applause of the fans, Bobby managed to pull himself together and put a lid on the feelings that were threatening to spring out everywhere at once.
It wasn't as if this was the first time he had ever touched her, or even put an arm around her, but it was the first time he'd done it with love in his heart, to say nothing of the desire he was becoming all too aware of.
Unaware of what was happening inside of him, Emily got caught up in the start of the game, the noise of the crowd, and the first crack of the bat as Derek Jeter sent the ball flying into the outfield and took off for first base. She'd never been a big fan of baseball, but seeing a live game was way more exciting than any televised game could ever be.
She cheered the Yankees on, loving the energy of the crowd and the way Bobby would lean over and explain the plays to her. He smelled so good; a mixture of Old Spice aftershave and Irish Spring soap, and suddenly she was having trouble keeping her feelings for him under control.
Bobby knew she wasn't deliberately trying to drive him crazy but every time she bounced in her excitement and bumped against him, all he could think about was pulling her into his arms and kissing her breathless. Her scent was like some kind of combination of strawberries and roses and it was making him want to take a bite out of her, starting anywhere.
The Yankees won, six-to-three, and Bobby and Emily shared another box of Cracker Jacks as they waited for the fireworks to start. There was music playing and she was singing along with John Fogerty about the love of the game.
When the first rocket went up and exploded in a shower of deep blue, Emily gave a cry of delight and barely managed to stop herself from clapping her hands. She'd always loved fireworks. When she was young, before Steven had died, her father had taken them to the beach every July Fourth and let them light off their own fireworks after they watched the big, professional display over Charleston Harbor.
Thinking of it now had her tearing up and she smiled up at the light-filled sky and thought of her father and her brother up there, maybe taking a peek now and then to see how she was doing.
Bobby laid his arm around her again, leaned over to get a better look at what he thought were tears running down her face. "Emily? You okay?"
She nodded, forgetting herself, and relaxed against him, turned her head onto his shoulder. "I was just remembering summers when I was a kid," she told him. "Daddy used to take Steven and I out to the beach to watch the fireworks in the harbor on July Fourth, and then we would set off our own. We had all kinds of stuff, like bottle rockets and whistlers, and Roman candles."
He rubbed his hand slowly up and down her arm. "If I'd known fireworks would make you weepy, I'd've brought my handkerchief." He usually kept one in his pocket and she loved to tease him about it.
"Guess I'll have to use your shirt," she said and managed a laugh even though her breath was beginning to catch in her throat because his hand was still stroking her arm.
She knew he had no idea what it was doing to her to be close to him, in fact, to be nestled against his side with her head resting on his shoulder.
Another rocket went up and turned the sky brilliant with light as it exploded into a multi-colored shower in the shape of a dragon. The ooh's and aah's of the crowd became gasps and then cheers each time a new shape appeared and Emily sat with her head on Bobby's shoulder and watched each display with a growing desire to tell him how she felt about him. She couldn't do that, she knew, without risking their friendship and sending him quick, fast, and in-a-hurry in the other direction.
So she kept her feelings to herself even as he kept his arm comfortably around her and pointed at the next shower of light.
"Look, Em." Laughing now, and just as caught up in the moment as she, he didn't think about what he was about to say. "That's you."
It was Tinkerbelle, her wand held high and her wings spread wide. She laughed, too, and then nudged him with her elbow. "Oh, a fairy is it?" she asked, slipping into an Irish brogue. "And are you after thinking I'll put a spell on you, then?"
She already had, he thought as he turned a playful grin on her. "Maybe."
"And here I was thinking you were too practical to believe in fairies and magic."
"Of course I believe in magic." And with a quick motion he slid his hand behind her ear and brought it back with a Cracker Jack held between two of his fingers.
Delighted with the sleight of hand, she laughed out loud and took it from him, popped it into her mouth. "How do you do that?"
"Uh-uh." He shook his head. "A magician never gives away his secrets."
Oh, he was clever, she thought. And so sweet. Imagine, likening her to Tinkerbelle! Giddy as a schoolgirl, that's what she was, and she couldn't help herself.
When he walked her to her door that night, it was all she could do to keep from throwing her arms around him, but she kept it light and held her emotions in check. Even so, she went to the window to watch him walk next door and when she went to bed, she didn't fall asleep for a very long time.
Bobby couldn't sleep either. He'd walked inside, tossed his keys and his wallet on the table, then collapsed into his leather armchair with a wistful sigh. His eyes fell again on the painting Emily had given him for his birthday.
A street scene she had done herself, modeled after a story he had once told her, about the day he and some of his friends had been playing baseball in the street when they were kids. She had painted the buildings and the cars, even the storefronts, to look as they would have in the late sixties. A group of young boys played ball in the street while three men sat on the sidewalk in front of the barber shop, watching them.
It was as detailed and lifelike as anything he had ever seen. The day she'd given it to him, he had actually had to fight back the urge to cry. Even now, as he sat looking at it, he felt the sting of tears, the ache of the lump in his throat.
She had given him something made by her own hands, from the picture she held in her mind of the story he had told her. No one in his life had ever cared enough to do something so special for him.
There was so much in her, he thought as he got up and went down the short hall to his bedroom. She had dreams and plans, wishes and wants, and one day she was going to fall in love with someone and off she would go.
The idea of that depressed him, so he didn't dwell on it. Instead, he closed his eyes and pictured what she would be doing right now. Getting ready for bed, probably, and drinking her nightly cup of tea.
He pictured her home, thought of her there, curled up on the sofa, with her feet tucked beneath her, a cup of tea at her elbow and a book in her hand.
She had a love for antiques and her decorating taste ran the gamut from beach cottage to English manor home. He'd had a quick peek into her bedroom once, when she had been showing him her handiwork with restoring the moldings around the doorways upstairs.
A study in romance, it was dominated by a huge antique cherry sleigh bed. The bureau and night tables were new, but stained the same rich color as the bed, and there was a matching armoire that housed a TV with doors that she kept closed when she wasn't watching it.
The fabrics were fine, their colors bold and rich. Silk drapes, the color of merlot, a fluffy comforter covered in a pattern of dark red swirling vines against a champagne background. She had a mass of pillows on the bed as well, and they gave it a wonderfully inviting look.
So inviting, in fact, that at the moment he was imagining what it would be like to have her in his arms, her body wrapped around him in that big bed, nestled against all those pillows and comfortably cuddled beneath the softness of her sheets.
Because the very thought of it made him want, he pushed it out of his mind and went to the spare bedroom he used as an office. He had to be in court on Monday to testify in case he had worked on a couple of months back and he sat down and focused on his notes from the investigation until he was satisfied that he could close his eyes without thinking of Emily.
It almost worked.