Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from the show Moonlight. I only claim ownership my own character and her history.

Chapter One

Beth was blowdrying her hair when she heard the knocking coming from her apartment door. She went to put the dryer down but found herself in a pickle when her round hairbrush got caught in her curls. She groaned and tried to untangle the knots as the knocks on her door continued. Fustrated, Beth walked briskly to her door and shoved her eyeball against the peephole. An even bigger groan erupted when she saw Mick standing outside and here she was with her hair in a big mess while at war with a pesky brush.

She contemplated ignoring him for the moment but, hey, he's seen her in worse condition. Beth sucked in her breath, feigned a smile, and opened the door. She casually pretended to ignore that she was holding her arm up, shoving the brush deeper into her mass of blond. Mick raised an eyebrow and Beth knew she'd been busted but the enigmatic man said nothing to embarass her. Things had been tumultuous since Beth had tried to kill Coraline, to say the least. The latter woman currently laid in an icy coma in a freezer at Josef's house. Mick had turned her to save her life but left the stake in to keep her paralyzed. She'd proven to be both too dangerous and creepy to allow to walk around. However, she'd somehow discovered a "cure" for vampirism. This gave Coraline a small bit of worth that was responsible for her still being alive. Beth remembered watching in both horror and fascination as Mick turned Coraline back into a vampire and had run out of the place in revulsion. Beth refused to answer calls from Mick and definitely didn't want to come face to face with him. But there he stood, at her door staring at Beth in all her awkward under-dressed glory with a hair brush tangled in her head.

"Beth." He said her name like he was saying it for the first time "Can I come in?"

Beth sighed and stepped aside, holding the door open for Mick "Sure. But we'll be getting company shortly."

Mick looked around Beth's humble apartment, her table littered with photos, papers, and her laptop casually left open with Buzzwire's website up and running "Who's coming?"

"My cousin Eva. She's driving in from Phoenix and will probably be here within an hour." Beth stated as she moved towards her bathroom and began working at her hair issue "She's coming into town to help out with that stolen art case and I'm hoping to get an inside track for a story."

Mick leaned against the wall near the bathroom door but didn't dare look in "Oh? What does Eva do?"

"She's an assistant curator at the Phoenix Museum of Art. I guess the museum doesn't think the stolen art is that important."

"And you do?" Mick asked as he stood and ,unknowingly to Beth, inhaled the perfumes that radiated from her bathroom and closed his eyes for a moment.

Beth made a yowching sound and frowned when her brush broke free from her hair but claimed a clump "Yes, I do. There has to be a reason why someone would break into a huge Bellaire mansion,complete with guard dogs, and make off with a bunch of paintings."

"Boredom? Bad taste in art?" Mick jested but stifled himself when Beth popped her head out and glared with icy eyes.

"Ha ha. But whatever it is, I'm going to be there for the inside scoop."

Beth made her way from bathroom to bedroom nary looking at the handsome man standing in her apartment watching her with intense eyes. Mick had been angry with Beth, very angry, but he still thought about her nonstop. She drove him insane. All Mick wanted was to be near Beth despite every node of his common sense telling him to back off. He was no good for her. She deserved a normal life with a nice, normal, human man at her side. Be as it may, Beth seemed to want anything but a normal life, she kept herself in close contact with Mick. Much to his chagrin. Mick sniffed the air as he imagined Beth slipping into clothes not of the appropriate daytime variety.

"So are you and Eva close?"

Beth talked loudly from the bedroom as if she'd forgotten that Mick had hearing like a bat "We were when we were kids and in college."

"Is she anything like you?"

A laugh from the bedroom "Not really. I mean we have the same hair and eye color but that's about it. She's very...earthy."

Mick grinned "A hippy?"

"Not quite a hippy. She's just different from me. You'll see."

Beth emerged from the bedroom wearing jeans, a pale pink sweater, and her hair pulled into a ponytail. Mick drank her in. She looked comfortable, simple, lovely. Where Coraline had been a snow-white tigress, Beth was a tabby kitten. Both women were beautiful but in extremely different ways. Coraline was all pale angles and sultry glances and Beth was straighforward and wide-eyed. One was a doe and the other a wolf. Both were definitely obsessived and compulsive.

Beth put a hand on one hip and frowned at Mick "what?"

Mick snapped out of his trance "Nothing really, you just look...nice."

"You're not going to get all sappy on me, are you?"

Mick chuckled "Never." but his beautiful eyes told a different story. One he feared would play out until he heard the obnoxious sound a car horn playing the Mexican Hat Dance theme. In nanoseconds, he was at Beth's window and watched as some sort of convertible pulled up infront of the building. The car looked positively ancient. A woman looked up as she got out of the car. She waved. Micked waved back bovinely, in shock, that she waved at him first.

Beth joined Mick at the window and waved happily at her cousin.