The little coffee shop was more of a diner without the tacky nostalgic trappings and food that didn't taste like the bottom of a deep fryer. They'd been here over an hour, sitting in the buttery leather booth trading stories and flirtations over his burger and her chicken fajitas.
"He did not!"
"I swear I did, high kicks and all."
"If my boss had caught me wearing a feathered headdress, she'd have shipped me over to psych."
"I'm surprised Grissom didn't." Greg grinned as he dragged a French fry through a puddle of ketchup. Nadine was right, they did mix a sweet Kenyan blend, and they made a killer cheeseburger with the works.
Nadine laughed, punched him in the arm, letting her fingers linger. He was slim but there was muscle here; the kind that wasn't noticeable unless it was something you looked for. She happened to be the sort attracted to that lanky well-built body he sported.
"So how did you get from French Guyana to nursing in Las Vegas?" Greg noted the hand on his arm, felt his skin tingle. It had been a while, longer than he cared to remember, since he'd felt this kind of comfort level around a woman.
"I moved here with my parents and my sister when I was twelve" Nadine popped a fried pepper into her mouth. "Ten years later they divorced, and Mama and Amandine moved back home. I stayed here with Daddy until he died."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Greg automatically laid his other hand over hers. His sister Renee was very close to their father, and he didn't want to imagine what it'd be like if they lost him at their age. "How-?"
"A heart attack. He was fifty-three." Nadine shrugged. "I didn't have a lot of time with him, but the time I got I cherished. What about you, do you have any family around here?"
"My parents live in San Gabriel, and my little sister Renee is doing her doctorate in forensic psych at University of Miami. She's actually coming to Vegas in a few weeks and I'm trying to get the time off to visit with her."
"So you guys are close, then." A small kernel of green jealousy bloomed in Nadine's chest. She'd wished she was close to the saintly Amandine, but so long as her mother kept comparing her two daughters to each other, Nadine knew the pretty lawyer would always be the competition. "Did anyone ever mistake you for twins?"
"She's six years younger than me and a redhead like our grandmother, so not so much."
"Amandine and I always got that, even though she's three years older. Drove her nuts," she added.
Greg beamed at the tone in her voice, that smug little sister sound he'd also heard in Renee's voice on more than one occasion. He rubbed his thumb over the soft skin of her hands, little shivers going down his back.
"I bet you're prettier though."
"Ah…" Actually, it had always been the other way around; no one had told Nadine she was prettier than Amandine a day in her life. Amandine looked like a movie star and Nadine was…herself, curvy in all the wrong places. Still it was sweet of him to think she could be. She leaned in, kissed his cheek as her own burned red. "Flirt all you like, you're not seeing my underwear tonight."
"What?"
"I'm not that nurse," she stated matter-of-factly, hoping it didn't put a damper on this otherwise blissful evening.
"What nurse?"
"Don't play dumb. Most men harbour this stereotypical notion that all nurses are nymphomaniacs, and I like to set the record straight upfront."
"When I definitely don't want to end up in pieces in the back alley," he concluded.
"Huh?"
Greg briefly told her about a case two years before when they'd found a nurse butchered in her bathroom because she gave it away like M&M's and a lover with access to scalpels got jealous. "She fit that stereotype, but you definitely don't."
"And why do you say that?"
"Because when you said let's get out of here, we didn't end up doing the back-seat boogie in my Jeep. We're here chatting over burgers and coffee."
"What if this is a ploy before we get to that step? You have only known me for all of three hours; this could be my MO for seducing men."
The skin on the back of Greg's neck itched. Oh she was a sly one. "Call me crazy, but as a trained investigator, I don't think that you're the kind of girl who would just find a stud like me and haul him back to the ranch for breeding."
"You're such a nerd," Nadine giggled. "And you're very right. I don't sleep with strange men."
"Well it's nice to have known you," he mocked, pretending to get up before she pulled on his wrist to sink him back into the booth.
"Quel charmant idiote," she muttered in French, which made the Greg's blood begin to do laps around his brain. "Sorry, I still curse people out in French."
"No, it's hot. I like it."
"Well then, tu peut me conduire au resto pour acquérir ma voiture, if you'd be so kind," Nadine smiled. "It means you can take me back to the restaurant to pick up my car. I have rounds at five tomorrow morning, and I just finished twelve hours before coming to this gig."
Greg obliged her; the entire car ride back to the Angelo's parking lot went much like their dinner had, full of flirtations and playful shoves or smacks. Only this time, she didn't let go of his hand, nor did he want her to. When he escorted her back to the nifty little black Mazda 3 Sport, he stopped short so she would spin around to face him. Instead she wound up in his arms, her hands trailing over his shoulders before interlacing at the back of his neck.
"I want to see you again," he said bluntly.
"Me too."
It wasn't quite obvious how they wound up locked in a kiss, whether Greg had leaned in towards her, or Nadine pulled him close, but they locked lips all the same. He tasted sweet, like the creamy coffee she'd watched him down at the diner. And he could kiss; the firm lips against hers were not the lips of a typical science geek. These were pure male and made her sigh a little.
When he broke the kiss, Greg fought the urge to shake his head, to reassure himself his brain was still intact and not a hot lump of jelly. Her quick mouth with its overfull bottom lip was like kissing an angel, telling him he hadn't been wrong on his instinct to try and get a cursory kiss. There was a definite spark here.
"Call me the next night your free," she said.
"Okay." He let his arms drop then, started to walk back to his own car when he felt Nadine tug on his hand. "What?"
"You need my number if you want to call me," she said slowly, as she might have with one of her patients.
Greg squeezed his eyes shut. "Right, yeah...that might...that might help," he replied lamely, fishing out his cell phone to key in her number. He watched her climb into her car, drive north out of the lot before he hopped into his Jeep. He wasn't surprised when he found a message from Warrick cursing him out for ditching him.
Sanders, you better have gotten dead or laid for you to ditch me with those medical power trips. And if you got laid…I hate you even more. See you next shift.
Greg just smiled, turned up his radio as he hummed along with The Clash on the Friday night late show. He may not have gotten into Nadine's drawers but he could guarantee Warrick one thing: he'd definitely gotten his heart rocked.
