A couple of days after the epilogue of Saturday in the Park…

Kaile glanced around the restaurant, finally spotting her cousin in a booth and making her way over. "Hey, Ella."

The younger woman smiled and put away the PDA she had been working on while she waited. "You made it."

"Of course I did! Would I stand you up?" she asked with a faux-indignant look as she sat on the other side of the booth.

"If the job demanded it, of course you would, just like the rest of us," Ell replied.

Kaile sighed. "The city really needs to calm down. What is it about the summer that makes people crazy?" Ell just grinned in law enforcement camaraderie as the waitress approached and took their orders and brought a replacement soda for Ell's now empty glass.

"So," Ell began once the waitress was gone, "have you talked to Dom lately?"

"What? Why would I have talked to Dominic?" Kaile inwardly winced at her tone. She had just made it completely obvious that something was up and Ell totally picked up on it as her raised eyebrow attested to.

"I was just asking since he talks to you more often than anyone else in the family. What's with the defensiveness, K?"

Kaile ran a hand through her long, dark hair. "Is that why you asked me to lunch? To interrogate me about your brother?"

Ell sat back without a visible reaction on her face. "You know that's not why. I'm making an effort to connect with everyone since I've been so bad at it for years. But if you don't want to talk about Dominic, that's fine."

Kaile groaned, folded her arms on the table and laid her head down on them. "No, no, I'm sorry," she mumbled. She brought her head back up and looked her cousin in the eye. "I really am sorry for jumping on you like that. It's just…" She trailed off not knowing how to finish the sentence, but as usual Ell was a step ahead of her.

"Did you guys sleep together?" Kaile blushed and looked away, but she didn't refute the statement. "Oh, K. I thought you had decided that was over for you guys."

"I did," Kaile protested. "It just kind of happened and now we can't seem to talk normally to each other anymore."

"When did it happen? Dom hasn't been in town since…" Ell trailed off as she realized exactly when the last time her older brother had been in New York.

"Now don't you go feeling bad about this, Daniella Messer," Kaile reprimanded, pointing her finger at her cousin. "Dom and I are adults, we take full responsibility for our actions." She blew out a breath. "Even our stupid ones."

Ell was quiet for a moment. "Okay, well, is there anything I can do to help? Do you need me to kick my brother's ass?"

Kaile laughed. "No, no, that's okay. We just need to get past the awkwardness and we'll be fine." Though who knew when that would be. They had been playing phone tag with each other's answering machines and voicemail for weeks. But it at least felt a little better having told someone about it, and Ella was about the best person to have told. She had a poker face like nobody else Kaile knew and she could keep a secret, even within their family. "So, anyway, if I had talked to Dominic, what was it that you needed to know?" she asked as their food came.

Ell waited until the waitress was done and gone again. Kaile would almost swear her cousin was actually blushing a bit. "I, uh, just wanted to know how many tickets he had managed to get for the All-Star game in a couple of weeks. If he couldn't get enough I didn't want him to feel bad, I could always not go, it's not like I haven't seem him play in one before."

The detective in Kaile Flack perked its head up. Ella was usually so good at lying, either to a suspect or a family member, that few could tell she wasn't saying the absolute truth. Butter wouldn't melt on her tongue she was so cool. But for some reason Ella was totally giving away that she was flustered and Kaile was intrigued. "Bullshit, Ella. I know very well that everyone in your family does their damnedest to get to that game since it would be pretty impossible to get enough time off to attend all of Dominic's playoff games. Devon has the excuse that he can't always get leave and that he would be court-martialed for going AWOL, but all together you, your sister or one of your parents have missed the All Star game, what, three times?"

Ell didn't meet her older cousin's eyes as she played with her food using her fork. "Four if you count the one time that both Ana and I couldn't make it as separate instances."

Kaile took a sip of her water. "Yeah, so that line doesn't fly with me. Spit it out."

Ell sighed. "Fine. But," she stated strongly, pointing her fork at the woman across the table, "this does not get mentioned to anyone else until I know that it's a sure thing."

Kaile held up her hand like she was promising to tell the truth in court. "I solemnly swear."

Sighing again, Ell took a drink from her glass before she went on. "I wanted to see if Dominic could swing an extra ticket for JD."

"JD? As in, John Deveraux? As in, Detective John Deveraux of the NYPD, the man who saved your life? That JD?"

Now Ell rolled her eyes. "Yes, that JD."

"I didn't know things had gotten this serious," Kaile said, smiling.

"They're not!" Ell protested. "Which is entirely why I'm leaning towards not inviting him. I know if I bring him the entire family is going to be one step away from thinking we're engaged and we're barely anything, K. I just know he likes baseball and the Cubs in particular and I want to do something nice for him, but now I'm thinking this whole idea was just bad to begin with."

Anyone else and Kaile would have gone for the jugular, continuing the teasing until it was well past acceptable. But Ella had just recently reconnected meaningfully with the family and Kaile knew that her cousin found the idea of being the center of family gossip like this terrifying and it could push her back again. She would have to tread lightly. "Tell you what, why I don't I call your brother and get him to 'offer' a ticket to Deveraux," Kaile suggested, using her fingers to make air quotes around the word offer, "as a belated thank-you for saving your life. You could still bring the ticket to him, but at least if Dominic made the overture it wouldn't look like you were asking him out on a date and the family wouldn't have as much to hassle you about." She took a bite of her food.

Ell seemed to roll the idea around in her head. "That just might work. Are you sure you're okay with calling Dominic for me? If you make the call and make the suggestion to Dominic then everyone can't say I asked Dom for the tickets just to ask JD out."

"Yeah," Kaile said, waving her hand in the air, "it's no problem. Like I said, Dom and I just need to get over the awkwardness, so there's nothing like meeting it head on." She did her best to give off the impression that it wasn't a big deal even though she was dreading the impending phone call.

"Great," Ell replied, smiling again as she began to actually eat her food. "Since the game is in New York this year do you think anybody else is coming?"

Kaile swallowed before answering. "I think Mac is and maybe my dad, but that's all I've heard so far. Uncle Sheldon will probably get in using Aunt Tessa's connections. I think Shayna is too busy with her summer classes and Will is busy with his internship in Chicago. Maybe they'll bring Carla with them."

"How about you? Or would that be too awkward for you?" Ell asked.

Kaile sighed. "I don't know, I probably won't go unless somebody makes a big deal about it. With the game being in New York we'll all probably be working overtime to handle the influx of people and I don't want to pull strings to get out of duty. I can watch Dominic play some other time." Deciding a subject change was in order, she picked up another bite on her fork but paused to ask a question before eating it. "Have you heard about Mac?"

Ell quirked an eyebrow. "That he's thinking about retiring? Yeah, he kind of hinted about it to me in a roundabout way. How'd you hear about it?"

"My dad, who else? He brought it up at dinner the other night." She tried to have dinner with her father at least a couple of times a week and a lunch if they could work it into their busy schedules. Often it was no more than a hot dog at a street vendor, but it didn't matter to them.

"You mean Uncle Don talked about retiring sometime in the foreseeable future and you just inferred that meant that Mac must be thinking about it." They all knew how things went. Don was still in because Mac was, Danny was only hanging around until Lindsay was ready to retire in a couple of years, and Sheldon was staying in because he still had kids to put through college. It would be a weird day for the NYPD, but in the not too distant future Kaile Flack would be the only member of the House of New York still around.

She tipped her glass to her cousin. "That's about the size of it." She sighed. "I hope Dad does retire with Mac and doesn't stay in just because of me."

Ell smiled. "Don't worry, retirement doesn't mean he'll stop looking out for you, calling to check up on you and hassling any guy that shows a passing interest in you."

Kaile threw her napkin at the other woman. "Stop, you, or I won't call Dominic!" That was enough to get Ell to throw up her hands in surrender and the women shared a laugh and finally managed to really get down to eating knowing that they could be called back to work at any moment. Kaile temporarily pushed any thoughts of Dominic to the back of her mind. She was already kicking herself for volunteering to call him, but she wouldn't think about that right now. After work was soon enough for that awkwardness.