CHAPTER NINE

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(M rating ahead ... can ya take it?)

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Karen Vick was a very busy woman with many responsibilities.

Very busy.

Many, many responsibilities.

But she was never too busy to miss certain types of details of daily life in the station, and sometimes the only person who could get her the information she needed was… Karen Vick.

She called her "missing" detective on Thursday morning.

"Chief," Juliet said, obviously surprised.

"How are you, Juliet?"

The answer was cautious. "I'm okay. I mean, everything's fine. Did you… need me for something?"

"Well, actually, I wanted to check in and see what was going on in your world which is having such an interesting effect on mine." She tried not to sound irritated; she knew whatever it was probably wasn't Juliet's fault. Having overheard the conversation between Lassiter and Spencer at the end of Juliet's first week away made her pretty sure the problem was with one or all of the men.

Okay, just the one who smelled like pineapple.

"Um… your world?"

"When you called me to ask for emergency time off, I could tell you were upset about something, but you're not the drama queen type and you had plenty of leave in reserve, so I decided not to ask too many questions."

"I appreciate you letting me go on such short notice." Juliet sounded more confident now.

"But in the nearly three weeks you've been gone, I've noticed a few oddities. First, your partner keeps wavering between cranky and giddy. And I don't mean the usual cranky; I mean industrial-strength cranky. The giddy, I don't even want to talk about. Then Henry took last week off for a big fishing trip which apparently didn't involve any water, let alone fish, since he was seen around town several times by Miller and Dobson. This week, I'm told he's out with the flu, but it doesn't seem to be stopping him from shopping at Home Depot, which is where my husband saw him yesterday. And Monday." She paused, listening to Juliet's silence and judging her spellbound. "Shawn and Gus, interestingly, have turned down opportunities to consult on two cases. Two. The first time, they had the same flu as Henry, I guess, the kind that allows you to move around town as if nothing's wrong at all, and then Tuesday, they swore they couldn't get out from under their massive spring-cleaning project."

"Oh," Juliet said faintly.

"Now, I used to be a pretty good detective, you know, but even if I weren't, it doesn't exactly take a rocket surgeon to figure out that no matter what's going on, you seem to be at the heart of it all."

Juliet may have been holding her breath, so profound was the silence on the other end.

Karen pressed on. "I don't mean to crowd you and I'm really not trying to pry into your personal affairs, but since so many of the people who work for me seem to be involved, I'm asking. What kind of maelstrom am I looking at when you come back?"

The breath escaped. Juliet said carefully, "I… I don't think I can explain all of it."

"How about some? Can you explain some of it?"

"Well. Yes. I—well, I broke up with Shawn."

Somehow, Karen wasn't surprised, but surely there was more to it. "And you went up there to… deal with it?"

Pause. "Sort of. The breakup is… complicated."

"Oh, hell. Please tell me you're not pregnant." It was none of her business but she couldn't stop the question.

"No! Oh, God, no. No, no, no. I mean, I want kids, but not right now, and not with… well, no." She cleared her throat. "Chief, I promise everything's going to be explained when I get home. I'm sorry my absence has been disruptive. You know I never intended anything like that."

Karen sighed. "I'm sure you didn't. So when will you be rejoining us?"

"Maybe… maybe this time next week? Maybe the following Monday? But it won't be much longer, I promise."

"All right, O'Hara. Again, I'm sorry to pry but all this odd behavior just gave me pause and I don't like that feeling in my own station. You understand?"

"Yes, of course. Um, Chief?"

"Yes?"

"Did you say Carlton was… giddy?"

Karen couldn't help but smile. "Yep. And off the record, it's not as weird as it sounds. Beats industrial-strength cranky by a mile."

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Lassiter got to the resort just before ten on Saturday morning. He figured if he made it down that path to Juliet's cabin before his heart exploded in anticipatory stress, he might get at least one good long look at her before he croaked.

It was a simple goal, one he could work with.

She was sitting on the steps of the cabin, holding a flower. At the moment he first saw her, she was looking up into the trees, smiling at a bird or maybe just at the idea he was about to die, but either way, she was just so damned lovely that his breath caught and his pace faltered.

The motion caught her eye, and she looked at him, her smile changing to one of welcome… and more.

She rose and held her arms out and he embraced her, and his heart didn't explode, but it didn't slow down much either.

Grasping his hand, she pulled him inside the cabin and through to the main room, where the wide glass window at the back revealed the tree-lined slopes of the hills and the burgeoning colors of spring. "We'll sit on the deck," she suggested, and he carried the two glasses of iced tea she poured for them.

They sat close together on the glider, and his pulse returned to normal, because there was something both calming and exciting about being with her, and having his arm around her shoulders was medicine he needed.

"Hi," he said softly. His first word since arrival. "You look wonderful. How do you feel?"

She smiled up at him, secure against his body. "I feel wonderful right now. I haven't had a seriously rocky day since Monday, I think. Everything's finally starting to make sense."

They'd been in touch all week long, every day, text messages and phone calls. Lassiter was still bemused at the shift in their relationship, because it just didn't seem possible, even though sitting here close to her like this was clearly what he'd been born to do.

Yeah, forget that supercop thing. Juliet was the answer he'd been seeking.

She'd told him about Vick's call, and teased him that night about being 'giddy.' He was embarrassed, but had to admit it was most likely true, and that this giddiness most likely directly followed each of their workday conversations. She didn't press for more that night, but he would probably spill it if she asked him.

Leaning her head back against his arm, and sipping her iced tea, she said, "I've been giving a lot of thought to what you said to me on Monday. About whether or not I was… hiding behind you to get past Shawn."

Lassiter tensed, and she immediately turned to look up at him, concerned.

"Relax." She kissed his cheek, and put her glass down to snuggle closer to him. "I just had to work out whether you could be right. I mean, I didn't think so. I really didn't. But my judgment has clearly been compromised by my emotions and my obsessing over all this for several weeks, and I owed it to you to be sure."

"You owed it to yourself, too." He was surprised he found speech possible, and took a rather large sip of tea to ease the sudden dryness in his throat.

"Maybe," she mused. "We've been friends such a long time and the bond between us—between all partners, I guess—isn't like anything else in the world. And I know, just like you do, how that bond can… make things fuzzy."

He had nothing to say. But if you're going to kill me, do it fast.

"So I had to figure out whether my thoughts about you were being influenced by that bond, never mind my thoughts about Shawn."

Another gulp—should have had whiskey in it—and he set his glass down on the glass-topped table. "What did you decide?"

Juliet's voice was soft, and he couldn't look at her. "It turned out it wasn't about deciding. It was about... knowing. And what I know is... there's simply no one else on the planet I'd rather have seen come up that path today. Or any day, really. That's what I know."

Now he looked at her, into her beautiful eyes, into her radiant face.

She smiled at him almost tremulously. "What do you know, Carlton?"

Oh, God. How much time have you got?

Lassiter traced a gentle line along her soft cheek, and she sighed, and as it turned out, he didn't have any words to express his feelings. But there was something he could do to show her, and he was pretty sure she would allow it.

He leaned in closer, slowly, but she held her position, and not more than a half second passed after his lips met hers before it stopped being him kissing her, and the two of them kissing each other.

It was so sweet, and so intense. Her mouth was warm and searching and the taste of the iced tea flavored his exploration of her lips. He sighed against her, and her arms slipped around his neck as she moved even more impossibly close to him on the glider, but it wasn't anxious, and it wasn't desperate.

It was only... absolutely... perfectly... right.

"Wow," she whispered unsteadily when he pulled back to look into her eyes, needing to confirm the reality of this moment. "You know a lot."

He couldn't help but grin, and she leaned in and kissed him again in the middle of it. His arms wound around her and this time it was a little more anxious, more teeth, more tongue, more urgent.

Years of want.

Answered.

Perfect.

But he grasped her upper arms and held her away from him.

She accepted the break. He didn't have to tell her they shouldn't go further, that there was too much potential chaos waiting at home, even though he wanted her so badly he wasn't sure how he could make it another day.

"Let's go inside." She stood up, offering her hand, and he let her lead him into the big sunny main room of the cabin.

But when he sank into the soft cushions of the sofa, she came to him wordlessly and straddled his lap, her mouth covering his before he could even think to resist.

"Juliet," he managed, before her tongue silenced him, and he gave it up for while, because… oh, God, he thought, because.

Kissing her was the most engrossing, enthralling, enrapturing experience he'd ever known. Having her lips move against his, her tongue dancing with his, her teeth nipping at his lips… hearing her utterly captivating rapid breathing as she responded to him… it was more than the sum total of every dream he'd ever had.

It was crazyperfect good, and it had to be too soon, no matter what she thought; it had to be too soon, because romantic entanglements didn't work out very well for him, and he should stop this. He knew he shouldn't let this go further.

Yeah, he "knew" a lot.

He knew he shouldn't slide his hands up under her flowing dress. He knew he shouldn't let her unbutton his shirt and brush her lips against the hair of his chest, making him tense with desire. He knew he shouldn't unzip the dress, or pull it down from her shoulders, or put his lips to her breasts through the smooth blue silk of her bra.

He knew he shouldn't let her unbuckle his belt when his shirt was completely open and she'd already blazed a trail of kisses across his bare chest.

He knew all that.

And so did she.

The taste and feel of her dusky pink nipple in his mouth was a thousand times better than his thousands of imaginings about it, as was the feel of her teeth tugging at his earlobe while her hand unzipped his pants and went exploring.

Juliet paused, her eyes a smoky blue ocean of passion, and smoothly pulled the dress up off over her head. Then she unhooked her bra and pressed her bare breasts to his bare chest and kissed him deeply and needfully, as one hand slipped back into his pants, where she grasped him sensuously, fingers like sweet fire on his flesh.

And Lassiter... Lassiter who had sworn he would never again be the kind of man who would break anyone's trust, put his partner's career at risk, or allow her to make a choice she would regret, slid his hands down her smooth bare back with the very specific intent of getting her panties off so he could make love to her—a woman who was barely his to take—when his cell phone rang, disrupting their complete aloneness with all the subtlety of a claxon alarm.

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Juliet froze, staring into his eyes, breathing hard. "Please," she whispered.

Carlton didn't seem to be breathing, but she could feel his rapid pulse at his throat, where her fingertips continued to caress him, and she hadn't let go of him down below, either.

The color of his eyes was a blue she'd never seen before, a blue which spoke of heat and want and need and the love she had already accepted she wanted more than anything.

"Please," she said again, as the phone kept ringing.

He lifted one unsteady hand from her hip and reached into his pocket. Then, his gaze never leaving hers, he pushed the 'off' button and tossed the phone to the coffee table.

"Where's the bedroom?" He was already rising, carrying her, legs wrapped around him.

She kissed him, managed to point in the right direction, and when he deposited her gently on the bed, let him slide those panties off, leaving her nude—and wanting—before him.

His shirt fell to the floor and his pants followed and she saw with wondering eyes the proof of the arousal she'd felt with her hand moments ago, but even seeing him, broad chest, lean torso, naked and about to make love to her, somehow she still couldn't take her eyes off his. His eyes. His heart in his eyes. His promise that neither one of them would regret this, ever.

Joining her on the bed, his warm skin touching hers from shoulder to calf, he stroked her body gently, sighing as she explored his in turn. "You have no idea," he whispered, "how much I've wanted this. You."

"Show me," she said, and pulled him to her, "because I plan to show you how much I've wanted you."

Funny how the human body can meld itself to another; his taller, leaner, harder frame was exactly what her smaller, curvier body needed to feel complete. All of the differences between them—starting with the way her bare, smooth breasts felt when pressed to the light fur of his chest—complemented each other perfectly.

He pushed, and she undulated against him; she arched, and he caught her up close and tight. They sighed together, within their kisses and without. They explored, with lips and teeth and fingers… and love. She felt it.

She couldn't stop stroking his skin; he was so warm. So much warmer than anyone on earth could ever imagine. He was heat, and he was hers. She was his.

His blue eyes were ablaze as he pushed into her willing body; the passion unlike anything she'd ever experienced.

She moaned out his name and heard his answering sigh, and she kissed him over and over again, feeling like now, now she could go home again, because now, with him, she was home again.

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