Rick finishes his supper, watching as Carl dashes from the laundry room to his room. His son is shirtless because he'd realized belatedly that his favorite Braves t-shirt was in his laundry hamper. Chuckling, he gets up to fetch the dropped socks just as the door opens behind him. Turning to see Amanda, he smiles. She's tucking away her access card, not knocking as he thought she might and only using the card for the elevator. It feels like they're finding their common ground finally, just a little.

"Carl's leaving a trail of socks," he says flourishing the four socks, none of which match.

Amanda smiles, easier than she's done around him in a while. "You should tell him about this wonderful invention called a laundry basket."

"And deny him the teenage fun of running through the apartment with armloads of laundry?" Rick goes to hand the socks off to Carl, who has his Braves t-shirt on now.

"You should go with us, Dad," he says, sorting socks to find a match.

"I just bought two tickets, Carl," Rick says, going to add his dishes to the dishwasher.

"C'mon. It's Labor Day. I'll bet it didn't sell out." Carl's expression is earnest, and the idea he's being asked to go along is appealing, except this was Amanda's game. Glancing to his erstwhile partner, Rick shrugs. "If it's good with Amanda."

Whatever truce they've reached seems to hold, and he has hope for pulling a friendship out of the mess when she actually smiles. It makes him wonder a bit, so he spares a flicker of curiosity about why she came by last night. "Why not? I know you probably didn't want to commit on a work night, but you're home for the day, right?"

"It was an astonishingly calm day for the last day of a holiday weekend," Rick admits. He'd cycled half his detectives off for the day based on past activity, with the rest getting it as a floating holiday later. "If you don't mind…"

Amanda nods, so he goes to find his phone. There isn't an extra ticket with the ones he already purchased, so he buys another three. There's an alternative for them attending where he doesn't have to buy seats, but he's never used that option with taking Carl to the games and doesn't intend to start now.

"Let me change, and then we can go," Rick calls out down the hall. He's still in his trousers and dress shirt from work, and while he wouldn't be the only attendee to show up that way to a night game, he prefers to be more comfortable. Carl shouts back an okay, returning to whatever he's chattering to Amanda about.

When he reappears in jeans and one of his own Braves t-shirts, Amanda arches a brow, looking between him and Carl. Their shirts don't match, but they're obviously set up for the game whereas Amanda is wearing a plain green t-shirt. "I feel like the odd one out."

"I can fix that." Carl grins and trots off to his room, returning with another shirt.

Amanda takes it, but laughs and shrugs, disappearing into the powder room to change. When she returns, spreading her arms and laughing at the close match to Carl's shirt, Rick squashes the thought that he wishes he'd thought to loan her a shirt himself. He's just glad it's a men's shirt, because he isn't so sure his resolve to keep things platonic would survive seeing her in a more form fitting women's shirt.

"You prepaid parking, right, Dad?" Carl asks, patting his pockets before dashing back to his room for his missing wallet.

"I did." If it wasn't for work, he would just take a cab or Uber. "Are we taking your car or mine?"

She thinks it over and surprises him. "Yours. Odds I'll get called in again are slim. They try to spread the overtime out."

"Too bad you already ate, Dad. No ballpark food for you," Carl teases as they head for the elevator.

"For which my cardiologist is probably grateful." The reply gets him a concerned side look from Amanda, but she doesn't comment. "I'm sure you'll make up for my lack."

"He ate a Blooper burger last time," Amanda admits, shuddering. "And ate the entire thing."

Rick eyes Carl, not sure if he's impressed or concerned for his digestive health. That thing has four burger patties, a footlong hotdog, chicken tenders, plus a bunch of toppings. "Jesus, son. Your mother's right about you having two hollow legs."

Carl just grins and leads the way to the garage and keys the code to open it. "I gave Amanda the candied popcorn."

Rick chuckles as Amanda rolls her eyes. Carl slides into the back as soon as he unlocks the door, but Amanda hesitates on taking the front passenger seat. "Wouldn't it be more comfortable for you up front?"

"Nah. If I was as tall as Dad, maybe. Back's fine."

Reassured, Amanda gets into the car. She inspects the car with open curiosity, which makes Carl lean forward as much as his seatbelt allows as Rick navigates the parking garage and out into traffic. "It's a sweet car, isn't it? Dad keeps telling me I can drive it one day."

Rick snorts. "When it doesn't triple my insurance rates, maybe. We'll talk when you turn twenty-five."

"My great-grandpa had one this exact color," Carl adds. "He bought it brand new in 1966. It took Dad nearly a year to find one just like it."

"It's that rare?" Amanda turns in her seat to eye Carl.

"Actually, Aunt Kate bought it for Grandpa. That's what made it rare, because he lives in Denver, not Boston. He bought it there and drove it east," Rick interjects.

"Oh, yeah. Anyway, that's what makes it different. It's a special edition, only sold out west, like three hundred made. That's why Aunt Kate got the car after your grandpa died, right?"

Rick nods. "One of my cousins owns it now."

"And you went to find a car just like it?"

"He taught me to drive in his, so, yeah." Rick knows his smile is a little goofy and embarrassed, but when he realized it wouldn't cost him any more than most modern cars, he couldn't resist. "It's not an Eleanor or that kind of rare. Just unique."

A glance over shows Amanda looking thoughtful. "So your family isn't all Georgia born and bred?"

Carl laughs from the backseat, and Rick just smiles. "My mother's family? Most all of them. My father was born and raised in Boston. Seventh of ten kids, nine of them boys, and one of only two to go to college and leave the state."

"That's a huge family." Amanda looks wide eyed, but then nods. "That's why you and Lori don't mind Carl going to MIT. There's a ton of family there."

Rick hits traffic congestion, while Carl tells Amanda about the three trips they've managed to visit family up north since he was old enough to remember. Two have been since the divorce. For a kid who is the only one of his generation of their family in Georgia, Carl took to the masses of cousins like a duck to water. Sure, he'd prefer his son to attend Georgia Tech, but heading north won't be a culture shock for Carl either.

By the time they're in the ballpark, Carl and Amanda are debating where to eat. Carl snags his elbow. "C'mon, Dad. Tell Amanda the chicken and waffle boat is amazing."

"It is."

Amanda looks intrigued. "I thought you were a vegetarian."

Rick laughs, shaking his head. "Healthy food, not necessarily vegetarian. Those places are usually easier, though, if you don't want to be stuck with grilled chicken salads."

"Okay, fine. If it keeps you away from that monstrosity you ate last time, I'll eat this waffle boat."

Watching her figuring out how to eat the mango habanero sauced chicken is entertaining, even as Carl gives her tips that the honey and powder sugar coated waffle is part of balancing the heat. "Jesus, Carl, how the hell is this amazing," she asks his son, patting at her watering eyes. The heat from the pepper sauce is making her sweat lightly, but it's accompanied by a flush along her skin he finds appealing.

Carl is snickering, even as he finishes chewing a bite of his own. "It said habanero when you ordered."

Rick leaves them long enough to retrieve ice cream bars. "Here. Ice cream will help more than the rest of the sweets."

The game starts, distracting them from Amanda's battle with the chicken, but Rick doesn't miss that she finishes everything down to the last curly fry on the side. It's Carl that jogs off to return with a second round of ice cream. His son hasn't been subtle tonight, deliberately sitting so that Rick's got the middle seat of their three. He'll have to have a chat with him tonight about the barely subtle matchmaking. For now, he's just going to enjoy the game - and the company.

Amanda enjoys the baseball game far more than she expects. Carl is an enthusiastic fan, but along the lines of anyone who enjoys sports. Sitting next to Rick, who pulls out his smart phone and shows her an app, is sitting next to a diehard baseball affictionato.

She finally understands why he fiddled with his phone so much when he watched games at Merle's bar. While the Braves are definitely his favorite team, he also follows the Red Sox. Apparently, Atlanta's team started off in Boston, too. Scorekeeping does make things a little more interesting, especially as Rick explains both the action on the field and the entries for the app in that soft tenor of his.

It also puts her close enough to realize whatever cologne he put on when they left the apartment is not the bright, clean smelling cologne she's scented on him that reminds her of someone freshly showered. This is something richer, that smelled similar at first, but aged into something that smells like spicy, rich coffee with hints of leather. Normally, she's not much into men's colognes, finding them too chemical in nature, but whatever this is smells nice and luxurious. With all the other hints of wealth, she wouldn't be surprised if it's something crazy expensive.

By the time the game enters the later innings, she's a few steps further down the path of letting all the matchmaking happen, because Rick's boyishly happy at the game. There's none of the playboy she's been led to expect, and while she knows the seats they have tonight are far more expensive than the ones Bob gave her, they aren't obscenely so. It doesn't hurt that he took the two tickets from his prior plans for just her and Carl and passes them on to a young couple behind them that definitely were aiming for cheap seats.

Rick leans in toward the end of the sixth inning, aiming to be overheard over a loud fan behind them that isn't pleased with the out call against the home team. "Not as boring as you thought it would be?"

Amanda shakes her head, not leaning away despite the way Rick's turned meaning she can feel his soft breath on her skin. "It's the long stretches of no hits that get a little weird."

He smiles and hands her his phone. "Why don't you try the rest of the game?"

"Trying to convert me as a fan?" she teases, a little surprised at being handed his phone. In her experience, most people don't care to hand over something with such personal access to them. It's not like she would snoop, but many people would.

"Diehard baseball fans always try. Besides, the more you like the games, maybe you'll come with me again." There's the barest hint of an undertone she thinks might be flirting, but if so, he's keeping it restrained. But by the rules she set for him, that's the boundary line. He isn't pushing it, and it intrigues her.

The seventh inning stretch leaves her solo for the first time. Carl's jaunted off for more junk food, while Rick apologetically stated he's too old to be tackling Mountain Dew anymore. She laughs at the joke, watching him make his way toward the restrooms and choosing to relax in her seat after a judicious stretch.

Cop instincts alert her to someone stopping at the end of their row. She looks over to see an overly made up platinum blonde studying her with a sour look on her pretty face. The woman is expensively dressed in that way designed to show off it's expensive. Amanda might not know designers on sight like some women, but she recognizes designer clothing in general, at least. "Can I help you?"

"I just wanted to see what sort of woman would have Rick out in the cheap seats instead of where he should be."

Amanda frowns, pocketing Rick's phone that he left with her. "What are you talking about?" These aren't exactly cheap seats, not terrace level infield, but the blonde points over and down toward the area where attending the game includes club seats, catering, and God only knows what else. She's heard plenty of working class folks bitch about the cost of those areas.

"His family's company has several club seats, you know. They're wealthy enough they don't even attend all that much. It's just one of those things they do to be seen, you know." The smile on the woman's face is bitter and false. "That's where we sat when he brought me. But I see he's slumming it again, like with that beanpole ex-wife of his."

"I have no idea what the hell you think is going on here, lady, but Rick and I aren't dating. We work together." A sly voice in the back of her mind reminds her she's been imagining more all night, each time she gets a good whiff of how that cologne has blended into his body chemistry.

The woman is older than the coeds she's been told about, maybe two or three years older than Amanda, which is almost worrisome. But then something out of place settles into Amanda's study of the stranger: she's wearing a wedding band, along with an obnoxiously large diamond engagement ring. She also catches Amanda looking toward it and grimaces.

"I had to settle for someone a little less cultured in the end, when Rick married the little redneck before I was old enough for our parents' plans to join our families. My family was old money, but we had nothing on the Corbyns. Then things should have aligned again, because his dear mother certainly still wanted to see us paired off after his divorce."

"Even though you're married?" Amanda knows her tone is incredulous. Lori's never had a good word about her former mother-in-law, but this is beyond belief.

The blonde laughs. "I wasn't married until last year. A woman can only wait so long, and modeling is a young woman's business. Lyle isn't old money, and he's thirty years my senior, but that just means he doesn't expect children out of me. That was the one good thing Lori would have taken care of for me, if Rick hadn't been so stubborn."

Amanda is paying more attention than the little harridan, because she sees Rick just as he speaks. "My mother never should have encouraged your delusions. I wouldn't have married you if you'd been the last woman on earth, Valerie."

The frigid tone makes the woman freeze, and she slowly turns to face Rick. "You thought I was good enough to date."

"Three dates was plenty to convince me that my mother is foolishly naive about your true nature. I suggest you stop harassing my friend and get back to your husband before I go explain what you're up to."

Surprisingly, the threat works, with Valerie stalking away just as Carl reappears. Rick takes the seat next to her, offering her a bottle of water. "I'm sorry about that. Valerie and I didn't exactly grow up together, but our parents owned adjacent houses on the coast. Our mothers got this dreamy idea of uniting the families like some Victorian novel."

"I see. You don't have to apologize for her." Amanda is starting to absorb the information slowly, and the game restarting helps draw Rick's attention away from her. Carl keeps looking their way curiously, and she knows it's because they've lost their relaxed camaraderie. Rick seems embarrassed, and Amanda is trying to ignore the most significant tidbit of information Valerie dropped.

She could care less about family matchmaking of offspring, since obviously Rick never took it seriously. It's the small, prettily wrapped bombshell of Rick's family name that is crawling into that place that's seen them as too socially different and exploding along her senses. The knowledge shouldn't be so shocking. She's seen so many indications of wealth she shouldn't be surprised.

Rick is a fucking Corbyn. They aren't Vanderbilt or Rockefeller wealthy, not on such a national scale of wealth so large it's practically perverse. But here? In Georgia? They're probably among the top twenty wealthiest families, and the company founded by his great grandfather is one of the largest industrial manufacturing employers in the Southeast.

She struggles to wrap her mind around a man raised to that being content as a cop. The penthouse, glimpses of ease with money, and an old school gentility not seen often these days… that's from a background she can't even begin to imagine outside of a movie or novel. Carl seems like such a normal kid, more upper middle class than Amanda could ever imagine being, but normal.

They never regain their comfortable state before the game ends, and she even hands the phone back instead of keeping score. The ride back is mostly filled with Carl's easy chatter. The teen dashes ahead, intent on getting upstairs for something, leaving Amanda alone with his father. Since he neglects to tell her goodnight, she thinks he expects her to join them upstairs.

She'd intended to, really she had, but she starts making her excuses to Rick and watches the last of the contentment fade from his expression. He reaches out as if he's going to touch her shoulder, but drops his hand.

"I really am sorry about Valerie."

Amanda sighs and fiddles with her car keys. "She wasn't really that awful. A bit dramatic like a soap opera, but it was more angry cat than intimidating compared to what I deal with at work."

Rick nods. "Worst thing I ever did was think it would shut my mother up by going out on a few dates. She was a nice girl, once, but she was about fifteen when I married Lori. Her family lost most of their fortune in the recession a decade back. Working for a living wasn't in her game plan, thanks to her mother expecting her to marry someone of similar background."

"Like you?" Amanda can see it, she thinks. For all of Valerie's catty behavior, she carries herself with the same bearing and has the same cultured speech patterns Rick does.

"If she'd been smart, she would have aimed for my cousin, who actually runs the company. I guess she didn't want to be wife number four." The wry grin tells her Rick is trying to downplay the impact of the family name he's carefully never mentioned.

"Depends on whether he's careful enough for prenups." It's such a weird thing to say, but she knows they exist in worlds like his. Lori says the word like it's the foulest curse sometimes, although it seems directed at her former in-laws, not Rick.

It's a sore point with Rick, because there's a minute flinch he controls quickly. "He generally is."

"Smart man." She can say that honestly. There are enough Valeries in the world to make planning for a divorce before you even marry a necessity. "I should go."

Rick is disappointed, she can tell, but he honors their original agreement. "Stay safe out there tomorrow."

It's the same thing he texted to her last night, making her realize he probably saw her in the garage. Did he see how she hesitated in getting out of the car, or did he just catch her leaving. She pushes the thought away, carefully not looking his way. Yesterday was foolishness on her part.

"You, too." It doesn't surprise her that he stays by the elevator, watching her as she gets to her car. She's armed with a badge and her backup weapon, but he still watches. The part of her that regrets not getting on that elevator wishes the partnership was something other than temporary on that alone. He has her back.

As she passes by the elevator, he's inside as the doors slowly close. She gets a glimpse of his head bowed and his hands stuffed in his jeans pockets, shoulders slumped. It puts a chink in her resolve, but she drives on.

An adopted kid who doesn't even know who her own father is can't be compatible with the world he comes from. This isn't some rags to riches princess story. If Rick's mother hated Lori, who at least gave her a grandson and learned all those finicky upper class manners, she would loathe Amanda. She's a career cop who rides motorcycles with her brothers, one of which is an ex-con and the other married to Rick's ex.

"Jesus, Mandy, you'd give the old broad a heart attack the second you opened your mouth," she mutters. Christ Almighty, she wishes things were different, because she keeps imagining how good he smelled tonight and wishing she could have rediscovered how good he feels, too. She's going to ignore that her mind already goes to the sort of longevity between her and Rick that would mean she needs to meet his mother.

Dreaming impossible things has never been something Amanda Shepherd excelled at, so she's not starting now.

Rick ought to have expected Carl to be spying a bit to see if his matchmaking worked, but even with Valerie's bullshit, he had found himself hoping the teen's machinations would have some effect. Seeing Amanda here last night, even if she didn't make it inside the building, it gave him a small kernel of hope. They'd had a good time at the ballgame, not quite a date, but close enough to make him understand what it would be like.

But then Valerie happened, and he could see the blooming knowledge of who his grandfather was behind those green eyes. Amanda went from warm and friendly, sitting close enough to him that they were definitely pushing any boundary of just being friends and partners, to withdrawn. She hadn't been unfriendly or even cold, just cloaked in that wariness that he remembers from all their early meetings when she hadn't been actually antagonistic.

"Amanda didn't come up?" his son asks, venturing out of his room when Rick just leans against the door, feeling old and tired.

Shaking his head, Rick straightens, a flash of green catching his eye. It's Amanda's t-shirt, left in the powder room when she changed into one of Carl's Braves t-shirts. The damn thing made her eyes brighten from a mossy dark green to something vivid, which he had tried not to notice at the time. After spending the entire evening close enough to keep getting glimpses of how the color changed with her emotions, he can't help but remember them now.

"Carl?" he says softly, hating the disappointed look on the teen's face. Carl has never liked a single woman he's dated, and while their age was a primary factor, Amanda's still younger than him by a decade or so. Something about her settles Carl's antagonism.

The teen just sighs. "She's smart, and she knows what being a cop is like. I thought maybe… Well, it wouldn't be like with Mom."

So many of the problems with his marriage had been beyond the scope of his job that he wishes it were easier to explain to a boy who loves them both. Carl has no idea of what the early years were like, when Lori struggled to adapt to a world she wasn't born into. Tonight proves Amanda feels the same way as Lori did, despite being older and more able to handle such issues. "I understand. But I'd like to be friends with Amanda, and I think that can't happen if people are nudging us beyond that."

Carl nods and surprises him by hugging him. "Maybe we should just get you a dating app, Dad. Or see if Uncle Shane knows someone."

Rick chuckles and ruffles the boy's hair. "Let's don't and say we did. Going out and looking to date didn't exactly do me a lot of good, so maybe you let your dad just be content with his own company for now?"

Dating anyone other than Amanda feels like swallowing a bitter pill. He knows that will fade in time, the same way that the idea of dating anyone after Lori finally seemed palatable after he got his head on a little straighter after the divorce. For now, it's just something to endure until it does fade away, like dust scattering in the wind.