Author's Notes: It's been awhile since I updated this. My apologies for the delay. Thanks for keeping up with the story, as well as for the kind comments on the previous chapters. Enjoy this new one!
Moments
by Kristen Elizabeth
It was one of those perfect days, the kind where it almost seemed like it should be illegal to stay inside. The sun was shining, but there was sufficient breeze coming down from the mountains to keep the temperatures low enough for the residents of Las Vegas to venture outside their air-conditioned havens.
It was an ideal day, Sara had decided, for a picnic at Lake Mead.
That was how Grissom found himself hauling one end of a massive cooler across the gravel parking lot, towards the clump of trees and the set of picnic tables his wife had picked out from the road. Greg Sanders was at the other end of the cooler, having been invited along by Sara when she found out it was also his day off.
"What's your woman hauling in here, Gris?" Greg panted. "Correction. What's she have us hauling?"
"I wasn't included in the menu planning," he replied, blinking a bead of sweat out of his eye. "I was informed that I would love the food and that I'd have to carry it."
The younger man shook his head, amused. "This is why I just date 'em. Marriage turns you into a beast of burden."
"Sara has you doing her grunt work every day. And you're not, need I point out, dating or married to her."
"Yeah, but I only do it 'cause I need the experience." Greg grinned at him. "Not 'cause I'm afraid of her."
"Of course not," Grissom said, dryly.
"Less talk, more walk," Sara called out to them as she passed by with Rosalind on her hip. She glanced back over her shoulder. "Even the cooler won't keep the food from spoiling eventually."
"Did she invite me for my unparalleled charm and wit, or just because she needed another pair of hands?"
Grissom didn't bother answering his question.
After what seemed like a lifetime, the two men let the cooler drop onto the grass. "Wherever it falls, there shall it be," Grissom sighed.
Sara had spread out a red and white-checkered cloth over the wooden table, and another one on the ground a few feet away. On their first trip from the car, they'd brought over the myriad of assorted things Rosalind needed for a day at the lake. Her portable playpen, an umbrella for shade, a high chair for when it was time to eat, and more toys than she could play with in the space of a week. For now, she sat in her mother's lap, pulling at the gold chain around Sara's neck that Grissom had given her when they were married.
"Dada!" Rosalind burbled, abandoning the necklace in favor of stretching her arms up at her father.
Grissom lowered himself onto the opposite side of the blanket and smiled at his daughter. "Come here, Rosalind." He held out his own hands.
Sara lifted the little girl out of her lap and planted her feet on the ground. Rosalind gripped her mother's fingers for support.
"Look at you, Roz," Greg marveled, sitting down on the edge of the picnic table. "Standing on your own two feet."
"Standing, yes. Walking…" Sara released her daughter's hands. Rosalind managed to stay up for a few seconds, before plopping onto her butt. "We're working on it."
Grissom plucked Rosalind up and lifted her into the air high over his head. She squealed with delight. "She'll get it," he declared. "Won't you, sweetheart?" Rosalind replied by patting her father's bearded cheeks when he lowered her back down.
"Almost every morning for the past week, she's been standing up in her crib when I come to get her," Sara told Greg. "The books all say that's a preclude to her first steps."
"I never bothered with walking. I went straight from standing to running." Greg leaned back against the table and folded his hands behind his head. "Thanks for getting me out of my apartment, Sara. It's a great day to be outside."
With Grissom looking after Rosalind, Sara started unpacking the cooler. "I heard about what happened with you and Kay. Figured you could use a distraction." She smiled at him. "I know from experience that there's nothing worse for heartache than an empty apartment."
He lifted his shoulders. "Wouldn't call it heartache exactly. More like…bruised pride. Although it's not her fault that she's more into Nick than me. Can't explain attraction, right?"
Sara glanced over at her husband as he tickled Rosalind much to the little girl's delight. "Nor should you try." She returned to her attention to Greg as she lifted plastic containers out of the cooler. "But you know Nick doesn't return her feelings, right?"
"Yeah, we talked about it." Greg turned his face up towards the sun's warming rays. "I'm chalking the whole thing up to water under the bridge. With a mental note not to get into relationships with QD girls again."
"What's wrong with…" she started to ask.
"Better to avoid getting involved with a woman who could forge your signature and get away with it."
Sara laughed and shook her head. "You're a nut, Sanders."
He beamed at her. "And you're secretly crazy about me, right?" She arched an eyebrow, and he backed down. "Withdrawn."
Sara's spread turned out to be just as good as she had promised it would be, and well worth the physical labor. There were even a few dishes that contained meat, although they did appear to be store-bought. Somehow Greg just couldn't see Sara baking a ham. Or even buying a ham.
Grissom and Sara took turns feeding Rosalind in between bites of their own lunches. Greg was fairly certain that more food ended up on the little girl's chubby cheeks than in her mouth, but she seemed enormously happy. It probably wasn't often that she had both of her parents' undivided attention for a whole afternoon.
When lunch was done, Grissom offered to help Sara clean up. Sensing what it was all leading up to, Greg jumped to his feet. "I'll help, too!"
"No, we've got a system." Sara fixed him with the same smile she used to get him to do anything from scraping bits of brain out of a shag carpeting, to being a test dummy in an experiment to determine how much weight would have to be on a man before he couldn't breathe from the pressure. "Can you look after Rosalind for a few minutes?"
His head ached. Specifically, his scalp. He'd just started to grow back the clumps of hair Rosalind had yanked out the last time he'd played with her. "Um…" He looked at the carrot-covered kid as she wriggled in her portable high chair. "Okay…"
"Women like a guy who can keep his cool around babies," she informed him as she stuffed dirty paper plates into a garbage bag. "I don't care if you're the most hardcore feminist on the planet, there's something undeniably endearing about a man holding a laughing baby."
Greg shot her a skeptical look. "I'm telling Gloria Steinem on you."
It took him a moment to gather his courage. Rubbing his hands together, he focused on Rosalind. "Here we go."
Rosalind let him lift her out of the highchair and allowed him to set her on his knee. But when he removed her bib and started wiping carrots off her mouth, she stopped being cooperative. Her little face scrunched up and she pulled away from Greg, whimpering in protest.
"Um…Sara?" Greg looked around; Rosalind's parents were already halfway back to the parking lot with the garbage bag. "Great. Just great." He looked down at the baby. She made a move for his hair, but he caught her little hand just in time. "No, no, Roz. I've got at least another ten years before it's Rogaine-time, and I intend to hold it off for as long as possible."
Rosalind blinked up at him, then made a grab for the next best thing, the band logo on his T-shirt. She grabbed a tiny fistful of cotton and laughed, gleefully.
"Is that your daughter?"
Greg's head shot up at the sound of a woman's voice. Turned out it was two women walking past the picnic table on their way down to the shore. They were clad in bikini tops and miniscule skirts and not much else. He cleared his throat. "No. She's…um…my niece."
One of them lowered her sunglasses and smiled at Rosalind. "What a cutie-pie! What's your name, sweetheart?"
"Rosalind Emilie," he answered for the baby. "I picked out her middle name."
The other girl gave Greg a much more seductive smile. "What a great uncle you must be."
He shrugged as nonchalantly as he could. "I try."
"I'm Maria, and this is my sorority sister, Sierra," she introduced herself. "What's your name?"
"Greg," Sara called out as she approached the table. "Can you…" She stopped when she noticed the new additions. "Oh. Hello there."
"This is my sister, Sara," Greg quickly covered, shooting his co-worker a significant look. "Rosalind's mother. Right, sis?"
"Yep, Rosalind's mother and Greg's sister." Sara's smile was deadly and even. "I'm a lucky woman."
Maria tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Listen, we're meeting up with some people, so we've gotta go. But Greg…" She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a pen. Grabbing his free hand, she scribbled her phone number on the heel of his palm. "Call us sometime."
Greg didn't blink for a full minute after the cousins sauntered away. "Wow. Hey, Sara, can I borrow Roz when I go out clubbing?"
"Did I just hear Greg say he wants to take my daughter clubbing?" Grissom asked as he rejoined them.
Sara slipped her hand into her husband's. "Apparently our baby makes for great girl bait, sweetie."
"Oh, I know."
It took her a second to react to his words. "You know!"
Greg grinned at his boss. "Let me guess. You took Roz to the grocery store and got hit on?"
"Grocery store, book store, post office…you name it. If she's with me, it's a buffet of indecent proposals." Grissom coughed when he caught Sara's deadly glare. "Just the facts, ma'am."
"How indecent were these proposals? I have to ask because it's not like I ever get any when I'm out with Rosalind. Men don't tend to hit on mothers."
"I would," Grissom said in an attempt to smooth her feathers. "Wait, I mean…if you were the mother and…"
Greg tuned out their discussion in favor of paying attention to the little girl on his lap. "I owe you one, kid. Phone numbers from frisky sorority sisters are hard to come by, even in Vegas." Rosalind tugged at his shirt; he took it to mean 'you're welcome.' "Let's try this whole standing thing again, shall we?"
Holding on to her hands, Greg lowered Rosalind to the ground, allowing her a few seconds to find her balance. Slowly, he copied Sara's movements from earlier and released her. Rosalind teetered for a second…then stepped forward. Then once more.
Greg's eyes grew wide. "Gris, Sara!" he shouted, interrupting them. "She's got it!"
To Be Continued