Lying in the dark beside her, listening to her breathing and smelling her perfume beneath the tang of sex and sweat, Jack knew that Claire was wondering what sort of man he is.

He knew she'd been wondering that for a while, now.

It's not my fault. I never pretended anything. Never pretended to be a bleeding-heart, never pretended not to enjoy winning a case. Never pretended to be anything other than exactly who I am.

What she saw is what she got.

When they'd started this … this whatever it was that they were doing, he hadn't given a thought to how it was going to end. He'd expected that it would, because it was a fling, for her at least, and flings end, don't they?

He could even have predicted that work would come between them, because work always came between him and the women in his life: late nights, long hours, weekends spent prepping for trial and not picnicking in the park or whatever the hell other people did their Sundays.

And it had. Just not in the way he would have expected.

"Claire," he said softly. "Come over here. Please."

Claire was silent a moment. "I need a glass of water," she said at last.

She got up and went into the kitchen. Jack could have followed her.

He didn't. He lay staring at the ceiling in the dark and wondered if she was getting dressed out there, if she'd come back in and say something like we've both got early starts tomorrow

And then he'd know, finally, how this whatever-it-was that they were doing was going to end.

Until she came back with her water and with a glass for him, too, and slipped back into bed beside him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Penny for them?" he asked, not sure if he wanted to hear what she was thinking about, not sure if it was worse to wonder.

Unexpectedly, she chuckled. "If you really want to know, I was remembering that until I was about twelve, I thought 'corpus delicti' meant 'delectable body', not 'body of the crime'."

"The first time I read 'mens rea' in some courtroom potboiler I borrowed from the school library, I thought it meant the crime had been committed by a man."

She moved a little, and Jack realized she was looking up at him, even though she couldn't possibly have been able to make out his face in the dark. "And actus rea?"

"Committed by an actuary," he said promptly, and was rewarded with her chuckle. "You know, Claire …"

"Yes?"

He took the glass from her hand by touch and reached over her to set it on the nightstand. "Since we're both awake … it seems a shame to waste an opportunity to habeas your corpus delicti."

She was laughing when he kissed her.