Distantly, I hear a phone ring. I open my eyes and try to sit up, but find myself pinned down by the arm and leg of one very attractive brunette named Sara, who seems to be sleeping soundly while sprawled over me.

We must have fallen asleep, I realize as I work my way out from under her and start tracking the ringing phone, which turns out to be the house phone on the desk in my room.

"Grissom," I answer, holding the phone in one hand and rubbing my tired eyes with the other.

"Gil?" says a female voice.

I grunt an assent.

"It's Sharon. It's 8:30 in the morning." She stops, seeming to be waiting for an answer.

She got me out of my nice warm bed to tell me that? "Uh-huh," I say blankly. "And?"

She sighs loudly. "And we need to be downstairs at 9 for the morning session. Are you guys awake?"

I look at the watch I never got around to taking off last night. "Shit!"

"I'll take that as a no," Sharon says. "I figured you guys might forget to schedule a wake-up call. You both seemed a little...distracted when I called last night."

"Damn," I say and then, remembering my manners, add, "Thank you for the call."

"No problem. Hey, I'm on my way to Dunkin Donuts now. Do you want me to pick you guys up some breakfast while I'm there?"

Sara's sitting up in bed now, looking both confused and delicious. I give her a smile and then tell Sharon, "That would be great."

"Any preferences?"

"Umm...coffee, black, for both of us...a crueller for me, and..." I look at Sara, who seems to have caught on to the topic at hand. Coffee roll, she mouths at me. "And a coffee roll for Sara," I finish.

"Your wish is my command," Sharon says cheerfully. "See you in half an hour."

I hang up the phone and look at Sara. "We forgot to set the alarm," I tell her. "We have to be at the workshop in half an hour. That was Sharon on the phone, offering to bring us breakfast."

Her eyes widen. "Crap!"

"Exactly." I can't help grinning - she looks so tempting sitting in that bed. "Good thing we have two bathrooms."

"No kidding!" she says, throwing back the covers. "Wanna race? Whoever's ready first wins a prize."

"You're on." We both turn and dash for our respective bathrooms.

Fifteen minutes later, I put on my glasses and knock on the connecting door.

"Come in!"

I open the door and find Sara sitting on the bed, fully dressed and looking bored. "I win," she says smugly.

I put on an expression of mock-disbelief. "You're female, you can't have beaten me!"

Standing up, she grabs her notebook and key card off the desk and gives me a blinding smile. "I can do a lot of things you've never even considered." While I'm busy pondering the implications of that statement, she heads for the door and adds, "Ready?"

With a sigh, I follow her out the door.

We slip into the meeting room just as the first lecture starts, and work our way to the seats Sharon saved for us.

-------------------------

"So?" Sharon demands a few hours later, twirling a strand of lo mein around her fork. "You guys have a fun night?"

"Sharon!" I scold, giving her a look that says not here!

She smirks and forks down the noodle. "That good, huh?"

I look at Sara, waiting for an explosion, but instead of preparing to kill the other woman, she's carefully balancing a small ball of white rice on the edge of her spoon. I reach under the table and squeeze her knee, giving her a warning look, but she just raises an eyebrow, grins, and lets fly at Sharon with her makeshift catapult.

The rice ball drops neatly into the v-neckline of Sharon's shirt and she grabs at it with a squeak. "Sara!"

I catch Alex's eye and note that he's trying hard not to laugh out loud. I shake my head mournfully at him, mouthing Can you believe these two? That seems to kill the last of his self-control and he bursts out laughing.

Sharon turns and glares at Alex, then fishes the rice out of her shirt and flings it at him. He tries to catch it, but the ball is finally played out and breaks apart against his palm. Brushing the grains of rice off of his hands, Alex gives us a calm smile and asks Sara, "Didn't your mother ever tell you not to play with your food?"

Sara, without comment, returns to demurely eating her teriyaki vegetables.

There are a few minutes of silence, then Sharon says, "Are you guys going to have dinner with us tonight?"

Sara and I exchange a look. She shrugs, indicating that it's up to me. I consider for a moment saying "no," and locking Sara in my room all night, but decide that might not go over too well. I try for something not quite so obvious: "Depends. Where did you want to eat?"

"No idea." Sharon tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and looks at Alex, who mirrors Sara's shrug. "I don't know too much about what's available in the area."

"I don't think any of us do," Sara says.

"We could ask at the front desk of the hotel," I suggest. "Usually they're happy to set you up with reservations."

Sara elbows me. "We're not going anywhere fancy enough to need reservations! I wore my one and only nice outfit last night."

Oh boy, did she ever!

"Well," I say, forcing my mind away from last night, "that narrows the selection. But I still say we should ask the concierge."

"Why don't you do that, Gil," Sharon says. "You seem to be Mr. Urbane."

Sara stifles something that's a cross between a scoff and a laugh. "'Urbane'...oh, if only Las Vegas could see you now..."

I give her a dark look, lean over, and whisper into her ear, "You know what you said just before we left the room this morning, about things I've never considered?" She moves her head in a tiny nod. "I know how to do a lot of things you've never considered, either."

If I wasn't less than a millimeter from touching her, I would never have noticed the little shiver that runs through her body. "Stop," she says, sounding more amused than annoyed, as she pushes at my shoulder. "We'll talk about that later."

I raise my eyebrows. We will?

Sharon coughs politely from the other side of the table. "You two done, over there?"

"Yes," I say.

"Nope," Sara says at the same time.

I get another elbow in the ribs for that. I poke her back, then point to her plate. "You look like you're done to me."

-------------------------

Our assignment for the afternoon session is to write a thousand words on a non-technical subject, then have our partners count word frequencies using a simple shell script on the computers we're provided. Sara grins at me as I sigh heavily. I exhausted all my creativity in yesterday's work!

"I know something you can write about," Sara teases me.

I try not to, but I think I turn a little red. "I know something you can write about, too," I retort, and stick my tongue out at her for a fraction of a second.

She giggles and Sharon turns and gives us an overly strict look. "Some of us are trying to create," she deadpans.

I stick my tongue out at her too.

-------------------------

"So?" Sara says to me when we're back in my room later in the day. "Where are we eating?"

Trying to keep a straight face, I say, "You washed that shiny outfit, right?"

"Grissom!"

I can't help it; I tip her chin up with one finger and kiss the tip of her nose. "We're going to Dallas Dan's Barbeque," I tell her with a grin.

"Dallas what?"

"Dallas Dan's," I repeat.

She gives me a playful shove. "Did anyone ever tell you you're weird?"

I act shocked. "Why, no; no one's ever told me that before!"

"So," she says, sidling up to me, "what should I wear to have dinner with...Dallas Dan?"

"I don't think he cares," I smile, "but personally, I think you should wear something low-cut." I try to leer at her, but I'm not sure if it works. My leering skills are a little rusty.

Instead of smacking me as I expect, she looks thoughtful. "Hmm. I think..."

"What?"

She turns and retreats into her room, then shouts back through the door, "I think that can be arranged!"

"How do I look?" she says ten minutes later, doing a slow turn in front of me.

She looks like someone who makes me reconsider the whole locking-ourselves-in thing. "Very..." I begin, meeting her in the doorway between our rooms. "...nice," I finish, enjoying the great view her shirt offers. She seems to have taken me at my word when I asked for something low-cut. It's a black, wrap-style top in some sort of smooth fabric that makes me want to touch it. The two halves of the shirt cross each other at the very bottom of her sternum - low enough that I wonder if she's using that tape again to stay decent.

I must have stared for a few seconds too long, because she waves a hand in front of my face to get my attention and waits until I meet her eyes. "I'm up here," she says, smirking.

"If you say so," I say, pushing her hand away and eyeing that neckline again.

"You can be an ass sometimes, you know that?"

"Sure." I don't move my eyes.

"Grissom!" she says with a theatrical sigh, turning away and pulling open the hall door. "Let's go." She makes a come on motion with her arm and I follow her out of the room.

"We're meeting Sharon and Alex downstairs," I say as we start down the hall toward the elevators.

"Hmm. What floor are we on again?"

I blink. "Thirty-two. Why?"

She shrugs and is about to say something when the elevator dings and its doors slide open in front of us.

I follow her in, surreptitiously enjoying the view her fitted pants provide. My mind is really in the gutter tonight, I realize. I back up a step from her and lean against the wall. "You like barbeque, don't you?" I ask, suddenly realizing that I have no idea if she does or not. "They have non-meat options," I add. "I checked."

"Yeah, it's fine. I love corn on the cob when it's grilled; I hope they have it."

"That, I don't know. Sorry."

"It's ok. I'll figure it out." She shrugs. So," she says after a second, in a more playful tone of voice, "you like my shirt, I take it?"

I try for flippancy: "I'm trying to decide whether it's worth the risk of you being arrested for public nudity."

"I'm not naked!"

"Might as well be."

Her eyes narrow and one eyebrow inches upward; she's giving me such mixed signals that I can't decide if she's angry or interested. "Oh?" She takes a step toward me in the small elevator car. "So right now you feel like I'm standing next to you...naked?"

"Umm. No?"

"Because I'm not going to a restaurant if I'm naked," she adds, obviously enjoying torturing me.

"The other option is to stay here," I point out. "And if we do that, you will be naked." My timing is perfect - as her jaw drops and she prepares to verbally flay me, the elevator dings cheerfully and spits us out right in front of Sharon and Alex.

Alex just nods a hello, but Sharon catches the looks on our faces and seems to come to the correct conclusion: that once again she's walked into the middle of something very interesting that's happening between those two Las Vegas folks. "Hi," she finally says, realizing that we're not going to fill her in when I just glare at her and Sara pretends to be absorbed in pulling a loose thread off her pants.

I give her a bright smile that says, Nope, absolutely nothing wrong here. Not a thing for you to wonder about!

"Hi," Sara responds. She gives Sharon a short nod, although now that she's had a moment to recover from what I said in the elevator, her attention seems to be more focused on placing her heel on exactly the part of my foot that causes the most pain. I wince, but restrain myself from trying to step on her other foot with my other foot. The last thing we need is the two of us tangled up on the floor.

Hmm.

On second thought...

Sounding as calm as ever, Alex interrupts my thoughts. "So," he says casually, as though nothing odd is going on in front of him, "what's for dinner?"

Sara speaks before I get a chance to. "Barbeque," she sing-songs, drawing out the first syllable. "Dallas Dan's Barbeque, to be exact."

Sharon and Alex look at each other, then back at Sara. "Who's Dallas Dan?"

Sara tries to hold back a smile, but I can see her mouth twitching on the sides. "Dallas Dan's Barbeque," I say sardonically, "happens to be one of the best-rated restaurants in this year's Zagat's. The concierge said the food is good, plentiful, and cheap; I figured that covered all the bases."

"Barbeque," Sharon repeats. "Barbeque!" She starts laughing as if it's the funniest thing she's heard all day.

What's going on here? I stare, waiting for her to explain herself, but she just continues snickering.

I continue to stare. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sara and Alex exchange a look. That annoys me more and, out of patience, I look back at Sharon and demand, "What's so funny?"

"I second that question," Sara says.

Alex nods. "Me too."

Still laughing, Sharon leans over and stage-whispers into Sara's ear, "Barbeque? I could tell he wasn't a romantic, but barbeque?"

I wonder whether there's some rule saying that you can't take a girl to a barbeque restaurant until after you're engaged, or something. I stay quiet and listen, hoping one of the women will explain this unexpected wrinkle in my plan.

"Ohhhh." Sara rolls her eyes, seeming to get what Sharon's saying. She grins and glances at me, then back to the other woman. "A romantic he's not, but he does try. By the fourth year, I had realized that he means well, at least usually."

"Fourth year of what?" Alex asks, and then shuts his mouth, looking like he hadn't meant to join in on this discussion.

"The fourth year of our working together," I answer for her, figuring I might as well show off when the question's easy and I actually know the answer.

Both Sharon and Alex stare at me. "You've been working together for four years?" Sharon says, sounding like I just told her that Sara's from Mars and I'm actually a woman.

"Uh, it's five, now," I correct, then stop. The rest of what she said is one of those questions I can't answer. Having no idea what Sharon had meant to ask by echoing what I said, I look at Sara, waiting for her to clear things up.

"Let's just say," Sara says dryly, "that he's methodical. And cautious."

"You poor girl!" Sharon replies, sounding more like she's joking than actually pitying Sara. I should be thankful for that much, I suppose. "I'm buying your dessert tonight!"

But what if I wanted to buy Sara's dessert? I think, shooting mental daggers at Sharon.

Sara looks at me, so quickly that I almost miss it, and then looks away again. "We'll see," she says noncommittally.

"Well!" Alex says, and I detect a note of desperate heartiness in his voice. "Shall we go sample Dallas Dan's wares, then?"