A/N1 Posting two chapters tonight, Chapters Two and Three.

Love to hear your thoughts on each and on the story.

Time for an Ellie-arranged blind date.

Don't own Chuck. Kinda liked the show though.

Chutes and Ladders

CHAPTER TWO

Do Not Pass Go?

Saturday, March 25

Coffee seemed safe.

Sarah got to the shop early and got a seat against the wall but with a good view of the door. She would be able to see him coming - and, if worse came to worse - she was close enough to the back door to beat a hasty retreat. It turned out that Ellie had been calling Sarah to warn her that she had given Sarah's number to Chuck (really? Chuck?) and advised him to call. Sarah really did like Ellie, but that was presuming on their new friendship. But Sarah also had to admit that she was...curious.

Ellie had not said much, but she had told Sarah a bit about her brother. Her description made almost no sense. The man she described was a computer whiz, an electronics genius, a Stanford scholarship guy (although he had not graduated - Ellie had added that without elaborating), but now working as a private detective in LA. A private detective?

Sarah had been both intrigued and disheartened by that. PI. Intrigued: there was a seedy glamour surrounding the job, a Raymond Chandler tang that the thought of it carried. Almost all certainly false, Sarah reminded herself. And that was connected to: Disheartened: Sarah had spent her childhood and her high school years with her conman father. He had just come through town on another con, and was gone again. The first time I've seen him in two years and I get one lousy brunch. At least the food was good And it was good to see him. She had eventually quit, walked away from that life and gone to college, got her teaching degree. Before the ink on the degree was dry, she was hired at the kindergarten and she had been working there for the last few years.

She had put seedy behind her. Sometimes she missed the challenge, the intellectual challenge, of the con life, the on-the-edge quality it had, but she only missed it sometimes. Her life was good. She loved her kids. She loved teaching. But admittedly, she was lonely - a low-volume, background-noise loneliness. It did not make her unhappy, it just sapped some of her happiness.

Her father, the way he was, what he taught her, - all that had made it hard for her to trust anyone, but especially men. Her beauty compounded her problem, since there was always a question about what they were really interested in - Sarah or the leggy, blue-eyed blonde. With most, the answer came quickly: the blonde, not Sarah. She had accepted that she was bad at relationships and had given up, sort of, and just drifted in her personal life for the last year or more. She had dated a few times, but not seen any man more than once. She shared her life and herself only with her kids.

She was looking out the window as she sat thinking. She saw him. She was sure it was him. The coloring - brown hair, curly - the set of the shoulders - the quick smile he gave the meter maid as she stared at his massive old American car (what the hell is that thing?) - all of it reminded her of Ellie. Family resemblance.

She did not let her gaze rest long on the car. She focused on him. Chuck. He was tall, not skinny but thin, lanky. Broad shouldered. He had on a worn sports coat, over a dark t-shirt. Jeans, high-topped Converse tennis shoes. Really? Not the sort of gumshoe I expected. The sports coat was worn, but it draped nicely on him and it had clearly been expensive in its time. He did not look Columbo-rumpled or Nick Charles-polished; he looked like a lanky version of Phillip Marlowe (the Elliot Gould version in The Long Goodbye).

"Hi," he offered, self-consciously, as he arrived at the table. Obviously, Ellie had given him a description of her; he had come directly to her when he entered the shop. He gave her a smile, and the look of it, the boyish charm of it, and something about his eyes, no his gaze...Something about that smile stirred parts of Sarah that had been dormant for a long while. She swallowed hard, trying to regain her normal self-control.

"Hi," she offered in return, her voice sounding even more enthusiastic than she expected.

ooOoo

As he entered the coffee shop, he saw her. Ellie had told him she was beautiful. Ellie had understated so completely that it was as if she had said something false. She - Sarah, her name is Sarah, don't be an idiot and forget - was beautiful but she was so much more than that. It was like she was the only thing in Chuck's immediate environment that was real. Everything else dulled, stretched, emptied, stepped back: it was all background to her: she was the figure in the foreground. Hell, she is the foreground. Chuck almost turned around. There was simply no earthly chance that woman was going to have coffee with him, much less like him. But he had canceled or weaseled on Ellie's good intentions too many times already, and Ellie was so sure about Sarah.

She had her hair pulled back, a long ponytail. If she had on makeup, Chuck could not tell. She had on a blue blouse with small blue buttons. Her eyes were so blue it made the blue of her blouse look like their reflection, the buttons envious of their blue. Can anything be blue with envy?

Chuck managed to get out a single word. "Hi!"

When she smiled and answered, he thought for a moment he would pass out, or just shrink and vanish like that constricting circle of light on just-turned-off, old-time televisions. That smile was impossible - an intergalactic anomaly. A singularity. What is a singularity again? Do I remember? Do I care?

ooOoo

After introductions, they awkwardly walked up to the counter and ordered coffee. Chuck was careful to order the cheapest cup; he didn't have much money. Sarah ordered the same and Chuck paid. The took their cups back to the table where Sarah had been seated.

ooOoo

Sarah had never been able to shake her father's lessons completely. She still sized up everyone she met, took stock of them in a lightning-quick assessment.

Chuck's sports coat matched his watch, on old '60s-style diver's compressor. A good maker. Taken care of but showing its age. Maybe an heirloom or bought second-hand. The hard look he had taken at the menu and the easy item he ordered made her guess that he was not awash in money. Dad would guess, what?, maybe a couple of thousand in the bank, on payday. A schnook. But Sarah liked him, liked him immediately. She could hear her dad in her head. "Don't just respond to the mark. Always a choice. Control what you do. Everything. You are an act, remember, not a person. Nothing spontaneous, everything seeming spontaneous. Try it again."

But her smile at Chuck had been spontaneous. So had the liking. I am a person, Dad.

ooOoo

Chuck noticed, as they sat down, that not only were Sarah's eyes blue, they were complicated - her gaze was complicated. Her attention seemed divided. Probably not into me at all. Just trying to figure how to choke down her coffee and make her getaway. His spirits, previously running high, sank. Who am I kidding? She probably dates actors. Good looking guys with tons of ready cash. Why would Ellie be so sure we should meet?

Chuck began the conversation with something, someone, they shared.

"So, you and Ellie are friends?"

Sarah grinned. "Yes. I think Ellie decided that we would be just a moment or two after we met and, well…"

"And there is no resisting her...I know. She...I've spent a lifetime unsuccessfully resisting my sister. If she were evil, she would rule the world."

Sarah laughed at that, obviously in complete agreement.

"Um...since we mentioned that...Look, Sarah, I don't mean to make this awkward...more awkward...but if she pushed you into this, and if you'd rather be somewhere else, like undergoing an emergency appendectomy, I'd understand. You can leave and there'd be no hard feelings. I can come up with a story for Ellie. She thinks I'm romantically challenged anyway…" Did I really just admit that?

Sarah's look became more complicated for a second, and Chuck thought she was going to take him up on the offer, but then she suddenly began to giggle. "Emergency appendectomy? How bad do you think spending a little time with you really is, Chuck?" Her saying his name was like an incantation: he felt her magic. He had never met anyone like her, he was sure of that, even if he had just met her.

He grinned back at her, chuckling himself. "Well, when your sister suggests you should get a hangtag, like the ones for handicapped parking, but displaying a broken heart, it's hard to summon up oodles of confidence."

She giggled again. "'Oodles'?" She caressed the word unselfconsciously. "I didn't know anyone still used that word."

Chuck blushed. Hearing her say that word as she said it...affected him. Wow. She makes 'oodles' sexy. Focus, Chuck. Make conversation.

ooOoo

He's funny. And to admit what he just admitted, to give me an out, not part of a pathetic love-me-because-I'm-pitiful ploy, but just frankly, generously. Who the hell is this guy?

She fell quickly into his diverting, companionable conversation. He seemed to intuit her reticence to talk much about herself personally, so he kept the conversation focused on Ellie, the gym, her work, his work. Sarah was delighted by him.

As they talked about his work, an idea that Sarah had when Ellie told her about Chuck came back to mind. Irresistibly. Sasha. Sarah was still worried about Sasha. There had been more bad dreams that week. She had no place poking into Sasha's home life or intruding on her parents and their lives, but she wanted to know more about what was going on.

Maybe she could hire Chuck to look into the family, maybe to sort of take a look around, see if there was something...strange...going on. Sarah's instincts were not as sharp as they had been back in the day, working with her father, but they were still there. And they told her something was off.

Calling Child Services - perhaps the appropriate next step and perhaps what she would end up doing - was drastic. Once that Pandora's Box was open, there was no closing it, and she did not want to cast suspicion wrongly. She did not want to harm Sasha or her family. She just wanted to make sure the little girl was okay. Chuck seemed like the perfect person to help her.

She thought it was worth asking. She told him the story about Sasha, getting immersed in the details and in her worries about her little student. He was immediately concerned for Sasha too, gripped by the story.

Sarah finished and looked at Chuck. "So, do you think you could, you know, investigate this, a little, for me? Just see what you can find out? I'm not talking anything large-scale or invasive. I would just like to quiet my mind."

Chuck nodded but she could see him mentally step back, his gaze less fully present. Maybe he's just thinking about whether he should. "So you want to hire me? You're going to be my client?"

Sarah wasn't sure what he was thinking, driving at. "Yes, Ellie made it sound like you could use the work, and I...have a little money I can use this way."

The slight absence in his eyes was still there. Why? Is he going to say no?

"Well...this is an irregular...sort of thing. If the family finds out I am doing it, it could come back on you. Get you into trouble. Overstepping your teacherly bounds. You know that, right?"

She nodded. "I do. But I trust you, Chuck. They won't find out, and it really would put my mind at ease. I came sort of hoping you might be willing to do this."

"Oh." He glanced away, then back. "Sure. I mean how could I not help Sasha? I may be down on my luck, but I'm no hard case."

Sarah was so pleased that he accepted that stopped thinking about the change in his demeanor. They finished their coffee. He pulled out a small wire-bound notebook and a short green pencil and made a few notes. She watched him, wondering what the white print on the pencil said but unable to make it out because of the largeness of Chuck's hand and the smallness of the print.

She was surprised when Chuck told her he needed to go. They walked out together. He walked her to her Porsche.

"So, I will do this," he said when they stopped in front of her car, "but not for pay. It probably won't take much time, anyway. I will call you...you know, about the investigation. Um, you know, after I have started investigating."

"But, Chuck, really, I can pay." She looked at him, he was looking at the Porsche.

His shoulders sank a bit. "No, really, no. I didn't come here to get work." He hurried on. "I mean - I had a nice time. I really did. It really was terrific to meet you."

He shook her hand and walked away. She watched him go, feeling warm all over. Even if she was a little disappointed the evening had ended - and ended in a handshake. She had thought a kiss might be in the evenings future, and she was very curious about what that would be like. She had wanted to take a closer look at his brown eyes.

.

She was in the car and driving away before she realized what she had done. How clueless can I be?

"Shit!" She spoke it aloud in the Porsche.

ooOoo

Chuck urged the Crown Vic into traffic, its engine clattering in unamused, belabored response.

At least he had something to do, a real case. Odd case. No money. No money - because how could he take money from her, given how he felt? But what did the way he felt matter?

What was a kindergarten teacher doing with ready cash for a PI? Driving a Porsche? Was she up to something? But what?

It didn't seem like it. She seemed genuinely concerned about the little girl. She really was a school teacher. Ellie had lunch with her and her kids at school one day when they were first getting to know each other.

Still, her gaze had so often been complicated, divided.

The way she had looked at him, examined him when they ordered: cool, thorough, assessing. Her blue eyes were deep water. What had she been thinking?

She was a real kindergarten teacher, but she was not a normal kindergarten teacher.

And then that conversation. So good - until the end. Now the evening seemed less a blind date and more a job interview. Figures. I had no shot.

"Shit," he whispered to himself.

A/N2 More to come, if folks are interested. Let me know.

Z