Disclaimer: I don't own anything remotely connected to Crossing Jordan. It all belongs to Tim Kring, the lucky guy, and Tailwind Productions.


I am waiting on Jordan. Again. Woody thought, as he stretched his legs out in front of him. He was sitting in the waiting room of the hospital, trying to make himself more comfortable.

How many times had he been in this position…waiting on this woman? He smiled to himself. More times than he could count. More times than he really wanted to remember. But when he thought about it, he had spent the first thirty years of his life waiting a woman like her. Someone strong, beautiful, intelligent, interesting.

And it didn't hurt that she had a body that didn't quit. He grinned to himself when that thought flickered across his mind.

He thought he had found a woman like that once…before Jordan. Annie. But that relationship wasn't meant to be. When it ended, he found himself propelled to Boston…propelled into her and all her issues. And his experience with her began as nearly the roller coaster ride from hell. The corners of his mouth turned up a little more as he remembered.

The bank heist. She was the answering medical examiner. An officer told him that the ME was Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh. He had looked around, fully expecting a man. Instead, he found himself looking down into a pair of whiskey-colored eyes that he willingly wanted to drown in.

She was beautiful. She was intelligent. She was strong and interesting. And God, did she had a body….she was all he dreamed of for nearly the next three years.

Dreamed of, hoped for, and pursued. And nearly every time he thought he had her, the lady would dance away from him…the look in her eyes told him she was afraid…so he asked. Word around the precinct was that while the woman was a brilliant ME, in the personal department, she was the ice queen. She'd let you get close and then push you away. Ice queen. Tease. Various words were used to describe her.

He figured it was nothing a little Midwestern persistence couldn't get around.

So he tried. As he learned her story in bits and pieces from other officers, he knew they were meant for each other…cut from the same cloth.

She was having a harder time accepting it. But that was okay. It was the beginning of their relationship. The springtime of their life together. They worked together and often spent time outside of the morgue with each other. She began to tell him some of her past. Her mother. The murder. Her relentless pursuit to bring Emily's murderer to justice.

Her desire to have that closure in her own life.

He listened. He sympathized. He told her little about himself, other than the fact that he was from a small town – Kewuanne – in Wisconsin. He had a brother named Cal. She promptly had dubbed him Farm Boy. But he pursued her...slowly...relentlessly However, sometimes she made it very difficult. Like when she showed up for that set-up in her father's bar in that red dress split up to her thigh. One part of him wanted to get her out of the bar for her own safety….before the sick bastard showed up that could possibly hurt her. The other part of him wanted to pull her in the backroom and see just how quickly he could get her out of that dress. Yes, he lusted after Jordan Cavanaugh. She set him on fire then.

She still did.

It got worse. She followed him to LA…kissed him in the desert…stole his heart completely, and then told him it was "just a kiss….it meant nothing."

Yeah, right.

He had felt the emotion in that kiss…he bet any money the same fireworks that had streaked up through his stomach and spread across his chest were working the same magic in her.

And she was scared witless about it….and ran. She avoided any physical contact with him for a long time.

Until Devan. Woody sighed then. He was a patient man by nature….but even he had gotten tired by then. Tired of waiting…so tired. Devan arrived from DC with bouncy, blonde hair and big blue eyes. Jordan seemed distant and cold and Devan was warm and inviting.

So he began to see her. On Sundays, they would eat Chinese together while she worked her shift at the morgue. They began to go to concerts together. Movies. He spent more time alone with Devan than he ever had with Jordan. He had found his heart strangely conflicted. He appreciated Devan…but still longed for Jordan. He knew Devan's heart was just as divided…between him and an old fiancé. They both knew a choice would need to be made…

But that decision was ripped from their control when the airplane that Devan was traveling in crashed into a mountain. She was gone…in a heartbeat.

He had mourned…grieved. Tried to find his footing…stumbling along the way…falling right back into Jordan's arms. They had gone to LA…again. And while LA drove Jordan slightly crazy, it also lowered their guard with each other. He remembered they were standing on the roof of the LA County Morgue… "Don't jump," he had joked with her.

"I'm not," she answered, turning to face him, leaning back against the wall. "I hate LA, Woody," she confessed. "It makes me crazy."

"Why?"

"It helped make me the way I am…why I run from relationships…why I can't stay in them. Why am I so scared? I don't want to run."

He had slowly put his arms around her and pulled her to him. She didn't resist. He had lowered his lips to right above hers. Then whispering softly, he said, "Maybe, Jordan…maybe you just need someone to hold you a little tighter." He had lowered his lips even further…

And her damned cell phone rang. She had looked up into his blue eyes with sincere regret and frustration. But she had to take the call. A woman's life was on the line.

Later that evening, she had sent him to Miami with Kinks tickets. "I'll be in Boston…waiting for you. I'm not going anywhere," she promised.

And she had kept her word. She was there for him when he came back. She had been there for him ever since. That was the beginning of their relationship. The springtime of their lives.