A/N - Happy New Year! Here I am back with a new chapter!

I had planned on more but we unexpectedly had to take care of my grandmother over the holiday. She somehow sprained her wrist on her right hand and thought it was an attack of arthritis. She went to the ER and then ended up in the hospital with an attack of heart arrhythmia. Her heart rate was all over the place. So, she should be home in a few days. Meanwhile, that break I wanted to get some writing done over Christmas break might just be possible.

A/N - Here we are with Sophie gonna set Eliot right...

Maybe...

Can't wait to see your first reviews of the new year! Enjoy and please do Review... You never know what might happen to Parker...

BWHAHAHAHAHA!

Sophie went back out to her vehicle and brought in a carry on piece of luggage and her make up bag. She dropped her bags off in the guest room designated for her and Nate before she went into the kitchen. It took a little bit of time, but she found her favorite tea in a cabinet before she put a pot of water on the stove to heat for her tea. Then she found Eliot in the living room, staring out a window toward the barn.

"Eliot, where did you see her last?"

"In the living room, last night," the grifter knew how to read the hitter; he wasn't telling her everything.

"I have a few minutes left. I'll go settle in and then I'll look for clues…" she thought she might offer to him in a soft voice.

She really didn't worry that much because she knew Parker had been with Nate in the early morning hours. The grifter knew the mastermind would have his eyes on her. Sophie set herself up in the guest room as quickly as she could and then found Parker's room. She looked around the room and spotted a white envelope corner peeking out from under the pillow. It was quickly pocketed and she headed back downstairs.

"Water's ready," Eliot bellowed.

"Coming, darling," she yelled back.

"Did you find anything upstairs?" He was still staring out the window. Did he even notice she'd been gone?

"How did you know I went up to the second floor?" She asked as she turned off the water on the stove.

"You have a distinctive foot fall."

"Oh… Parker left me a note."

"What does it say?"

"I haven't opened it yet."

"Well OPEN it dammit!" Sophie felt his fuse was getting shorter.

"No Eliot. I will open it when I'm damn good and ready. Now here darling, here's some tea and I want you to drink it. All of it as I will do to mine as I read the note."

She knew he would pick up the English breakfast in the tea because he had a distinctive nose… At least it would prove to him that it wasn't chamomile. She needed him to calm down before he hurt her or himself. Sophie sat down at the dining room table with the two mugs of hot liquid. Then the note came out of the pocket of her jeans.

The hitter watched the drive and the barn as he listened to the grifter move about the farm house. The one thing that bothered him was that he thought he should have seen Jake around somewhere; maybe getting rid of more snow or feeding the horses and ponies in the barn. No sign of movement… And as Parker called them, his spidey senses were on edge. Something about that man didn't seem right and he couldn't quite put his finger on it… He never saw the man without a hat so he couldn't tell if he was military by the haircut… But the man really didn't look him in the eye much when they had briefly met before Parker stole him away on horseback. When Sophie came down, he finally looked away from the window and came to the dining room table in his ride. He watched as the grifter painstakingly took the note carefully out of the envelope like it was a fine piece of art and started to read. Eliot couldn't believe he'd missed seeing the note before the grifter arrived… But then he let himself off the hook by telling himself that he hadn't been looking for one for Sophie to begin with. He couldn't imagine what Parker put in the note to the tall Englishwoman. For all he knew it could have been an order for more cereal…

"Mmmm… Ah-ha… Yeah…" Sophie went on to make annoying sound effects.

"Dammit Sophie, just read it."

"Hold your britches, be done in a minute. Have some more tea," she spoke as she pushed the pot a little closer.

He didn't really want tea, but it was oddly comforting. And he did it for the grifter so that she'd get off his back. He didn't need her to try to retrain his brain with that touching stuff again. Then he watched as she put the note back in the envelope carefully and stuffing it back into the denim pocket on her jeans.

"Well? What's it say?"

"I want you to tell me what happened last night…"

'Shit, did he really have to relive that again?' He thought.

"She made me get all dressed up and made me dinner. Felt like the last dinner of a condemned man headed to the electric chair. Don't get me wrong, the food was good. Yeah, you might as well know, Parker can cook… It wasn't just some buddy of mine that dropped of food; that was all Parker. Anyway, after dinner, she had all the furniture moved and I figured okay we'll do some floor exercises on my legs for physical therapy. Then she comes out of the blue and wants me up on my feet. So, I got up and she wrapped her arms around me, holding onto my belt. She turned on the stereo and started to try and get me to slow dance with her!"

"What's so wrong with that, Eliot? Dancing is good physical therapy."

"Not the way she was dressed it wasn't…"

"Why Eliot, is that a blush I see creeping up your neck?" The grifter teased.

"The music was a little too romantic for my liking…"

"How did that make you feel?"

"It wasn't good. I'm not gonna talk about my past, but one of the songs didn't exactly make me feel like whistling Dixie out of my ass…"

Sophie knew she was pushing all the right buttons so far… If her plan went right, he'd tell her what Parker left in his note, though she already knew because Parker put it in the one she left behind for her.

"Go on, love."

"Well then I suddenly got the feeling she was trying to tell me something with the music and what she was trying to say just turned me off."

"What did she tell you?" There, now she had him in a corner.

"She wants to love me. I can't… I can't… She deserves better than me. I can't love her the way she needs to be loved."

"Why not?"

"Because I had it in my hands and it died… Just like everything else I've killed. It stays dead."

"Eliot, I'm going to tell you a story…"

"We don't have time for that, we need to find Parker."

"Shut up and listen…," she barked at him. "There was a broken soul who used to steal to survive… One day she joined a team that became like family to her. Almost everything in the world to her… Then an accident happened and one of those teammates was injured, her favorite one as it happens. She instantly found a new purpose to her life… There was something more important to her than stealing, to make sure her favorite teammate was whole again."

She could see that he was trying to process what she was telling him…

"She spent days and nights, and the hours between, never leaving her teammate's side. She even turned to magic to help heal him. Anything to get him to wake up after he'd died three times… And then slowly he started to recover, and she planned for him a place where he could recover in a peaceful place, not in the city. Where he could ride horses and breathe fresh air… Instead of only seeing obstacles to overcome."

Sophie stopped to take a couple sips of tea…

"And then one day, her teammate got to leave the hospital. And she was so happy… But then her teammate's father was dying, so because she couldn't remember her real father, she thought it was important that she be a good friend and take her teammate to see him one last time. As it happened, a nightmare began… And the other teammates were called in to save the injured teammate's family, because she saw that the family was important to him, because aside from the team, he had no other family."

"But I never asked her to do any of this…"

"Hush, I'm not done. So she went to work and came up with a plan. She didn't want to worry her healing teammate, so not all the details were shared. And no, I don't know what they are. Her goal became to get her friend and teammate back up on his feet so that she could leave. But she wasn't leaving him alone… She left plans behind for more physical and massage therapy for him. She'd planned to be back to her teammate before he realized she'd been gone a while. And then she could tell him that his family was safe."

"I would rather have Nate in charge."

"Anyway, every touch and every moment she's waited on her friend, hand and foot, was for his benefit and because she loves him very, very much."

"Parker doesn't know what love is… She may have some crazy idea what it is, but she doesn't know."

"Eliot… She knows more than you think. She knows that love is patient, and love is kind. She knows that it doesn't keep score on what wrongs have been done to one another…"

"See, there you go. I'm none of those things. I don't keep attachments… You know that."

"Yeah, I do… But one day Eliot, whoring your way around the world isn't going to cut it… And you're gonna want to settle down. Look at Nate and I…"

"Yeah, look at you…," he teased.

"Yes, we've had our ups and downs, but we're still together. And the make-up sex is wonderful," she got him back.

"Dammit Sophie, I don't need to know that."

"You're welcome for the mental image," Sophie could give as good as she got… "What did her note to you say?"

"She told me that I'm afraid to love her…"

"Well, are you?" And there was the sixty-four thousand dollar question…