"So," Lisbon said, sinking neatly onto the cushion next to him, her fingers curled around a cup of coffee in her favorite white mug. She took a sip. "How was it?"

"How was what?" he asked warily, watching her sigh in contentment from her position next to him on his couch. He found himself mesmerized by the waves of contented pleasure emanating from her as she savored her coffee. Things had come to a sorry pass, he reflected, when he was in danger of forming feelings of jealousy towards a caffeinated beverage.

She gestured vaguely with her free hand. "You know. Working with the female you."

"The female me?" he repeated, distracted by her mouth forming a soft 'o' as she blew on the surface of the coffee to cool it down.

"Brooke Harper."

"You're casting Brooke Harper as the female me?" he said indignantly. "She's nowhere near as good as me!"

"My mistake," Lisbon said dryly. "After all, who could lie and cheat and steal as well as the great Patrick Jane?"

"No one, that's who," Jane said, mollified despite her sarcasm. "Besides, I wasn't working with her. I was working with you. To catch her and identify the real killer."

Lisbon shook her head. "Two cons in one case and neither of them was orchestrated by you. This certainly was one for the books."

"Excuse me, what do you call the bit with the key and the train station?" Jane said, affronted. Was the woman being deliberately provoking? He looked at her, sipping her coffee demurely and decided that she was. "My con exposed two cons and identified the killer. My con clearly trumps the other two."

Lisbon shook her head. "I'm just glad the chewing gum play didn't get any gum in my hair."

Jane paused, distracted again. "I told you, you'd look good with short hair." He could just imagine it, her face all fathomless green eyes and adorable freckles.

Lisbon ignored this. "Plus, you got to check shoes."

Jane brightened. "That's true."

"Have you really checked the shoes of every single person in a wheelchair you've ever met?" Lisbon asked with a certain tone of exasperated affection.

"Yep. You have no idea how satisfying it was to have that effort finally pay off," Jane said, still savoring the gratification.

Lisbon shook her head, smiling. "I'm happy for you. You got to check shoes and flirt with a beautiful woman—pretty much your perfect case, huh?"

Jane frowned. "Flirt with a beautiful woman?" Surely she wasn't talking about herself. Lisbon was the most beautiful woman he knew and his favorite person in the world to flirt with, but he knew she would never refer to herself that way.

Lisbon looked at him as though he were being purposefully obtuse. "Brook Harper," she reminded him. "She's just your type, after all."

"My 'type?'" Jane said, indignant again. He didn't have a type. He was an equal opportunity lover. Although he was prepared to admit—secretly, to himself—that he seemed to have developed something of a weakness for a certain shade of green eyes in recent years. But Lisbon wasn't to know that.

"Sure. Cunning, beautiful, and manipulative," Lisbon said. "The Patrick Jane trifecta."

"In what way is that my type?" Jane demanded.

Lisbon started ticking off examples on her fingers. "Jennifer Sands, Kristina Frye, Brooke Harper—"

"It's not like I dated any of those women," Jane pointed out. "So I fail to see how you can claim to have any idea what my 'type' is."

"Come on," Lisbon said, not buying it. "You have to admit you were drawn to those women, found them attractive."

Jane considered this. Okay, so he had found each of the women she'd named attractive. He wasn't blind. But the truth was that he'd been drawn to each of them more for the opportunity to pit his wits against a worthy opponent than out of any serious designs on any of them. He wasn't a position to form serious designs on any woman at the moment. But even if he had been, none of those woman would have been his first choice of someone to pursue. He shifted subtly away from Lisbon's inviting warmth, well aware of how dangerous it was to engage in this line of thinking at all while she was sitting so close to him. It was easier to stay focused on the task at hand—namely, killing Red John and keeping her safe—when he wasn't completely enveloped in cinnamon waves. Not to mention close enough to get lost in those kaleidoscope eyes.

"Perhaps," he said finally. "I admit I find it stimulating to engage in a battle of wits with a worthy adversary. But that doesn't mean that kind of woman is exactly my type." He thought of Lisbon walking the length of the boat with him, perfectly in synch despite the fundamentally different ways their minds operated. Finding the switch for the anchor together. Lisbon leading the effort to execute the take down once he'd come up with the plan. He didn't appreciate how much he truly enjoyed working with her often enough, he realized. Working towards a common goal with someone whose strengths were so different from his own was a tremendous gift. He'd never really had that in his life before. In the carnie world, there was a certain fellowship, to be sure, but in the end, everyone was focused on their own hustle—every man for himself. The closest he'd ever come to having something like this, he realized, swallowing a lump in his throat, had been with Angela, when they'd been plotting to leave the carnival together. But once they'd made it out, he'd worked on his own, focused on making as much money as possible so Angela and whatever children they might have would never want for anything. When Charlotte had come along, that feeling of working together towards a common goal had reasserted itself, but Charlotte herself had been so delightfully distracting he'd never taken the time to properly appreciate it while he'd had it.

Lisbon nudged him gently in the side with her elbow. "Hey," she said softly. "Where'd you go just then?"

"Sorry," he said, pulling his mind back from the past and focusing on the present. "I was just thinking. Maybe I'm drawn to those women because I enjoy mentally sparring with them. But once the match is over, I want to go back to my corner to someone who will support me when I'm down. Someone who will look at what I'm doing from a different angle and tell me how to do better." Because the truth was, those women were entirely too like him. What he really needed was someone as unlike him as possible. Someone brave, and strong, with her own quiet intelligence. The kind that didn't need tricks or bluster to shine, but rather made itself known by critically evaluating every situation and organizing her resources to meet whatever challenges happened to crop up next.

"Sounds like a good person to have on your team," Lisbon said.

He had to smile at that. "I don't think I can ask for better than that, can I?"

"I don't think so," she agreed. "I hope you find it someday."

He made the mistake of looking into her eyes then, remembering too late the danger inherent in being close enough to examine the gold flecks in her eyes and wonder how those golden sparks somehow made her green eyes even more clear and deep. "Yes," he murmured absently, still lost in the kaleidoscope. "Someday."