A/N: Here it is; the final chapter. Hope everyone who read this little bit of insanity enjoyed it and I appreciate you taking the time.
And in case anyone's interested, I wrote this on four hours of sleep. Yeah.
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When they found out, via hotel management, that the fire alarm had been pulled by two kids that snuck out of their room after their parents feel asleep the entirety of the hundred plus crowd groaned before making their way back toward their rooms.
Ellie waited for Spinner by the front door. His phone had begun ringing not two minutes after they were safely outside. He had a scowl on his face, a large one, that she could see even from where he stood at the other end of the hotel's driveway. She gnawed on her cuticle while se watched him, hoping that his bad mood had more to do with his current conversation and not what had happened between them upstairs.
Him flipping his phone shut and running a hand along the back of his neck in frustration had her going back outside to check on him. "What's wrong?"
"Antonelli." Spinner held his phone up to exaggerate his point. "He said he heard there was an alarm pulled and wanted to make sure we were both okay."
She snorted. "You could almost think he was a decent person if there weren't so much proof he's a disgusting perv."
Spinner sank down onto the curb of the sidewalk, propped his elbows on his knees, and dropped his head into his hands. Ellie watched his shoulders rise and fall with the deep breaths he took. She sat carefully beside him, making sure her skirt wasn't askew, and placed a tentative hand on his arm. "Spinner?"
"He knew, Ellie," he whispered. "He knew what was going on because he was watching us up there. That…that twisted…he set this whole thing up with the intention of sitting back and watching us have sex."
Queasiness washed over her. She knew that-had known that-and for a second had ignored it. Because she wanted him. The only thing that had stopped her was her wire.
Speaking of…
Discreetly, Ellie fumbled around with the buttons through the thin material of her dress and turned it off. The guys listening in at the station didn't need to hear their conversation. "Spin, there's something else going on here. I can see it. Please tell me."
He looked up, but not at her. He wouldn't meet her eyes. "I shouldn't have done that, Ellie. I'm sorry."
"Done what?" She felt her brow wrinkle in confusion, felt Spinner's arm tense under her hand.
His eyes finally met hers, softer than she had seen them in longer than she could remember. A vague fluttery feeling flitted about in her chest. She hadn't felt anything like it since the first time she had seen Marco when she was fourteen. Butterflies.
Ellie was feeling butterflies with Spinner, on a downtown sidewalk, after having just escaped a mob arranged hotel tryst. When had her life gone so topsy-turvy?
She figured it must have been around the time that the very distracting lust turned into the even scarier butterflies.
"You know," he said. A hint of pink colored his cheeks that, despite the current situation, she found completely adorable. "Upstairs. I'm on duty, this is a case, you're a friend. I just…I shouldn't have tried to take advantage of the situation that way."
Ellie smiled, leaning her chin on his shoulder. "In case you missed it," she told him, "you weren't the only one up in that room. And I kissed you first-because I wanted to. I started it."
A wicked smirk spread over his face. Reminiscent of the Spinner she had first met, it made his eyes darken and twinkle, pushing all the guilt off his face. "Yeah. You did." He leaned his face toward her and lowered his voice. "Not that I'm complaining."
She blushed, smacking at his shoulder. This was the Spinner she knew. The one she knew how to deal with. No that it helped the fluttering subside any. "Spin…I…" With a deep breath, she leaned in and touched her lips lightly to his. "I'm not sorry. And I like you. As in, a lot. Not like a friend either." A huge grin split his face, prompting a matching one to come to her own. He tilted his head closer to her, but she pulled back just enough to stop him. "Maybe we shouldn't. Until after this whole mess is over," she added hurriedly.
"Define over." Spinner brushed a stray lock of hair back from her face, smiling a lazy that reminded her of the old movies she used to watch on late night TV with her grandmother. "As in arrest over or trial over?"
Taking her bottom lip between her teeth, Ellie hesitated. She had to phrase it just right or it would sound like she didn't want to pursue what was going on between them. "Would you be upset if I said after the trial?"
His mouth dropped opened a bit. "After?"
"It's not how it sounds," Ellie assured him. "We're going to have to testify, right?" Spinner nodded. "Well…say I get up there and testify. They're going to ask me about our relationship and how I got involved in this. What sounds like a more credible witness," she asked, "I'm your friend who ran into you by accident and wanted to help-or I'm the girl you're sleeping with?"
Nodding his head, Spinner laid a hand over hers on his arm. "I get it. I'm not happy about it, but I get it."
His hand fell away from hers. He had folded his hands together in front of him, but Ellie decided that if they couldn't have everything just yet, they could at least have a little bit right now. She let her palm slide down his arm and over his joined hands, running a finger over his knuckles until he turned one hand over and she slid her fingers through his. She snuggled into him, resting her cheek on his shoulder, and sighed deeply in contentment.
"You do realize that Marco is going to flip over this, right?" Spinner commented a few moments later as he idly played with her fingers.
"Yeah," she added, "about that…I sort of…already told him. About me at least."
"What did you say exactly?" he asked.
"Nothing that you should be worried about. But…there is something I need to tell you."
Spinner's fingers stopped moving. He didn't release her hand however. Merely squeezed them tighter and prompted her to continue. "I um…well, I," she stuttered. "I lied to you. Kind of."
"You kind of lied?" he asked, disbelief falling from his words. "How do you kind of lie?"
A heavy flush spread over her cheeks. She should have been used to it, she figured, after the consistent awkward situations they had been thrown into during the whole ordeal. After all, Spinner had drug up on to a strip club stage to dance-and rather sexily at that-not to mention slid a hand up her dress in front of Antonelli, and yet this was harder than all of that. "That night I put the bug in you dressing room…I told you that I didn't find out anything worth using?"
"Yeah?"
"I may have been wrong." She looked down at their hands, still clasped together and held her breath for his reaction.
Five seconds. Ten. And still he said nothing. Then she heard a snort and felt him moving ever so slightly beside her. She looked up to see his shoulders shaking with laughter, face contorted with restrained laughter.
"It's not funny!" she insisted. "This whole thing could have been over already. I've have him on tape saying that I'd have to pay for you if I wanted any action for days now! This is not funny!"
He leaned back, laughing openly while she huffed beside him. "Oh…Ellie. I'm sorry, but it is a little funny."
"How exactly do you see that?"
Once he had composed himself, he draped an arm around her slim shoulders and pulled her back against him. "Between the two of us, we have enough on tape to nail him and instead we've been too worried about nailing each other to figure it out."
"Spinner!" she whacked him in the stomach, face flaming. "Nailing? Nice."
"I'm right," he replied. "You wanted me. Admit it."
Ellie pursed her lips, turning her face away from him and his teasing. "Don't you have an arrest to make?"
Spinner pulled away and removed his arm from around her. "Fine, fine. Deny it all you want. Can I have your wire please? Or is it at home? And the tape."
"The tape is at home," she said. "But the wire is right here. Although I can't really take it off out here."
His eyes raked her up and down shamelessly, an innocent expression plastered on his face. "I wouldn't mind."
"I'm sure you wouldn't. Now go."
…0...
"That," Ellie groaned, "was the most irritating man I have ever met in my life."
Spinner unlocked the front door, holding the door open for her to walk through. "Of course he was irritating; he's a lawyer."
Once Spinner collected the tape Ellie had made from the microphone in his dressing room and the wire she was wearing, it had taken less than four hours to get the warrant and haul Antonelli down to lockup. He'd made sure to call Ellie on the way to the station, figuring she'd want to be there to get the full scoop for her article.
The best part had been the quick photo she'd snapped when Spinner had brought him in and saw her standing there wearing her press pass. The front page article-complete with photo-had been her best story yet and now hung over their mantle, a gift from Marco.
"If he's taking the deal, then what was the point of his even being there for our testimonies? It didn't help matter any. And that defense attorney was a total ass." Ellie sat her purse down on the front table, and peeled off the jacket of her suit. Summer had reached Toronto and she was sweltering just from the ride home from the courthouse.
"That's why he's well paid. Look at it this way, he's in jail, you're Editor, and I'm an official detective. It all could have gone a lot worse," he took of his uniform issue hat and laid it beside her purse. "Marco? You home?"
They wandered through the house looking for their third roommate. The plan was to go out for dinner to celebrate it all being over. Footsteps sounded on the stairs finally and they looked up to see him walking down with a small duffel bag in his hand.
"You going somewhere?" Spinner asked.
"My ma's birthday is tomorrow. I'm gonna stay over there tonight," he explained.
Ellie pushed her lower lip out in a pout. "What about dinner?"
Marco chuckled, shaking his head. "Oh no. I've had to sit through dinner with you two for the last three months and watch you guys flirt more than you eat. Not to mention breakfast, lunch, pretty much every time you're within ten feet of each other. I'm taking the night off. "
Glancing at each other in surprise, they simultaneously said, "What?"
"We're not that bad," Ellie declared. She stopped, thought about it and turned back to Spinner. "Are we?"
"I didn't think so," he muttered.
Opening the front door, Marco threw a look over his shoulder at his roommates and nodded. "You are. But I believe you said you'd resolve all this once the trial was over, right? Well, it's over. And the medicine cabinet is fully stocked. Have fun."
Glancing from the front door to Ellie's beet red face, Spinner's brow wrinkled in confusion. "I don't get it."
"I do," she assured him. Taking her thumb into her mouth, Ellie began pacing around the living room, obviously lost in thought and mumbling under her breath.
Spinner stopped her with his hands on either shoulder. "Uh, El, what are you doing?"
She licked her lips, and squared her shoulders. "Spin, Marco's right. We've been putting this off just because of the trial, right?"
He nodded. "Right."
"And we've been out together enough times so we could say we're technically dating if we wanted to. Right?"
Again, Spinner bobbed his head up and down.
Ellie kicked her shoes off, loosing about three inches in height and now barely reaching the underside of his chin. "So then I wouldn't be too forward in telling you that I don't want to go to dinner tonight?"
"Then," he said slowly, "what do you want to do?"
With a deep breath, and even more color in her cheeks, Ellie lowered her eyes in embarrassment-mainly at her own boldness-and then glanced back up at him through lowered lashes. "I want to go to bed."
He looked, to put it mildly, thoroughly befuzzled. That was the first word that popped into her head. And it was accurate. "Bed? But it's not even three o'clock. Why would you want to-"
His words were cut off when Ellie placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him, pressing as close to him as she could. She pulled away to see him stunned and open mouthed. The haze he was in seemed to lift and his mouth curved upwards into a huge grin that made her collapse into giggles, burying her face into his chest.
"Oh," he said. "Oh. Okay then." She felt his hands go to her shoulders, pulling back from her just enough to bend quickly, hands going behind her legs and back, and swooped her up into his arms.
"What are you doing? This isn't some cheesy romance novel. We-" Ellie's got a taste of her own medicine when Spinner bent his head and captured her lips while walking. He banged into the stair case, staggering a smidge, and mumbled a curse against her lips.
"Are you okay?" Ellie ran her hand through the hair on the back of his neck tenderly, running the other one across his cheek.
"Yeah."
She whacked his arm, making him sputter indignantly. "You better be more careful. I happen to have something invested in that body of yours now and don't want you to hurt yourself."
His quirked an eyebrow at her. Her words seemed to have puzzled him for a minute. He stopped outside her bedroom door and pulled her closer, knuckling he neck. "Oh really?"
"Yes. And I mean it," she declared. "In case you forgot, I paid quite a bit for you once, and I'd like to get my money's worth." She smiled cheekily, her tongue poking through her teeth.
"I think I can manage that." He walked into her room, slamming the door behind him with his foot. "But…what did Marco mean by that medicine cabinet comment?"
"Why don't I show you."
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