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There it was—the phone.

For days after the revelation that Brennan had an incriminatingly sexy picture of a naked Booth cooking breakfast, she'd been almost obsessed in her desire to see it.

It.

As she stood contemplating the phone on Brennan's desk, she wondered what it was she really needed to see.

It. You know, IT.

All right, all right, her inner voice was saying. She was an artist who had taken a detour into a science lab and got to see the inside of people and often had the task of putting the outsides back onto that skeleton in order to identify the person and had a natural and professional curiosity about such things.

It would be relatively easy to simply take the phone, go back to her office and use her computer to unlock the code. Hell, there were only 24 possible combinations and given just how focused Brennan could be—even as pregnant as she was—how long could it really take to run through the combinations, open up the phone and peruse the photo?

The Photo.

Her hand, so used to holding a stylus, paintbrush or pencil, practically needed something to hold, to wield as an instrument. Why not Brennan's phone?

More than a little creepy, her inner voice admonished her. It's clear you want to look, to see Booth's physique in the flesh—well a bit more flesh than that roll through in the lab that one Christmas—broad muscular shoulders tapering down into a trim, tight waist, firm buttocks, hips that . . . . Wait!

It wasn't as if she were alone in the curiosity. She had seen any number of the lab techs, female and male, checking out Booth, checking out the pure maleness of him, the chiseled physique that couldn't be easily hidden. And when he came into the lab whether dressed in a t-shirt and jeans or his FBI-uniform-like suit and tie, didn't their eyes travel downward until they reached the promised land?

She found her fingers wrapped around the phone, found her heart racing, her prurient interest warring with the sisterhood she and Brennan had forged over the years.

And then there was Hodgins.

She had this great guy, a wonderful guy, sweet and warm and sexy as hell and loving and satisfying and just so incredibly hot. He was a friend and a lover and a colleague and a father to her child and it did not matter what order she listed her relationship with him, they were somehow always going to be together because their love was that strong.

So why was she obsessed with looking at a naked picture of Booth?

Was it because Cam looked and now Brennan had a good look, a good long look that had finally, finally, FINALLY happened in one of the longest courtships in the history of time? Was she trying to keep up with the others? Or did she need proof—the Brennan kind of proof—that they were finally a couple?

Or did she just want to see what Brennan was getting? A wistful longing for what she had given up by getting married and settling down into one, long-term, till-death-we-do-part relationship with one man?

She let her fingers dance along the table, just close enough to the cell phone to accidentally touch it, to bring it to life, but far enough away to respect that invisible line that she and Brennan had.

Sisterhood.

She looked up, looked into the lab, wondered what Hodgins was doing, wondered why she couldn't stop thinking of him even as she was thinking about looking at that photo.

She'd asked Brennan to share the photo—it wasn't like she was asking to share the man. Granted, she had been kind of pushy and giggly like some teen fan girl drooling over the latest Teen Beat hottie. Did they even publish that rag anymore? Not a mature woman with a baby and a husband who adored her and a house and a life. . . .

You are a hopeless teen fan girl juicing over some arm porn and chest porn and. . . .

She silenced her inner critic, the one she knew would spell it out for her. Part of her could blame Booth, the man who wore the cocky belt buckle despite now having the woman he had wanted for years in his bed, having his child. He was advertising it, advertising something that was and should be Brennan's and Brennan's alone. But she worked in a field where the baser instincts led people to do abominable things and she'd seen far too many people mistake desire for entitlement.

People liked to look. Liked to imagine what certain people looked like when they were in the throes of ecstasy. Wasn't that the whole foundation of the porn industry? Didn't that sell tickets at the movie theaters, draw viewers to TV shows, cause women of all ages—and some men—to salivate over the latest hunk?

Okay, okay, she liked to look. Call it an artist's discerning eye or a woman's, she liked to look. Men like Booth were meant to catch your eye—he moved with a confidence and grace that was deeply sexy, deeply provocative.

Just a peek. Her finger hovered over the screen when the cell trilled, startling her, doing a sidelong dance on the desk. AFBA came up on the screen, and even she knew enough to know that with initials like that it was official business. Letting the phone finish its dance, the cell beeping as it went to voicemail, she folded herself into one of the chairs facing the desk and contemplated the phone.

Anyone else might have simply stolen a look quickly, maybe even snapped a shot or forwarded the photo to be lusted over some more, but if she had been just anyone, wouldn't she have looked by now?

The phone sat there, waiting to be woken, but she couldn't do it. Brennan had earned a bit of playfulness with her FBI guy and he with her. She deserved only the best and Booth was pretty damned good.

And she had her own pretty damned good guy in Jack Hodgins. She knew exactly what resided under that lab coat, a man with his own powerful grace, well-toned and muscular, a giving lover, a generous friend, a hunk of a husband who treated her very well. And he was great with Michael Vincent, great with her whenever she lost her grounding and took to flights of idiocy or fancy and lost her way.

He was always there to help her find her way back to what really mattered.

"Angela?" Brennan stood at the doorway, her lab coat tented to accommodate her growing pregnancy. "Do you need something?"

"No," Angela said as she stood. "No, I have everything I need."

Author's note: Unlike many fans, I have no problem with Angela. (The name, AmandaFriend is drawn from the Brennan novels since Amanda is Kathy Reich's best friend in the novels. I love Brennan and figured it was a good nom de plume.) Granted, she's crossed the line (toed the line?) with Booth, but despite fan fiction stories that spell out other scenarios, the show is never going to show Angela and Booth together. Is she outrageous at times? Yes. Insensitive? Definitely. Far too flirty for her own good? No argument from me. But like all characters, she needs something that makes her a little edgy, abrasive even. From Booth through Aubrey, each one of them has features that make them a little (or a lot) unlikeable. It just so happens that Hodgins is so incredibly cool and loveable that his idiosyncrasies are neutralized. Angela? Not so much. Hodgins might be King of the Lab, but he's also King of many of our hearts and anyone who crosses him crosses us. Maybe we know a woman like Angela, a bit too flirty, a bit too nosey, a bit too teenie-bopperish and we can easily dismiss her, even dislike her. For whatever reason, like Jessica Rabbit, she's not bad, she's just drawn that way.

Just my humble opinion.