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"You're really about to make me embarrass you?" Vivienne waltzed onto the baseball diamond, her martini buzz giving her just the slightest divine confidence. Maybe this wasn't a bad idea. Oh yes, that was certainly the alcohol speaking. She swayed her hips just a little more when she walked onto the pitcher's mound, ball and glove in hand.
"You're all mouth, woman. Throw the ball." Dave flexed his arms and lifted the bat above his head. He was soaring somewhere over Brooklyn, by now, the high of having just eluded the soon-to-be in-laws and having Vivienne by himself on the field, and she didn't even seem to mind. He knew he was misbehaving but grinning ear to ear as he watched her wind up her pitch, he felt pure bliss.
Oh god, wouldn't I like to show you… She grinned at her dirty thoughts, envisioning using her mouth on his on the dug out benches. The serious bout of concentration she was attempting to show was very much being thwarted by images of Rossi kissing her. Deciding to throw the ball before she burst into giggles, her eyes widened a little as she pitched it as hard as she could, and a split second later he matched her pitch in perfect time and hit the thing out of the park. She turned quickly and watched the baseball disappear into the now gray dusk.
"And now you owe me a baseball." Vivienne turned back around only to come face to face with Rossi, holding the bat over his shoulder, resembling some morbid mobster and grinning like a cat that swallowed the canary.
She couldn't help but chuckle at him, this was the David Rossi she'd grown up admiring, watching, hanging on his every word, scribbling up the pages of his books with her own notes. God, but he looked like the lead role heart-throb out of a romance movie. Vivienne's mind went into a tizzy of thoughts, rushing through multiple scenarios of her fantasies.
"Small price to pay. Let's go catch up to dinner." David swatted her ass with the bat to get her moving. Small price to pay, indeed… he watched her walk away from the pitchers mound, flushed and beautiful from the effort and from the cold settling down. The wind had picked up and was playing with the ends of her hair.
"Small price to pay for what, by the way? We haven't begun paying for this. I'm in deep shit. And you're in it with me." Vivienne smiled happily, as if the prospect of being in deep shit was something she enjoyed very much. David walked around to the passenger side of her car and opened the door for her, noticing she looked briefly at his hand on the car door handle as if surprised to see it there.
"I don't mind being in the shit with you. I am very curious, however, of why you seem to be so happy being in the shit to begin with." He shut the door after she had seated and walked around to get in the sporty vehicle.
"Well then, I will answer your question if you answer mine." Flipping her maple hair coyly, she glinted at David while he began navigating the streets, determined not to grin at the exasperated look on his face.
"Small price to pay for seeing you smile. It's good to see you happy. It's good to be the reason for that smile." He laid it out, in a rush, keeping all of the affection he felt out of his voice, and with his eyes glued to the road ahead of him. He told himself that night eight years ago that he would never damage their relationship by letting on how he felt, and he was exercising great self-discipline to hold himself to it.
"I guess I enjoy watching Clair squirm. She hasn't given me a chance from the beginning. Now I just don't try." Vivienne forced a smile for David, but she could feel the good martini feelings fading away quickly.
"Now whose lying?" Dave smirked. He reached a hand over to gently pull her chin up to look at him. "What's wrong, bella?"
Bella. He hadn't called her that since she was a child. It made her think of the days she spent sitting in the window seat, waiting for him to arrive for dinner if her father had mentioned it. Her father… and as if spiraling downward, the tears flooded her eyes and she hated herself for not being able to control the flood of emotions.
"All right." David said presumptuously, anger rising like bile in his throat. He'd had enough, fuck this dinner and fuck the Van Dick family, seeing her cry was where he drew the line. "Here, sweetheart." He took his handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her. "Give me your phone, honey." She handed it over without asking why, she knew she couldn't speak if she was going to try to stopper the leaking in her eyes.
Scrolling through the phone list, and finding what he was looking for, he punched a button and put the thing to his ear. "Doug. David here. Yea, we made a detour. Listen, we're not going to make it. Vivienne… she's not feeling well. Yes, it is serious. I'm sure you'll figure it out, look, I gotta go. I'll have her call you in the morning. Don't worry everyone else about it. Thanks, Doug."
"That was brave." Vivienne whispered from the next seat.
"You might hate me for it, but I'm making an executive decision here, you're in no shape to be faking bridal bliss right now." David punched a few buttons into the GPS coordinator so as to find his hotel, realizing immediately she hadn't objected to missing her own rehearsal dinner. It slowly occurred to him that she wasn't telling him everything going on here, and that she wasn't quite as ready for "I Do's" as he was initially led to believe. Then why call me here? Why make such a big deal about me giving her away? He couldn't make heads or tails of it, and he drove the west of the way to the hotel in silence.
"You have that look in your eyes." She mumbled, from her sideways position facing him in the car.
"What look?"
"The look you get, when you're thinking in circles." She sniffed. Her eyes were red now, and tired, and she felt emotionally drained.
He didn't respond. Of course she knew him well enough to understand his facial expressions, try as he might to mask them. Anger was building to a slow boil in him by the time he pulled her vehicle into the valet parking at the Sheraton. Wordlessly he exited the car and efficiently gave the valet instructions for bags and parking. "Come on, Viv." He said gently, pulling her out of the passenger seat. She held his hand, and leaned her head on his shoulder as they walked.
After checking in, they began moving towards the elevators and it wasn't until this moment that David caught a glimpse of her in the large mirrors. She was small, she was terribly thin, tired, and staring off into space. David felt his chest squeeze at the diminished woman he saw before him. He ran his eyes slowly, almost imperceptibly over her, head to toe, taking in every detail he possibly could. Not entirely because he thought she was the most attractive woman in the world, but because his spidey-senses, as Garcia called them, were tingling something fierce and a piece of the puzzle was definitely missing – profiling the details was the only way he knew to get the answers he needed. Once the elevator doors dinged, they stepped out onto the tenth floor and were greeted by the bell boy. "Right this way, Mr. and Mrs. Rossi." He said kindly, smiling. David furrowed his brow at this, but felt rather than heard Vivienne laugh under her breath beside him. Surely it was obvious he was old enough to be her father, he thought.
"Here you are, Sir, Ma'am, it is much roomier than your original suite. Have a good stay." David tipped him, and he left. Vivienne walked to the bed and sat down heavily, looked at the walls once, then laid back.
"What did he mean, original suite?"
"You've been zoned out for about 20 minutes, sweetheart. When I checked in I switched floors."
"Why?" She asked with the tone of curiosity a child would.
"Because when Charlie comes here in the morning acting like an ogre and looking for you, I want to have the advantage of surprise."
"Always so tactical." She turned her head on the mattress and watched him take his jacket off and hang it in the closet, then his suit jacket. God but he looked incredible, and all the while assuming a position as if he was gracing earth with his very being alive.
David evaluated her from his position in front of the mirror, removing his cufflinks, internally destroyed with conflict over wanting to smirk at her observations and shake the truth out of her about Charlie. He settled on lifting his chin and staring seriously, an intimidation tactic he'd learned a long time ago, and was sorry to have to use now, but he would have his answers.
"What? Why are you looking at me like that?" Vivienne pushed herself upright, a jolt of apprehension and excitement eating up her exhaustion in one fell swoop.
"I'm going to ask you some serious questions, Vivienne Rose, and you have one opportunity to tell me the truth. And, remember…" David pulled a chair up to the end of the bed and turned it around so the back faced her, and straddled the chair opposite. Placing his arms on the back of the chair, he leveled all of his frustration into the famous Rossi death-beam, piercing into her soul with the intense eye contact. "As in Cross Examination, assume I already know the answer."
Vivienne gulped. She was wholly entranced, she couldn't break his gaze if she tried. Again, excitement ran through her like electricity because of his intensity. She wouldn't lie to him, but she might not get a chance to answer all of his questions – the only thing she wanted to do was grab his face and kiss him.
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