Chapter Ten — Tonight, Rizzoli. Tonight.
"What the...?" Jane wondered as she unlocked the door to Maura's place and ushered her girlfriend in ahead of herself. The lights were low, with candles flickering here and there all throughout the great room, and heavenly smells came from the kitchen, where Angela Rizzoli stood in one of her favorite aprons, just pulling a pie out of the oven.
She turned around at the younger women's entrance and grinned hugely. "Janie! Maura! Good, you're here right on time. Now, I want you to go get showered and clean and relaxed, and then come in and eat dinner. I set the table and took care of everything, so all you have to do is just enjoy each other."
"How sweet!" Maura gushed, particularly at the sight of a roasted chicken resting atop the range; it would probably go into the oven right away, now that the pie was out, to give the skin its final crisping. Yep, there it went. "What's the occasion, Angela?"
"What do you want?" Jane half translated, half accused her mother. She'd learned to be wary, over years of coming home to beautiful dinners and finding out that there was a blind date involved just about every single time.
Angela had the gall to look hurt. "A mother can't cook a nice dinner for her daughters?" She used the plural pointedly, thereby enlisting Maura to come and fight for her side. Jane knew full well that Maura hadn't always had such a close relationship with her own mother. Surely she wouldn't try to rob her of this surrogate relationship, her raised eyebrow seemed to challenge?
But she would. "It looks great, Ma. What's the favor?" she demanded, even as she checked her service weapon, put her keys and small change on the dish just inside the door, and made her way towards the bedroom to divest herself of cellphone and service weapon. She paused, though, just before going through the archway that would take her out of answering range.
Maura put away her coat, gloves, the scarf she tied on to keep the wind and snow out of her hair, and her fashionably rugged snow boots before coming to Angela's aid. "Whatever the reason, I think it's nice. May I help?" she offered with a brief but warm squeeze of one of Angela's upper arms.
"You missed your anniversary," Angela said by way of both answer and accusation, "didn't you?"
"Um," Jane wanted to dither, but Maura beat her to the punch with a more definitive, "Yes. Jane was out of town for work."
"So," Angela concluded, "I'm going to spend the night at Carla Talucci's. We haven't had a real sleepover since before she got married, and we used to have them all the time in high school. You two need privacy."
Unlike Jane, Maura didn't even have the courtesy to realize she should blush, let alone could she manage it. "We can close the window. I thought you said you couldn't hear me when we closed the window." By now, her noisiness wasn't embarrassing to any of them, not even to Jane, though Jane's own quietness sometimes was. "And Jane got you those nice, noise-cancelling headphones..."
"Which work great!" the elder Rizzoli, now default clan matriarch despite having married into it, enthused. "But now that Carla's husband has passed, we're both single, and we thought, hey, why not have a sleepover like when we were kids? We were best friends. Sort of like you two used to be, only not quite."
"Oh, God," Jane muttered, and finally left the conversation to the two who wouldn't be mortified by it. "I'm going to shower," she called back, on her way up the stairs. "Maura, do not start talking details with my mother!"
Both Maura and Angela cast a glance in that direction, and both chuckled. "She's such a prude," Angela remarked with a wink. "Honestly, sometimes I wonder if she thinks I thought she was a virgin till you showed up!"
"Well, she seems to think you still are," Maura deadpanned, "so I suppose anything's possible. Theoretically." Then her wink ruined what was shaping up to be a much-improved poker face and she leaned in. "So, what's really going on?"
Angela leaned over to make certain her daughter was out of hearing reach. "It really is about you two making up for your anniversary, but now that you mention it, I need to ask you something and you can't tell Janie. She'd just tell me I was being gross."
Maura's head tilted, inviting more information. "I can keep private matters confidential." Quickly she performed a mental and visual scan of Angela's appearance: Hunched shoulders, lowered voice, eyes darting towards the archway leading to the staircase, mouth barely moving when she spoke. Secrets; embarrassment; expectancy. Accordingly, Maura lowered her voice as well, and pulled her shoulders slightly down and forward, indicating that she understood the situation at hand. "And I won't judge."
"What do you use?" Angela asked, without further explanation.
Maura was quiet for several seconds before realizing that there would not be clarification of the question until she requested it. "What do I use for what?"
"For... your... self." This time, Angela was so quiet and her lips moved barely at all, that Maura had a hard time even understanding.
With nothing else to go on, Maura was stymied. "I'm sorry, Angela, but I don't..."
Angela gritted her teeth, growing red in the face. "What do you use... by yourself? Or... not by yourself, for all I know, but I'm not asking what you do with my daughter, you understand?"
Suddenly, Maura flashed to a similarly low-pitched, teeth-gritted moment of Jane's — You mean a dildo? — and she knew that Angela was asking the same question. Her own voice became the next best thing to a whisper, not for her own sake, but for Angela's. So much for Jane being the prude, she thought. "Do you want to go shopping with me this weekend? I can show you some things. Non-biological... items that would be helpful for a... newly single person." She'd have been perfectly happy discussing the use of toys in more open terms, and in a normal, conversational tone, but Angela seemed to need more discretion, and Maura could accommodate that desire.
Angela looked grateful. "Yes. But don't tell Janie," she repeated somewhat hurriedly, then stepped away to put the chicken in the oven just as Jane came floating down the stairs in skinny jeans, a newish black T-shirt, and towel-dried hair.
"Hey, what's going on?" Jane asked with a smile, clearly feeling much better thanks to the fastest shower in the history of ever. "Ma, you better not be asking my girlfriend about details."
"She's not," Maura promised, kissing Jane on the cheek as she headed upstairs. "I was just... expressing gratitude for tonight, and volunteering to be a good daughter-in-law. We're going shopping Saturday afternoon."
Angela perked up immediately as she closed the oven and turned around. "Daughter-in-law? You're getting married?"
"NO, Ma!" Jane insisted. "It's a figure of speech. That hasn't been discussed, and don't pressure us."
Maura laughed all the way up the stairs to her turn in the shower.
Getting to sleep at a decent hour two days in a row was uncommon for Jane, even in the best of times, which meant she was wide awake a little too early. As the winter sun rose, she stretched her long form across her half of Maura's bed and watched the other woman sleep. Or so she thought. "Go back to sleep, Jane," Maura muttered, eyes firmly closed.
"I can't enjoy this if I'm asleep." Jane rolled onto her side and draped an arm over Maura's waist, capturing the Big Spoon spot. "This is way better than waking up in bed alone."
While Jane could remember life before Maura, every morning had been a struggle to get up, get moving and get going. Now, yes, there were mornings when she still wanted to stay in bed, but they weren't the old reasons. Jane wasn't afraid of taking on the misogynistic old boy's club of Boston PD, and she wasn't afraid of being seen as 'just' a girl. Somewhere in the last five years, she'd managed to drop those problems. Of course she had newer, bigger problems now, but facing those with Maura was a lot easier than doing it alone.
"You're thinking," complained Maura, snuggling closer to Jane's warmth.
"I'm thinking about you," Jane countered, keeping her voice soft. Maura snorted, in her most unladylike fashion, but Jane could see the smile on her cheek. Kissing Maura's shoulder, Jane relaxed in the warmth of their bed, watching the pre-dawn light pick up the colors of Maura's hair. What color is it? she wondered, not for the first time. I'm pretty sure 'sexy' isn't an acceptable answer to that question, too. That said, it might get her style points, and Jane made a note to later ask Maura how to factor those into their ongoing points game.
No more asleep than Jane, Maura wriggled her hands out from the blankets to take hold of Jane's hand. She started to investigate Jane's fingers, the webbing between, and then the scars. Every once in a while, Maura would just look at Jane's hands like that, as if she were an explorer studying them. For whatever reason, Jane no longer felt self-conscious when Maura did that, any more than she did when Maura investigated the scars on her torso. When Maura looked at her, she never saw the damaged Jane, and yes, Jane knew she was. Maura just saw Jane.
It gave Jane butterflies in a good way.
Jane wasn't always this comfortable in her own skin, and certainly not in her own skin with Maura. Heck, Maura practically had to drag her out of state to push their relationship past the will-they/won't-they stage. Jane snickered at the thought.
Maura stopped running her fingers up Jane's arm and asked, "What are you thinking about?"
"When you kidnapped me."
They'd been trying to date properly for months, but there was always some damned thing getting in the way. Cases, work, Rizzoli drama, Maura's mother coming to visit again, the conference at which Maura taught and three more she'd attended, bonding exercises with Korsak and Frost which were apparently mandatory between the three of them, and the weekends — and sometimes, a week or longer — in which Jane would simply vanish, going incommunicado for an unpredictable length of time and returning looking drained and speaking in monosyllables.
Somehow, in spite of all those obstacles, they'd managed it. There had been Shakespeare in the park, that last gasp of 'summer' theater before the cold weather put an end to it; a hay ride, a first for Maura, as was the haunted house that preceded it that day, and the following, watching scary/funny movies while little kids rang Maura's doorbell and were rewarded with far more candy than was the going rate; a performance by the Boston Pops, and another by Stomp. Thanksgiving, when Maura and the Rizzolis gathered for food and togetherness, and both women had to restrain themselves from stating what they were actually most thankful for that year. After everyone had left for their respective homes, they'd turned on a DVD of White Christmas and pretended to watch it, but instead they'd kept glancing at each other, playing with each other's hands, and had eventually hemmed and hawed and decided that they might just make a go of it.
Christmas season had been replete with parties of friends and families and precinct. Maura had had the audacity to devise a wreath for her hair made entirely of mistletoe and holly sprigs, and had of course been very popular, because she didn't turn down a single kiss — though she sometimes turned her head so as to receive them on the cheek. It was no less than a dare for Jane, and Jane knew it the moment that some of her sisters in blue started taking advantage of the situation, making Maura smile and laugh genuinely. She'd been more conservative, giving her a quick buss on the temple when handing over a glass of something vaguely alcoholic, but only because not doing so at that point would have stood out.
New Year's, they'd had the good sense to go elsewhere. Namely, Jane's apartment, where they cuddled on the sofa, talked about nothing, watched the ball drop, commented on Dick Clark's complete detachment from anything resembling nature, and kissed at the stroke of midnight with sparkles in their eyes. The sparkles were there because Jane hadn't made herself take down the Christmas tree yet, but they were there, right enough, so that was all right.
Maura had planned a special evening for Valentine's Day. Beautiful meal, dress to the nines, dancing at a club mostly frequented by women, and home for some predictable romancing. That date had not materialized. They'd gotten dressed up, and just as Maura was pulling dinner from the take-away boxes and setting the table, Angela had come over. "I saw you come in and I thought, well, as long as none of us has dates, we might as well spend Valentine's Day commiserating, right?" She looked so hopeful, and so lonely, that not even Jane had the heart to tell her mother to get lost. She had instead been ordered — by Maura, no less — to go put on something gorgeous so they could all look and feel special that night. In the end it was still a beautiful night, but not quite what she'd had in mind, and she could have sworn it wasn't really what Jane had had in mind, either.
So when Jane was called out of town that next weekend, Maura swung into gear. Lieutenant Cavanaugh had agreed that both of them could stand to take a few days off, starting the day Rizzoli got back. "Take that whole week," he ordered, and Maura left before he could change his mind. Though history had already proven Jane wouldn't answer her phone, Maura still left her a message, asking her to call when she was about to get on the plane and say what time Maura should pick her up. Then she'd made one other phone call, so that her plan would come to fruition in the right way. After that, the only thing left was to pack.
Sunday morning, the start of the week after Valentine's Day, Maura met Jane at the airport. She didn't know there had been three different modes of transportation to get Jane there. She only knew that in her trunk were the things they would need for the following week, and that there was no need to mention those things to Jane. "You look terrible," she stated baldly as Jane walked out from the airport and into the pickup area. She'd lost maybe five pounds, but on a lean frame like hers, they were five pounds she couldn't afford to do without, and there was strong darkening of the nasojugal folds. Her eyes drooped and refused to focus, but still she smiled (weakly) and hugged Maura as tightly as her limp arms could manage. "Poor thing. Did you use the bathroom in the airport, or do you need to make a stop?"
"M'fine," Jane replied as she struggled with her suitcase, frowning.
Maura took the handle, pointed Jane towards the passenger side of the car, and placed Jane's carry-on in the trunk of her car, atop the trunk's other cargo. By the time she got in and fastened her own seatbelt, Jane was buckled in and asleep, face smooshed against the window.
Two hours later, Maura pulled over at a rest stop that looked like a log cabin, with a neon sign advertising the best gingerbread on the Eastern Seaboard. "Sweetheart," she said, gently stroking Jane's forearm. "Jane. Baby, do you need the bathroom? Something to eat or drink?"
She kept whispering endearments as Jane swam up from the bottom of the tar pit of exhaustion, blinked, and looked around. "We're not in Kansas," she said, eyes wide with the effort of focusing.
"Correct," Maura replied. "We're at a rest stop. Do you need to go?"
"Nuh-uh," Jane grunted, and almost immediately went back to sleep. Maura let her, though she went inside for two bottles of water and some gingerbread to go.
Just over two hours later, she tried again. "Jane. We're here, baby. Do you want to go inside, and I'll bring in our things?"
This time, Jane paid attention. She didn't look truly all there, but she was a bit better off for the four hour nap. "Where are we?"
"Maine. We're at my cabin."
"That," Jane said as her eyes went round, "is not a cabin. Maura, the entire von Trapp family could live there and never even see each other." It was made to look like a log cabin, but it bore little resemblance to the rustic hovel Jane would have meant if she had spoken about her cabin — if she'd had one. In fact, it looked more like a full-sized home, quaint and pretty, but not tiny. Something like a modern, wealthy person thought of as "roughing it." Picturesque as hell.
Long since past any reaction to exaggeration other than chuckling, Maura simply pushed her fingers into one pocket and came out with a key, which she handed over. "Go inside and sit down somewhere, and I'll be right in with our things. If you need a bathroom, there's one just inside and to the left. I won't be long. Just relax."
It spoke for Jane's fatigued state that even after going inside and making use of the facilities followed by the couch, she couldn't really make sense of their location. "Seriously, Maur," she said as the smaller woman brought in the last of three suitcases, only one of which Jane had brought with her to wherever she went when she went there. "Where the hell are we?"
Maura recited the GPS coordinates, the exact distance in miles from Jane's apartment, then added, "In other words, Islesboro, Maine. The cabin was a gift. My father thought I might need a place to go and regroup once in a while, so he gave me this as a graduation present."
Looking around the cabin, Jane muttered, "Geeze. All Pop got me when I graduated was the pizza and beer to help me move." Her brain started to move in gear again, and Jane circled the front room. "Okay, so I'm in Maine, in a cabin in the woods —" Jane paused to verify this by looking out the window. "This is either a set up to kill me, or a romantic getaway. Did you pack sexy things or an axe?"
Maura hesitated. "The axe is just for chopping firewood, I promise. And I didn't pack it. It's already here." Her hands rubbed together as if to either warm each other or to prepare her for a change in topic. "How do you feel? Would you like to just get a shower and take a nap, or would you like me to show you around first?"
Instead of asking what time it was, Jane looked at the fancy watch Maura had given her for Christmas. "I landed at 11am. So it's probably five at night. Or I was asleep longer than I thought." She smirked at Maura. "I would like to, in order, get a tour, shower, brush my teeth, eat something, and then..." Jane trailed off looking around the cabin. "Well. Then we'll see." Helen Keller wouldn't have been able to miss the signs Maura was throwing out right now. This was a sexy-time cabin. Jane flushed as she thought about exactly what Maura's intentions were, but no way was she going to object. This was what they were moving towards, right? Right.
Or was it? A second look around told Jane that, her car-dreaming aside, this was really just a standard cabin, albeit a lush version thereof. It wasn't a lumberjack's or trapper's place, but a sort of faux-rustic resort. There was no bearskin rug, not that that kind of thing would've gotten her in the mood. Gross. Nor was Maura's demeanor actually all that different from what it was like all the time. Janie, girl, you've got sex on the brain, she told herself, then firmly added, Quit that.
Maura was just saying, "...built by someone who clearly had never spent any time in an actual log cabin, but that's actually an advantage. The original builder-slash-owner couldn't stand the idea of living without indoor plumbing, electricity, a phone line... We'll be as comfortable here as we would be at either of our homes. The chief advantage is distance. Lieutenant Cavanaugh as much as ordered me to take you someplace where you couldn't be reached, so no one would be tempted to interrupt our retreat." At some point, she'd led them on a tour of the downstairs, which included a smallish guest bedroom and full bath, kitchen that appeared fully stocked as if they'd done a grocery run while Jane had been asleep, the main room which Jane had already seen and which functioned as a living room, dining room (complete with gorgeous farmhouse trestle table, chairs, and a long bench down one side). The downstairs revolved around a central fireplace, made entirely of large, river-rounded stones, large enough to warm the entire area with the fire that was already laid, but not lit.
Rather than show Jane upstairs yet, Maura pointed out not just the rooms, but also the little touches here and there. "I found this wagon wheel at an antique shop here in town. It actually has provenance — this wheel made three trips on the Oregon Trail and back before the owner sold the wagon and retired, having guided dozens of families out to new lives in the West. I have the documentation in the upstairs office. This is a picture of my first ballet performance." A tiny, chubby child in a soft pink tutu, hands overhead as if holding a beach ball, turned to look at the slightly taller child next to her, who held the position with more poise, looking very grown-up for a four-year-old, next to the chubbier one, who couldn't have been more than two. "I'm the little one with the belly."
Knickknacks, photographs, antiques: each one had a story, and though she didn't offer every story, Jane knew that they were waiting to be told. This, more than the house in which she lived most of her life, was her space. No decorator had touched it. "I made these curtains the first time I stayed here. I got out of the shower and found myself nearly face to face with a neighbor at the door who'd come to bring a pot of coffee and a basket of biscuits to welcome me to the area." She pointed at the door: mostly glass. "Apparently I'm still known as Lady Godiva, to those who lived here then."
Jane stared at the door for a moment and then, decisively, wrapped both arms around Maura's waist. It was a much more complete hug than the one at the airport. "Why do I get the feeling you just chatted away with your neighbor, buck naked, thanked 'em for the food, and then went to put on a robe?"
"That is not... exactly... what happened," Maura denied with a self-conscious chuckle. "Anyway, that was how I met Mrs. Hudson. It turned out that she wasn't really a neighbor so much as a caretaker. She tends the place when I'm away, and in return, lives in the other house on the island, rent-free. It's a good deal for us both."
Jane cuddled the shorter woman closer. The cabin felt like a safe, warm place. Where accidentally greeting your neighbors in your all-together was amusing and not mortifying. Resting her head on Maura's shoulder, Jane admired the homeliness of it all.
"Are you falling asleep again?" questioned Maura, when Jane's introspective silence dragged on for what was, apparently, too long.
"No. But I smell like an airplane, and a car ride, and my mouth feels like something died in it. Shower."
"Upstairs," Maura redirected. "The downstairs is for guests. Upstairs is for... I mean, unless you'd rather have your own space." Ah. There it was, the evidence of intentions Jane only thought she saw before. She paused, thought about it, then nodded. In deference to Maura's opinion about kissing when one's mouth tasted like evidence, Jane settled for a promising brush of her lips to Maura's neck before bounding up the stairs into the shower to wash away the lingering fingers of Florida and all its connotations. She did, however, leave the door open halfway. "Would you bring me my toothbrush and stuff, Maura?"
"Sure," Maura agreed as she grabbed Jane's bags and followed her upstairs. With effort, she kept her eyes lowered to the floor and the bathroom sink, not looking towards the glass-walled shower, nor at the mirror that would show it in reflection. She set down the grooming kit of Jane's grooming supplies on the left side, just where her left-handed girlfriend liked her things to be, and backed out of the room, congratulating herself on having avoided taking advantage of the view.
Nothing, however, could stop Jane taking advantage of the view. Specifically, the view out the shower window, which was just low enough to let Maura look outside if she stepped up to it, but would conceal Jane below the shoulders if she stood back and under the spray. As Maura unpacked their clothes in the bedroom, Jane stared, half-shampooed hair ignored, at the one part of the horizon she hadn't expected. "Maur?" she called out uncertainly. "Are we on an island?"
"Yes," came the pleasant voice from the bedroom, the wonders of which Jane hadn't fully grasped in her rush to get the airplane stench off her skin. "You slept through the ferry ride." Maura continued to remove the few clean garments Jane had packed from her suitcase, along with the ones she'd brought in the second bag, and toss the dirty ones down a hidden chute to the laundry basket in the downstairs bathroom.
"And what did you say the name of the island was?" Idly, Jane resumed soaping her body, glancing in the mirror without really realizing she was doing so. Maura wasn't facing this way, which meant that Jane could watch her as she dealt with the chore of unpacking.
Maura tucked away the last of the clean clothes and closed the last drawer, oblivious to Jane's scrutiny. She'd been doing a good job of not looking in the direction of the open bathroom door. Jane was so tired; she couldn't view that open door as an invitation, much though she'd love for it to be one. "The island? It's just part of the town that you can see from the window in there."
"Then what's the name of the town?" queried Jane as she reached for a razor and began to shave. It crossed her mind that it was a little bit odd that her own preferred type of razor was in one of the two holders, along with her favorite body wash and hair products, right alongside the froufrou types that populated Maura's guest bathroom and presumably her master bath, which Jane had never seen.
Maura hesitated, gazing out the bedroom window. Rather than the town, it faced the opposite direction, which meant nothing but further-offshore islands and ocean. "It's Islesboro."
"Any relation?"
"Yes and no," Maura explained. She glanced towards the bathroom, then quickly away; she hadn't meant to do that. "The town is a boro — borough — which includes an island, hence the name. But when my father was choosing a parcel of land, he chose this one because he thought I'd think it was cute."
Jane smiled as she ducked her head under the spray to rinse off soap and conditioner. "I think it's cute," she admitted, and turned off the water. Surprisingly, Jane felt immeasurably better than she had getting off the plane. The nap in the car, just in Maura's presence, had restored her energy levels. Of course, her reflection in the mirror showed a skinny and tired Rizzoli, which couldn't be as sexy as normal, but it had been six months of soul draining work to get her this tired. It might take just as long to get back to normal. She roughly dried off and picked the longer of the two robes, wrapping it around herself before creating a monument of hair. "I feel so much better, babe," announced Jane, taking in the bedroom for the first time.
It was a very comfortable room, hardwood with plenty of rugs to soften the feel underfoot. Though the appearance was even more rustic than the downstairs areas, the comfort level was higher, thanks to a fire that Maura had lit while Jane wasn't looking. Good oak and apple wood sparked and crackled merrily, throwing shadows onto the log walls. There were no closets, but two cedar armoires stood ready to receive any clothes that wouldn't do well in the chest-o'-drawers, which were also cedar, but not of exactly the same pattern. In fact, nothing matched, giving the room a homey eclecticism that Maura's actual residence lacked. Then again, the formality of that home was a bit more majestic, and it was easy to suppose that it made a more favorable first impression for those who liked that sort of thing, as most of Maura's family and acquaintances did.
One thing that the cabin lacked was the usual complement of game heads, antlers, and fur rugs that Jane had almost expected to see in something so close to being a man-cave. Where those might have looked at home, there were instead quilts, photographs, and mountable objects such as what looked to be a hundred-year-old snow shoe, or an entire outfit from... Jane searched her memory of historical geography lessons... an Iroquois woman? Something like that.
And then, of course, there was her girlfriend, shoes off, laying out a sinfully comfortable looking nightgown to don in a little while. "Don't tell me you're going to be wearing that," Jane couldn't stop herself from saying with a light smirk.
Maura whirled around, eyes wide and growing wider as she stared, dazed. "Robe," she mentioned, nodding at the one Jane was wearing. Fuzzy terrycloth, utterly figure-concealing in shape, but tied just about loosely enough to be dangerous if she moved. "Good. I mean, it's good you found it. I'm... shower."
"Hang on," Jane requested, and stepped closer to Maura, hands lightly resting on the ME's hips. "Thank you for driving us five hours to this serial killer cabin." And she returned her lips to kissing the side of Maura's neck, just enough to make Maura start to squirm.
"Aren't you tired?" whispered Maura, still stretching her neck to give Jane more access.
And Jane stopped. "Not so much as I'm hungry." With one last kiss to Maura's neck, Jane stepped away. "I'm going to go see what this mysterious Mrs. Hudson left in your fancy kitchen. You're gonna shower and put on that other robe. And... we'll see where it goes."
"Mmhm," Maura hummed in the wake of the kiss, and opened her eyes to realize Jane was already headed downstairs. Then her eyes snapped further open. See where it goes? I hope she left me some cold water, came the thought unbidden, and she walked, none too steadily, into the bathroom for her own shower. "Mrs. Hudson leaves notes on the refrigerator, Jane."
Just as Maura was getting settled in the shower, Jane popped her head in. "Hey, does 'save room for lobster tomorrow' mean what I think it does?" While Maura had done her best to discreetly give Jane some privacy and not look at her while she showered, apparently Jane didn't share that feeling right now, and was getting an eye full of Maura in the shower. "Uh..."
While Maura was surprised, the slack jaw expression that took over Jane's face was pleasing. Rendering someone mute with just the sight of her body was one of her greatest powers. "Her sons are lobstermen," Maura replied. "Do you want to go with them?"
That brought Jane out of her obvious appreciation for Maura's form. "Go fishing? No. Nooooo. No. I don't fish. Lobster." She took the towel off her hair and hung it on a hook. "Whatever. Your Mrs. Hudson left us shepherd's pie. I'm heating it up in the oven." With one last look at the showering Maura, Jane grinned and went downstairs.
They ate dinner on the couch in their bathrobes, hair drying to near-equal levels of curly frizz, much to Jane's amusement. "Tell the truth, Maura. How hard do you have to work to make your hair look like it usually looks?"
"An hour to dry it evenly, another half-hour for rollers, a twice-weekly conditioning oil or cream," Maura estimated as she cleared their dishes into the kitchen, "and about once every two months I go to see André, my stylist, who performs some sort of miracle so that I can stay glossy and sleek. My colorist, Nina, also earns her pay quite nicely. Why do you ask?"
"Because you look like," Jane paused, then grinned; why not? "You look like me, only shorter and closer to blonde, or red, or whatever the hell color that is."
"Honey-brown," Maura supplied easily, "with butterscotch highlights and caramel lowlights." Nina apparently had a penchant for sweets. "Am I shaggy right now, or curly, or just a big mess?"
Jane was just about aware enough, as she put the food away, to claim that it was curly. "But," she added as she closed the fridge and snuck up behind Maura for a quick nuzzle, "I could mess that up for you a little bit. Hm?" Without either of them consciously deciding to do so, their hips began to sway side to side, like dancing.
"I think," Maura started, then cleared her throat, which had gone dry enough to turn her speaking voice almost as raspy as Jane's, "I think we need to get upstairs."
"I could kidnap you again, you know," Maura murmured as she turned to face and embrace her lover, then lean back in a mute suggestion: this is my body. You need to be on top of that. "Any time you like. Just say the word, and I'll spirit you off to my serial killer cabin and have my way with you."
Jane scooted to oblige Maura's suggestion. "Soon as we finish this case, I might kidnap you myself."
There is a real Islesboro, Maine, which we just had to use when we saw it. However, this is not the real Islesboro, so any and all inaccuracies are on us. Mrs. Hudson is named for the landlady in Sherlock Holmes.
Review and they'll go back to Islesboro.