Disclaimer: CSI belongs to CBS and Jerry Bruckheimer
Note: A continuation of "To Halve and To Hold" (as I believe that's the title).
Unexpected Pleasure
By:
Manda
He looked away from the window and the lure of his own thoughtful expression at the sound of a chair
being
pulled out from the opposite side of the table. Teri
had gone...and now Gil Grissom was ill-prepared to hide his
surprise at the unexpected arrival of the lithe figure
seated in the recently abandoned seat.
"Hey there, stranger." Nonchalant, Catherine
Willows was the personification of
chic beauty and grace. Sporting a
black silk evening gown, spaghetti straps gently
hugging her freckled shoulders, she shrugged off
a transparent opal shoulder wrap and gently fluffed
her strawberry locks with elegantly manicured fingernails.
Grissom found himself fascinated by her metamorphosis
from exhausted working mother to elite social
icon, porcelean skin and vibrant blue eyes hiding
every trace of the busy shift she'd only recently
have left behind. "What's the special
tonight?"
"What are you doing here, Catherine?" He posed the
question patiently, fingers wrapped around
the cool
exterior
of a glass on the tabletop to his right, frothy
amber beer filling the vessel a quarter of the way
up.
"Oh, I'm sorry- would you two rather be alone? Or
are you saving this seat for the
Calamari?" The comment yielded no
sarcasm, but was accompanied by a jesting
smile, and a barely discernable wink. "Did I come
at a bad time, Gil?"
"No." Rather than discourage her presence, Grissom
waved to the nearest waiter, who promptly
deposited a
glass of sparkling champagne at Catherine's right elbow. She lifted the delicate, thin-stemmed glass and
examined the dancing bubbles silently, eyes taking in the vision of the man in front of her, distorted by
the
moving liquid. "Thank you."
"For what? Grissom- I was just on my way to the Opera."
A peculiar glance pasted onto the boyish features
made her sigh, and she amended the sentence quickly.
"I'm just kidding...Sara mentioned you might be
here, and I thought that I'd stop by..."
The suggestion that she'd known Teri would leave flew
through Grissom's mind, but he dismissed it, not desiring
to know the answer. She beat him to it.
"Teri gave me a call, a few minutes ago...asked if I
could get her a plane ticket to Reno. She
told me that she had to leave,
Grissom..."
"Wait a minute." Grissom held up his hand, the
opposite member still absently clutching the
glass. "Catherine- that was
barely an hour ago."
"And you've been sitting here ever since, lost in
your own world. I know you, Gil- you're not
going to go home and sit in front of
your television set with a jar of
chocolate grasshoppers, wondering why it didn't work
out. For that matter, I'm not even sure if you own
a television set. But the point is," She paused, sipping
from the champagne, mocha-shaded lips moistened
by the beverage, and glistening in the elegant
overhead candlelight. "That you needed company,
and I'm here."
He nodded, thoughtfully. The idea that he and Teri were
ever to be anything other than colleagues...when the
urge had come over him to ask her to dinner...only to
watch her leave.... He had been overcome with the realization
that perhaps that would be how his colleagues
would forever look at him. How every woman, every
person in his life would be forced to regard him.
The man who would never enjoy a meal in life, with
the woman he loved...because he couldn't leave work
behind for even a second. He loved the puzzles, loved
the pursuit of the evidence...but when looking at
the evidence in front of him at that very moment, Grissom
knew why it was that Catherine Willows had come
to be with him that very evening.
"Thank you, Catherine." He reached for her hand,
wrapping large, callused fingers around her
slender, delicate digits. "I
appreciate that."
And the calamari never joined them.
-End