Hey! another Booth chapter, this one has a cliff hanger, you've been warned. :) Review, plez!

It had been three months since he'd seen the short blonde agent with the large, perky blue eyes, so it surprised Booth immensely when he answered his phone to her voice.

"Booth." He stated, waiting subconsciously for Bones to answer with her typical, 'It's me.' Instead he heard,

"Perotta. Listen, how fast can you be at Hoover?" She'd asked abruptly. He answered and flipped his phone shut, setting it down in the cup holder between the driver and passenger seat of his car. He was stopped at a red light and glanced over at the empty space from him, noticing the silence. He looked up to see that the light had changed and quickly turned the volume dial on the radio up, drowning out the unwelcome stillness.

He wasn't sure what he thought of working with Perotta again. To be honest, he was confused. She was pretty, she was blonde, she had a natural golden skin- she was, in every way, his type. Yet, he had never made a move with her. He almost had, oh yeah; he had very close to swooping in on her. It had happened while she was interrogating him (during the case where the hockey player had been murdered), he brought the charm and she shot it right back.

They were perfect, really. Both Agents set out to find justice, both fast witted people with nearly the same sense of humor.

It had appealed to him at first. But then he realized that it was just mindless flirting with another meaningless girl. A girl who wouldn't stick around for long. He'd been through too many of those.

That was the day he had reevaluated his 'type'. He hadn't set up and written down what kind of girls he was interested in, he'd just mentally decided that when he did get back on the relationship train, he wouldn't leap too suddenly onto some blonde, tan ditz. No, he wanted a woman. A smart, sophisticated woman who had some little thing about her that set her apart from the rest. A quirk of some sort.

Perotta, to him at least, didn't have that. She was his coworker. That was it. A means to an end.

He turned into the J. Edgar Hoover parking lot and found his space. He took a deep breath and glanced once more over to the empty space that was the passenger seat.

It'd been almost three weeks since Bones had left and finally, he was starting to return to his life. It was nice. He wasn't sure why he'd missed her, especially those first few days. He'd gone almost his entire life without knowing her and a week apart had been killing him from the inside out. It wasn't like she hadn't been gone before, Angela had pointed that out quite nicely for him, but for whatever bizarre reason, this trip to Africa had done a real number on him.

He began walking to the building and stepped mindlessly onto the elevator, still deep in thought.

He suspected that the reason he missed her had to do with the new height their relationship had taken recently. Just a week before she'd left, and about a month after he'd fully recovered from his operation, he'd kissed her- and it had unduly freaked both of them out.

They'd been at his house, talking on the couch about the case and he'd said something that set her off into one of her inexhaustible ramblings about 'Alpha-male tendencies'. He was looking at her, not at all paying attention. He was drinking her in, observing the sharp curve of her jaw, the fiery passion ever present in her eyes, the soft glow of her fair skin. He saw the way her bottom lip poked out, as it often did when she rambled or lectured him, and it was calling out to him, which was par for the course. This time, instead of being entranced by that soft looking bottom lip, he leaned over and planted a small kiss on the corner of her mouth.

He regretted it at first, as he saw her blue eyes turn three shades lighter and grow to the size of saucers and her cheeks tinge a dusty rose color. She had jumped up almost instantaneously and vacated the premises immediately.

"I…need to go…" It came out almost as a question and her voice was as high as he'd ever heard before. He felt his face and neck heating up and turning a deep crimson, but after she picked up her bag and shut the door behind her, his heart rate slowed and he came back down to Earth. What had he done? How could he be this stupid?

Looking back on it, it didn't seem nearly as ridiculous as it had at the time, but still, he could see how if she'd reacted differently, it could've changed their working relationship for good.

Booth stepped out onto his floor and started to weave his way down the maze of hallways to the conference room, never ceasing his train of thought.

She'd reacted like he assumed she would. Clean and detached, her two favorite adjectives. She acted as though nothing had happened. This, oddly enough, had made the tension between them much greater. Their last few days together felt like a volcano about to erupt.

Booth entered the room, holding the door open for Charlie, who was just behind him.

"Hey, Agent Booth." He greeted his superior warmly. Booth nodded.

"Hi Charlie." He closed the door behind him and entered to see Agent Perotta, standing behind the large table in a blue blouse and black pencil skirt.

"Hello, Agent Booth." She smiled warmly, her eyes sparkling.

"Perotta." He grinned, holding out his hand for her to shake. She took it eagerly and then folded her skirt under as she sat down, receiving a manila file folder from Charlie. They began to talk about the case, but Booth couldn't seem to turn his thought switch off.

Instead he was busy thinking about how the corner of her mouth had twitched upward into a slight smile as his lips had pressed generously to hers. He liked that he made her smile, that his touch made her excited.

The light bulb above his head flickered on. That is why she couldn't embrace head on the fact their partnership was evolving. She was happy.

"..And that is how the body ended up in the washing machine in a laundry mat in downtown. Questions?" Charlie finished eagerly. They both shook their heads and he smiled, taking his file and beginning to leave. Booth stared off into space, only half aware that Perotta was speaking to him.

Psychology may not have been his field, but he certainly knew a thing or too. One of the things he knew was that Bones had been abandoned. Countless times. By her parents, by her brother, by her earlier partners, by her previous boyfriends and, most recently, by her assistant, who had been very close to her heart.

Not only was Bones afraid of commitment, but she was afraid of allowing herself to be happy, because in her mind, every time she's happy, someone leaves her.

She didn't want him to leave her.

"Booth?" Perotta asked. Booth snapped out of his daze and flew quickly back to the planet Earth.

"Yeah?" He asked.

"Do you want to go grab something to eat?" She asked, tucking a piece of her honey suckle blonde hair behind her delicate ears.

"To discuss the case?" He asked innocently, unaware of her intentions. He leaned back in his chair and flipped nonchalantly through the file.

"No…I mean, like two people going to get dinner. together…" She added, noting his confused look.

"I don't know…" he hesitated.

"Come on, it'll be nice to not think about work and work related things for awhile." Her eyes smiled. He could use a break…

"Uh…"

So there you go! (if you can really consider that a cliffhanger...)

REview if you please!

~ Rhea~

Booth: Vodka?
Brennan: Water...but it's on the rocks.
Booth: You know, Bones, I'm not sure you grasp the basic theory on how to get drunk.