A/N: Wtf? I hate when the site refuses for half a day to let me upload a new chapter!


The sensation of movement next to him, followed by a loud voice, woke Goren out of the deep sleep, bordering on unconsciousness, that he had given in to only an hour before. Groaning, he turned toward the source of the noise and opened his eyes, taking in the dark hair and bare back of the woman sitting on the side of his bed. "Danielle . . ."

"Hmm?" She twisted around to look at him, then gave him a rueful smile and patted his bicep. "Sorry, hon. I was trying not to wake you up."

"Oh. What -" He stopped short when he realized she was holding his cell phone in her hand. "What are you doing?" he asked slowly, suspecting that whatever it was, he wouldn't like it.

"Your phone was ringing," she said with a shrug, leaning forward to put it down on the nightstand, "and you weren't waking up. So I picked it up."

Yep, he didn't like it. Muttering a curse, he sat up and rubbed at his eyes. "You answeredmy phone?"

"Well, yeah," she said. "Is there something wrong with that?"

"Is there something wr-" he started to echo incredulously, then broke off with a shake of his head to opt for a more important question: "Who was it?"

Looking thoughtful, Danielle slid down in the bed until she was lying next to him again. "Alex somebody-or-other. She didn't seem to want to say much once she realized I wasn't you."

Alex had called in the middle of the night and Danielle had answered his phone? "Shit!" he bit out, barely resisting the urge to give Danielle a hard push out of his bed as he clambered out of it himself. "What did you say to her? What did she say?" Without waiting for her answer, he headed for the closet. His partner wouldn't have called him so late unless either she or the case needed him - and both of those took precedence over Danielle Matthews.

"What . . . Bobby!" Danielle blurted, scrambling out of bed to follow him across the room. "It's not a big deal. She just said to tell you that she got a name, and then she hung up."

He spared her a glance as he buttoned his shirt, then repeated, "What did you say to her?"

"I told her you were busy!" Danielle snapped. "Jesus, Bobby, the world's not going to end because I picked up your phone. And if 'Alex' is another girlfriend," she added, watching him nearly trip himself in his haste to pull on a pair of pants, "then it damn well serves you right!"

" 'Alex' is my partner." He snatched his phone and his keys off the nightstand, then turned to look at Danielle, who was standing in the middle of his bedroom, looking both shocked and confused. "You can stay the rest of the night if you want. I won't be home. Lock the door when you leave."

"Bobby!"

He ignored her shouted protest and was out the apartment door within seconds, flipping open his phone to dial his partner's number.


Alex looked at her buzzing cell phone as it wobbled across her desk, then picked it up and checked the caller ID: Goren. With a quiet snort, she hit the button to silence the phone and put it down again. If he was calling her, he'd gotten her message, and if he'd gotten her message, then he would choose to either come to One PP and meet her, or stay with whatever woman had answered his phone. Either way, he didn't need to talk to her to decide.

Reminding herself that his after-hours activities were none of her concern, she forced her attention back to the computer screen in front of her, which was displaying Robert Daugherty's records.


He walked into the squad room twenty minutes later, unsure of what sort of welcome he was going to get. Depending on Eames's current mindset, she would probably either let loose at him or refuse to speak to him.

Neither of those were particularly attractive to him at the moment, but he couldn't escape the fact that he'd brought it upon himself with his impulsive invitation to Danielle. He'd known before he even picked up the phone to issue it what would happen, and he'd mentally consigned his partner to hell and made the call anyway.

After all, he'd rationalized, Eames was dating someone - a witness, no less. For all he knew, she was sleeping with the "gorgeous" psychiatrist; why shouldn't Goren see someone if he wanted? She was the one who'd told him he ought to stick with Danielle.

And her only reaction to his kissing her had been amusement.

He had no reason to feel like he was doing something underhanded when he called Danielle. At least, that was what he had convinced himself of earlier in the night. Right up until he woke up to see Danielle holding his phone.

Now Danielle was nearly forgotten and he was concentrating on what he could see of his partner's face from across the room, searching for any hint of what to expect.

When he reached their desks, her response was far from what he'd expected. She looked up from whatever she had been writing, offered him a cool nod, and pushed a piece of paper across to him. "Robert Daugherty," she told him, returning her attention to the legal pad in front of her. "Both girls were his advisees."

"Oh." Warily, he slid into his seat across from her and picked up the paper, looking at it but not really seeing it through his anxiety over her chilly greeting. "Uh, Eames . . ."

"What?" she said, turning to her computer and not looking up at him.

"Um, when you called . . . a little while ago, I mean . . . that was -"

"I don't care what - or who - it was, as long as you got my message. Which you did."

He blinked, unused to dealing with an Eames who looked normal but whose speech was rapidly lowering the room temperature toward freezing. "Listen," he said tentatively, "Danielle is -"

"I don't care!" she snapped, raising her eyes to glare at him. "I don't care what Danielle is. Just keep her out of my case." Not giving him time to reply, she stood up and, in one swift movement, scooped up her laptop and the pad she'd been writing on. "That's all I've got for him right now," she said, nodding at the paper he was still holding. "So see what you can make of it. I'll be in the conference room."

"Eames!"

She ignored him and continued walking.

Stunned, he watched her disappear into the conference room and close the door behind her.


Danielle, she thought angrily as she made a note on her pad. Who'd you expect it to be, Alex, his mother? He's perfectly -

The point of the pencil she was writing with snapped under the pressure she was applying to it and flew past her cheek, narrowing missing her eye. Fighting the urge to scream in frustration, she slapped the now-useless pencil down and stood up to retrieve a new one from the pile of forgotten writing implements that was a fixture of the conference room.

Her partner could sleep with whoever he wanted to, she reminded herself as she settled back down at the table and started writing again. She certainly had no claim on him.

Still, out of all the women in the world he could have taken to bed, why did it have to be a smarmy, large-breasted medical examiner who sneered at Eames every time they ran into each other? The woman had sounded positively gleeful when she answered the phone and told Eames that "Bobby was occupied." What the hell did "occupied" mean, anyway?

On second thought, she probably really didn't want to know. The thought of Bobby sleeping with that -

"Alex?"

She jumped, startled by the voice that had shattered the silence of the room. "What?" she barked, whirling around to find her partner standing just inside the door of the room.

Emboldened by the fact that she'd responded at all, he closed the door behind him and took another step toward her. "Look, I'm sorry she answered the phone. I was asleep, and . . . I don't know what possessed her to do that."

Closing her eyes, she took a slow breath and then let it out. "Bobby."

"What?"

"I don't want to know." She opened her eyes again and immediately directed them to the pencil she was holding. "Who you sleep with is your business, not mine."

Giving her a skeptical look, he pulled out a chair across from her and dropped into it. "That's not what you thought a few days ago."

"That," she said tightly, keeping her eyes down, "was before it became something other than academic. I'm not going to act like I really think I have any say in who you go to bed with."

"This was a one-time thing," he began, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "I -"

"Oh, even better!" she broke in sarcastically. "Not only are you sleeping with someone I can't stand, but you're using her, too! I guess the two of you are just made for each other."

"Eames, come on. Would you listen to me, please?"

"What for? Is there some part of the story I missed, maybe? Or are you just trying to make yourself feel better by 'explaining' it to me?"

"Look, I'm sorry, ok?" he snapped, shoving back his chair and getting to his feet. "I didn't want this to happen."

"I bet," she snorted. "Maybe that's something you should think about before you jump in the sack with someone from now on."

He sighed. "I did think about it. I just . . . overruled myself."

"That's not my problem," she replied coldly. "Are you going to do any work tonight, or are you just going to keep bugging me? Because if it's the latter, I'm not hanging around for it."

" 'Bugging you'?" he repeated incredulously, resting on hand on the corner of the table and leaning down. "I'm trying to apologize to you - although I have no idea why, since I sure as hell don't owe you an apology for having a social life outside of you."

Standing up, she moved closer to him, glaring. "Yeah, well, your apology sucks." She gave him a hard push toward the door. "Don't do me any favors. If you don't think you owe me anything, then don't patronize me and pretend you do." She gave him another shove, a faint smile on her face as she watched him stumble backwards into the wall.

He wrapped a hand around the door frame, holding himself in place so her pushes couldn't move him any farther toward the door. "What the hell's wrong with you? What do I have to do to get you to stop screaming at me?"

Still glaring daggers, she came to a stop a few feet in front of him. "You could start by having better taste in women. Go back to your desk, Bobby," she went on quickly, jabbing a finger into his chest and then using it to point to the door. "Trust me when I say you don't want to take this conversation any farther."

Refusing to be moved, he just raised his eyebrows. "Why not?"

"Because you wouldn't like either of the two things I'm tempted to do to you right now," she snapped. "Would you just go?"

"No." Intrigued by her comments, he crossed his arms and looked down at her curiously. "What are the two things?"

"What, you don't believe me?"

"That I wouldn't like them? No, I believe you. Considering how angry you are right now, I'm pretty sure anything you do to me will be less than pleasant - but I'm still curious."

She took a step back, scrutinizing him, and then nodded jerkily. "Fine."

" 'Fine' what?"

"Shut up." And with that, she planted a hand on his chest, went up on tiptoe, and kissed him.

Shocked, he froze for a second, but as the kiss began to overshadow the argument in his short-term memory, he relaxed and wrapped an arm around her waist with a quiet groan.

And then, without segue, she pulled her mouth away from his, took a step back, and slammed a well-practiced right hook into his jaw, knocking him back a step.

Slightly dazed by the blow, he raised a hand to touch his face where her punch had landed, verifying that everything was still in one piece, and then just stared at her.

Doing her best to look completely unconcerned by his reaction, she raised her eyebrows and smiled in satisfaction. "I warned you, Bobby. Now, I'm going home. I'll see you tomorrow."

By the time he'd gotten his wits together enough to react to her words, she was long gone.


A/N: Yes, Bobby is a rat bastard. He will be made to pay - and pay, and pay - before this story ends!