Hello, everyone!

Sorry for the delay in this chapter, I am in the process of moving so life is a little hectic. I will post one more chapter before the move, and then I'll pick back up as soon as I can. :)

Breaking the Rules: Chapter Six

Eddie could feel Jamie's deep stare with each passing step on the dance floor. Not only did he appear annoyed, she couldn't deny that there was a bit of an uneasy feeling herself as Mark Jacobs' hands roamed around her backside.

The bandage on her wrist didn't slow down his aggressiveness.

"Maybe you should drop that husband of yours and go in on this deal with us," Mark Jacobs whispered near Eddie's ear, just before pressing against her a bit more. This action threw her off a bit, knowing that his wife was nearby. However, once they turned, he took the opportunity to look over at his wife with Jamie, hoping that she was doing her part with as just as much effort.

Shifting slightly, Eddie found his grip a little tight for her liking. "We're not married."

"Even more reason to toss him aside."

Eddie rolled her eyes as they turned once more hoping to send Jamie a signal as they did, one that let him know they were about to move into the next phase at any moment. Unfortunately, though, she found that Mark Jacobs' wife was doing her best to block their view from each other.

This was obviously part of the plan.

It didn't seem to matter what direction he shifted either, the woman moved in unison with Jamie.

Eddie then found herself remembering what Jamie had told her - the warning Mrs. Jacobs had given him the last time they were all together, which was that her husband carried a gun with him and wouldn't be afraid to use it. She told him that this was her one and only warning, something neither her or Jamie understood the reasons behind a warning.

Did she feel guilty about what they were doing?

Or, was this part of a tactic she used with the innocent couples?

"Why would I need to get rid of Jamie? I thought this plan involved all four of us?"

Mark wondered if he'd misjudged this pair – they didn't seem as gullible as the usual targets. Did he misread them? Typically, all he had to do was mention a bigger piece of the pie and the women seemed willing to toss their significant other aside, at least long enough to distract them, which then allowed him to easily obtain a very large amount of cash from her bank account.

"Do you need his permission to make this deal?" Eddie heard in a stern whisper from him.

Mrs. Jacobs was using her physique to distract Jamie, something that was irritating since he was attempting to ensure that her husband didn't cross the line with Eddie. Even though he knew she could hold her own with this guy, it didn't stop the protective nature he had where she was concerned.

The woman finally sat back in the chair next to him, exhaling deeply.

It was clear that she was studying his body language.

"Does Eddie dancing with my husband put you on edge?" she asked, in between sips of the glass of wine directly in front of her. "It does seem to grate under your skin, unless I'm reading you all wrong." Despite Jamie's refusal to give her a formal response, she glanced over her shoulder at her husband and his dance partner. "She doesn't really seem to be willing to jump in on this deal with us."

Jamie leaned back a bit, trying to get a better view of what was happening on the dance floor. "Why do you say that?" he questioned, since the only thing he noticed was that Eddie seemed a bit uncomfortable from the tight grip Mr. Jacobs appeared to have around her waist. It wasn't a sight he cared to witness either, but he knew he needed to wait for her signal before he even dared to step in.

For now, he held back from interrupting.

At this rate, though, he might not make it another then minutes.

"The look on my husband's face – he is losing patience with her," Mrs. Jacobs pointed out to Jamie. "He might be naïve in her reasoning. But, all I have to do is give him the signal and this girlfriend of yours will have a few bullets in her side." At the words, she noticed Jamie's demeanor change in a blink of an eye. "I take it the idea of such action is a little unsettling to you?"

This woman had some serious problems – was this supposed to be a joke?

Or, did she like to see the male partners squirm, knowing she was calling the shots?

"I can make it worth your while if you toss Eddie aside and I do the same with my husband," she said, dangling some sort of monetary and physical desire in front of him, believing that was all that was needed, as if he was just as crazy as her husband.

Jamie pushed her glass of wine toward her side of the table, just before standing up from the chair.

"I think I'll pass."

The woman stood as well, nodding toward her husband, and then created a distraction by knocking her glass of wine off the table. This caused Jamie to jerk his head back just long enough for Mark Jacobs to pull out a gun and direct Eddie out the back door.

It had all happened so fast.

Jamie then turned back to the dance floor after the woman apologized, to find that Eddie was nowhere in sight. She had completely disappeared from the dance floor, along with their target, Mark Jacobs.

It was clear that they had misjudged the MO of this couple.

What that meant, that was to be determined.

He looked around the room, hoping to find some type of clue to where she would have gone. All he had left was Mrs. Jacobs; and while she had warned him of what her husband could do to Eddie as his patience grew thin, Jamie honestly had doubts that she was telling the truth.

Now that it appeared she was, he was filled with concern on when he'd see Eddie again.

His mind flashed in and out of one of the last things he said to her.

"…In a way, I want my family to know what you mean to me. So, when we were discussing Jenkins, I got a sense from him that he sort-of knew."

Jamie was almost too distracted by visions of Eddie that he didn't notice Mrs. Jacobs was about to slip out of his view to who knows where – maybe she had a designated meeting spot with her husband when things got out of hand? Had she purposely been trying to get Jamie to turn on Eddie?

If so, what were those reasons and why?

Did they believe that this deal was too much work?

He took out his cell phone, and as he was about to dial the number for his brother Danny, the woman yanked the phone from his hand and looked Jamie square in the eye. "I can take you to her."

Jamie stepped out the front door with this woman, reluctantly willing to trust anything she had to say but feeling as though he had no choice in the moment, as this wasn't just about some officer that he was paired with on an undercover assignment, this was someone he was emotional tied to in more ways than one.

The woman noticed his silence, something unexpected and rare.

Neither spoke a word as they walked further down the sidewalk.

Once they both turned the corner of the building, walking down the dark alley between two buildings and barely able to see an end in sight, Jamie started to wonder what he would find at the other end. Would Eddie really be there? Was this a trap?

The two of them heard a noise coming from the far end. And as Jamie was about to turn and ask where they were headed, he noticed that she had disappeared as well, which caused him to suddenly stop in his tracks.

From a distance, he heard a vehicle's tires squeal.

"Damn it," he cursed under his breath, feeling as though the only lead he had slipped away. Normally, he was better at putting the pieces of the puzzle together, but he couldn't keep his head straight on this one.

He leaned down a bit as his knees were bent slightly, and he pressed his hands against them, breathing deeply and trying to recall everything he could to what Mrs. Jacobs had told him since their first encounter with this couple.

Any small clue was bound to help.

He then stood upright, about to turn back to the street lights when he heard a shuffling sound.

"Eddie — "

A light began to shine down the dark alley as the figure closed in on him, which was coming from the flashlight of a cell phone. He couldn't help but smile from relief once he saw her vision, noticing that at first glance she appeared unharmed.

"Are you OK?" Eddie asked Jamie, breathing heavily before stopping a few feet before him.

Jamie noticed her gun, and even though he didn't have to ask, he did anyway. "You good?"

She nodded, holding up the gun, and then placing it back in the purse that Jamie handed her. It didn't seem as though Jamie quite understood what happened – where had she gone, and how did she end up in this alley seemingly in a better place than he expected.

"That is one angry man when he doesn't get his way."

A large smile spread across Jamie's face at her words. Mrs. Jacobs had warned him on her husband, but instead of letting those words get to him, based on what he was seeing, maybe he should have warned her about Eddie instead.

"I should call Danny."

Eddie nodded, knowing that if Jamie trusted anyone on this one, it was his brother.

After walking toward the street from the alley, Jamie turned to Eddie. "How did you manage to turn the tables on him? And why didn't you give me a signal on what was going down?"

"I tried!" Eddie exclaimed, recalling that she had tried to give him a signal almost a half dozen times. "You had your hands full – and from what I could tell, she didn't have any intention in allowing any glance in my direction." She paused, leaning against the brick of the building. "Mark – he was more than willing to bring me into this plan, if I threw you to the curb."

Jamie nodded and then said, "His wife fed me the same line."

"What did you say?"

Looking away from the cars on the street, he turned back to Eddie. "I told her I wasn't interested." He might have gone along with the plan if his partner was just a partner, but this assignment was two sides of a coin – Eddie was his partner, but she was also secretly someone he was emotionally invested in.

They both tried to ignore their feelings, but they kept coming back to them.

This assignment, though, it was a dangerous one because of those feelings. He didn't react in the right way when Eddie was missing from the dance floor, as his emotions got in the way. He was at the mercy of this woman and her husband.

Before either could say much more, Danny and Maria pulled up to the curb.

Jamie cleared his throat as Eddie removed herself from the exterior of the building and stepped beside him, seconds before Danny approached the two of them and Maria trailing from behind. "What happened here, kid?" Danny asked his brother.

Jamie turned to Eddie, knowing she would have to be the one to answer.

"We're working on an undercover, trying to nail down a couple that swindles money from couples. We thought we were on the right track with them, getting on the inside with this so-called invention idea, which we thought was their way to weed out which half of the couples would be willing to hand over quite a bit of cash to them."

"He had his eye on Eddie," Jamie continued where she ended. "And his wife tried to use me as a distraction, so that her husband could turn Eddie."

"He convinced me early in the evening to join him on the dance floor, and when I wasn't cooperating, he shoved a gun in my side and directed me through a crowd and right out the back door." She paused, glancing over at Jamie before continuing. "He had a car waiting, obviously with the assumption that I was the weaker part of the couple Reagan and I were trying to sell, and he kept telling me that I'd regret not taking him up on his offer."

It didn't take long for Danny to turn his focus to Jamie, watching his reaction to Eddie's detail.

"…So, after he got a little rough, he attempted to shove me into this car. However, when I pulled out my gun, it must have freaked him out because he dropped his and hopped into the car." She hadn't picked up the gun since the driver had crunched it into pieces. "There weren't any plates on the vehicle that I could see."

Maria turned to Eddie and said, "You were probably lucky to get away."

"Do you think you can continue to push this guy?" Danny asked Eddie, trying keep all focus on her and not in the general direction of his brother Jamie, knowing he could read him well at this point. Maybe nobody else saw it or was willing to call him on it, but this was more than a partner on the job to him. "I think we need to get them off the street before they do anymore damage."

Jamie didn't like what he was hearing. "Danny…"

"Absolutely," Eddie answered Danny, despite Jamie's reluctance for her to do so. "Whatever it takes."

Eddie came out of the bathroom, with a clean wrap around her wrist, wincing a bit from the bruising. She only halfway expected Jamie to be waiting for her, pacing outside of the bathroom, almost as if she had broken bones rather than just a bruised, sprained wrist.

"I know this is not easy, but I don't want you upset with your brother," Eddie stated, walking around him and entering the kitchen. "He's not asking me to do anything he wouldn't ask any cop. We need to get this couple off the streets – if I didn't have a gun on me tonight, who knows where they would have taken me?"

"I don't want to think about it."

Eddie knew this was what they'd discussed before – emotions got in the way of being partners, and it clouded your judgement of trusting your partner 100% in life or death situations. And now, here Jamie was, wanting to avoid discussion of her putting her life on the line to bring this man to his knees.

"You're a good cop," Jamie began, stepping toward her on the other side of the kitchen counter. "We both know that. We both know you could cover my back in any situation and that you would never back down." He knew Eddie was irritated, despite what he was telling her. "We also know that how I handled things tonight was not the actions of a good cop."

Confused, she leaned into the counter, facing him. "What do you mean?"

"I panicked," he told her. "My cop instincts didn't kick in – my emotion did. My judgement was impaired, and all I seemed to care about was your safety. Once I heard your voice, I didn't even care about the fact that they were getting away or what led that to happen."

"Jamie…" she whispered, leaning into the edge of the counter just slightly.

"And Danny – he knows," Jamie continued, as he moved away from the counter and stepped around it toward her. "Probably the same way everyone in the house seemed to know before either one of us did. I guess we don't do a good job in hiding it."

As usual, her stomach was in knots as he stepped around to her side of the counter.

"But, we need to finish out this undercover, so we have to find a way to put those feelings aside." Jamie always went back and forth with what he'd be gaining on a personal to what they'd be tossing aside on a professional level.

Eddie pressed her lips together and nodded, "You want to put our feelings aside in this apartment, too?"

He smiled brightly as she stepped to him, "Maybe not."

The two moved slowly inward until their lips met, and it didn't take long before Jamie had wrapped his arms around her body and interlaced his fingers together as he pulled her in a bit closer, settling in for what came next.

Eddie felt his hands drop to her waist, as their lips parted and their foreheads slowly met.

Maybe they could do this – maybe they could stay partners by day and on assignments, but when the doors were closed, they could continue to dip their feet in the pool to what it would feel like to be in a full relationship.

She wanted to continue testing the waters.

He was already there, even if he didn't know it.

Eddie pulled her forehead from Jamie, and then turned around as she walked toward the bedroom door. Once inside, she noticed that Jamie was standing near the doorframe, but didn't enter the room with her.

"Are you staying?"

Jamie leaned against the frame, clearly contemplating on whether to stay the night. "You know what will happen if I do."

She knew.

Nodding, Eddie moved back to where he stood and reached out for his hand. "I know, that's why I asked if you were going to stay with me tonight." She stepped backward, pulling him with her until they reached the foot of the bed. "After tonight, I think we could use a little reminder, don't you?"

End of discussion – they both knew it.

...