Author: Isabel Juno

Story:Rock & Roll

Warnings/Spoilers/Disclaimers/Author's Notes: WARNING DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE A GSR OR YOBLING FAN. DO NOT READ IF YOU'RE ALLERGIC TO BAD JOKES. No spoilers to my knowledge... be worried if somehow some snuck in without my knowledge. the day i own CSI is the day that french speaking mice take over the world with baguettes. ... READ AND REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rock & Roll in Vegas

By Isabel Juno

As she strode down the hall of the Las Vegas crime lab Sandra Duvaulle caused heads to turn. Not one of the gaping lab geeks would have guessed her to be a day over 35. The woman had supreme confidence in herself and was completely comfortable with her figure and the men noticed. Her long, wavy, soft, onyx hair flowed gracefully as it spilled over her shoulders. Her pearly white skin and shockingly blue eyes made her look like a seductive vampire and the way she walked made it look like she was on the hunt, prowling like a tigress closing in for the kill. She stopped and gave a seductive smile to a speechless and crazy haired young man who promptly dropped his bag of coffee. She raised an eyebrow and picked up the bag and examined the label and scribbles of the owner's name on it critically.

"Well," she paused to glance back down at the label, "Greg, Hawaiian Blue is definitely an excellent coffee." She handed him the bag with another smile that showed off her sparkling white teeth and rich red lips. Greg felt his knees go a little bit weak. He could see Warrick and Nick watching him enviously. He decided to take advantage of the moment.

"Yeah well, ya know. Gotta have the best coffee; do you want to have a cup with me?" It was weak and he knew it. She smiled an leaned in towards him, her lips only centimeters from his ear.

"Maybe later. I'm wondering if you can help me find something I lost." She leaned back to study Greg's face. Greg just nodded, it was he could manage. She gave him a tigress smile. "I'm looking for an old friend of mine. I haven't seen him for years."

"Him?" Asked Greg feeling his heart sink into his shoes. She didn't miss the look on his face.

"No, no, nothing like that." Greg felt relieved. "Well, at least, not anymore." His heart was in his shoes again. He ignored his sudden depression.

"Who're you looking for?"

"Gil Grissom." If Greg had been drinking or eating something he would have started choking and would have had an excuse. He found choking on air was a rather different experience. She pretended not to notice his shock. He gave her directions in a rather stunned tone and she smiled again in that I'm-going- to- eat- you sort of look.

"Enjoy your coffee Greg." He just nodded as she walked off completely confident in herself. Warrick and Nick came over agape after her just like Greg was.

"What'd she want?" Nick asked softly. Warrick raised an eyebrow.

"Who'd she want?" He added with a snicker. Nick smacked Warrick in the chest.

"Grissom." Was all Greg said. The other two men just stared at Greg. He nodded sharing their disbelief. "And that's not the half of it. I think she and Grissom had a thing. I don't know. I mean I was kinda flirting with her."

"You looked like you were choking on air like a pathetic teenager." Warrick interjected. Greg ignored the keen observation and continued.
"So I was asking her if she wanted to have a cup of coffee with me and she said that she was looking for somebody. She said she hadn't seen him in ages. Well I was kinda upset about that and she noticed and she said that it wasn't like that. Not anymore anyway." The others stared.

"Grissom and her?" Warrick said in disbelief. "How'd he get so lucky?" Greg shrugged. None of them knew that in Grissom's office he wasn't feeling so lucky.

In reality Grissom felt rather like a goldfish, gulp gulp gulp. His jaw dropped. The shock of seeing Sandra had rendered him speechless. She waltzed in with the same grace she'd always had. It brought back all the memories as quick and sharp as a slap in the face with a haddock. He felt his stomach churn and he suddenly regretted the chocolate grasshoppers he'd been indulging in earlier. Sandra breezed in with every ounce of her old beauty and unshakable confidence she'd had years before. She didn't look much older, her beauty was natural and irreplaceable. She gave him a dazzling smile glided over to him and kissed his still open mouth. That was all too familiar. Brass was watching in disbelief from across the desk. Sandra's breath was light and spearminty as always. He felt an unwelcome longing for her to kiss him again as she pulled away. She perched on the edge of his desk like a hunting eagle waiting for an unsuspecting field mouse to stray from cover. Her slender back was to Jim, who was still as flabbergasted as a middle aged wife seeing a drunk lunatic run stark naked down her street at noon yelling "FISH & CHIPS HALF OFF AT CAPTAIN WALLY'S FISH EMPORIUM!" Sandra preened herself by pretending to clean her already immaculate nails with a pencil. Gil struggled to find something, anything to say to this highly unexpected intrusion of his old college girlfriend into his office twenty five years after they'd broken up when they went to different schools for graduate work.

"Erm." That was all Gil could manage. She smirked at him in her completely faux cheerful manner.

"I s'pose you're wondering why I'm here after twenty-five years of no chatting." She said putting on a very bad Boston accent. Gil sighed and adjusted his glasses, trying desperately to salvage any dignity he had left, his efforts failed horribly.

"From the sound of things you went to Boston." She smirked. This was an old game of theirs and she was pleased that it hadn't died. She nodded still smirking.

"Yeah, I've got a nice little café going out there. I've got a book out now too." Jim could read the surface tension like size seventy-two bold font. He wondered who the hell this fiery woman was and why she seemed suddenly tense. He could see Grissom was just as tense. They seemed to be off in their own little world where Jim was invisible and the lab forgotten. Sandra leaned towards Gil, and Gil pressed himself as far back in his chair as he could, his eyes were focused on her lips. Her heel was resting less than an inch from a place Grissom was extremely protective of as were all guys. Jim was looking nervously between Sandra's back and Gil's nervous features. The boiling bubble of tension and near action was burst by Catherine throwing open Gil's office door without knocking and letting out a small "oh" of shock at the sight she saw. Jim looked confused and anxious, a strange woman was sitting on Gil's desk with her foot on the edge of his chair, and Gil had scooted as far back into his chair as he could. She processed the situation quickly and examined the odds of Gil and Jim hiring a stripper, they seemed fairly slim. Gil looked like he wanted to jump up but he was very mindful of where Sandra's leg was, so he was forced to attempt to remain calm and make the introductions. His voice was slightly higher pitched than normal and he had a slight sheen of nervous sweat on his face.

"Catherine, Jim, this is Sandra Duvaulle. Sandra the flabbergasted little man is Jim Brass and the stunned and stunning lady is Catherine Willows." Catherine resisted the urge to blush and to scold Gil. She gave a curt nod to the warm smile from the strange siren Sandra. Jim managed only a slight "uhh" sound and Sandra reached over and closed Jim's mouth with a gentle smirk.

"Pleasure to meet you both, I would love to say I've heard so much about you, but as Gil and I neglected to keep in contact that would be a lie." Sandra gave Gil a significant look that Catherine couldn't read. She also couldn't read the odd frown that Gil sent at Sandra. She suddenly felt an odd feeling of foreboding about Sandra's arrival and she highly doubted Sandra was leaving soon. Sandra spoke only to confirm Catherine's suspicions.

"Umm… Gil? Can I speak with you for a minute?" She glanced around the room for a minute, "Alone?" Gil nodded and gave an apologetic look to Jim and Catherine who both left silently, reeling over the arrival of this strange woman who seemed to have a hold on Grissom. The two walked to the break room in dead silence. Once in there Jim grabbed a Styrofoam cup of sludge that passed for PTA standard coffee and leaned against the wall, while Catherine snatched a bottle of water from an unsuspecting Greg and dropped onto the couch without a word. Greg seemed to notice Catherine's bad mood, cut his losses and escaped out of the room before the tension suffocated him. Catherine stared moodily into the bottle of water and Jim stirred his toxic waste labeled coffee until it was a steaming black whirlpool.

"So, how do you think she knows Grissom?" Jim asked in a would-be-casual tone. Catherine glared bitterly at her water bottle as if it had done something to mortally offend her.

"How should I know? Maybe she was a therapist to one of his more traumatized cockroaches." Jim stifled a grin. He'd just had a mental image of Sandra with a fake bushy gray mustache, holding a pencil and paper pad with a cockroach laying on its back on a scarlet couch and waving its antennae to converse about the problems it'd had with its mother. God, that was a conversation he could understand, well, maybe Ecklie could understand better. He'd overheard Ecklie talking to his mother on the phone and from the look on Ecklie's face he was imagining at least a dozen different reasons to justify putting his mother on mute and playing computer solitaire. He shuddered inwardly. Catherine ignored him. Gil popped his head in waving an assignment sheet nervously at Catherine, who scowled and jumped up from her seat brushed by Grissom and snatched the assignment violently from him. His mouth was slightly open with shock. Jim noticed the bewildered expression on Gil's face and sighed to himself, Gil really could be thick sometimes.

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