Author's Note:

This is pretty different from anything I've written. But you guys tell me I didn't go over the top in Ch 4, so of course I have to see if I can't jump the shark yet in this story. ;)

Twilight fans, don't crucify me for the brief reference here. I'm not really bagging on it, I just needed a well-known pop culture chick-lit title that would likely not be to Sam's taste.

Also, be warned this is pretty long. But cutting it in two didn't seem workable. The excerpts from The English Patient are real, but I mixed up the order of a few things for the sake of the story.

Chapter 7: Story Time

"So, what are we going to do for tonight's not-quite-foreplay activities?" Andy asked after they'd finished dinner.

"What are we going to do for what?" Sam did a double take.

"Well, that's how I think of last night. It fits, doesn't it?" Andy shrugged.

"I guess. Tonight should be lady's choice, shouldn't it? I ran the show last night," Sam replied, curious what she'd come up with.

"We-ell…this morning did give me one idea. First, I think we need to give your downstairs spa tub a try since you went to all that work glamming up the bathroom. I can give you a foot massage this time," she offered.

"Sounds great to me. But you said something about this morning. What else were you going to suggest?" certain she meant to follow that 'first' with something she was shy about proposing.

She blushed a little before saying, "Well, I don't know if you'll be up for it, but I was wondering if afterward I could curl up on your lap again while you read to me for a while? I love the sound of your voice when you're not yelling, and it was kind of a turn on to feel the vibration of your chest while listening to you speak. You practically have a library in your office, and we could light a fire…." she trailed off, embarrassed that it might sound silly or cheesy to him.

The look in his eyes immediately reassured her, "I told you I'd be open to any of your ideas. Let's go pick something out before we fire up the tub," he put his arm around her waist to lead her back toward the office.

"I'm not sure I'll have the perfect thing for this occasion, though," he looked at her speculatively, "Do you want me to read you poetry? Like Keats, or Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or something?" he asked carefully, uncertain what she had in mind and not wanting to say anything she might interpret as poking fun.

"Well, you could read the phone book, and I'd probably be happy," she smiled at him, before an impulse to pull a prank took over. "Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of Stephenie Meyers," she said, watching Sam carefully under her lashes.

"Who?"

"You know, the author of the Twilight books?" Andy replied earnestly.

Sam couldn't quite hide the look of horror that crossed his face, before he schooled his face into a neutral expression and searched desperately for what to say and how to get out that idea. Andy turned away when she couldn't hold a straight face. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught motion that betrayed her silent laughter.

Hah! Two can play this game, Sam thought. "Really? I'm so relieved you didn't go for the stuffy classics. Don't tell anyone, but I actually love those vampire books."

When she whipped around, now with her own shocked and horrified expression, she encountered his broad, wicked grin at having also fooled her. They both broke into laughter.

"You know, I should be much more insulted that you fell for that, McNally." Sam complained. "I think my masculinity is going to need some TLC to recover," he winked.

"I'm not buying that you have any lack of confidence in that department, Andy scoffed.

Sam shrugged, "You're right. So I'll read any mushy thing your heart desires without a second thought," he said with a charming smile.

"Well, Keats or Browning poems are beautiful, but actually I think I saw something better. A novelist with a bit of a poetic style, and Canadian to boot. Since you have all his books, I take it you like Michael Ondaatje?"

Sam's eyes lit up, "Yeah, I do like his work, and it fits for what you had in mind."

"Is The English Patient too mushy for you?" she asked anxiously.

"For reading aloud with you on my lap? I think it's probably a better choice than the one that takes place in the middle of the genocide in Sri Lanka," he teased. "Anyway, it's a good romantic novel. I even liked the movie, as far as long, historical epics go," Sam admitted. "In fact, I think I'm rather looking forward to reading you that part at the end about 'bodies we have plunged into and swum up' " Sam drawled.

That tone sent shivers up her spine and a renewed blush to her cheeks, "My thought exactly. There are some great steamy passages in that book," she said huskily. "I also always loved how Katherine first seduced Almasy by reading the story from his favorite book. He said he fell in love with a voice." Andy smiled. "In the movie, she seemed like such a temptress the way she read it and looked at him across the campfire. You knew right then and there he was going to betray his benefactor with her," Andy smiled.

"Some women can make a man do just about anything, principles be damned," Sam agreed, his look making it clear he considered her to belong in that category.

Andy swallowed to restore a little moisture to her suddenly dry mouth, "I think we have our winner. Let's get to that Jacuzzi tub so i can hear you read all these good parts," she said, eager to continue this somewhere other than his office.

"Go get it started and jump in. I'll get the fireplace ready to light when we're done and bring drinks. You want to go with wine this time since we're going for a literary evening?"

"Perfect!" she smiled at him, marveling at seeing such a different side to the tough demanding cop she'd been partnered with for months.


Andy snuggled happily into Sam's lap facing a roaring fire. They had decided to have him read the parts that were the flashbacks to what had happened in Africa rather than just reading the first part of a novel that skips all over in time.

~~~0~~~

I promised to tell you how one falls in love. This is the story of how I fell in love with a woman who read a specific story from Herodotus.

When I met Katherine she was married. A married woman. Clifton climbed out of the plane and then, unexpected, for we had planned the expedition with just him in mind, she emerged. Here were four men and one woman and her husband and his verbal joy of honeymoon. I see her, still, always with the eye of Adam. She was a willow.

~~~~0~~~~

Andy clapped her hands and blurted, "My tree!"

Sam stopped and glanced over at her with a puzzled quirk to his brow. "Your tree? I can't say I'm following your reaction to the metaphor, McNally," he said, amused.

Andy just grinned back unphased, "Remember when you were mocking me with the 'no time for What Kind of Tree Would I Be' exercises? You know, right before you dumped me and I figured out where the files were? The second I pulled that thumb drive out of the salt shaker, my first thought was that I would be a willow tree. I guess I never got a chance to rub it in because I was too busy pulling your stubborn, dive-in-with-no-plan ass out of Antoine's restaurant," she teased. Then when I saw you being such a softie with Emily, I didn't have the heart to bring it up," she added.

"Well, you certainly knocked me back on my heels that day. I would have never believed a rookie as new as you, especially one coming off a rough first day, would have had the brains and the guts to come charging in on your own to save the day. It's the reason I slipped up and hit on you when you chased after me in the parking lot," he said with a smile.

"You think you were rocked back on your heels? We had started the morning with you taking every opportunity to be a jerk, but I still almost said yes. All of a sudden out of nowhere, you were all smiles and dimples and smoldering looks and saying my name like I was a present you couldn't wait to unwrap. I don't think you have any idea what a potent effect you had on me. Or how unsettling it was to know that I wouldn't stand a chance if you ever dropped your restraint and tried again. That was the first time I noticed what a sexy voice you have. Thanks for humoring me about this reading thing," she kissed him on the cheek.

"Well, I was actually a little self-conscious and worried this idea might not live up to your expectations. But if the first paragraph can spur a conversation that turns into compliments like that, I think I might have underestimated the potential of this not-quite-foreplay. Give me a minute to recover," he added, taking a sip of his wine, before returning to the book.

Andy was glad that he now seemed more into the spirit of playing along with her. She was enjoying this so much she thought she might never want to read any other way again. But as he continued, both also began to realize the melodramatic story of this couple in a messy triangle, so different from them in almost all particulars, still cut a little close to home in some parts:

~~~~0~~~~

They went back to Cairo and returned a month later. After that month she was muted, as if something had occurred or she realized suddenly that wondrous thing about the human being, it can change. She did not have to remain a socialite who married an adventurer. She was discovering herself. It was painful to watch, because Clifton could not see it, her self-education.

The words of her husband's praise for her meant nothing. But I would look up sometimes as he spoke and catch her glance, witnessing my unspoken exasperation, and then her demure smile. That was the burden of our story. Our situation.

I was a man fifteen years older than she, you understand. I had reached that stage in life where I identified with cynical villains in a book. But she was smarter. She was hungrier for change than I expected.

"Geoffrey has planned a party for you. He's writing a song, ands want me to read a poem, but I want to do something else." "Here take the book you wanted to borrow earlier and look through it." I pulled it from my knapsack and handed it to her.

Clifton brought out a bottle of cognac he had hidden. The whole bottle was drunk during Maddox's account of our journey and Clifton's funny song. Then she began to read from The Histories-the story of Candaules and his queen. I always skim past that part. It was also what she'd chosen.

This Candaules had become so passionately in love with his own wife; and having become so, he deemed that his wife was fairer by far than all other women. To Gyges, son of Daskylus, he used to describe the beauty of his wife, praising it above all measure.

He said: "Gyges, I think that you do not believe me when I tell you of the beauty of my wife, for it happens that men's ears are less apt to believe than their eyes. Contrive therefore means by which you may look upon her naked."

"I believe you that she is of all women the fairest and I entreat you not to ask of me that which is not lawful for me to do." But the King answered him thus: "Be of good courage, Gyges. For I will contrive it so that she shall not perceive that she has been seen by you. I will place you in the room where we sleep, behind the open door; and after I have gone in, my wife will also come to lie down. Now there is a seat near the entrance of the room, and on this she lays her garments as she takes them off, one by one; and so you will be able to gaze at her at full leisure."

But Gyges is witnessed by the queen when he leaves. The next day she calls in Gyges and gives him two choices. "Either you must slay Candaules and possess both me and the Kingdom of Lydia, or you must yourself here on the spot be slain, so that you mayest not in future, by obeying Candeles in all things, see that which you should not. Either he must die who formed this design, or you who have looked upon me naked."

I heard the words she spoke across the fire, never looking up, even when she teased her husband. Perhaps she was just reading it to him. Perhaps there was no ulterior motive in the selection. But a path suddenly revealed itself in real life. With the help of an anecdote, I fell in love. I am a man who fasts until I see what I want.

~~~~0~~~~~

"I can kind of relate to him, aside from the prickly Hungarian Count part. So, you like the idea of that being the way she put a spell on the guy, huh? I think I prefer what made me fall for you in our story. It's better than a clever mind game planting the seed of an obsession. " Sam commented.

"And how did it happen in our story?" she asked.

"It was the way the bond you developed with Bennie's foster mother made you want to look out for her. I was really touched that when you asked for another favor that day it wasn't to go do something to take your mind off things. It was to go help that woman on one of the worst nights of her life. Even hung over, I've never been happier to do something for someone," he smiled at her. "That's when I knew for sure I was a goner."

"Well, you have a way of making it sound a lot more romantic than it seemed then. I wish I hadn't been too upset to notice I'd just made that kind of impact on the guy who still gave me butterflies even if I didn't wan to admit it. Now I'm the one who's all flustered by a compliment. Story time is turning out even better than I thought," she smiled. "Read a little bit more."

~~~~0~~~~

Words, Caravaggio. They have a power.

She had been part of the expedition for almost a year. I saw her, conversed with her. We had been continually in the presence of the other. Later, when we were aware of mutual desire, these previous moments flooded back into the heart, now suggestive, that nervous grip of an arm on a cliff, looks that had been missed or misinterpreted.

I began to be doubly formal in her company. As if awkward about a previously revealed nakedness. On Hassanein Bey's Cairo lawn-that grand old man of the 1923 expedition-she walked over with the government aid Roundell and shook my hand, asked him to get her a drink, turned back to me and said, "I want you to ravish me." Roundell returned. It was as if she had handed me a knife. Within a month I was her lover.

Her life with others no longer interested me. I wanted only her stalking beauty, the theater of her expressions. Women want everything of a lover. She had always wanted words. Words gave her clarity, brought reason. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.

She returned to her husband. On the night of her insistence on parting, she sat, enclosed within herself, in the armour of her terrible conscience. What had our relationship been? The betrayal of those around us, or the desire of another life?

…..

Don't we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it. In the cave, after all those months of separation and anger, they had come together and spoken once more as lovers, rolling away the boulder they had placed between themselves for some social law neither had believed in.

I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pendant, who imagines or remembers a meeting when the other had passed by innocently, just as Clifton might have opened a door for you a year earlier and ignored the fate of his life. But all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur.

We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all of this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography-to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps. I carried Katherine Clifton into the desert, where there is the communal book of moonlight.


Sam glanced down at Andy and saw that she'd drifted off, her head tucked into the hollow between his shoulder and neck. He set the book aside and slid an arm carefully under her knees so he could carry her off to bed like the peaceful child she resembled.

So much for the big turn on, he thought, smiling down at her, without any real disappointment. The important thing to him is that she was getting more comfortable with the idea of them as a couple, that they could make this work long term. He hadn't caught expressions of doubt and anxiety as often as the day unfolded and they managed to shift back into the role of riding patrol together without much awkwardness. And this little reading idea of hers had opened up some illuminating conversation about things that had remained unsaid in a way he never would have predicted.

As he reached the top of the staircase, she opened her eyes and said, "Well, that was impressive. You should have been a firefighter."

He realized by her alertness that she must have been feigning sleep. So he gave her a big, jarring toss onto the guest bed, throwing a little mock outrage her way. "You faked being asleep?" he asked as she let out a little shriek of surprise.

"Don't be mad. 'Don't we forgive everything of a lover?' How could I resist getting you to carry me into the communal book of moonlight?" she asked, giggling as she glanced up at the room's skylight.

"We're not lovers yet, so don't push it, McNally," Sam tried to use a gruff tone, but couldn't help ruining the effect by breaking into a grin. "But I'd say breakfast in bed tomorrow morning would be enough to earn total forgiveness," he winked.

"Hey, it's your call that we're not lovers. But I don't mind doing breakfast in bed as second choice route to forgiveness. Want to place your order now?" she smiled at him.

"Carrying you up here isn't my first choice of ways to burn calories with you either, McNally. But since I did, I think a carb splurge is in order. Surprise me with whatever you make best: pancakes, waffles, French toast. I love all that breakfast stuff," he grinned back.

"You know, Dov used to say that you had turned me into your sexy secretary with a gun. Are you sure you're not just keeping me around to be your sexy B&B chef?" she teased.

"You'll find out soon enough why I really want you around. And I intend to make it more than worth the wait. I still have to convince you to make sticking around a permanent thing. Much as I love the B&B fantasy, I'm hoping this place will seem more like home before too long," this time there was no teasing in his eyes.

'Sam…" he thought she was going to protest, if only to tell him not to say something like that while he was about to head down to his room. But instead she added, "You already feel like home to me." She got up to wrap her arms around him and give him a lingering goodnight kiss.

"But you better go now if you want us to wait for our three-day stretch. Because, trust me, all the atoms in my body are jumping in one direction right now," she warned.

"And they've got all the atoms in mine leaping in response," he flashed his dimples at her, before giving her a last swift kiss and turning to go.

"Sweet dreams, McNally," he said from the doorway. "I want you to know that I'm not missing you yet," he added, quoting from the book.

"You will," she quoted back. "You can call me again if you need to," she added with a wink.

~~~~0~~~~

AN: This chapter kind of came out of nowhere. But I've always had a soft spot for The English Patient because I actually got to go to the Oscars and the victory party the year it won. An old friend from UCLA was in town this week and the reminiscing gave me the idea to use it for a second night of not-quite-foreplay for them. Not quite sure I could ever picture Sam and Andy doing this, but...guess fanfic is the place to stretch the characters a little. Hope I didn't distort them beyond recognition. ;)