A/N: A huge debt of gratitude to M for the beta and all the support. Big thanks to B for a very influential line. And, of course, huge :wub: to Maple Street. Best. Forum. Ever.

Continued from chapter six.

Chapter Seven:

Samantha had cancelled their dinner, and Jack didn't know why. Didn't know if it was because she wanted out of his life, of if she just thought she should be. Perhaps the reminder of their office, their relationship, was just too much baggage to bring with her to Washington.

Samantha had cancelled their dinner, and Jack didn't know why he was walking down a third floor hallway of the J. Edgar Hoover building with a visitor's badge clipped to his lapel, an office number in his hand and no real idea as to why he was there in the first place.

Scanning the gray walls, he passed rows of brown plaques until he found the one he was looking for.

C-16.

He found the door ajar and caught sight of her through the opening. Leaning over her desk, she was gesturing toward the monitor to someone outside his narrow range of vision. It was a one-sided vantage point, but from her body language he could tell that whatever she was looking at on the screen was a breakthrough of some kind, and the person she was talking to simply wasn't getting it. Her teeth grazed her bottom lip and her shoulders pointed away, not toward, the source of her frustration. He was, by profession, an observer, but observing Samantha had also become a hobby.

He stepped away from the door as it opened; the man he wasn't able to see before had moved away from the desk and was now on his way out. Nearly colliding with him, the other agent offered an apology and a cautious smile when he took note of Jack's visitor badge.

"Were you here to see Agent Spade?"

For the first time since he had boarded the shuttle, he wondered if this was a bad idea. "I..."

"Yes, he is." Samantha approached an even smile. "Charles Warren, this is Special Agent Jack Malone. He was my supervisory agent in New York."

At that, Warren's smile brightened. "It's nice to finally meet. I've heard a lot about you."

Jack kept his face neutral as he wondered if Samantha had brought up his name or if his reputation as the Northeast's most notoriously rogue agent had preceded him. "I can only imagine."

Samantha coughed and Warren laughed uncertainly. "I better get going. I'll let you two catch up." He passed Jack and paused. "You should be proud; she's a great agent."

Jack caught her eyes. "Yes, she is."

Smiling awkwardly, Samantha waited until he was around the corner. Confident that he was out of earshot, she stared at Jack. "Why are you here?"

"What kind of greeting is that?"

"I'm sorry." Not knowing if she should hug him or ask him to leave, she crossed her arms in front of her. "But why are you here?"

He motioned generically down the hall. "I came to drop off that file."

"That's why they have couriers."

"It was a very important file."

Her eyes darted around the office. "I thought we cancelled."

"No, you cancelled and didn't give me a reason."

"So you just showed up anyway?"

Now that he was standing in her office, in DC, it did seem more than a little impetuous. "Would I have seen you again otherwise?"

She took a step back and began stacking folders on her desk. "I've just been really busy this week."

"What are you going to do now?" When she didn't answer immediately, he took a step closer. "Did you want to grab dinner?"

She looked up and for the first time since he arrived he saw honest indecision cross her features. "I don't know. I have a lot of paperwork."

"You have all weekend."

Gesturing at her black suit, she frowned. "I'm not really dressed to go out."

"It's a business dinner."

"A business dinner?" She eyed him skeptically.

Nodding, he held the door as she picked up her briefcase.

"Martin said that?" Samantha laughed as the waiter reached across and refilled her wine glass. "What did the woman say?"

"Apparently she wasn't too offended. Ended up asking him out."

"I guess sometimes the best pick-up lines are unintentional."

They had walked the short distance from the Hoover building to a small Italian restaurant --more formal than the places they usually frequented, but not intimate enough to betray Jack's justification for having this meal at all. He imagined that she knew as well as he did that he hadn't brought her here to discuss a case or her new position, but so far they had only broached safe topics. The weather. Work. The news. It was familiar, and it had helped melt away much of the tension that had existed since their call earlier in the week. He had made a big overture by coming there, so he had decided before his arrival to let her dictate the boundaries.

"I've never used one."

"You never used what?"

"A pick-up line."

She looked incredulous. "You're kidding." He shook his head. "That's unusual. I've been the target of all of them, I think. How did you get dates?"

"The same way I got this one."

Raising an eyebrow, she took a bite of her salad. "By stalking women several hundred miles away and showing up at their office door? And I thought this was a business dinner."

"The process is the same."

"What about back in college? Not even then?"

He motioned for the server and ordered another drink. After he had left, he answered. "I didn't date a lot in college."

"Me neither."

Jack couldn't hide his surprise. "Really?"

"Is that so hard to believe?" She grinned.

"I just didn't take you as someone who would have a hard time getting dates."

Their dinners came and she paused a moment before answering. "I didn't say I couldn't get any. I was kind of a bookworm."

That was one thing he had never considered about her. "I always pictured you as more of the sorority type."

She knew Jack well enough to know that he didn't intend that as an insult; respect had never been a problem in their relationship, professionally or personally. "Nope. I was skinny, awkward. Mousy hair."

"I would have gone out with you."

Meeting his eyes, she was touched to see some sincerity there. She laughed nervously. "Until my ex-husband caught up with you."

She had mentioned her marriage only briefly, and he had never pursued the subject. Now, twisting some spaghetti around his fork, he took the opportunity. "Why didn't that work out?"

"He cheated on me."

He stopped chewing.

"Not really." Pushing a cheese ravioli to one side, she speared another one with her fork. "It just didn't work out. We had different mindsets. I went to school full time and had a job, and he wanted a wife. Conflict of interests."

Jack smiled. "Sounds like it."

"I moved on, he moved on, and we haven't talked since."

"You didn't have any regrets?"

"My mom had more than I did. She was of the 'You made your bed, you should lie in it' mentality."

"You were 18."

She shrugged. "Apparently you're never too young to make life-altering mistakes."

Grimacing at the irony, Jack took another sip of his drink. "I was 33 when I got married. Sometimes the mistake's in not walking away."

"I should have married you. We'd be completely dysfunctional."

"I would have been far too old for you."

Smirking, she took another bite of pasta. "As opposed to now?"

"33 and 18 is quite an age difference."

"So is 18 and three, but once you get to a certain age maturity takes over."

"In most cases."

He caught her staring as he cut into his chicken parmesan. "What?"

"I was just thinking how long it's been since we've had dinner together. Just the two of us, I mean."

It had been a long time. Before his reconciliation attempt with Marie. Before the Office of Professional Review had become involved and made them wary of even the most innocent contact. "Yeah, it's been awhile."

"Do you remember the last time?"

She had just stretched the boundary a little farther. He nodded at her to continue.

"You told me that we had to end...what we had, because even if you were never going back to your wife you didn't want to risk it coming out and causing even more problems."

It was true. He had ended their relationship that night, not just because of the potential ramifications of sleeping with his subordinate and putting the final stake through the heart of his marriage, but because the guilt had been intolerable. Not wanting to sacrifice one for the other, he could only sacrifice them both. He had broken it off with Samantha over lo mien and egg rolls in a crowded Chinese restaurant near their office. There hadn't been any tears or anger and Jack had felt like he was closing a business transaction more than a yearlong relationship with a woman he had come to love more than his wife.

Samantha had walked away and he had gone back to his apartment. The affair was over even if the feelings weren't.  "What are you saying?"

"I wonder why this is different."

"I just wanted to see you."

She gave him a dubious look and he was struck by how beautiful she was. Between the office and dinner she had removed her hair from the ponytail she had worn earlier, and that combined with the low lighting of the restaurant made her features appear very soft. "I'm sorry about earlier. I was just surprised to see you and to be honest I didn't know if I wanted to see you. I didn't know what your motivations were and I thought maybe I should just move on."

"I can understand that."

"Can you? Getting transferred to another job in another city. Having to move away from everything I've known for the last several years. Meanwhile, you have the same office overseeing the same people and can choose to go home to your family. I don't have any of that."

She had a point, but if only she knew that had all been complicated by her absence. "It's not that simple."

"It isn't?"

"The office hasn't been the same without you." It was an understatement and he could only hope she'd recognize that. He couldn't tell her that life hadn't been the same without her, that he was constantly reminded of her presence by the simplest things. He couldn't tell her that life had been the same without her, because they had never been allowed to think in those terms. For all intents and purposes, outside work, she had never existed in his life.

"Yeah, Danny said there have been some..." she tapped her fingers on the tablecloth. "...morale issues."

He nodded. "You know, new agent. There's been a change in dynamic. It's a transition time and it's just going to take some time for everyone to get used to that. Our caseload has been relatively light recently, and that's bound to keep the focus elsewhere."

"That's a very official answer."

Staring at his plate, he deliberated how much to admit to her. "I know Danny misses you, and even though he'd never admit it, I think Martin blames me for you being gone. Vivian's been trying to help Melissa. Tensions have just been high."

"What about you?"

"Me?"

"Do you miss me?" Her eyes didn't waver from his, and he could see an undercurrent of vulnerability there.

"Would I be here if I didn't?"

Her eyes returned to her plate. "And all this time I thought you didn't trust the courier."

"Desperate times call for desperate measures."

Leaning back to allow the server to clear their plates, she looked chagrined. "I'm sorry about that. I just didn't know if this 'business dinner' was a good idea."

"It's okay now?"

"I don't know."

Jack waved off an attempt to take their dessert order and fixed his attention on Samantha. "What does that mean?"

"When I left, you had shut me out almost completely. You were back with your family and I could respect that. At least you were moving forward; I thought maybe I could, too."

"I wasn't moving forward." He had moved back, literally and figuratively. It was something he was just beginning to admit to himself.

"That day, outside the courthouse, when you told me it was over...did you mean that?"

"Yes."

He could see her shoulders tense under her jacket. "Then what is all of this?"

"I told you it was over because at that moment in time it's what I thought was the right thing to do."

"And now?"

Having anticipated the question before his arrival, the answer rolled off his tongue. "I've been going through the motions for six weeks. I realized I wasn't reinvested in my marriage, but in the idea of my marriage. Marie and I have fought a dozen times since I moved back home and do you know how many of those times concerned you?"

Samantha looked tired all of a sudden. "No."

"One."

She looked up and he continued. "That's when I realized that distancing myself from you was never the answer. It just took you being gone to show what a non-factor you were in this."

"I don't know if I should be relieved or insulted."

Her laugh was uncomfortable, but some of the tension had been lifted. "Do you want to take a walk?"

She laid her credit card down and he looked at her quizzically.

"Bureau card. Business dinner, right? 'My former supervisor and I discussed unit models over dinner' sounds a little better than you flying down here to deliver a file I'm still not convinced exists."

He smirked. For all the stress and tension of the last few weeks, they had fallen back into their old routine fairly quickly. Secrets and lies, just this time for another reason. Sliding her card back to her, he replaced it with his own.

They walked in silence back toward the Hoover building, their fingers brushing occasionally; neither of them making an effort to distance themselves despite the humid night. For all the reservations Samantha had about his coming to see her, she suddenly found herself wanting to delay his departure.

"When are you leaving?"

"I'm getting the shuttle back at 11:45."

She stopped in her tracks. "Tonight?"

"I have to be back at the office tomorrow by nine. Some of us don't have nice nine-to-five jobs."

"Yeah, don't rub it in." She took a step and faced him now. "Are you sure you have to go now? You could catch an early flight--stay at my place."

He looked to his left, then his right, then back at her. "I think that wouldn't be a good idea."

"I think you flatter yourself. I was just going to offer you my couch."

They stepped aside to let a group of people pass, and Samantha leaned against a lamppost.  Utilizing the light, Jack checked his watch. "I really should get going."

"When will I see you again?"

"I don't know."

Between the unpredictable nature of his job and the equally tumultuous status of his marriage, he couldn't answer her. While he was off Bureau time, he was fairly sure that his superiors wouldn't look favorably on what he was doing right now. He was certain his wife wouldn't. One couldn't do anything about it and the other could. But standing on that sidewalk that night, he couldn't bring himself to care.

They were standing very close now, and he could feel Samantha's breath on his face as she spoke. "Will you call me?"

He nodded and felt her lips brush against his cheek as she leaned in for a hug.

Still in relatively safe territory, he told himself as his arms encircled her waist.

Her hands rested right above his belt and he could smell her hair.

It wasn't too late to pull back, he justified as he met her eyes for the first time since the restaurant.

Her lips pressed against his and he felt her hands run up his back.

He thought about Marie and all the reasons he shouldn't be doing this as he deepened the contact, her teeth grazing his lower lip as she responded.

Her smile was the first thing he saw when they separated several seconds later, and she still hadn't pulled away.

He thought about Marie and all the lies he had told to be here, with Samantha, at that moment. All the lies he and Samantha didn't have to tell after sharing their first kiss in a city where there would be no repercussions.

At that moment, he thought he had made his choice.

TBC