Author's Note: Thank you so much for the follows, favorites, and especially for the reviews lovely readers!
Disclaimer: I do not own the Mentalist and would not be foolish enough to claim to.
"Holy sheep dip."
The words were more gasped than spoken, tone almost aghast. Her breath fogged the windshield just slightly as Lisbon leaned forward over the steering wheel, the better to see upward where the gate to Ms. Ruskin's manor house loomed to block the beginning of the front drive.
"You really live here, Patrick?" Tommy asked in awe, nose practically pressed to the window.
Drew was straining against his seatbelt to see better from the other side of the car.
"It's my grandmother's house." Despite his amusement at there wide-mouthed reactions, the lie still stuck in Jane's throat a little on the way out. As though it was reluctant to be seen in the light of day. Maybe because it wasn't easy anymore, to not tell Teresa the truth. There was a big difference in his mind between small white lies that hurt no one and outright dishonesty about something that made him feel supremely uncomfortable. Said over a cars seat like it was a flippant thing was even worse. "Uh, she's kinda..."
"Loaded?" Drew supplied dryly.
"Andrew." Teresa hissed back in rebuke. She looked at Jane, the apology for her brother settled in her eyes. An attempt at a smile was all she managed. "It's... nice. It's really nice."
"It's ostentatious." Jane said without remorse.
Lisbon flinched a little and shrugged her shoulders, telling him that she had no real argument to give.
"Not exactly what I'm used to either." He assured her. "I've only lived here for a little while. It's taken some getting used to. You've already met the people I'm used to hanging out with." He grinned.
A smirk tilted her lips in response.
Jane went to open the door, then stopped, remembering Mrs. Ruskin's demands yesterday for letting him off the hook. Demands he didn't dare ignore. "But, uh, I was wondering..." It wouldn't come. Not when he looked back at her to find her eying the house again uncertainly.
She lifted her eyebrows when he didn't finish, meeting his eyes with her own green emeralds.
Ah, hell. "Would you come to dinner tomorrow night?" He questioned in a rush.
Nonplussed was the best way to describe Lisbon's reaction to his invitation. Like she was a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding car. As further proof of that, a touch of fear entered her irises. "Here?" She croaked.
"No, Buckingham Palace." Jane said sarcastically, his own nerves making him a little waspish. "Yes, here."
Her mouth worked silently, brow crumpling.
"Say yes, Reese." Tommy said eagerly from the back. "You'll probably get to eat fancy stuff, like caviet."
"Caviar." Teresa corrected blindly, not really paying attention to the words coming out of her own mouth. "Caveat is a bad or unexpected addition to something." She looked out the windshield again at the manor in which Jane currently resided. "Which might prove just as apt." Her face seemed almost a little green, to match her eyes.
Now growing slightly amused, but mostly peeved by her reaction, Jane huffed. "It's a house. It doesn't bite."
"That's not a house." Drew spoke up.
"Yeah, it's more like a castle." Tommy breathed, still staring out the window of the car at the gate, grounds and house as a whole. His eager eyes couldn't seem to see enough.
Lisbon wrinkled her nose, but didn't contradict her brothers.
Jane's nerves grew as the silence stretched, until he felt like he just might vibrate his way right out of the car. He was surprised the Lisbon's couldn't tell just by looking at him. He was perspiring enough.
Finally, Teresa spoke hoarsely. "I- what the hel- heck would I wear, Jane?" She glanced back at her brothers and lowered her voice. "I can't really show up in jeans."
Maybe asking her to what now sounded suspiciously like a date, right in front of her two little brothers, wasn't the brightest idea Jane had ever had. "You don't need to worry about that." He tried to soothe. "It's not like we dress in suits just for a meal. Whatever nice thing you've got it your closet would be fine."
She gave him a skeptical look.
"Or I've got my m-mother's old clothes." He tripped over the fib. "They're a little old fashioned, but they're nice. I'm already lending one to Grace."
Blinking rapidly at him for a moment, Teresa finally said- "That was you?" She sounded a little disgusted, or maybe angry.
Behind them, Tommy turned from the window with a small, drawn out 'oohh'.
"Oh, no. No, no." Jane waved his hands between them, trying to banish whatever Teresa was thinking back to the hole it had crawled out of. Her thinking he had designs on her best friend was definitely not the road he wanted to go down with her. He wasn't even certain which road he did want to take with her yet. So far, he'd pretty much been winging this whole thing. "I'm helping Rigsby. That's all."
Her expression cleared instantly to one of wonder. "He actually- finally did it? Wayne's the one that asked her out?" She sat back. "They've had crushes on each other for ages. I never thought anything would come of it at that rate."
"And well it might not have." He preened a little. "If not for me."
"What?" She frowned again. "Oh, Jane, don't tell me you're meddling." It sounded like she didn't approve.
Him and his big mouth tonight. Jane backtracked a little. "I owed Rigsby a little help. That's all."
"Why do I get the feeling this isn't going to end well?" Lisbon sighed.
"Cause you're smart." Drew quipped.
Jane gave him an unheated, 'quiet you' glare. "It'll be fine. Trust me."
She gave him a look.
"I'd never hurt my friends, Teresa." He said more seriously, hoping to convey his sincerity.
Her brow flattened and he could tell he'd taken her by surprise. After a thoughtful, almost tense moment where she seemed to be mulling it over, she nodded. "Yeah. Okay."
Narrowing his gaze, he squinted at her dubiously. "Okay, you'll come to dinner, or okay you trust me?"
Her fingers plucked at her pants nervously, jaw tight. When her answer came, it bordered on too quiet to hear, even with him sitting right beside her. "Both."
Even if he had been able to, Jane wouldn't have stopped the grin that grew on his face. She'd accepted. She was coming. He'd asked her, and she'd said yes. His chest felt like it might implode with the rush of emotions passing through it. On impulse and before he could think it over and lose his courage, he leaned over across the car and placed a gentle, barely there kiss to Teresa's cheek.
He was too much of a coward to await a response, instead fleeing from the car as fast as he could and slipping through the gate onto the manor property. However, he was followed by the sounds of her two little brothers' hoots and catcalls from inside the car. "Reese and Patrick sitting in a tree-"
She was going to kill him for that.
And oh, it would be a sweet death.
:)
Jane was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow that night.
The shock of what he'd done- asking Lisbon to dinner, kissing her impossibly soft cheek- lasted through the whole afternoon and the evening meal.
Mrs. Ruskin was kind of worried about him because of it. He could tell when she didn't even blink as he asked her for permission to use the standing reservation at the White Light downtown in the near future. She just nodded and continued to eye him in confusion. She did seem pleased that Teresa had agreed to the evening. Probably even thought that the reservation would be for him and Lisbon as a sort of 'thank you for coming'.
It would've made sense. Perhaps it wasn't that bad of an idea, but he wasn't so low as to try to seduce Lisbon over a fancy meal. He was putting her through enough asking her to come to his home. Something else perhaps. Maybe Summer or Cho would have an idea of something that she would enjoy more. After all, he had to follow that kiss up with something, or she might start to think he wasn't that interested.
When he was finally starting to realize that really, really was. Interested. He couldn't really deny that after today, at least not to himself anymore. The flowering seedling she'd planted in his heart was growing too large to contain. Too big to shut out. It would demand a name, and soon, and when it did, he had to be ready.
He had to have a plan.
However, that really was asking too much of him today. His shock wasn't wearing off, following him to bed and not allowing him to really think. Instead, it pulled him under and to sleep immediately.
It was the middle of the night when he awoke though, not the morning. He was pulled from a dream of Teresa and her soft cheek that somehow morphed into her lips, so he groaned when his mind refused to stay silent and still and let him return to it. Blinking, he looked about for what had disturbed him.
The light from Mrs. Ruskin's window was shining on his bed again. Just visible and just enough that it might have been what roused him. Rubbing at his face, Jane sat up and looked out and up.
There were shadows shifting against the light, so she was awake and moving at least.
His mind automatically jumped to the other night when she'd been crying herself to sleep and he felt sick. Not again. The thought wouldn't leave him alone, wouldn't stop its shouting for attention, so he climbed from bed and snuck his way back to the other hallway where her bedroom was. When he drew close though, he saw that the door was open. He stepped closer.
Suddenly, the door opened wide and he barely had time to flee back into the shadows before a wild looking Mrs. Ruskin came out of her bedroom, holding her cane in one hand and some kind of box under the other arm. She was dressed only in her nightgown and her curly white hair, loosely flying about her shoulders rather than neatly pinned up, was what gave her her manic appearance.
She reached back and closed her door, then went in the opposite direction from Jane's position, hobbling slightly.
Against his better judgment, Jane followed, his curiosity getting the better of him.
The elderly woman didn't go far. She got to the main hall of this wing of the house and halted. Carefully, she switched her cane to her opposite hand, mindful of the box precariously there as well and reached out to a picture on the wall. Her gnarled fingers pulled the thing out to reveal a safe behind.
Jane's attention sharpened. A safe. One that he hadn't found and cataloged yet.
What in the world was she doing?
Putting the code into the dial, with Jane listening as best he could and straining to see without being seen, Mrs. Ruskin opened the thing. She took the box from beneath her arm and placed it inside, closing it back up again and spinning the dial randomly to lock it.
The picture didn't even squeak as she swing it back into place.
Abruptly realizing where she would probably be headed, Jane swiftly ducked into a room, finding himself in a small broom cupboard just in time.
Her cane thunked rhythmically as she passed on by the door back towards her room.
Curiouser and curiouser this woman became. Jane just hoped he could figure her out before it got them both killed.
