A/N: I still don't have a whole lot of clarity to add to the summary beyond saying this story will have an angsty bent. So, what else is new?
Welcome to the twisted mind of Calladragon.
#####
Biting her tongue to keep from humming loud enough to drown the monotony, Lisbon forced herself to remain seated straight and still when all she truly wanted to do was wriggle about like am adolescent school girl summoned to the Principal's office. That was how she felt. Like she'd been a very naughty girl, and not in a good way, so now she was paying for it. It wasn't a pleasant feeling or one she was fond of.
Turning her attention back to LaRoche, Lisbon didn't try to stop herself from imagining his initials drawn in huge letters in the middle of his forehead with navy blue permanent marker. It was all she could do not to grin at the vision in her head. Giving herself an imaginary smack on the hand with an imaginary ruler like Sister Mary Katherine used to do, Lisbon decided she really had to get a grip on her imaginary ADD. She was acting worse than Jane at the moment. So not a good thing.
Not when she and Rigsby were both a hair's breadth away from a suspension neither of them could afford to have.
Getting her deviant thoughts under tight rein, Lisbon focused her attention back where it needed to be: hanging on LaRoche and his every word.
"Agent Lisbon, while I realize Agent Rigsby's actions weren't intentional…." LaRoche droned on annoyingly even if he was speaking the uncontested truth.
No one ever wanted to lose it at a crime scene and her team usually didn't. Not even when one of the victim's family members was an unrepentant jerk openly asking for it. This time the crime had been a too heinous and the brother's words too insensitive for Wayne to take. Cho had had a hard time restraining his friend from taking that first punch. Though he hadn't laid a hand on the Sanderson kid in the end, he'd said more than enough to get a formal complaint lodged against him.
And her by association since she'd been present at the crime scene at the time.
Personally, Lisbon would have preferred it if Rigsby had beaten the ever living poop out of the ungrateful twerp. At least it would have made the situation worth the grief she was currently enduring. Being born with a silver spoon in his mouth didn't give man a right to speak about his dead sister like that. Yeah, maybe the girl had lived a risky lifestyle. But, she'd been living it among her peers the way they all did.
No one would have given her actions a second thought if she hadn't gotten killed.
As for Karina herself, she'd never once thought there was any danger in casually hooking up with people she'd known all of her life. Men she'd gone to school with or knew well socially. Most of their whole clique was doing exactly the same. They had been for years. Unfortunately, the twenty year old debutant turned college student never realized one of the men, or boys, she was sleeping with was going to leave her brutally raped, beaten, and insultingly posed by the side of the road like so much discarded refuse waiting to be found by Sacramento Road Maintenance workers out to do a random clean up for the first time in several weeks.
That was what had sent Rigsby so far over the edge. The fact the young woman had clearly known her assailant. That she was most likely in the midst of consentual intimacy with him when things had turned dark and deadly. Hearing her brother say none of them were surprised the little whore had come to such a bad end snapped the last of his formidable self-control. It didn't matter the twenty-something grad student was speaking from shock, anger, and pain. The words tumbling out of his mouth had almost gotten him a large fist to the face.
Lisbon really wasn't all that surprised. Even Jane had been visibly shaken by what he'd seen. Her, not so much, she was of sterner mettle than most of her team with the exception of Cho. For one thing, she'd seen a lot more. She'd never been to war. But, she'd handled a number of rough cases when she'd been with the SAC PD.
Pretending to listen to LaRoche, Lisbon decided she knew the perfect way to end a lousy day. Once it was finally over. If it ever was.
She was going to call that really good Italian Restaurant on the way home and order a huge salad, breadsticks, and a large Tuscan sausage and bean soup along with a large order of their classic Lasagna. She was also going to open that nice bottle of Chianti Tommy had given he'd gotten from one of his clients. While she didn't drink all that often or all that much when she did, her brother drank even less than she did sticking to an occasional beer.
Nodding her head appropriately while giving a good impression of actually listening, Lisbon decided what she didn't eat of the breadsticks and lasagna tonight would all freeze well enough to defrost at a later date. The soup she could bring for lunch tomorrow along with whatever was left of that monster slice of chocolate caramel cake she knew she was ordering. Actually, she'd probably be freezing half of that slice of cake as well.
After that, she was going to take her glass of wine upstairs and leave it on the lavatory sink while she set out her favorite candles, lit them, and ran a nice hot bath. While the hot water was running she was going to upend a couple of generous caps of her favorite cinnamon bubble bath under the faucet. The one smelling reminiscent of her favorite hot cinnamon candies that Jane like so well. He tended to sniff her much too closely the morning after the evenings she indulged in a nice, long soak. That she kind of liked being sniffed would remain her guilty secret.
Not that she got to soak that often.
While her tub was filling, she was going to dig out that angsty Historical Romance she'd abandoned a couple of months ago when her caseload got to be too much. The novel set in the 12th century, not the 16th, though that one was pretty good, too. The one making her believe someone, somewhere, was getting laid that wasn't her…even if only in fantasy land.
After that, she was turning her cell phone off. To hell with being "On Call" for a couple of hours for a change. If something serious went down, Cho would reach her on the land line. Her Number One knew if he couldn't reach her on one, he could definitely reach her on the other.
In the interim, she was carrying that novel into her bathroom and laying it beside her glass of wine while she twisted her hair on top of her hair and stripped naked as the day she was born. Then, she was taking that book along with her bath tub pillow and sinking up to her chin in frothy, fragrant, steamy water for as long as she could get away with it or until she turned into a wrinkled prune. Whichever came first.
Blinking, Lisbon focused her full attention back on LaRoche sensing he was fast winding down. It wouldn't do to be caught daydreaming when she should be listening. Not by J.J. LaRoche and not when he could make her life a living hell.
"None of this can happen again, Agent Lisbon. As the Senior Agent, insuring your team's actions are in line is your responsibility as you already know. I'm afraid I must insist that you promise me such a thing won't happen again. We might not be able to smooth things over quite so satisfactorily if there is a next time." LaRoche said as he watched Lisbon rise to her feet. "Unfortunately, while I'm aware it isn't always possible with Jane, I know you are fully capable of handling the rest of your team."
"Yes, Sir, I am." Lisbon reassured him as she walked out the door glad their rambling conversation had finally come to an end.
She was going to have a one-on-one with each of her team members to assure this never happened again. While fully capable of handling a dressing down, there was always something extra creepy about meeting with LaRoche behind closed doors that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Maybe it was the nature of his job or the fact she'd always felt he saw and knew far more than he let on. Whatever it was, it would take her a while to get back to normal after spending longer than she wanted in his presence.
Walking down the hall, Lisbon stopped by the ladies room to apply a dab of lip gloss and use the facilities before making her way to her office. Taking her key from her suit jacket pocket, Lisbon honestly didn't expect her sanctuary to have remained unbreached. A certain someone had been skulking about in full Jane mode long before she'd left for LaRoche's offce. She'd noted he was already in the kitchen putting the final touches on that familiar cup of tea as she passed on the way to J.J.'s abode.
Cursing softly under her breath, Lisbon unlocked her door fully expecting to find a Red Delicious sitting in the middle of her desk as a peace offering that would never have been necessary in the first place if Jane hadn't gone where he wasn't supposed to go. While she appreciated the gesture, she did not appreciate Jane's constant need to remind her how easily he could invade her personal space at will. He'd been doing that much too well for way too many years and, frankly, it was growing old.
At least for the moment as she'd just spent the last hour in LaRoche's office trying to literally scrape the proverbial pile of crap Rigsby had pushed her into off the bottom of her figurative shoe. It hadn't been easy as it had involved more than Wayne's run-in with that punk. Somehow, through flattery and acquiescence, and far more judicious ass kissing than she liked to do, she'd managed to keep them both from getting another black mark in their files.
Or, more accurately, Jane had thanks to that very strange love-hate relationship he and LaRoche had when he'd casually meandered into the midst of their conversation out of the blue and shown her precisely how it should be done.
As if she needed another reason to be grateful to that louse. He hadn't done that much really. Just said a few words then disappeared as he always did leaving LaRoche to mull his words while Lisbon finished arguing her case. In the end, she preferred to think her defense had carried more weight than Jane's opinion in LaRoche's final decision.
Tossing her suit jacket on the back of her chair, Lisbon stopped dead in her tracks noting what had unbelievably failed to capture her attention upon walking through the door.
There sitting smack in the middle of her desk was an extravagantly wrapped, elegantly beribboned, triple boxed tower from the bakery down the block and across the street giving off the most divine fragrances she'd ever inhaled. Reaching out to open the small card attached to the bow, Lisbon saw her name in an artistic script and nothing else. Feeling her heart beat accelerate and deciding she didn't know what else to do as her Secret Admirer had obviously struck again, Lisbon reached out to tentatively slip the crimson bow from the boxes before carefully unwrapping the smallest, topmost box. Removing the lid, she smiled at the daintily authentic Bourbon Pecan Tassies that were much too sweet to nibble more than a two or three at a time. Reaching for the second box, her eyes grew wide at the sight of her favorite cherry cheesecake brownie bars that Jane hadn't brought her in a coon's age. Deciding she liked the way his mind worked since he was buying her all her favorite things, Lisbon opened the third box to expose a dozen freshly prepared pastries comprised of Cinnamon Rolls, Bear Claws, Iced Lemon Scones, and Apple Fritters.
Catching Jane lingering nosily around the parameter of her open office door, Lisbon bid him enter before turning confused eyes toward her Mentalist.
"Honestly, Jane." She'd had enough. She truly had. While the flowers and treats were nice, it was time to stop. And while she knew he was frustrated at not getting any closer to Red John; she wasn't willing to be his latest diversion. "Don't you ever get tired of playing games?"
"Don't look at me, Lisbon." Jane threw his hands up in resignation. "I assured you a few weeks ago that I'm not your Secret Admirer and I'm not."
He was also no closer to discovering his real identity than he had been back then. That's assuming "he" was actually even a "him". For all they knew, Lisbon's unknown friend could be female. Somehow, Jane doubted that. Those perfect roses and the fancy, beribboned boxes wrapping her favorite sweets had a definite masculine aura about them. One that said, whoever he was, that he meant business…Whatever that business might actually be.
As long as it wasn't monkey business, he might be okay with it.
The jury was still out on that one. Jane rather liked the guy's style as he was neither chintzy nor predictably trite. However, if it was sexual shenanigans he was plotting, all bets were off. It wouldn't matter he'd taken the time to discover Lisbon's special delights. And there'd better not be any jewelry coming down the pipe either.
When that happened, Jane would find him and kick him out of Lisbon's life before he ever got into it. He'd do it or he'd die trying. If there was one thing Patrick Jane knew, it was that he wasn't ready to die.
"Do you think they're okay to eat?" Lisbon asked tentatively lifting a decadently warm, golden fried Apple Fritter to her nose before taking a satisfactory whiff of cinnamony sugar glazed heaven.
"Considering they were just hand delivered from that high brow bakery down the street still warm from the oven, I'd say they're perfectly fine." Jane said recognizing the delivery boy as the owner's son as he frequented the place on a regular basis to purchase those deadly cherry cheesecake brownies Lisbon liked so well. Or he used to before he'd gotten distracted by other things. Maybe he should start up again. "If you have any doubts, feed Rigsby one of the Bear Claws. We'll know soon enough if something's wrong. I doubt the rest of your treats would even have time to get cold."
"Shush, Jane." Lisbon said holding out the box. "Here, Rigsby, have a Bear Claw."
Watching Rigsby stare hesitantly at the artery clogging treats with undisguised desire, Lisbon laughed before taking a huge bite of her Apple Fritter and closing her eyes in ecstasy. If it wouldn't be so disgusting and unprofessional, she'd gladly moan her pleasure aloud. There was nothing she liked more than a delicious pastry accompanied by a strong cup of coffee like the one Jane was currently pressing into her palm.
Staring at her with mirthful eyes, Lisbon had a feeling Jane was reading her every unrestrained thought. If she had any doubts, his next words confirmed it. Thank goodness they were rasped for her ears only through lips that were much too close to her skin.
"Who knew you found eating such a sensual experience." Jane's expression let her know she was so busted and he was reading her every thought.
That he might even be wondering what other experiences she approached in a similar manner.
"The fritters are really good." Lisbon said innocently as she licked a sticky gob of icing off her finger. "You should try one."
"I might do that some time." Jane said in a tone that had Lisbon's over active imagination kicking into overdrive in wildly inappropriate ways before heading for the kitchen to finish the cup of tea he'd left steeping while he brought his "Boss" her cup of coffee instead.
Watching him leave, Lisbon decided things had gotten unusual since she'd started receiving gifts from her unknown benefactor. He wasn't sending them all that regularly either. Just every time her team solved a newsworthy case which seemed about every four to six weeks lately. The near regularity was noticeably starting to put Jane's nose out of joint.
As far as Lisbon was concerned, she couldn't take this imaginary relationship seriously although she did appreciate his tastes. They seemed to be very similar to her own which both flattered and alarmed her to a degree. Maybe alarmed was too strong a word for her feelings. It made her feel like her Secret Admirer was someone she worked with closely enough that he'd had opportunity to observe her more intimate habits on a casual basis.
Lisbon wasn't sure how she felt about that. She really wasn't.
Jane clearly didn't like it. Not that she'd expect anything else. The man had sabotaged her last four dates. She'd have literally killed him for that one if the guys hadn't turned out to be such losers in the first place. Not that she thought he had a right to meddle.
But, Jane was going to be Jane and there wasn't anything she could do about it.
She'd learned that lesson the hard way a long time ago.
#####
Looking around her bathroom, Lisbon couldn't believe she'd managed to escape the CBI at a decent hour as she'd hoped. Nor could she believe she'd actually followed through on the plans she'd made for the evening. She'd called the Italian Restaurant as she'd walked out the door and picked up her order on the way home. She'd even managed a leisurely, uninterrupted meal of soup, salad, and lasagna accompanied by a half glass of Chianti.
As she'd only had that couple of bites of Apple Fritter since her hastily devoured breakfast of two scrambled eggs and a slice of toast early this morning, she'd found her more substantial dinner very satisfactory. As often happened, she'd been forced to skip lunch thanks to her meeting with LaRoche which had come soon after she'd returned from the field on their latest case. The very one that had gotten both her and Rigsby in trouble. In fact, she'd enjoyed her lasagna when she'd finally gotten around to it so much she'd forgone that nibble or two of chocolate cake in favor of ambling upstairs to prepare that bath.
Arranging the last of her candles in its usual spot, Lisbon carefully lit each one before turning on the faucet and adding her bubble bath. Placing her favorite CD in the player, Lisbon walked into her bedroom to remove her clothes. Hanging her blouse and pants in the closet beside her jacket, she walked back into her bathroom to pile her hair on top of her head. Removing her lingerie, she tossed her serviceable bra and panties into the hamper before walking over to turn off the water and test the temperature.
Deciding it was comfortably hot without being scalding; Lisbon slipped into the water and arranged her pillow behind her head. If felt good to be soaking away the day. Between the intermittent "appearances" of her Secret Admirer and Jane acting like a jealous suitor which everyone knew he wasn't, she'd had an exhausting day without the case and LaRoche. Add that in and she was truly ready for a relaxing hour or so surround by the moist heat of the water lapping against her skin.
Thinking about her Secret Admirer, Lisbon was torn between a desire to discover who he was and her desire to never find out. There was a certain mystique about their dance that would disappear the moment she learned his identity. On the one hand, the greater part of her thought "he" was actually Jane playing mind games. If it was, she knew better than to think he was up to anything more serious than trying to dispel his boredom and using her to do it. The whole scene would truly be much ado about nothing.
On the other, there were certain things that pointed to her Secret Admirer being anyone but Jane. For one thing, his gifts coincided with her most recent News Conferences of which she'd given two in the last six weeks. The first was when she'd gotten injured pulling Haley and Buck from that burning car and received her Commendation. He'd sent those lovely roses she'd kept in her office for several days in response.
The second was when she'd found the Mayor's wife still alive in that hunting shack after she'd been taken in a car-jacking gone bad that left everyone believing she was dead. But, that one had been all Jane even though she'd gotten the credit. He was the only one who'd believe Lorraine was still alive given the amount of blood at the scene. And she was. She was badly injured; but, still alive which was all that truly mattered in the end. Lisbon had gotten a different Commendation for that one. One she didn't feel she deserved. But, as it looked good for the Bureau, Bertram had convinced her to accept it. That had been late yesterday afternoon and the pastries had arrived mid-day today.
Lisbon couldn't help thinking, if her Secret Admirer was really Jane playing Mentalist head games, he wouldn't wait around to see her face on the television screen to act. He'd be leaving his offerings strewn about randomly and far closer together so she didn't miss his point. Or, if he was being sneaky, he'd do exactly what this guy was doing to throw her off her game.
Jeez, she honestly didn't know. If her Secret Admirer turned out to be Jane, she'd brain him. If it wasn't, she'd figure out that one when the time came. A lot would depend on who he turned out to be. Whether he was a guy she'd consider going out with or someone who made her want to run. That thought bothered her some. He might turn out to be a real creeper then what was she supposed to do.?
Dismissing her mildly disturbing thoughts, Lisbon wallowed out a more comfortable spot on her waterproof pillow and flipped open her novel. She didn't want to waste any more time thinking about murderers, Secret Admirers, LaRoche or her team. She especially didn't want to think about one Patrick Jane.
She'd had her fill of the lot of them for a while.
She'd much rather fantasize about taking Alexandria's place with the Sheriff of Lothian. She'd decided a long time ago he was an oversized hunk of man flesh any red blooded woman with half a libido would like to get her hands on. She certainly would. He had all the right requirements…He was tall, smart, strong, and striking to look at. If that wasn't enough, he'd definitely get the law enforcement gig. And she doubted he'd be intimidated by a woman packing heat even if he'd never seen a gun…What more could a girl ask for?
Smiling at the ridiculousness of her thoughts, Lisbon took a sip of wine and turned the page quickly losing herself in the twisted tale of a desperate woman out to literally capture the man of her dreams.