Chapter 21 – December 21, 2006

Stella was all but jumping as she accosted Lindsay in the hall of the lab. "Are you excited?" she asked.

Lindsay held back her urge to crack up laughing at Stella's child-like exuberance. "For what?"

"The lab party tonight!" Stella exclaimed. "You can't tell me you've forgotten about it."

Now Lindsay did laugh, something that surprised Stella a bit. "I haven't forgotten, Stel, don't worry."

They were silent for a minute. "What's got you so happy?" Stella asked finally.

"Am I not allowed to be happy?" Lindsay asked, blushing.

Stella shrugged. "It's been a long time since I've seen you smile like that. There something you're not telling me?"

"Don't you think you're being a little nosy, Stel?" Lindsay teased. "I'm happy right now."

"And I want to know why so that the next time you're depressed for a month I can cheer you up," Stella replied logically.

"I don't think you could replicate this," Lindsay admitted.

Stella gasped. "So it is a guy."

Lindsay's blush gave it away and Stella squealed.

"Tell me all about him."

"Montana!" Danny called down the hall.

Lindsay couldn't decide if she wanted to hug him, or throttle him. He was carrying a take out bag. She couldn't stop her expression from turning hopeful. She hadn't gotten a change to scarf something down yet. "Tell me you have lunch," she said as he approached them.

He shook the take out bag at her. "I have lunch. You have results."

"Hydrochloric acid," she agreed, waving the folder in much the same way he'd shaken the take out bag at her, "And trace says it was bleach all over the floor. Adam couldn't get a usable profile."

"Rock, paper, scissors for who's lettin' Mac know?" Danny groaned when Lindsay won, relinquishing the bag to her. "Don't eat mine."

She grinned. "But food tastes so much better when it's stolen," she quoted.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Ten minutes."

"You're on."

Lindsay knew she was in for the third degree and almost wished she'd been the one to lose to tell Mac. Stella was grinning when Lindsay finally looked at her.

"So it is a guy."

"It's nothing, Stella," Lindsay lied.

"That was more than nothing," Stella exclaimed. "He brought you lunch."

"And I bring him coffee if I stop," she replied. "He asked if I wanted something before he left, I said yes. He picked up lunch, I picked up results, it's more efficient."

"No way."

Lindsay chuckled. "You do it with Mac, don't you?"

Stella pursed her lips. Sure, she and Mac picked something up for each other when they were working, but there were other connotations too. They were looking out for each other, making sure the other was nourished properly and wasn't working on an empty stomach. "Yeah but…"

"Exactly. I'll see you later." And she was off down the hall.

Stella's cell phone stopped her from following. Looking at Lindsay's retreating back and then at the direction in which Danny had gone, Stella shook her head. Something was up, there just wasn't enough evidence for her to make a concrete conclusion.

Lindsay looked up at Danny as he eventually entered their office, already having polished off her sandwich and now going over the test results and evidence, trying to put it all into context. "That took a while," she said, starting to put away all of the pages.

"Yeah. Mac and I started throwin' around theories and you know how that can get."

Lindsay nodded, finally packing up the last of the pages. "I like the sister for this."

"Somethin' about her isn't sittin' right on this one, but I can't see why she'd get involved."

"I think we're missing something," Lindsay responded. "Is the scene still there?"

"Yeah, clean up is scheduled for a couple of days from now," Danny answered, unwrapping and tearing into his sandwich.

"You think Mac would be okay with us going back in to see if we missed something? There's got to be something to tie the sister to all of this."

"I'm sure he'd be fine with it," he replied. "You want me to pick you up tonight?"

"For the party? I can make it here on my own."

Danny read the underlying message. "No one's gonna think anythin' if I pick you up, Montana. It could easily just be that we met up in the lobby."

Stella poked her head in. "Lindsay, you want to come over to my apartment and get ready? We can cab over together."

"Sure, Stel. Give me ten minutes at the end of shift?"

"I get a company car because I'm on call tomorrow morning, I'll wait." Then she was gone.

Lindsay turned back to Danny with a smile. "Now I'm not going by myself."

"Cute, Monroe, really cute."

She chuckled. "I'll make you a deal. You can drive me home."

That was a deal Danny readily agreed to.

Lindsay looked around the break room with a huge smile. There was something about Christmas that she enjoyed more than anything else and seeing the decorations and the socializing of the people around her, she couldn't help but be happy. Christmas music floated from a nearby radio, though with the equipment Adam was setting up, she wondered how long it would be until they had their own DJ.

"Evenin' Montana."

Lindsay turned and resisted the urge to swoon. Danny Messer looked damn hot in a suit. "Hey Danny."

He gave her the typical once over, taking in her knee length skirt and red three-quarter-length shirt. "You really do clean up nice, Monroe."

"Same to you, Messer," she said with a shy smile.

He wanted to kiss her, had to kiss her, so he pulled her off down the hall. He'd seen one of the lab techs going around the lab hanging mistletoe right before he'd left for the evening and knew the print lab was far enough out of the way and hidden behind enough equipment that no one would see.

"Danny, where are we going?"

Finally he stopped, turning to face her and glancing up. "Mistletoe."

Lindsay looked up at the mistletoe over the door in surprise. Apparently some one had decorated more than just the break room. Then she locked eyes with Danny and smiled shyly.

"It's tradition, Montana," he said, voice low and sending a shiver down her spine. "And there's no one around to witness it." He knew how important her privacy was to her.

"It is," she agreed, shivering as he leaned closer, wrapping his arms around her to pull her towards him. She went willingly, feeling his breath fan across her lips and cheeks. She'd been waiting for him to make the first move for what felt like a lot longer than it had been. Her eyes fluttered closed waiting for the contact of his mouth on hers.

Lord she hoped the lab tech gossip was true.

"Lindsay," he whispered, the word brushing against her skin like a gentle caress.

Why the hell isn't he kissing me? Lindsay's mind screamed. With effort her eyes slipped open again and focused on his. She saw the uncertainty in his face and felt the sudden need to slap him upside the head.

"Do it, Messer," she breathed, tilting her face further as she stepped impossibly closer.

He didn't need more encouragement than that. He'd meant for their first kiss to be gentle because she deserved gentle and perfect, but her small gasp fought with his control. Instead of the gentle kiss he'd wanted, his tongue delved into her mouth, open from the gasp. His hands cupped and angled her head, his fingers threading through the curls she'd so carefully pinned back, effectively dislodging the clip and sending her hair cascading down over her cheeks.

She pulled away to take a breath before attacking him again, her mouth pushing and massaging against his, giving as good as she got. She let out a squeal of surprise when her back hit the glass wall of the nearby lab enjoying the feel of his body against hers like the day in Central Park.

As he slowed their kiss down, aware they were still in the lab and anyone could come walking down the hall looking for them, his mind was screaming at him. Why the hell had he waited so long to do this? Had he known how well she kissed there was no way he'd have kept himself from jumping her sooner.

"God, Danny."

He chuckled, his hands sliding over her shoulders, forcing her to drop her arms to let him finish his journey. However, once he reached her hands he brought them back to his shoulders, placing his around her back, a thumb stroking against her spine. "Not really."

"Cute," she replied, settling more comfortably into his embrace and crossing her wrists behind his neck. "Remind me again why we didn't do this sooner?"

He laughed for a few minutes before sobering. "We're gonna take this at your pace, Montana. I'm not gonna do anythin' you don't wanna."

"And that's why you waited so long to kiss me?" she asked, both affronted and touched. "I've been waiting forever for you to do that."

His grin turned to a smirk. "Forever, huh? So that whole thing about not wantin' a relationship was a lie."

She blushed and smiled. "Look, I… At that particular moment, I was telling the truth. I wasn't ready and I thought that I had to work things out on my own. When I thought about it, I thought about… about what you'd been through and I… I decided that since I wanted to be there for you, I had to let you be there for me. What this has become…" She shrugged showing her inability to put what she was feeling into words.

"I wanted to make sure this was what you wanted," he replied, waving his hand between them. "I want to make this work."

She tilted her head towards his, brushing her lips gently across his. "I adore your white knight streak, Danny, but you can't just wait for me. I trust you and I trust that if I'm uncomfortable with something I can tell you."

"You've done a good job of that up to this point," he teased gently, kissing her again.

She chuckled. "It may take me a while to tell you, Danny, but I will."

"Mmhmm," he agreed against her mouth. "So kissing you is okay?"

She smiled. "Yeah. It's okay."

"Good."

Lindsay stood leaning against her door that night, after Danny had walked her up to her door and kissed her again, remarkably and completely content. Sure, she was scolding herself for not noticing how his heroic streak extended to his carnal needs, but she couldn't help but be happy and excited with how the night had turned out.

Stella had given her a knowing look when she and Danny walked back into the break room again and she blushed bright red. Stella knew there was something. She could only hope that they weren't as transparent to everyone else.

Oh who was she kidding? She wanted those gossiping lab techs to know he was hers, at least for the time being. She wanted to outrageously flirt with him in the office, to always forget why she'd turned him down in the first place.

Finally she had her knees under her, supporting her enough to stand and make her way across the room. A knock startled her. Since she'd just said goodbye to Danny, she couldn't think of anyone who would be knocking on her door. Looking through the peep hole, she threw the door open again with a playful smile.

"I thought you were going home," she said.

Danny gave her a crooked grin. "I was."

"Does this look like your apartment?"

He pulled her to him, nothing sexual about their embrace, just one of comfort. When he pulled back, he kissed her forehead. "Okay, now I'm really goin'."

However, it had Lindsay worried. "Danny? You okay?"

His smile put her at ease again. "Linds, I'm perfect. I just wanted to hold you for a minute."

Lindsay sighed, propping herself against the doorframe as Danny stood just outside. "You know, for the lab gossip about you as a bad boy, you're certainly not keeping with the rumours." It wasn't that she had a problem with the way he was acting, it just surprised her. He was turning into a teddy bear and though she knew he cared, she'd never seen him like this.

He shrugged noncommittally. "I was walkin' down the stairs, reflectin'… I just thought about how happy I was and about Louie and Aiden and Flack and…"

Lindsay hugged him again, cuddling her head under his chin. "I know."

"Do you know how scared I was when you decided to go undercover?"

Lindsay, who had closed her eyes and sunk into his warmth, opened them again. This was a road they had yet to go down. "I did what I had to do."

"I know that, and I'm not sayin' I'm not proud of the work you did, but I was petrified you weren't gonna come out."

She'd known Danny had been on the other side of the wire while the whole thing was going down but she'd had no clue about the depth of his fear. "I did."

He chuckled. "Yeah, you did. Then you turned me down, then Christmas came around, and here we are."

She pulled away and kissed his cheek. "That we are. You going to be okay now?"

"Yeah."

She smiled, pulling away completely. "Good night again, Danny."

He kissed her softly. "Good night, Linds. I'm glad you came out alive."

Then he was gone.

I have no idea what happened with this one… Seriously. The end morphed out of control, but I have to admit I liked it.

More importantly¸ I hope you guys enjoyed their kiss. It won't necessarily mean they dive into anything, but I'm sure there will be more in the last 4 chapters. Oh, now I'm upset because there's only 4 chapters left to write.

And someone asked for more of the team so there's more of Stella!

Oh, and my goal is to hit 200 reviews for this story. I have no reason to think I won't, but please leave one and help my ego!