There were mixed reactions at their table at the thought of dancing the night away. Bobby, as Alex expected, perked up significantly and turned to her with a pleading look on his face. "You want to?"

She looked around the table, trying to evaluate the odds of successfully begging off. Unfortunately, it seemed that chess players and misfits loved to dance, because every person, other than Annie, looked excited. Annie, on the other hand, seemed to be doing the same thing Alex was: trying to find a way out.

"Alex?" Bobby said next to her, giving their joined hands an encouraging wiggle. "Come on, will you go out there with me when they start the dancing?"

She looked over at Annie, hoping for support, but the other woman just shook her head, indicating to Alex that it was pointless to resist. Alex nodded slightly in response, and both women sighed, then turned to their respective partners and mumbled their assent.

It was almost worth the suffering, she thought as they stood up, to see such a wide smile appear on Bobby's face.

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The ballroom was decorated in a frighteningly accurate imitation of the disco era, complete with multiple disco balls hanging from the ceiling, cheesy movie posters on the walls, and a very bad imitation of the lighted floor from Saturday Night Fever. After staring at it for a few seconds, Alex decided it was probably a plastic roll-out mat that lit up. She wondered if the building code included regulations for that sort of thing.

"Alex," said a female voice behind her.

She turned to find Annie, looking furtive. "What's wrong?"

"Want to come to the bathroom with me?"

The universal signal for girl-talk. Hmm. She glanced up at Bobby and muttered an "excuse me," then followed Annie out into the hallway and toward the bathroom. "Is something wrong, or are we just reinforcing their concept of women having a herd mentality?"

"Nothing's 'wrong,' no. I just wanted to talk to you without all the guys present."

Walking past Annie toward a mirror above the sinks, Alex leaned forward and checked her reflection. "What about?"

"Bobby."

She dropped the pretence of checking her makeup and turned back to the other woman. "You were high school sweethearts," she said with a calm nod, as if she'd known this all along rather than figuring it out exactly thirteen seconds ago, as she actually had. And she tried not to look jealous.

"Kind of. I just didn't want you to think I . . ." She stopped and wrinkled her brows at Alex. "How did you know? I didn't think Bobby had told you."

She turned back to the mirror and stared at herself. You can handle this, Alex. The woman's happily married, she's not competition anymore. Besides, have you forgotten that you're only pretending for the night that you have a claim on him? "I'm a detective. Clues are what I do. When he introduced you to me, you cut him off before he could say more than your name, as if you had something you didn't want him to say. And then when I got a look at your husband . . ."

Annie sighed. "He hates when people notice the resemblance. Mike, I mean, not Bobby. I don't think Bobby's noticed, himself. Mike says it makes him feel like he's just a copy of someone from my past, instead of someone I love for who he is."

"Do you have a hairbrush, Annie?"

The other woman blinked at the non sequitur. "Uh, yeah," she said after a second, digging through her purse for the brush. "You're not upset about this?"

Alex considered how much she could share with this woman, who happened to be an old flame of Bobby's, but who also happened to be someone she genuinely liked. "Vaguely jealous," she finally said as she attempted to return her hair to its original french twist, "which I guess is kind of unavoidable. But it's hard to be truly freaked out about it when it's obvious that your eyes are on Mike, not Bobby."

"Wow, you're und-"

"Understanding? Usually. But that doesn't mean I won't start a cat fight if you get drunk and start hitting on my date," Alex added, only half-joking.

"If I start hitting on Bobby, you have my permission to either dump a glass of wine over my head or hit on my husband - as long as you keep five feet away from him at all times."

She couldn't hold back a laugh at that. "You know, if anyone asked me, I'd tell them that I'm absolutely not a clingy, possessive person . . ."

". . . except that every now and then you are, when it comes to the man you care about? Yeah, me too." Annie raised an eyebrow. "Can I ask you something?"

"Uh, sure, although I reserve the right to not answer if I don't want to."

"What are you and Bobby to each other, really?"

What was Annie fishing for? She thought everyone knew that they worked together. "We're partners . . ." she said slowly. "Why?"

"I don't mean at work. I mean in real life."

Alex could feel her face turning pink. "I'm his fiance. I don't understand what you're asking, Annie."

"Cut the crap. You're not engaged to him, although I have to say, that was a great story you guys spun at the table."

"Well I -"

"I'm beginning to doubt that you're actually his girlfriend, either. You look too surprised every time he touches you. So what's going on?"

Alex sighed. "I guess we're worse actors than we thought. We're not used to trying to pull off the 'couple' thing for more than ten minutes at a time. If you must know, in 'real life,' we're partners and that's all."

"And this is what? A prank?"

"No! No, it's not a prank, and please don't tell anyone else. I just didn't want it to look to people like he couldn't get a date and brought his partner instead. Which isn't true, by the way - I happen to know he has at least five of his bimbos in current rotation."

Strolling out into the plush ladies "waiting room," Annie sat down on a cushy armchair and gave Alex a hard look. "So you're just partners, huh? That's it?"

"Yes."

Annie snorted. "Who decided that?"

"Excuse me?"

"Which of you decided that you only wanted to be partners?"

"Uh, neither of us. It's just the way things worked out. Why would we be more?" Even she could tell she was beginning to sound defensive.

Annie rolled her eyes and patted Alex's arm. "Alex, dear. Brilliant detective that you are, do I need to point out to you that you two have been clinging - yes, clinging - to each other all night? I was surprised you stopped holding hands long enough to eat dinner."

"Acting," Alex said dismissively.

"Uh-huh, and the way you humiliated Jimmy Willis after you found out about him and Bobby?"

"I'm protective of him. He's my partner and he doesn't stand up for himself enough. Someone has to."

A tiny smile appeared on Annie's face. "And how about the engagement story you guys made up on the spot, yet somehow managed to switch off sentences while telling?"

"Again, partnership," Alex said with a shrug. "There are a lot of similarities between a good partnership and a good romantic relationship."

Obviously she'd been lobbing softballs to Alex - issues the woman had long since decided on answers for - so Annie decided it was time to play hardball. "What about the way you got starry-eyed after he kissed you?"

Alex blinked. "He hasn't kissed me."

"He kissed you on the temple at dinner. You turned bright red and got a dreamy look on your face."

Red flamed in Alex's cheeks at Annie's words. "Please tell me you're the only one who noticed that."

"I think it was only me. But you admit it?"

"Fine, sure, I've had a crush on him for a long time. That doesn't have anything to do with anything."

"You're wrong," Annie said with a shake of her head. "It has a whole lot to do with the fact that he's here and actually out of his shell for the night."

"Annie, he's used to being out of his shell with me at work. It's just . . . natural."

"You haven't seen the way he's been looking at you all night when he thinks you're not paying attention."

That caught Alex's attention. "Why? How does he look at me?"

"Like you're his favorite food and he's on a diet."

It took a second to digest that, then Alex burst out laughing. "He looks at me like I'm his favorite food?"

"Ok, you want a more romantic analogy? Let me think for a second."

Alex waved a hand. "Take all the time you want, this is getting interesting."

"He's been looking at you like . . . like you're the best thing that's ever happened to him and he wishes you weren't."

"That doesn't sound particularly complimentary to me," Alex said with a skeptical look.

"Look." Annie leaned forward and took hold of Alex's hands, then went on: "How much do you know about his family?"

"Well, uh . . . his mom's in a hospice. Um, his brother's god-knows-where and they don't keep in touch as far as I know. His dad's just . . . gone."

"And what's the common link between all of them?"

"You mean besides being part of the same family?"

"Yes."

It didn't take long for Alex to figure it out. "They've all left him, in one way or another. But I'm not his family, and I've been with him for years!"

"And he probably wishes you'd never stuck with him, because now he's on the edge of his seat just waiting for the day you decide to walk away."

"What makes you think you can read him any better than I can?" Alex said sharply. "I see him every day and I never caught anything like that."

"Two reasons: first, because I happen to know him fairly well to begin with; second, and more important, he hides it when he knows you're watching. He's not on his guard looking at you around me; why would he be?"

Alex sighed and stood up. "Look, Annie, this is interesting and all, but I don't know where you're going with this. I feel like I'm being psychoanalyzed."

"Well, you're not," the other woman said as she stood up next to Alex. "I'm just giving you food for thought. Do with it what you will. Ready to go back out?"

Alex glanced in the mirror one last time to check her hair, then nodded. "Yeah."

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They found their tablemates clustered more or less where they'd left them, except for Janet, who'd disappeared and subsequently been declared no great loss to the group.

"What did you guys do in there?" Annie's husband, Mike, asked wonderingly as he put an arm around his wife's shoulders. "Wash and blow-dry your hair or something?"

"Just girl talk, hon," Annie replied, patting Mike's hand comfortingly.

Alex, feeling uncomfortably aware of Bobby's eyes on her now that Annie had put the thought in her head, returned to him with slow steps. "Wanna dance?" he asked as he reclaimed her hand.

She took a moment to listen to what music was playing and weigh the pros and cons. In the pro column, it was a slow Eagles song, and she did much better at slow dancing than fast; however, the obvious con was that she'd be slow-dancing with Bobby and she wasn't sure if that made her want to hide, redo her makeup like a nervous teenager, or jump him on the dance floor.

"Alex?" he said again, noting the far-away look on her face. "Dance?"

"C'mon, Alex," Annie said brightly. "Dance with the guy! Mike and I are going to."

Her fate was sealed. She could accept that gracefully. She looked up at Bobby, who was beginning to look disappointed. "Sure, let's dance."

His face immediately broke into a smile and he pulled her out onto the glowing vinyl dance floor with the enthusiasm of a man half his age, sweeping her into his arms.

A second later, Alex found herself nose to chest with seventy-six inches of Armani-clad detective, one of her hands completely swallowed in his and the other pressed against his lower back. His free hand sat just above her hip and she suppressed a shiver when his fingers slipped past the brief fabric of her shirt and touched her skin.

"Sorry," he murmured, pulling his hand back and trying to position it in a safer area.

"It's ok. I'm showing the skin anyway, nothing wrong with it being touched."

Bobby, mind racing at that statement, missed a step. After a quick recovery, he looked down at her. "What were you and Annie doing in the bathroom?"

"What did you think we were doing?" she teased. "I've always wondered what men think about women going to the bathroom in groups."

"Hmm," he mumbled thoughtfully. "I always figured they took turns holding the stall doors for each other."

"What?"

"Well, public bathrooms aren't well-maintained and a lot of time the stalls have broken locks . . ." He had to stop talking when Alex started laughing and dropped her head against his chest. "What'd I say?" he asked, staring down at her.

She swallowed another giggle. "You're just so . . . logical. Most men probably would have said something . . . lewd."

"You know I don't do lewd," he admonished sternly. Then, a second later, he bent closer to her head and added playfully, "At least . . . not in public."

It was Alex's turn to miss a step as she gaped at him. "I think I need to take you to reunions more often!"

"Why?"

"They make you loosen up!" she said, moving a little closer to him and enjoying the sensation of his arm tightening around her in response.

"This is loose?" he said doubtfully.

"This is looser, at least."

"Oh. Alex?"

She didn't lift her head off his chest as she said, "Yeah?"

"Thank you for coming with me tonight. I'm . . . actually enjoying myself."

"Heaven forbid," she teased, pulling her head back so she could see his face. "You're very welcome. I'm having fun, too," she continued after a moment of studying him.

As the last few chords of the song sounded, she grinned up at him. "You still want to know what Annie and I did in the bathroom?"

"Of course," he replied, reluctantly loosening his arms.

"Then you'll just have to ask me to dance again later, won't you?" she said, reaching up to pat his cheek before allowing herself to be pulled away by Dan, who had been eagerly waiting for a dance with her.

"You guys looked funny standing so close together," Dan said as they stepped back onto the dance floor. "The height difference, I mean."

"Funny," Alex said with a grin, "I thought the same thing when I first saw him talking to you."

"Touche," he replied, then added, "Oops," as his fingers made the same slip Bobby's had made on her hip. "Sorry."

"No feeling up the guests, Dan," she teased, picking up his hand and moving it out of the path of danger.

"Darn."

"Well, you can certainly try, I suppose, as long as you don't mind attempting to explain it to Bobby later."

"No thank you! But did I just hear you suggest that you'd let him do your dirty work? How un-feminist."

"I carry a gun; I think my feminism karma is quite secure. Besides, what I meant was more along the lines of you attempting to explain it to Bobby while I try to pull him off you."

"Hmm. Can I ask you a kind of personal question?"

"How personal?" she said warily.

"Not that kind of personal! I mean just something about your relationship with Bobby."

"Uh, sure. We'll see if I can answer it, at least."

"How come he's so protective of you? And when I say 'protective,' I mean 'eager to injure any other man that comes near you'."

She thought about that for a second. "I honestly have no idea. He's not like that at work, at all."

"You guys have been together for five years?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I'm happy for you. No, seriously," he said when Alex looked skeptical. "To have been together five years and still be as into each other as you are, that's impressive." The music began to fade out and he led her to the edge of the dance floor.

"Well, thank you," she told him. "I'll pass on the message to the big guy." Great, now she felt guilty in addition to confused. His friends were all so glad to see him with someone he seemed to care about; little did they know that she was just a big fake.

She needed a drink. And maybe a little light-hearted flirting with Oli.