Feb 3rd 2006

Greg looked at his reflection in the rear view mirror of his Jeep, making sure his recently trimmed sideburns were even, as scythe wielding butterflies began to flutter in his stomach. It was the Friday night he'd been dreading for awhile: Warrick's wife was hosting a departmental fundraising mixer and naturally Warrick was being hauled in. Warrick in turn had begged Greg to come with him so that if he felt the urge to wind up and clock a snippy surgeon, Greg would provide him with a fantastic distraction. The prospect of wasting a free Friday night was beyond a little frightening, but Warrick needed him, and given that Warrick seemed to look like a harsh thought might knock him down when he mentioned his wife, Greg would have been sorely remiss to say no. Now, as he approached the door of Angelo's he forced himself to take a few deep breaths, square his shoulders and step up to the maitre d'.

"Hi, I'm with the Brown party," he said firmly, knowing his rather retro-looking pinstripe sport coat over his jeans was being judged.

"This way sir," the host responded snidely, making Greg roll his eyes as he was lead to the private function room. He stepped in, looked around hoping to find the one person he knew at this thing. Since Warrick stood a head taller than most people Greg knew and there was no sign of his curly quasi-afro, he stepped up to the bar and ordered a Kilkenny draft. He sipped it carefully, resting an elbow on the bar as he surveyed the crowd.

"Can I get a TGV with soda and a cannon ball?"

Greg glanced over to his right at the woman making this request – and did a double take. The voice had been slightly accented, but the woman it belonged to looked like Ulla from The Producers. She had rich honey blond hair twisted up in a fancy knot at the back of her head. Her curvy figure was decked out in a striped dress of blues and creams that accented her body in all the right places; and this woman was no pencil, Greg would have put her at a healthy one-fifty of well muscled arms and legs. The brown leather pumps she wore put her at nose-to-shoulder level which meant she'd just cleared five and a half feet in her socks. Then suddenly, Greg found himself reaching for his wallet.

"Here, let me get that for you," he said, passing the bartender a ten.

The woman turned back to him, hands, and Greg could now see the deeper flecks of colour in her powder blue eyes matched the blue in her dress perfectly. When she flashed a smile of perfectly white teeth, he felt his knees turn a little watery.

"That's very kind of you," she replied with that hint of implacable accent, "but I don't know if my boyfriend will appreciate that."

Greg's confidence vanished like smoke. "Oh, well…is he a doctor?"

"Oh yes, he's gorgeous, works in the ER, came over from Eastern Europe."

"Sounds nice."

"Yes, his name is Luca Kovac and when I grow up, I'm going to marry that man," she giggled.

It took Greg a second to realize she was referring to a character from ER. She was having him on, making him laugh at his own stupidity.

The woman sipped her drink carefully as she passed the other to the other woman standing beside her who had appeared and vanished in the blink of an eye. "I've never seen you at these things before. Are you here with your girlfriend…or boyfriend?"

"Oh no," Greg spluttered, but once again, she flashed that smile and his legs liquefied a little more.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I know you're here alone."

"And how do you know that?"

"You just told me."

"So I've gone from girlfriend to boyfriend to single in a thirty second space, I think maybe I should go call the people at Guinness World Records."

"I'll hold your beer."

At that moment, Warrick appeared out of the crowd, pissed off as wet rooster.

"Greg! Where the hell have you been, man? I've been looking for you for like twenty minutes."

"Sorry, Warrick, I've been talking to…" Greg trailed off gesturing to the blonde. When she didn't fill in the blank, he whispered, "This is the part where you say your name."

"Oh sorry. Nadine Barton. You're Warrick?"

"Yeah," Warrick said at length as he cautiously shook her hand, then gestured to Greg's draft to place an order.

"I've heard Tina talk about you, how you're always out fighting crime, and that's why you never make it to these parties. Such a shame."

"Oh, so that's why you always volunteer for overtime," Greg interjected, suddenly aware he didn't like the way Nadine was flirting with his colleague. He should have expected it thought, since Warrick seemed to be the buff hunk most women wanted to go after. Did I just call Warrick a 'buff hunk', he thought fleetingly.

Warrick had heard the shift in Greg's voice; it was small but it was there. It was also something he'd never really heard from Greg before, a kind of territoriality that meant one thing: mine. After grabbing his beer, Warrick took a quick sip, nodded at Nadine and Greg.

"Well, enjoy your evening, Nadine; I'm sure I'll know where to find Sanders if I want to not hear about the latest techniques in colonoscopies."

Grateful he now had the monopoly of Nadine's attention once again; Greg took another bracing swig of his beer. "So, I'm sure you've connected the dots by now."

"You work with my boss' husband. Are you in the field or in the lab?"

This one took Greg back a little. "Excuse me?"

"I've heard Tina talk about the people Warrick works with a little, she said they're either all a bunch of lab rats or field mice. So which are you?"

"Former lab rat, currently field mouse. What about you?"

"How about field rat?" Nadine offered. "I'm a paediatric nurse, and I'm doing more training to be a surgical nurse, so I've been scrubbing in with Doctor Brown for about a year and a half now."

A nurse. Score, Greg thought. "So is it like a family tradition? Your mom was a nurse and her mom was a nurse?"

"Actually I'm the first one. My sister's a lawyer in Cayenne, Dad was an architect and Mama ran the house."

"Oh so you're from California?"

"Close. French Guyana."

Greg stared at her for a humming three seconds before bursting out laughing. "How the hell is that even close?"

"It's not, but I've been pretty tough on you." Nadine sipped her cocktail delicately, studied him with glittering eyes that belied how her pulse had picked up a little. "You don't date a lot, do you?"'

"Erratic hours, not much time off, coming home smelling like blood or fat or worse; I consider myself lucky if a woman stays around more than two weeks."

Nadine leaned over, gave an audible sniff as she rested a balancing hand on his arm. "Well today you smell like honey, pine oil and…roses. Let me guess…Givenchy?"

"The lady's got a sharp tongue and sharper nose."

"Actually, I did a minor in biochemistry; one of my papers was on the components of perfumes." Nadine looked at Greg. She liked him, she realized, she definitely felt…something here. He was cute, he was funny, and he didn't act all creepy like most men did when they learned her profession. She set aside her empty glass, picked up her coat from the bar stool. "Let's get out of here."

"What?"

"I know a great little coffee place around the corner. It's got real food, not all this fancy finger crap and a sweet Kenyan blend. You can tell me about fighting crime and I can get of my feet. These shoes are killing me."

Greg had no response except, "Sure."