Chapter 8 – December 8, 2006

Lindsay almost groaned when her alarm went off the next morning. There had been a message on her voice mail she hadn't checked until she got home the previous night from Stella, reminding her that the next day was 'cookie day' at the lab. Thus, she'd spent the next two hours making a batch of her mother's gingerbread cookies. She'd collapsed into bed around 12:30.

Now she was wishing she'd planned in advance. She grabbed the cookie bin as she ran out the door, calling Stella and scolding her for not warning her before hand.

"You had all of yesterday, basically," Stella answered. "What did you do?"

Lindsay blushed. "Dinner and a concert," she admitted.

"You had a date last night?" Stella exclaimed, excitedly. "How was it?"

"I had fun," she replied, cryptically.

"What concert was it? The Christmas one at the Met?"

"Just a small choir concert," Lindsay answered, glad there was someone she could gush to.

"Who took you to that? Sounds like it could only be someone who knows the city."

Lindsay laughed. "That, Stel, is private information."

"So it was Danny then."

Lindsay hoped her shock that Stella had guessed didn't show through in her voice. "Danny knows of a church choir concert?" If they weren't doing this over the phone, Lindsay was sure Stella would have called her lie already.

"He and his family go every year."

"He didn't mention anything to me," Lindsay lied.

"Oh."

Lindsay would have sworn she'd heard disappointment in Stella's voice. "Anyway, I'm getting on the subway now, I should be there soon."

The break room table was already littered with plastic containers of cookies when Lindsay stepped in. Danny, Flack and Hawkes were already digging into the containers with gusto.

"You boys going to leave any for those of us that actually work?" she teased, setting her own Tupperware container on the table with the rest.

"People work here?" Flack quipped, taking another bite out of the chocolate chip cookie he was munching on.

Lindsay snorted. "This isn't the precinct."

"Kitten has claws this morning," Danny teased.

"'Kitten' is happy," Lindsay shot back, a smile tilting the corners of her mouth.

"Stella mentioned something about a date," Flack spoke up.

Lindsay rolled her eyes. "You guys are worse than high school girls. I went to dinner and a concert last night. Whether it can be considered a date remains to be seen."

"You must have had fun," Hawkes remarked.

"I did," Lindsay confirmed snatching a cookie from the only unlabelled bin. She bit into it and closed her eyes in bliss as the flavour took over her mouth. She dropped to a chair with the cookie. "Whose are these?"

"Bucket's unlabelled. Recipe looks old and well used though."

"Why, Flack, how detective-like of you," Lindsay teased. She really was in an excellent mood.

Making cookies was second nature to her, and as such she went through the motions without really thinking. That left her brain capacity to think of other things, like her night with Danny. She'd puzzled over whether or not to call it a date, over why she was holding back from him. She enjoyed their time together, their teasing, their conversations, their camaraderie and she'd come to the conclusion by the end of her baking that she wanted a relationship with Danny, damn the consequences.

The result had been a huge weight off of her chest.

"I bet you twenty bucks you won't be able to find out whose they are," Flack challenged her.

Lindsay raised an eyebrow, locking eyes with Danny as a smirk grew across her face. "You're on." They shook before Lindsay spoke up. "You'd be surprised at what I can find out about people."

The comment was not lost on Danny, who remembered their night at Cozy's very well. She had detecting skills that were unrivalled. He smirked back at her, knowing full well there was a good chance she'd be twenty bucks richer by the end of her shift.

Lindsay leaned against the doorframe of the trace lab, watching Danny put some sort of material through the GCMS. By the upturned corners of his mouth, he either knew she was there or he felt he had the breakthrough bit of his case.

"You gonna come in, Montana?"

She smiled as she pushed her shoulder off of the metal. "I didn't know you could bake."

The moment of surprise that flitted across her face was all of the answer she needed. "Baking, Montana?"

"The cookies are yours. They're excellent." She noticed the flush that crept over his cheeks at her praise.

"You're crazy."

"You should bake more often, though I would like to know when you had the time. I was up until after midnight because I'd completely forgotten."

"You're not going to get a confession out of me, Montana."

"I don't need a confession, Messer," she promised. "I just need you to back me up when I tell Flack I know whose cookies are unlabelled."

Finally, he met her eyes. The confidence in them startled him almost more than the fact that she'd figured him out. "How'd you figure it out?"

Lindsay leaned back against the lab bench, her hands bracing her weight. "I guess people didn't notice the other side of your recipe. It's all in Italian. You're the only person I know with an Italian background. The rest you confirmed for me right here."

He had to give her credit, she really was good. "I'm impressed."

"You should bake more often," she responded. "Though this whole element of surprise thing is working in your favour."

"In my favour?"

She took a deep breath and he knew that she was about to admit something big. "I'm starting to forget why I said 'no'."

He stood stunned, but was shocked out of it when her phone beeped. "Hammerbeck's calling me."

Flack hadn't given her the money he'd bet, but he didn't make her give him money either. Instead, they decided to call it a draw, regardless of Danny's testimony. She was just as happy at the end of the day as she had been in the beginning and hummed to herself as she almost skipped down the lab halls to her office. Even the idea of pulling a double shift couldn't spoil her mood.

Danny was sitting at his desk, a hand massaging over his forehead when she entered. "Hey Monroe."

"Why aren't you home?" Sure, she was tired, but she was happy and she didn't know what the next day would bring. She wanted to hold onto the happiness in her veins as long as she possibly could.

"The case," he said, as if she was crazy. "We are definitely pullin' a double."

"I know that, but I can hold down the fort for a few hours. We're just waiting for results, right?"

"No way, Montana. If you're stayin', so am I."

"Danny that's silly. Go home, get some sleep."

"You're not tired?"

She smiled softly. "Surprisingly, no. Go catch a couple of hours, I'll call you when we get our results in."

He nodded, pulling open his desk drawer and withdrawing a plastic wrapped package. He set it on her desk, on the papers she was supposed to be looking at as she watched him move. As impulsively as she had kissed his cheek last night, he pressed a kiss to her temple. "Thanks, Montana. I owe you."

She smiled. "I'll collect. Go get some sleep." She watched him leave before turning back to the package he'd left behind. Five cookies sat piled on top of each other, wrapped and tied with ribbon. She chuckled, carefully untying the ribbon and taking a blissful bite of the cookie she picked up.

She definitely hoped he'd be baking more often.