All your favorites, follows and reviews are amazing! Thank you so much. This chapter is a little shorter than normal, but there's a big chapter coming in a few days! :)

Chapter Nine

Butterflies filled my stomach as I half-listened to Grissom tell Nick and Warrick about a new breakthrough in insect life-cycle. We were gathered in his office, among the jars of animals, and I was waiting for Catherine to turn up.

After my encounter with her in the locker room this morning I hadn't been able to think of anything else. I had also gone through my entire wardrobe twice in an attempt to find something nice to wear, I'd only been able to settle on a short-sleeved white blouse and dark red jeans, but it still didn't feel like anything she would class as 'special'. I wondered what she thought of me at all, we hadn't really spoken, although I had enjoyed our alternative activities.

"Here she is!" Nick announced as Catherine entered the office.

"No need to make a fuss, please, I'm fine." she laughed, holding her hands up a little in an attempt to calm Nick's excitement.

"We missed you." Warrick wrapped his arm around her shoulders briefly before she took a space to stand next to him.

She held my gaze for a couple of seconds, a suggestive smile playing on her lips as her eyes fell down to take in my body.

I could have melted on the floor right then and there.

"Nick and Catherine, you've got a missing person case," Grissom handed Catherine the case information, "Warrick and Sara, you've got a homicide at Silverstone Golf Club."

I let Warrick take the address from Grissom and gave Catherine a sad smile at us not working together that shift, which she returned, before Warrick and I headed out of the office and to our crime scene.

Having processed the scene with Warrick for six hours, we'd come back to the lab with some napkins, all the golf clubs (as they were the suspected method of murder) and a load of different fingerprints lifted from all over the club. The joys of a communal building.

I sat in one of the offices in the lab in front of an IAFIS computer, trying to bring up any prints that belonged to people with a violent past - users of the golf club that would be more likely to be responsible for a murder. The search was becoming pretty hopeless, just a load of prints returning from people who had agreed to have their prints stored due to their profession, such as a casino worker or law enforcement. None of them had any immediate connection to the victim.

"Can you run this print through IAFIS for me?" Catherine popped her head around the door of the computer room I was sat in. She was wearing a low cut white lace-detailed vest and dark jeans, with a black blazer over the top.

"Sure I can." I smiled, glad to see her.

She came over and slid the ten-print card under the scanner. We waited for the computer to start its search.

I felt her breathe on my skin as she leaned over next to me to look at the screen, my whole body tingled.

Her hand rested on the back rest of my chair. "Anything coming up?" she asked.

I looked from the computer over to her, my eyes catching sight of her cleavage before meeting her eyes.

She smiled, knowing that she was teasing me.

The computer beeped and brought my attention back to work. "Here, there's a match." I hit the print button on the screen and the printer next to us started to kick into action.

"Thank you. I'll make it up to you."

"You better."

She turned to look back at me as she exited the room, "I promise." She winked.

The rest of the shift was spent spraying each golf club from the venue with Luminol in the hope of some blood showing it. I eventually did find blood on a singular club, but the prints left on it were all smudged, and I sighed frustratedly that I was back where I started hours ago. I glanced at my watch - 9am. It was definitely time to go home.

"You look like you need a night off."

I looked up from the line of clubs on the evidence table to see Catherine enter the room.

"I do." I replied, honestly.

Catherine came over to stand next to me, "I think you should take tonight off, and take me out for a drink."

"Do you?"

"Mhmm..." she played with an empty evidence bag that was on the table, "I also think if this lab wasn't full of people I would have my hands all over you."

I met her eyes and she raised her eyebrows at me, a cocky smile on her lips.

"I'll ask Grissom if I can take the time off." I told her; it taking all the self-restraint I had not to kiss her then and there.

Catherine slipped her fingers between mine, our hands below the desk and out of sight of anyone that might pass by the glass walls of the room. "I'll come and pick you up in taxi, about 8?"

I squeezed her hand, it felt good to be able to make some sort of physical connection with her. "That would be nice."

"It's a date." she replied.

She slipped her fingers out from mine and I watched as she walked out of the office and down the hall.

A date with Catherine Willows.

I was already nervous.