This chapter just went wild and wouldn't stop, like a Congressional budget hearing. Anyway. I found it amusing.

"Gus, don't be a freezer-burned strawberry popsicle," Shawn said irritably as they stood in line at the Lava Java stand by the beach. "We're just a little off our game, that's all."

"Off our game? Of your game, maybe. Not ours. Lassie and Jules have been solvin' crimes right and left, while you've just been standing there trying to come up with your first crackpot theory and spilling pineapple smoothie on the floor."

"I still think he put something in my pineapple smoothie," Shawn grouched. He glanced at his partner, who ordered a straight black coffee. Shawn ordered a mocca mocca frappachino and they made their way to a table. The outdoor café was crowded, in spite of the crispy cool December evening, and a live band was setting up nearby, sounding the speakers and making everybody flinch. The two young men sat down at the last unoccupied table.

Suddenly, Gus started trying to signal to Shawn with his eyes, shifting his gaze to the left and back to Shawn. Finally, his friend just kicked Shawn in the ankle. "Look."

Lassie was seated by himself at a table, drinking coffee and reading over some papers. What made his appearance there doubly surprising was what he was wearing: jeans, a simple gray T-shirt, a warm-looking but battered old leather jacket, and leather boots. He was absorbed in what he was reading and thus hadn't seen either of the two men. Before Shawn could call out to him, Gus shushed him, seeing a young couple approach the detective. The woman was heavily pregnant, to the point of waddling and knocking things over with her stomach, and the man's hand seemed to have been attached to her swollen belly by glue.

"Sir, can we take this extra chair?" the man asked Carlton, his other hand resting on the back of the empty chair at his table.

"Ah…a young couple, expecting a baby, in need of some help, and so close to Christmas, too." He peered around the woman. "But…no." He waved them away, which they took fairly well. He smiled as Marlowe sat down opposite him, huffing a little. She was carrying several shopping bags and looked pretty well worn out.

"Christmas can be so violent!" she said. "Can you believe a grown woman would elbow another person out of the way and then step on another woman's foot just to get to the gift she wanted to buy?"

"Somebody did that to you?" he asked, his expression clouding.

"No, but those two women will get over it soon enough, and I don't think they could recognize me. I was wearing my sunglasses." She waved to a waiter, who came over. "Just hot chocolate, please. With some marshmallows! Have you done any shopping yet?"

"For what?"

Marlowe studied him, and seemed to be counting backwards from five. "Christmas, Carlton."

"Oh. Right. Uh…not really. No."

She shook her head, smiling affectionately. "You're the soul of sentimentality, aren't you?"

"Who would ever say such a thing?" He shuffled the papers.

"What's that?" she asked, indicating the stack of pages in front of him.

"Specs on my new condo."

"You bought it?" she asked, looking excited. "Really? Which one?"

"The two-story one. With all the big rooms and the fenced back yard."

"Oh, that's great! I liked the pictures. Can I see them again?"

He handed the pages to her, and Marlowe perused the documents, looking more and more excited with each picture of the roomy condo. "Oh, wow, and you low-balled them!" she said, when she saw the numbers.

"I think the sight of my gun might have made the prior owners a little jittery, but I did get a good deal on it. They were eager to move out, for some reason, and they're leaving behind most of the furniture, too. It's almost move-in ready."

"You're moving, Lassie?"

Shawn had crept up on them, sidling up to their table without making a sound and dodging around other patrons until he reached them. He was at Marlowe's shoulder, looking down at the papers. Marlowe flipped them over immediately and fixed Shawn with a cool stare. Spencer actually took a step backwards, seeing an air of command in that woman that matched Lassiter's. He studied the couple, realizing that they fit each other like puzzle pieces while yet being complete misfits elsewhere.

"None of your business, Spencer," Carlton said, his jaw tightening. "Go play in another sandbox."

"Sure. I only play with the cool kids. Miss Vizzini," he said, bowing deeply.

"Vicchellio," Carlton corrected, eyes narrowed to two black-lashed blue slits. Marlowe just shook her head, looking bored.

"Right. And do you trust a Sicilian when death is on the line, Lassie?"

"My family was actually from northern Italy, then Louisiana," Marlowe said. She looked at Carlton. "They were bakers. In Italy, I mean. My father was a mechanic, and I'm sure my mother is currently back in Metairie, beating something back into a pot."

"So…Italian, French and…adventurously omnivorous?"

"It's not called roadkill for nothing," Marlowe answered with a mischievous smile.

Lassiter actually looked amused. Spencer ducked down to look at the detective's boots. "Where's the gentleman's brogues, Lassie?"

"Beat it, Spencer…unless you want to find out whether or not I'm armed."

Spencer eyed them both, and finally shrugged and returned to his table, sitting down with a disappointed huff. Gus glared at him. "You seem to keep forgetting that Lassie is always armed, Shawn."

They were walking on the boardwalk, enjoying the brisk winter night and debating going onto the arcade and trying some of the games. Marlowe liked the cold – it meant she could get warm later, and lately, she was getting warm with Carlton. Sitting on his couch, curled up against him, watching an old episode of Frasier or, for pure amusement, some old Japanese monster movie. He had surprised her by admitting that he liked Eureka and didn't actually like CSI that much ("I like CSI:NewYork best I suppose, but sooner or later it'll be CSI: Dubuque and then we have to admit they're running out of ideas."). He hated Woody Allen movies and anything on Lifetime, but indulged her taste for most of the network sitcoms and Dancing With the Stars, and had even endured sitting through General Hospital one day while he was off. She recorded every episode, and was still catching up following her four months in prison. He kept asking her who the hell those people were, but she had caught him looking rather intrigued by all the goings-on in Port Charles. "The balding guy that looks like James Cameron's even more idiotic brother…women get all hot and bothered over him?"

She saw a booth that offered several large, garish stuffed animals as prizes and dragged him over. "Look – target shooting!"

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and eyed the squirrely-looking little man running the booth. Carlton immediately recognized that the man had a glass eye, and that the other was rather…lazy, and that actually made him queasy. He looked around the booth, sizing it up, knowing that the games along the arcade were generally rigged. He pulled out his wallet and extracted the five dollars required for ten shots, clutching it in his hand. If he popped all ten balloons, he would be schlepping a giant teddy bear through the arcade. Worse yet, it was a teddy bear that had apparently been dressed by Elton John back during his psychedelic days, when he licked up lines of cocaine and commonly sang in Welsh. If he only hit one balloon, he'd only have to carry, perhaps, a tiny stuffed gecko.

Marlowe raised her eyebrows at him and looked at the giant teddy bear.

"You're kidding, right?"

"I like the teddy bear," she admitted. "It's…definitely a conversation piece."

"In the sense of the conversation starting with, 'My God, that's an ugly teddy bear' and ending with the person psychologically scarred forever?"

"Carlton…" she said, adding a gentle plea to her voice.

Finally, he handed the fiver over and picked up the gun. He didn't spot Spencer or Guster coming up behind him, and didn't see their wide eyes when he said, 'Go ahead, punk. Make my day' and popped ten balloons in a row, with full police stance, left leg bending a little to compensate for the gun's poor balance. He blew imaginary smoke from the muzzle and put it down, and Glass Squirrel Eye took the giant bear down, handing it over. Carlton staggered just a bit at the surprising heft of the bear, but he tucked it under his arm just the same and they walked away, heading toward the popcorn stand, Marlowe laughing helplessly.

Shawn and Gus followed them, in spite of Gus's trepidations about following the cranky detective. He suspected Lassie would be even crankier if he knew he was being watched. But he was clearly more focused on his date, and from the way she was leaning into him, laughing and gently teasing him, she was pretty well focused on him, too. "Why are we doing this, exactly?" he asked Shawn.

"Because I simply cannot believe that Lassieface has a hot chick as a girlfriend. I'm trying to figure out if he's drugging her, or if it's coercion."

"It's neither, Shawn. She likes him, he likes her. It's that simple."

Carlton bought a large bucket of popcorn and they made their way to a bench, the detective lugging the bear – now named Elton – with a look of aggrieved determination on his face. He plopped the bear down on the bench and sat down beside it, stretching his legs out, rubbing his knee and wincing, and Marlowe sat down beside him, prettily smoothing her skirt as she did so. She leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder and snuggling in.

"I suppose he can be a good chaperone," Carlton grumbled. She laughed, clapping her hands. "And like all chaperones, a bucket of cold water on any and all romance. Next time, bring along a duenna. A fat one. With a mustache."

"Speaking of romance," Marlowe said, sitting up straight. "I've been thinking…about…how things are progressing between us."

"Oh. Okay." He sat up straight then, his ease of a few moments ago vanishing. "What…what did I do? I did something wrong? What was it? I don't mind the bear, really. It's just heavy, and my knee…I did something else, then, right? Whatever it was, I'm sorry…"

"You've done nothing wrong, Carlton. I just wanted to talk about…well, I think we should discuss the guidelines."

"Guidelines?" He stared at her as though the word did not exist in his vocabulary.

"Yes. Well, not so much guidelines as just…how we really shouldn't rush things. I mean, how many relationships are just totally ruined by the couple rushing off to bed? I think that, with our current situation – my being on parole, in particular – it would be best if we waited for the…uh…physical side of things. We have all the time in the world, right, and I don't want to rush things."

"Oh. Right. Right." He ran a hand through his hair. "I…I see…right. I agree."

"You do?"

"Well, you're the woman, so last time I checked the Dating Manual, you let the woman set the rules. Otherwise, you're kind of a…jerk."

"Well, in my Dating Manual, it's a mutual agreement. But you're okay with waiting?"

"Of course!" He couldn't help it that his voice rose an octave and that his hands were now clenched into fists. Or that his head was now pounding.

Carlton drove Marlowe to her house, helped her carry Elton inside, was relatively polite to Lucien, and then sat in his car for a few moments, gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. It took some careful prying to finally get them to relax and let go, and he sat there, the radio inconveniently playing Beyonce Knowles' version of Fever. He switched it off let his head drop to the headrest, breathing slowly, trying to calm himself down.

He was not generally a conniption-fit-pitching sort of man. He didn't throw tantrums, scream, throw things, or start speaking in tongues when thwarted. Marlowe was being reasonable. She was absolutely right in wanting to take things slowly. His rational and honorable side was agreeing with her one-hundred percent. He would endure more cold showers and longer morning jogs and more time at the shooting range, obliterating all kinds of things (yesterday, it was a pineapple Spencer had left on his desk as a joke). He would let her set the rules, so far as…that went. It wasn't as though he had anybody else lining up for a chance to sleep with him, anyway, and he was hardly a prize. Then again, Victoria, and later, Lucinda had both appeared to enjoy and rather appreciate his…abilities, if their moaning, wide eyes and astonished post-coital expressions were anything to go by. Nonetheless, the fact that he hadn't had sex in six freaking years was, however, starting to get on his nerves.

Making sure he wasn't being watched, Carlton clenched his fists, squeezed his eyes shut, and gave in to the side of him that just wanted some goddamn sex and needed to let out some of that energy. He began stomping on the ground, spewing forth several vile curse words and stream of damndamndamndamndamns and even making up a few new curse words as he went along, until the tantrum had passed. When he finished, he was breathless, his hair was messed up, and he knew his face was red, but for God's sake, he was only human. Flesh and blood, and horny. Scared out of his wits. Jumping out without a parachute. Confused and frustrated and running a constant low fever.

Crazy in love.

Lassiter scrambled back into his car and drove home, paying no heed at all to speed limits, and arrived at his new condo at just a little after midnight. He dropped the keys three times before finally managing to get them into the lock, and finally stumbled inside. Boxes were still everywhere, and he hadn't even started unpacking.

Upstairs in the master suite, he glared at the big, heavy oak bedstead passed down from his distant ancestor, Muscum T Lassiter, who had been conceived, was born and finally died in it, likely screaming invective against the world. The bed was huge, heavy, and priceless - mahogany with ebony inlay and carvings of scary, unrecognizable creatures on the headboard. He had slept in that bed as a child, and had run his fingers over the carvings, trying to figure out what they were. One was definitely a dodo, the other a passenger pigeon, and the other looked like a drawing he had seen of the Roc from The Arabian Nights. The rest of the carvings were beyond even his vivid eight-year-old imagination and gave him nightmares. Yet he had put the bed in his bedroom. The other bed – the one that creeped him out the most – was in the guest bedroom.

The old bed that had been passed down from his great-great-grandmother, the Georgia belle whose family home had been burned down by the Yankees, to his great-grandmother (who put it on a Conestoga wagon and hauled it over the Rockies to what eventually became Hollywood), his grandmother (who refinished it and ruined its value forever), his mother (who hated it) and finally, to him (not to the rightful female heir, Lauren, whose marriage to a Hispanic had greatly disappointed the vicious old bat). If he never had a daughter – and things didn't look terribly promising to that end right now – he would give it to Lauren some day. She would likely find it rather amusing.

He had pulled it out of storage – there was no use telling his mother yet – and had spent most of last night assembling it in the master bedroom. It was a king size bed, very tall, and it had features to it that, until now, he hadn't remembered. Now it was coming back to him, in little bits and pieces.

He went upstairs and contemplated the bed in the guest bedroom. It was, in fact, a foldaway bed, and he wondered what loss of her sanity his great-great-grandmother had endured in 1877 to have purchased the damned thing in Atlanta. It didn't even fold up completely to the wall, for one thing, and he wondered if it ever had. The foot of the bed would - due to a serious of mysterious seismological or even meteorological reactions – begin to rise up from the ground, until it was at about a forty-five degree angle from the floor, while the little springs would click and snap and whirr and just generally scare the holy bejeezus out of the bed's occupant, if he or she was actually awake at the time.

The most unfortunate thing about it was that it tended to do this while an unsuspecting person was in the bed and trying to sleep. To wake up with your head pressed into the headboard and your frozen, numb toes pointed at the light fixture could cause spectacular reactions in even the most phlegmatic members of his family. And since no one in the Lassiter family could be remotely described as 'phlegmatic', he was now recalling several wild-eyed relatives dragging themselves into the kitchen the morning after a night in this bed, carrying their suitcases and leaving in a chilly huff, never to be seen or heard from again.

Not that that was a bad thing. He had little dealings with his relatives, genealogically close or far, and if his mother ever showed up, he'd park her in that bed for the night and look forward to seeing her leave in a similar huff. He might put Lauren and Raul in the guest bedroom/office, and Peter would fit in the fourth, if they deigned to visit him at all, but he doubted he'd see them until some time after hell froze over, because Lauren was busy and Raul didn't really like him. Peter did, he recalled. His nephew actually seemed to think his Uncle Carlton was kind of…nice.

It had taken an all-nighter to put the bed together, three days ago. He had even considered calling O'Hara and asking her to come over and help, because God knew she would be intrigued by it. The headboard had a painting of Medusa on it, for one thing, and he had nearly had a stroke when he had pulled the sheet off. The eyes of the woman, with the snakes curling around her head, bored into him every time he looked at it and he wondered how in hell anybody ever got conceived in this bed. Apparently, his great-grandmother had been born in this bed (the mattress, thank God, was long gone), and so had his grandmother.

Carlton had finally hung a piece of mosquito netting over Medusa and left it at that.

He had taken on the task of putting the bed together himself, though. His back still hurt from the hauling and the struggling to get the metal part of the frame into the headboard's slots, and after freaking out over the painting on the headboard, he had gone downstairs and drank a large glass of Jack, to recover. By four in the morning, he had the TV up and running, hooked up to satellite, and he watched Heartbreak Ridge. By six in the morning, he had the internet going and was reading an article about up and coming two-year olds debuting at Hollywood Park and went out. When he'd gotten home that night, his mind was clear and he had seven thousand three hundred sixty four dollars in his pocket, from picking all the top three finishers in all eight races at the track. He had called Marlowe and they had gone to dinner at a little Irish/Italian pub and listened to a tiny man sing Danny Boy. Then they had debated over who was the better singer – Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra, with Marlowe plugging for Deano and the tiny man.

The mattress and box springs had been delivered while he was at the station, and Carlton risked more back trouble by wrestling them onto the bed. He pondered the bed for a moment, wondering if it would make a late-night lift if he tried to sleep there, and finally he decided against it. It was just too exhausting now. He found the old quilt his father's mother had given him as a wedding present, dug around in a box for a sheet, and carried them down to the couch. He undressed hurriedly, shivering in the cold, and flopped onto the couch wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and a few more gray hairs. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

A noise – a thump – woke him at the crack of dawn and he shot out of the bed, reaching for his gun, but he wasn't wearing his holster and the gun was on the mantelpiece. He looked around the room, momentarily confused, and ran his hands through his hair. He was about to head upstairs to see if he could find any clothes when the doorbell rang. "What the hell?" Not bothering to even see if he could find his shirt or a bathrobe, he flung the door open.

A young, rather pretty redhead was standing there in a yellow dress right out of The Stepford Wives, carrying what looked like a bundt cake and smiling broadly. Her eyes widened a little when she saw his state of undress. "Hi!" she finally said, in a high-pitched, rather squeaky voice.

"What do you want?" he snapped.

She was staring at his chest. "I…I'm Dahlia. I live next door."

"Really."

"I made this cake yesterday, to bring over to welcome you to our little community, but you were gone all day. So I'm bringing it now, because I noticed your car was still here this morning."

"Ah." He made no move to take the cake. He just glared at her. He was in no mood to start bonding with the neighbors. What he wanted was coffee, but he couldn't remember what box the pot was in. There were boxes everywhere, and frankly he wondered if some of them hadn't bred overnight, because there seemed to be more than he recalled actually packing.

"Mind if I come in and put the cake in the kitchen?" she finally asked.

"Uh…er…yeah. Okay. Whatever. I need to get ready for work…"

"What do you do?" she asked as she passed him and made her way to the kitchen. He scratched his neck, wishing she would leave but sensing that she might try to scope him out, or worse, case the place.

"I'm a detective."

"Oh? Really? With the police?"

He sighed. He had no reason to be sarcastic to her. She had brought him a bundt cake, which he didn't really want, and was probably just being nice. Maybe he'd take the cake to Marlowe. If she didn't want it, her roommates would probably consume it in five seconds. If that didn't pay off, he would take it to the station.

"Yes."

"Oh, how exciting! You chase down criminals and stuff?"

"Right."

She put the cake on the kitchen counter and looked around. "I hope you like this place. The people who lived here before – the Donaldsons – they were always so noisy. Yelling at each other, throwing things – we all wondered what was going on, and then one day they were...well, the police never did find out what happened."

"Right, sure…" His brow furrowed. "The police?"

"Yes. Well, I'll see you around. There's all sorts of really lovely activities in our neighborhood. Bridge and canasta clubs, and in the summer we have pool and barbecue parties and there's a little outdoor amphitheatre in the park where we have amateur theatricals and concerts…"

"I'd rather have my toes chewed off by weasels, and what about the police?"

"Well…this place has been unoccupied for eight years, until last summer. Mr Peters went sort of…crazy one day and sort of…killed himself after trying to kill his wife and son."

He thought about the two beds upstairs. Either one of them could drive even the stablest of men crazy. Just putting them together had given him a headache that had made him look for an axe and a door to bust through.

"I see." He remembered his brief meeting with Mrs Peters, who had been a rather hollow-eyed creature who kept staring at his Glock and wouldn't let her son get more than two feet away from her side. She had had long, long fingers and big, nuclear accident teeth that didn't seem to fit inside her mouth.

"I'll be going then," Dahlia said. She looked at his chest again, and finally dragged her gaze up to his face again. "Welcome to the neighborhood!" she chirped, and went out.

He frowned, leaning against the doorframe, still clad in only a pair of boxer shorts. "Uh…thanks for the cake!" he yelled. An old woman walked by, led by a tiny ball of fur that resembled a feather duster with a respiratory system. She and the dog both gave him disapproving glares, which he answered with a disgusted snort before he shut the door and dashed upstairs to see if he could find his clothes.

Juliet found her partner at his desk, searching for something online and muttering under his breath about Elton John. He finally glanced at her. "Did you ever hear Crocodile Rock?"

"Of course…"

"Did you think that he was saying something about feeding his cat named Bill?"

"Yes…"

"Good. Good. I thought maybe I was just losing my hearing." He began printing something out. "I moved into my new condo the day before yesterday," he told her.

Her eyes widened. "Are you kidding? Really? Where is it?"

"I'm not sure I want to tell you."

"Why not?" she asked, looking hurt. "I'd love to throw you a house-warming party."

"You do that to newly married couples, not to single men."

"You do that for them, not to them."

"Same difference."

"Has…um…Marlowe seen it yet?"

"Not yet – only the pictures. She's working on a big project now and her hours are all screwy. She'll…uh…see it Friday night, I think." He rubbed his temples.

It was Tuesday. Just a few days until Christmas. Juliet seriously doubted he had decorated his house for Christmas, or even thought about doing such a thing. Granted, he was still unpacking and that in itself could be stressful, but she seriously wanted to do something for him, toward that end. She looked at his desk – so neat and organized, with not a single personal item there. Not even a photograph. She wondered if he had any photos in his wallet – maybe of at least his sister, to whom he was relatively close (he at least spoke to Lauren), or maybe even his nephew, or Marlowe. She studied her partner, who had removed his jacket and had rolled up his sleeves, and sighed.

"What?" he asked, looking testy.

"You really should…you know…have at least a house warming party. You were able to hold that party after you ran that investigation on that millionaire. You were exactly right on all counts on that case, too."

"Except I didn't have all the pertinent information proving his guilt."

"Which wasn't your fault," Juliet pointed out. "His brother kept that from you and his lawyer."

"And your boyfriend put us at risk for a lawsuit and possible mistrial again by breaking and entering, plus helping a convicted murderer escape from the booby hatch."

"Mental hospital," she corrected him gently. "And yes, I know."

"Did you ever notice," Carlton said, leaning back in his chair, "how boring and uninspiring actual detective work can be?"

"Yes, I know," she nodded.

"I had thoughts, when I was younger, of being Starsky…or Hutch. Whichever one of them practiced decent hygiene, anyway," he nodded. "Mostly, though, I'm Fish from Barney Miller. Just doing the paperwork, asking all the questions, following the leads. Meticulous, painstaking, clean, by the book investigations, and really, I don't care how we get the real killer, so long as we get him. For us, though, there's no glamour, no excitement. Eh, a shoot-out, sometimes, often caused by Spencer."

"Carlton, that's not true…" Juliet objected. "About the excitement part, I mean. Shawn wears the fedora, you wear the hardhat. He flits around and claims all the credit…"

"And get the media attention, a commendation from the mayor, the key to the city," he nodded. "Our work, meanwhile, is generally as stupid and disappointing as a magic show, except that at least with magic shows, it does eventually end. We come in tomorrow morning, and there's a new murder to cope with."

Spencer came bounding into the bullpen then, grinning happily and giving Juliet a quick kiss. Carlton stood up, snatching up a file folder, and left before Shawn could start in on him. When his girlfriend shot him a warning look, Shawn sat down in Lassiter's chair and grinned at her. "So what's up, Jules? Where're we going to night?"

"Nowhere," she answered.

"Aw, c'mon. You said you wanted some time off from us, but I'm bored and there's nothing on TV tonight."

"Shawn, you always find something to watch on TV. Even if it's infomercials, and I'm still on my vacation from the Shawn-ness of the Shawnilator, thank you."

Spencer frowned, looking annoyed, and tried a different tack. "Lassie's moved into a new condo, and I thought we'd go check it out."

"Shawn, I am not breaking into his house. Repeat: I am not breaking into his house."

"Who said we'd break in? We'll just go see it. It's at 2332 Arkle Lane. Arkle. What the hell kind of name is that?"

"I don't know," Juliet answered, but the name sounded familiar. Where had she heard it before? "And we're not going. Carlton is a very private man."

"Well, hell, he'd have to be, wouldn't he? All the guns and the paranoia and the ex-con girlfriend…"

Juliet glared at her boyfriend. "Go home, Shawn. Now."

Marlowe eyed Carlton, gauging his reaction to the sight of a Christmas wreath on his front door and a leaflet in her hand that advertised Christmas trees for sale at a nearby parking lot. He was frowning, but he didn't look angry. He looked around his living room, eyeing the decorations on his mantelpiece, and the hanging Christmas stockings. She was just trying to cheer up his Christmas, and had brought the stuff over as a surprise. She didn't know that he hated surprises. She didn't know that he was still voluntarily excluded from the station's Secret Santa draw and hated snowglobes with an almost psychotic passion and didn't have a single happy Christmas memory from his childhood.

But the kindness was there. He wasn't about to get all het up over kindness. Particularly from Marlowe.

"The house smells like cinnamon," he finally said. He was carrying a bag of groceries, including a smallish turkey, some cornmeal dressing mix, a bottle of sage, some good chicken broth, and a Christmas present for Marlowe that he hoped wasn't a total screw-up.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Wassail."

"Who-sail?"

"Wassail. You know…Here we come a-wassailing on this…something something…Christmas day! Uh…er…lah blah blah-dee-bloo-bloo…ya...yada …dee-ba-day…"

"Sounds like my uncle Padraic after the Celtics lose a game, or even when they win. And what is wassail, exactly?" He put the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter and went over to observe some kind of brown liquid simmering in a pot on the stove. He breathed in the scent – it was actually rather nice, and he caught not just cinnamon but apple and pineapple (pineapple!) and something kind of citrusy. He got the spoon and stirred it, and saw sticks of cinnamon and orange peels.

"It's basically hot cider, with some other ingred-…" Marlowe's explanation was cut short by Carlton moving back to her, settling her easily in place against the counter, threading his arms under hers and bracing against the counter as he kissed her thoroughly. She sighed against him, opening her mouth and letting him explore while she caressed his shoulders, feeling the tension slowly easing away, and finally ran her fingers through his remarkably soft hair. When he finally pulled back, she blinked. "Be careful with that thing, Detective. It's not a toy."

"What do you want to watch tonight?" he asked, eyes brilliantly blue.

Marlowe was too busy trying to get her mind jumpstarted to answer him immediately. The man could teach a course on kissing (not that she'd allow him to demonstrate his technique on anybody but her). And groping and fondling, too, and she thought briefly of her speech to him the other day, about waiting to move their relationship to the next, obvious, level. What in hell was she thinking?

She watched him drop onto the couch and kick his shoes off before stretching out, his feet on the coffee table. He was flipping through his mail, tossing away a credit card offer. She watched his long, elegant fingers tear open a piece of mail and peruse a bill before he finally lifted his gaze back to her. He looked smug.

"Um…"

"Hm?"

Marlowe went to the couch and sat down beside him, smoothing her hair. Boxes were everywhere. A tour of the upstairs rooms had revealed more boxes and large, rather odd beds in the master suite and the bedroom next door. He had told her to go ahead and find the sheets and put them on, if she wanted to (with no indication that she was required to), and to start putting pictures on the floor under where she thought they might look best, and when he got home he would start checking for studs and start hanging them. She was not, however, permitted to pick up any heavy boxes and try to haul them around.

She liked his taste, actually, even if it was entirely masculine. All the dark tones – blues and blacks and gun-barrel grays, mostly – seemed to match his own coloring beautifully, as well as his rather irascible personality, but she was already thinking of lightening things up a little with more whites, and maybe even a dash of lighter, softer colors some day…if he would allow it. This new condo was also far sunnier, with much more natural light, which she liked and suspected signaled his more optimistic outlook on life.

She watched him as he continued reading through his mail. Bills, a copy of California Law Enforcement Quarterly, and a monthly magazine for Civil War buffs. A bubbly little 'Welcome to the Neighborhood' letter from the homeowners' association, with a list of do's and don'ts that he appeared to find both amusing and vaguely annoying. He dug in his back pocket and extracted his wallet and checkbook, laying them on the coffee table, followed by his cell phone and his badge, and finally his Glock.

Never a wasted motion, she thought. She watched him remove the clip from the gun and drop it into an old candy dish, where it mixed in with Tootsie Rolls she had brought over. He took one of the candies, unwrapping it deftly, and popping the chocolate candy into his mouth. He turned the TV on and began flipping through channels, not completely familiar with the lineup offered by the satellite company, until he found The Sons of Katie Elder on TCM and sat back. "I lost the remote control once," he told her as she sat down beside him. "It was pretty awful, really. I finally made do by holding a calculator."

Marlowe startled him by suddenly straddling his hips and cupping his face in her hands, kissing him, hard and hot, as she pulled the pieces of mail from his hands and left them to scatter on the floor. He didn't resist, of course. He turned the TV off, andhis hands slid from her thighs and to her backside, and finally up, his fingers making brief contact with the bare skin of her back before continuing northwards and up to her breasts, gently massaging through her blouse.

Marlowe sat back suddenly, Carlton following her before he fell back against the cushions, staring up at her. She stared back at him, breathless, heart pounding. Finally, she started undoing her blouse, watching him as he watched her, and threw the garment aside before plunging back into his embrace, feeling his hands undoing her bra with the deftness she knew she could expect.

"Bed," she whispered against his mouth. "Now."

The doorbell was ringing. Again and again, and whoever was down there was not going away. Carlton slammed the door behind him, scrambling into his bathrobe and tying it closed, growling and fuming and not caring that he had a hickey and that he had a smudge of Marlowe's lipstick on his chin. He rushed downstairs, went to the coffee table and retrieved his gun, smacking the clip back in as Tootsie Rolls scattered everywhere, and stomped to the door, growling like an enraged bear, and flung it open.

A clearly annoyed O'Hara was standing there, looking apologetic, with Spencer and Guster on either side of her. They were each carrying something in their hands, but through his red haze of fury he didn't recognize any of the items. He aimed the pistol directly at Spencer's forehead, and the arrogant little prick actually did gulp nervously.

"Carlton, I begged Shawn not to do this, and the only reason I came along when he insisted on doing this anyway was because I figured you wouldn't kill him with two witnesses…thus Gus is also here."

"And wetting my pants," Guster said. "No one will be able to deny that I was here…as a material witness!"

"All. Of. You. Go. Away. Now," Carlton said, teeth clenched.

"I brought you a housewarming gift!" Shawn said, his initial terror finally subsiding into mere fear and possible loss of bladder control as well. The fake psychic held up a tallish box with some kind of garish, multi-colored writing on it, along with a picture of a parrot.

"Carlton, please put the gun down," Juliet pleaded. "Please? We'll leave soon, I swear it."

Her partner eyed them all, still pointing the pistol directly at Spencer's forehead. He wasn't so sure that O'Hara would testify against him for killing Spencer, but Guster might and Carlton didn't figure he could actually kill Guster, much less O'Hara. Finally, he put the pistol down. He was barefoot and cold, anyway. With a rasping "Get in here and make it quick!" he stepped aside and let the trio into his house.

"Well, first of all, Gus here has brought you a box of chocolate candy," Shawn said, pointing at his still trembling friend, who sprang into action on cue and held the box out to Carlton, who snatched it away and ripped it open. Russell Stover. He noted two layers of chocolates with various kinds of fillings, and figured Marlowe would appreciate the gift. He closed the box and tossed it onto the couch. A few candies escaped from the box and went on an adventure into the cushions.

"I…I brought you a plant," O'Hara said, thrusting a white and pink cyclamen into his hands. He stared down at the plant, with its weird, inside-out alien flowers and lush green leaves, and closed his eyes.

"Thank you," he finally managed to hiss. He would apologize to her tomorrow, and thank her, because the flower was rather pretty. He would have to wait until he was calm, though.

"And I brought you Pedro." Spencer grinned at him and held the box out to him. Carlton took it, gave Spencer a glare that could lock the Gobi Desert in a five-mile thick block of ice, and ripped into the box with his bare hands, tearing through the thick cardboard as if it was mere paper. Spencer stepped back, looking a little more worried, and they all watched the agitated detective pull the gift out – a red and yellow-furred mechanical parrot. Shawn helpfully reached over and turned the parrot on with a little switch on its underside. It was seated on a plastic limb, and began flapping its wings and turning its head from side to side, little mechanical eyes blinking.

"Pedro repeats everything you say!" Shawn said excitedly.

"Pedro repeats everything you say!" the parrot squawked.

"Can it say 'Eat dirt and die, Spencer'?"

"Can it say 'Eat dirt and die,Spencer'?"

"See?" Shawn said, grinning.

"See?" Pedro repeated. Carlton turned the bird off and put in on the coffee table, next to his Glock. He ran a hand through his hair.

"Well, thank you all for the lovely gifts. Now get the hell out of my house."

"But we…" Shawn started, and paused when Juliet gave him a murderous look and moved her gaze from him to a black, lacy object on the floor by the couch, which Shawn followed, his eyes widening. "We have to go, because…because…uh…The Princess Bride is showing at nine o'clock tonight on…on…uh…"

"AMC!" Gus said.

"Great. Go watch the movie. Buy some popcorn. Eat M&M's with it, and some Whoppers and drink a gallon of Coke each. Get some mentos and make a volcano. Light up big reefers and laugh until dawn, for all I care," He started walking toward them, and they started backing toward the door, and finally moved in one panicked mass out and into the night. "Get out and have fun storming the castle!"

Carlton slammed the door behind them and moments later he heard the sound of tires squealing. He stood for a moment, leaning against it, eyes closed. He heard a door open upstairs and stepped toward the stairs. Marlowe appeared at the top of the stairs, wearing nothing but his blue-and-silver striped tie.

"Such nice silk," she said. "How does it look on me?"

"It certainly looks a hell of a lot better on you than it ever did on me," he told her. "I'll be right up."

"Don't worry," she said, smiling. "I certainly won't start without you." She undid the tie and let it fall to the floor. He couldn't keep from grinning, and started up the stairs, but then stopped and looked around the room. He walked around to the coffee table and stood for a moment, looking at the cyclamen O'Hara had given him, gently rubbing a green leaf between his fingers, and the box of chocolate candies. He snatched up the box, thought about it, and snatched up Pedro, too, then turned back and headed upstairs.

TBC