Jack leaned back in his chair and watched the tall blonde walk into the room. She was a damn sight better looking than Kawalsky had been, anyway. He didn't know much about her, except that she was a recent transplant from California and newly minted as a detective. But she had a reputation for being smarter than smart and not afraid to show it.

He gave her a once over. She looked sharp in a button down blue blouse and flat-fronted black trousers. Like someone had given her a detective's catalogue to shop out of. But it was the boots that got him. The woman had a motorcycle somewhere and that gave him a bit of a thrill he wasn't letting out to play.

Kawalsky was a less threatening partner, he knew that already. Damn the man for thinking he'd have a safer gig in Hoboken. Never mind that's where his wife was from... This woman, she was going to be hell on wheels. He could tell by the flash in her blue eyes and the strength in her grip when she stuck out her hand for a firm handshake. And the little trip in her voice when she said his name. Oh, he liked the way she said his name. Goddamn dangerous the way she said his name.

After that they hit the ground running on a case he'd picked up the day before. It took him a day and a half to find the guy. It took her six hours to find the building the guy was hanging around in. And then they were brand new partners crammed together in a dark room all night on a stakeout. He asked her sixteen times if she wanted coffee. Only took him four times to figure out she really did like it black. He thought, at first, she was taking it that way to impress him. It did impress him, but probably not for the reasons she thought.

He never did find out what she liked on her pizza. She kept deferring to his palate. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. He kept changing up he order to see if he could find out what made her happy but she never seemed more or less taken with the pie one way or the other. Maybe he should have just stuck with Chinese.

She stared at him a lot in that little room, in a way that set his teeth on edge and made him go half hard with awareness. There was perusal in her eyes and he wasn't so far out of the game that he didn't know what that meant, even if the ring had been off his finger for a good number of years. And then she actually shook herself out of looking at him and turned back to their stakeout – he'd been watching the window while she watched him so they hadn't gone completely off track – and he'd been compelled to ask her, "What?"

"Nothing," she answered quickly.

He'd been asking why she'd turned from him so suddenly, why she'd had to shake away whatever she'd been thinking about him. But he'd give her back over to the case if that's what she needed. "Something happening over there?"

She took her time answering. "No." She sounded almost disappointed.

As she was turning back to him he saw movement. Their perp was leaving the apartment they were watching! "Yes, there is." He didn't wait for her to get her ass in gear, he just hoped she'd be quick about following him and she was, he could feel her on his heels. He liked that about her. She didn't dawdle. Kawalsky had been a dawdler.

He discovered he liked the sound of her boots on the pavement as she ran beside him, not behind him, gun out, pointed down at the ground next to her, ready to be deadly at a moment's notice but safe, safe for the time being. When they arrested the scumbag he let her do the work while he held the guy – mostly because the guy looked like he was gonna say or do something inappropriate and Jack wasn't about to let that happen and he wanted to make sure the guy had that impression from the word go.

He drove them all back to the precinct and did his share of the paperwork even though he always found a way to get Kawalsky to do the lion's share – he wasn't going to overthink his newfound magnanimosity too much – and then, he inexplicably invited her out for coffee. And she, well, inexplicably said yes.

She was new in town, he knew and when he asked her what brought her she bit out an answer that didn't surprise him, really, but intrigued him. "Fiancé."

He hadn't seen a ring on her finger and her tone of voice made him venture a guess. "Former."

"Yeah."

Her tone told him she didn't really want to talk about. He understood that. He had things he didn't particularly want to talk about either.

He walked them down a couple of blocks to a little diner he liked. "This okay?"

She looked up at the sign like the name of the place mattered. "Yeah."

Inside the heat was on full blast and he watched when she shrugged out of her jacket, the way her blouse pulled and revealed a black lacy bra and pale creamy skin underneath. He licked his lips and turned his gaze away. It had been too damn long since he'd been with a woman if that quick peek was enough to rile him up. And it was. So it had been.

At his usual booth he ordered two cups of coffee by waving a hand in the air – Jodi would get the picture – and realized she was looking at him again. His face, his chest, his hands, his left hand. He flexed it involuntarily under the weight of her gaze. Wondered if he should say something. Settled on. "Divorced."

She flushed attractively and said, "I wasn't-"

"It's okay, it was a long time ago." Not that long. But long enough. Long enough for him to have forgotten exactly where the papers were. And to no longer be able to recall his attorney's phone number off the top of his head. Long enough that it didn't sting so much anymore to think of Sara as his ex-wife rather than his wife. To think of her as something he got wrong instead of something he got right.

"Jonas is Air Force."

The mysterious former fiancé. Jack already didn't like him and all he knew what the guy's name and half his occupation. "Pilot?"

"No."

"Ah." Jack didn't know what no meant but he figured if she didn't say she likely couldn't say and that said a lot about the man she almost married.

Their coffees arrived and Jack added some cream and sugar to his and wondered what she thought about that as she sat there with her black coffee in front of her. Truth was, his stomach had taken all the black coffee it could handle and it just preferred the lighter, sweeter version of the stuff when given the opportuity. He was man enough to take it that way, too, he thought and barely contained the nod of self-assurance.

She kept talking like they hadn't stopped talking for a while. "I took this job and then he decided... to be a different man."

He considered her carefully for a few moments trying to decide what she needed to hear. She wasn't a delicate woman, but she had a fragile look around her eyes when she talked about the man. "You're safe now." He hoped it was the right thing to say.

She contemplated her coffee so long he started to wonder if he'd chosen the wrong thing when finally she said, ""How about you? Anything to go home to?"

He knew she didn't mean anything by it, but he was instantly mad at her. "Not anymore."

"Jack," she said in that way she had of saying his name that he remembered he liked, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

He felt instantly bad for being mad at her. Of course she didn't mean anything by it. She didn't know. She wouldn't know. "Don't worry about it. Old water. Old bridge."

"It didn't look that old."

"I don't talk about it."

"Okay," she said in a way that told him she took him at face value and he believed she'd never, ever ask him about his family, ever again. If he wanted to cross that bridge with her at some point, he'd have to walk her across it. And that was the way he liked it.

"You want something to eat with that?"

She looked down at her coffee. "No."

"I'm gonna have some cheesecake."

"Still... no."

"I'm not gonna share," he tried to tempt her.

She smiled wanly. "That's fine. Not hungry."

"Okay," he said. He held up another finger to Jodi who was doling out a slice of cherry cheesecake to another customer at the counter. She gave him a smile and nod. They sat there until his dessert arrived and he'd taken a bite. With his mouth full, in a way his mother would have smacked him on the back of his head for, he said, "It's fine, Samantha. Stop looking like you killed my puppy."

She looked at him sharply. "Sam."

"Huh?"

"It's just Sam."

"Okay." He noted that there was something about her full name that was off limits. He didn't know what or why, but he figured he'd get to the bottom of it eventually. They were finding the boundaries tonight, though, and they each had them. That was fair.

He realized he hadn't given her much and she'd given him quite a bit, when it came to personal details. So he decided to share something innocuous, but personal. "I'm from Minnesota. And Chicago."

"What brought you to Washington?"

"My ex-wife. She worked for the National Gallery of Art."

"And you stayed, after the divorce instead of going back to-"

"Good job. Memories." Charlie. Running around the mall. The kid dipping his fingers into the reflecting pool. The wonder in his eyes at the monuments. His first time at the planetarium...

He finished his cheesecake as she finished her coffee and he pulled some money out of his billfold and dropped it on the table. The infernal woman reached for her pocket like the fifteen dollars he'd dropped wouldn't cover two cups of coffee and a slice of cheesecake...

"I got it."

"You don't need to-"

"It's fine. Consider it your welcome party."

On the walk back to their cars he kept bumping her arm with his elbow because he liked the idea of touching her. It was stupid and juvenile, but he did it anyway. She didn't step away from him, either. He walked her to her car – a classic that went with her personality and motorcycle boots – that took a couple of tries to start.

He joked with her, "I was afraid I was going to have to give you a lift home." But the thought of putting her long, lithe body in the cab of his truck was doing things to his insides that he didn't want to examine too closely.

"Not this time, but I'm not going to guarantee it won't happen one day."

"Anytime." He was afraid that the eagerness shined through in his voice. "And hey, Carter," he said, tapping his hand on the roof of her car, "good work on this case. We wouldn't have known about that building at all if it hadn't have been for you."

"We wouldn't have even known it was him if it wasn't for you."

"Teamwork," he said, and threw her a rakish wink he wasn't sure how she'd take.

"Yeah," she said, with a chuckle.

"Night, Sam." He closed her door and turned to walk away before she could drive off.

At home that morning, before going to bed, he sat in the low pool of light thrown off by his bedside lamp and thought about the way she made him feel. Thought about the easy parts – the physical stuff, the latent hardness, the tingling, the way his hands itched to touch her. Thought about the hard stuff, like how he actually kind of wanted to tell her about Sara and Charlie. Wondered where that came from. Wondered why her. She was his partner, for crying out loud. He wasn't supposed to want his partner. Not that it didn't happen, just... it never happened to him.

And she was young. A lot damn younger than he was. And she was green. But she was good. And he should be more worried about breaking her in than anything else. But something in her eyes... something in her eyes said maybe he wasn't the only one thinking about things outside their partnership.

Damn it. This never would have happened with Kawalsky.