Honestly, it wasn't like she had never thought about it. To say the thought had never entered her mind was a flat out lie and Lindsay Monroe was becoming a very good liar. As much as she liked to deny her feelings and pretend she was immune, the thought of him had entered her mind more than she liked to admit.
Lindsay was born in Montana, not on the planet Mars. A trained detective, she paid attention to the minor details in her job and she also happened to be a straight woman with five senses. No matter how much she liked to pretend she was, she was far from oblivious to the fact that Danny Messer was a very sexy man.
That fact was becoming more and more difficult to deny, she was soon realizing.
She knew it from the moment she saw him. Mac nodded behind her, telling her Danny would be doing the processing and he said in that thick, Bronx accent "That'd be me, Danny Messer. Howyadoin'?"
Lindsay could only smile and say hi back. She was too busy concentrating on getting her heart to stop racing. He stood behind her, invading her personal space and told her to take a deep breath and not to let on if she was nervous.
Lindsay was nervous but she said the tiger was tranquillized and she could handle it. Danny retorted he meant Mac and she looked at her new boss, wondering if the stories of Mac she heard in Montana were true. So far, they weren't.
She could handle wading through a dumpster for a shotgun, taking apart the tiger dung for evidence or getting the 'easy' evidence. For some reason, being nicknamed Montana bothered her. For some reason, Danny was the only one who teased her about being from a rural community instead of being a native New Yorker.
The details of her predecessor's dismissal were rarely spoken about however she had heard a few rumours, none of which she believed. What she did know was, when she put in for the transfer, her former boss told her the principles and standards of conduct in New York would not be any different from the ethics of Bozeman. The New York translation was to make sure she kept her nose clean.
It became apparent Danny would be the hardest person to win over at the lab. Lindsay had an easy time fitting in with groups and thought she had a pretty good sense of humour but the nickname bothered her. Montana he drawled as they stood just a few feet away from a pig they used for recreation. Mac and Stella never corrected him.
"Montana," she imitated his accent, as she walked up the stairs to her door. "Jackass."
Finding solitude in her apartment, took her boots off and hung up her coat before putting on the kettle for some tea rose water tea that Stella had turned her onto.
She had a particularly rough day and wasn't in the mood for anymore distractions. It didn't bother her that Polly was hitting on Mac while they were trying to collect evidence. She was tired and wanted to take her mind off work.
Unfortunately, taking her mind off work was something she was still working out. What relaxed her in Bozeman was hardly feasible these days. It wasn't though the city had a lack of entertainment; there were a million things to do and she was eager to try them all. But she knew she wouldn't be going horseback ridding, hiking or camping any time soon.
When she had the morning off she went for a run in the park, cleaned her apartment or looked into something new to try. Lindsay was in no mood for a run, her apartment was spotless and she wasn't looking for something new.
It took a few weeks, but she had actually grown comfortable sleeping at night. In Bozeman, the occasional siren would compete with crickets and the silence of a city actually at rest. New York City was the city that never sleeps - so rose water tea became Lindsay's way of winding down at the end of the day. If there was one thing she missed about Montana, it was the peace and quiet but the excitement of the city made up for it, tenfold.
Taking the clip out of her hair she found a hair elastic to pull her hair into a ponytail, a habit she had formed in her twenties. Her hair wasn't quite as long as it was then so she wound up with a few strays she was constantly tucking behind her ear.
She walked to her bedroom where she changed out of her green sweater and brown slacks into a hooded sweatshirt and black jogging shorts. As the water boiled she pulled on a pair of woolly socks and looked around her apartment with the same curiosity she used when processing a crime scene.
From what she understood, it was a decent sized one-bedroom apartment and she was growing accustomed to everything in her neighbourhood having everything she needed. The building had character and charm, except when she had a lot of groceries to carry up the four flights of stairs to her door. Lindsay learned only the newer buildings in the city were covered with thick wallpaper and tacky artwork and was happy to live in a building with hardwood floors and real paint on the walls. When she moved in the building the superintendent handed her his card as he explained most of what she'd call him for would be the radiator or a leaky pipe when he wasn't working on the the elevator.
The telephone rang just then and Lindsay crossed her apartment to her bedroom where the phone sat on her bed.
"Hello?" she answered.
"Hey kiddo," replied a familiar voice.
"Allie?" Lindsay asked.
The woman laughed and Lindsay let out a happy sigh. A phone call from Allie White these days might rare but they were well worth the wait.
"How's it going?" she asked.
Lindsay looked around her apartment and shrugged. "It's going great. New York is everything you said it would be."
"Did you go on the tour, like I suggested?" Allie asked.
Lindsay nodded. "The apartment building with six deaths in the last ten years was pretty incredible. I can't believe every apartment had someone living in it."
"You weren't looking in there for real estate were you?" she teased and the longtime girlfriends shared a laugh. Allie smiled in her kitchen in Montana, standing over a sink of dishes with a window in front of her of the most gorgeous stretch of land and mountains at the edge of the horizon. "That's New York for you. People will live just about anywhere just to say they live in Manhattan."
"I'm one of those people," Lindsay reminded her.
Allie laughed. "Don't tell me you actually thought of moving in there?"
She sighed, sitting down on her bed and pulled a pillow onto her lap. "I told you my heart was set on Manhattan and I found a great place. No curses, no hexes and great neighbours."
"Is the elevator working today?" Allie asked and Lindsay was silent. "Okay well besides the lazy elevator, things are good then?"
"Yeah, they're great. I miss the open sky," Lindsay admitted. "I miss everyone."
Allie reminded her, "But you're better there than here, right?"
Lindsay shrugged.
"You're shrugging on the other end of the line, aren't you?" Allie asked, already knowing the answer.
She smiled and decided talking about diaper genies, potty training and troublesome husbands would be better conversation. "How's everybody doing? I miss you guys."
"Duncan is great - he's gotten over the colic, thank goodness and I'm taking him to see Amy for photos next week. Paula is doing so well in pre-school," Allie described. "She's learning so much. I love the teachers at her school, they're absolutely fabulous. She comes home and just talks about her day. My little Paula."
Lindsay was just starting to picture the life of her best friend when there was a knock at her front door. "Allie, hold on, there's someone at the door."
"Deepen your voice so you sound like a man," Allie advised.
"What?" Lindsay asked as she walked toward her door, carrying handset and receiver with her.
The best investment Lindsay had made was a long telephone cord that allowed her to walk the expanse of her apartment and have one phone jack. She liked it because she would also always know where the phone was, unlike when she had a cordless phone at her home in Montana and she was constantly losing the phone.
"Speak in a deep voice. If it's a crazy person they'll think you're a large man and not attack you," Allie advised.
"Allie, it's not that dangerous here," Lindsay retorted, standing on her toes to see out the peep hole. Lindsay stood on her toes again to look a second time, making sure she wasn't seeing things. "No way."
"Who is it?" Allie asked impatiently.
"It's someone from work," Lindsay replied, standing on flat feet and deciding to open the door. Unlocking the dead bolt, she opened the door and came face to face with Danny Messer.
"Hey Montana," he said lazily, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his well fitting jeans.
Damn he fills those out well, Lindsay thought.
"Who is it?" Allie asked again.
Lindsay watched Danny's eyes travel up her bare legs to her oversized sweatshirt and to her face. She looked at him expectantly and smiled into the phone. "It's Danny Messer."
"The pain in the ass?" she asked and Lindsay laughed. "Oh my. I'll call you back tomorrow."
"No, Allie-" Lindsay protested but the line went dead.
"Important phone call?" Danny asked, nodding toward the phone in her hands as he walked into her apartment.
Lindsay watched Danny with curiously. "Can I help you, Messer?"
Danny shrugged noncommittally. "I was going to get some pizza, thought you might want to come."
Lindsay put the phone back on the handset and closed the door behind him. "I'm not really dressed for..."
"We could order in, if you want," he interrupted.
Nodding her head once, Lindsay understood this was not the time to kick him out of her apartment. She handed Danny the phone and walked into her bedroom to put on some jeans. When she emerged from her bedroom his shoes were at the door, his jacket hung up next to hers while he sat with on her couch his feet up on her coffee table confirming the order.
That was fast, she thought.
Danny looked up and nodded once to her. "Pepperoni okay?"
Lindsay nodded.
"Yeah, large pepperoni and a Greek salad for two," he said into the phone. Danny looked up at her with his sharp blue eyes and handed her the receiver. "They need your address."
Lindsay wondered how he found her place when he was standing at her door but shrugged and took the phone from him anyway. She gave the pizza place her name, phone number and address and the older man on the other end told her it would be thirty minutes.
She hung up the phone and set it on the coffee table in front of her, debating whether to sit down or stand. She opted for the former and ran her hands along the tops of her thighs. "So."
Danny lazily thumbed the TV remote control, his eyes on the blank screen in front of them. "So."
"So, do you want something to drink?" she offered.
Danny nodded and Lindsay left the couch to get them a drink. From the kitchen she could hear the television turn on and suddenly the noise of the game filled her apartment. Looking into her fridge she stared at the six pack of beer and unopened bottle of red wine. She decided if they were drinking something you could get in a sports bar, it would be officially a hangout between friends and nothing else and she opted for beer.
"The Yankees are playing today," he said, nodding toward the television.
"Do you go to a lot of their games?" she asked, handing him his beer.
Their fingers brushed against one another's briefly and Danny's eyes penetrating into her. Lindsay tucked an errant strand behind her ear and sat next to him on the couch. She noted Danny was sitting in the middle of the couch and anywhere she sat was going to close to him.
"I see a few a season if I'm lucky," he replied. "I end up taping most of them and watching after my shift."
Lindsay nodded. Baseball season had ended but she wanted to see a game when it started. She said this to Danny and he grinned for the first time since entering her apartment.
"Maybe I'll take you to one," he replied. "It's an experience you'd never find in Montana."
Lindsay thought for a second Danny took it personally she wasn't born and raised in New York, like she had a choice. She turned her attention to the baseball game, which was turning to commercial. A commercial break was always a better time to bring up something than in the middle of an inning.
"Do you have something against non-New Yorkers, Danny?" she asked and took a sip from her beer.
Danny raised one eyebrow as he turned his head to her. "Are you kidding me?"
"You like to make a point of bringing up the fact I'm from Montana," she reminded him and shrugged. "Why?"
He brought the beer bottle to his lips and smiled before taking a sip. "Because it bugs you."
Lindsay rolled her eyes. "Very grown up."
Danny shrugged. "It's a turf thing. You came in a week after Aiden had left. What's a guy to do?"
"Aiden Burn?" she asked.
Danny nodded. "Yeah. She and I were like that." He held up his crossed fingers. "We had a nice little family goin' before she left."
She wanted to say it wasn't her fault Aiden broke the rules, she wanted to say she wasn't the reason Mac fired her. She wanted to say she was happy Aiden did what she did because she needed to get out of Bozeman more than anything. In all honesty Lindsay was glad she did because otherwise she'd still be back in Montana.
"I don't have any regrets about where I am or what I'm doing," she replied instead. She hoped he understood what she meant.
Danny looked up to her face again. Lindsay's brown eyes searched his, wondering why he chose to come over to her place tonight. As if working together wasn't enough of togetherness but she had few friends in the city and wasn't feeling up to kicking him out.
"Were you two more than that?" Lindsay asked holding up her fingers, mimicking Danny.
"Nah." Danny shook his head. "She was more like a sister. I haven't really talked to her since she left though."
Lindsay took another sip of her beer. "How's your case going?"
Danny finished off his beer and left to the kitchen. "You want another one?" he asked pointing to his empty bottle.
Lindsay looked down to her bottle, noting there was still two-thirds left. "Sure." She took a long sip and turned on the television. "Do you want to watch the game? We could watch something else..." she called to him from the living room.
This was all new to her. Having Danny over at her apartment wasn't exactly something she had thought about. The one time the thought had entered her mind she wasn't exactly thinking about what they'd watch on television.
Danny didn't answer her and she got up from the couch, taking her beer with her. He was standing in her kitchen, staring at the pictures on her refrigerator door like he was at her parents house and looking at her baby pictures. Lindsay stood beside him and took another sip of her beer.
She pointed to the picture of an elderly man in tight jeans, a checkered shirt, tanned skin and a white cowboy hat standing next in a large open field. "That's my grandpa. He had a ranch outside of Bozeman. So much space I think you'd probably die from lack of pollution."
Danny leaned in closer to the picture and smiled. "Get out of here."
There were a few pictures of friends Lindsay pointed out and he asked about every single one of them. The one Lindsay skipped over was the one that caught Danny completely off guard. It was Lindsay, maybe six months ago, and another man. Her hair was a little longer than she wore it now and she was tanned, in jeans, cowboy boots and a button up shirt he would die to see and a smile he had only seen once. A tall, black man with strong arms was holding Lindsay and smiling at the camera like they were on their honeymoon.
Danny pointed to the picture. "Who's that?"
Lindsay blushed and took a sip from her bottle, nearly finishing the cool liquid. When she hung the picture she didn't think anyone would ever see it besides her.
"That's-"
There was a loud knock at her door and Lindsay closed her eyes, thankful she had time to come up with an explanation.