Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or situations created for TGAH; I am borrowing them purely for entertainment purposes and am making no profit from their use. Thank you to Stephen J. Cannell, the cast, producers, writers, directors, and crew for giving us this wonderful, timeless show and the characters that bring it to life.

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Volcada

A movement in the Tango. An action by the male partner puts the female off balance resulting in a falling step. If executed properly, the female is held suspended resulting in a beautiful elongated pose. The movement requires the support of a close embrace.

This story is a sequel to Come Together, Over Me

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From The Hit Car:

Pam: "You know, sometimes it's hard to believe you live in this century, Bill."

Bill: "That was my idea about you, Davidson."

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Part 1: Salida

Salida

The first steps of dancing a tango, or a tango pattern, derived from "¿Salimos a bailar?" (Shall we dance?)

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She let her eyelids flutter closed. She felt his warm breath at her throat, her shoulder, but his lips never touched her skin.

She could feel his heat through the thin silk of her robe. She felt her hair stir and knew he was lifting it away from her neck for better access to that sensitive skin.

He exhaled a slow, steady pulse of breath across the fine hairs and she shivered. She couldn't wait much longer. She had to feel him against her. Hold him in her hands; know how much he wanted her in return.

She felt a tug at her waist and her robe fell open. She knew he could see her excitement in her flushed skin, knew he was watching her breath accelerate, could see her pulse throbbing. She felt him move closer and her stomach trembled. Now, oh, now, she thought, please touch me now.

"Now?" he murmured in her ear.

She could feel the vibration of his deep voice.

"Now," she breathed. "If you touch me-"

"Here?" he said and she felt his long fingers graze her thigh.

"Yes, there," she said. "There."

"Are you hot, Davidson?"

"Mnnh," she moaned.

"Pam, Bill was asking if you're hot."

"What?"

Pam's sat bolt upright in the backseat of Bill Maxwell's sedan. Ralph was turned around in the passenger seat, looking at her over the headrest with a curious expression.

I've been doing it again, she thought. Dear God, I've been dreaming about Bill Maxwell again. And he's sitting a foot away.

"I'm fine," she said. "Fine. No problem."

"Are you sure?" Ralph said. "You look flushed."

"She said she's fine," Bill said. "Stop bothering her if she's needs a nap."

"I don't need a nap," she said quickly. "The heater just made me drowsy."

"So you are hot," Ralph said.

"Look," Bill barked, "I'm turning on the air conditioner. Now everybody can shut up about the heat."

"Christmas Eve and he wants me to turn the air on," he muttered.

"I didn't say-" Ralph began.

"Just forget it, Ralph," she said. She tried to give him a sympathetic look, but he was too busy glaring at Bill's ear.

She concentrated on getting her breathing back to normal. Two weeks, she thought. This had been going on for two weeks.

Two weeks since she'd seen that damned picture. She blamed all of it on that stupid picture of Bill hanging out with the Beatles in India back in 1968.

She could still see the image clearly in her mind. The way that Kelly green pullover clung to his taut muscles. The cocky tilt of his head and the controlled power in his pose. It was as though looking at that snapshot had turned a key in her mind. A key she couldn't turn back.

In a single dazzling flash of insight, she'd realized she'd never really seen Bill as a man. And as a man, Bill Maxwell was sexy. Although she still felt a frisson of amazement at the thought, it was true.

When they'd finally gotten back to Ralph's place after dinner that night, it had taken some fancy footwork to convince her fiancée that what had gotten her so flustered was their newly discovered proximity by proxy to the Beatles.

As jealous as Ralph got over completely insignificant things, it would never do for him to know that it was the picture of Bill, looking like a full-color ad for testosterone in a can, that had made her go weak at the knees.

And now she was having fantasies about him. Well, everyone had fantasies. It certainly didn't mean she had any kind of crush on him.

It was the only nearness of the wedding that was making her think strange thoughts about Bill and bed sheets. It was a clear case of pre-wedding jitters.

So why did she feel like she needed to go to confession every time she noticed the way the muscles in his arms bunched under his jacket?

As if he could read her guilty thoughts, Ralph gripped the edge of the passenger seat and turned farther around to face her. His bright blue eyes crinkled with concern.

"I wish you were coming with me," he said.

Pam smiled and patted his hand.

"I know, sweetheart," she said. "It's really okay."

"It's just that with your parents in Hawaii," he said. "I don't want you to be sitting at home alone on Christmas."

"I'll enjoy being in California instead of Minnesota for a change," she said reassuringly. "I'm looking forward to not wearing a parka."

He opened his mouth to respond, but she went on.

"And you'll be back tomorrow night," she said. "We'll have our Christmas then."

"I know, but," he said. "If you came with me to Miami, we could-"

She cut him off.

"I'm not going to make Kevin cope with me and Alicia sniping at each other all day," she said. "Her apartment's too small for us to avoid each other."

"It might not be that bad," he said.

She cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Of course, it would, honey," she said. "We hate each other."

Ralph laughed.

"I know you're right," he said, shaking his head. "But I'm going to miss you."

"And… cut!" Bill barked out from the driver's seat. "Okay, that's the scene. Good work everyone. We'll take a ten minute break and you can take it from the top starting with Ralph's line, 'I wish you were coming.'"

Pam bit back her grin as Ralph turned in his seat and glared at Bill.

"I'm sorry if our lives are interrupting your deep thoughts about the latest in bullet-proof vests, Bill," he said. "This happens to be important."

"Yeah, I thought so, too, the first two times you went through it," Bill said. "But that's the third time you've had that conversation, and it always ends the same way."

"Frankly, Ralph," he went on, "I'm starting to think you're a slow learner."

"And you, Davidson," he said.

She looked up in surprise.

"I can't believe you keep letting him get past the part where he's going to his ex-wife's place instead of neutral territory," Bill said. "Why don't you stop being such a swell and understanding modern woman and haul off and hit him with a frying pan, already?"

"So, Bill," she said slowly. "Can I take it this is a last ditch, desperate attempt to keep Ralph in LA?"

"No," he said, flicking on his blinker and shifting into the passing lane. "I just think you oughta be a little more, you know, unreasonable."

She opened her mouth to respond, but Ralph beat her to it.

"Pam knows she doesn't have any reason to worry," he said. "She knows the only things Alicia and I have in common any more are a mutual distrust and Kevin."

"Yeah, well," Bill said, "As long as you know it."

She saw Ralph take a deep breath and for a moment she thought they were going to break into one of their infamous knock-down, drag-out fights, but to her surprise, Ralph seemed to make a visible effort to unclench.

"Okay, Bill," he said at last. "I'm not doing this right now. It's not the time. This is me changing the subject. So, what are you doing for Christmas, Bill?"

The shoulders of Bill's nutmeg brown suit shifted as he turned the wheel and banked the car onto the exit ramp. To her renewed surprise, Bill actually let it go.

"I usually man the desk," he said, his voice a little gruff. "Give the guys with families the day off."

"There can't be much to do on Christmas," Ralph said.

"Not usually," Bill agreed. "The punks is all nestled, all snug in their beds, with visions of jewel heists dancing in their heads."

"So it's a good time to catch up on paperwork," he went on, braking as he signaled to move into the turning lane for the parking lot.

In the rear view mirror, Pam could see Bill's forehead furrow with concentration as he merged over between two airport limos.

"Well, here's an idea," Ralph said. "Why don't you two do something together while I'm gone?"

The instinct came just an instant too late. Before Pam could turn away, she saw Bill look up. His eyes locked with hers in the rear view mirror. Her stomach did a rapid flip-flop and she dropped her gaze to her lap.

"Uh," they said simultaneously.

Startled, she looked up and saw Bill focused intently on the taillights of the leading limo. In spite of herself, she felt strangely hurt.

"Oh, come on," Ralph said cheerfully. "Think about it. You'll both be on your own. It'd be a good chance to get to know each other better."

Bill cleared his throat.

"Uh, yeah, Ralph," he said. "I, uh, I was being a little, you know…"

"I was lying before," he went on hurriedly. "About not having much to do. I got a lot of paperwork to catch up on."

"We've been busy lately, catching bad guys," he said. "Every time I bring somebody in I gotta write a book about how I found him and what he was doing."

He turned the wheel and angled up into the parking lot.

"That takes a lot of creativity," he said. "I'd be in line for some kinda Pulitzer if anybody knew how much fiction I write."

"And I'm sure the Counselor's got better things to do," he said, "Than keep me company."

His eyes flicked up to the mirror for just an instant, but he turned away again before she could interpret the look she saw there.

"It doesn't sound like it," Ralph said brightly. "You don't have anything important to do, do you, honey?"

"Um, no," she said slowly, racking her brain for some reasonable excuse. Only one was at the top of her mind.

"Although," she said, "I was thinking about spending the evening making some room at your house."

He looked at her curiously.

"For when I move in for good," she added.

"You were going to do that tonight?" he said.

She shrugged.

"I thought I'd start on it," she said. "But I suppose..."

"Don't worry about that tonight," he said, shaking his head. "I'll help you when I get back."

He turned back to Bill.

"Well, it sounds like a scenario to me," Ralph said. "Bill, you can take the night off from paperwork. And Pam-"

He looked back over the seat.

"You can have a nice dinner with Bill."

He was giving her a vaguely pleading look. It said, "Come on, it's one night. It won't kill you."

It was true, she knew. It was just one night. She was a mature woman, not a hormone-crazed teenager.

And, she reasoned, spending the whole evening with Bill was certain to accomplish one thing. There was no doubt in her mind that several hours of concentrated conversation with the sexist, egotistical, infuriating Bill Maxwell would banish her ridiculous fantasies for good.

Particularly the one where he was reclining in her bed; his long, muscular legs stretched out on the sheets, gazing at her with laughing eyes and wearing nothing but that big, beautiful grin.

She took a deep breath.

"Okay," she said. "Dinner sounds… nice."

Bill was turning into a parking space.

"Yeah," he echoed. "Sounds real, uh, nice. Don't worry about a thing, kid."

He glanced over at Ralph. "I'll take good care of her."

Pam refused to let herself start thinking the thoughts those words conjured up. But she did anyway.

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"Well, he was right about one thing," she said, pitching her voice above the din as they followed Bill through the airport terminal, "That Federal license plate came in handy for parking."

Ralph sidestepped a mother pushing a doublewide stroller.

"Yeah," he said. "It's only going to take you guys an hour to get out of the parking lot instead of three."

She laughed.

"That's okay," she said. "I'll think of it as more quality time."

Ralph shot her a grateful grin.

"Thanks for doing this," he said. "I expect he'd normally work late and go home to a TV dinner."

They dodged around a red-haired woman wheeling a suitcase that was much too large for carry-on luggage.

"Hey," he said, "I'm going to run ahead and check in. There's probably a line. I'll meet you at the gate."

"Go on," she said, landing a light pat on the seat of his khakis.

He trotted ahead and his butter-blond curls were soon lost to sight in the crush of travelers crisscrossing the terminal.

She didn't make an effort to catch up to Bill and he didn't seem inclined to slow down. Still, there was little danger of losing him in the crowd.

It wasn't so much that he was tall or broad shouldered, she thought, although he was both. It was the way he seemed to take up more than his share of space.

No one jostled him. No one stepped into his path, causing him to break his long, easy stride. It was like watching a nature documentary. All the other cats knew to stay a safe distance from the alpha lion.

Lions. She shook her head.

She was beginning to look forward to dinner. Once this evening was over, she was sure, there'd be no more thoughts of Bill Maxwell and lions.

Things would go back to normal. Or as normal as anything could be with a guy who snacked on dog biscuits.

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-continued-

el Tango de Los Angeles

(Tango of the Angels)