Eva flopped miserably onto the soft couch. So close! She'd been so close to kissing Tommy and ruining everything. How could she have been so foolish? This was what pity did, it made you want to make out with your co-workers. And Tommy had looked pathetic - well in that stubborn, I'm not really sad I'm just internally tortured but I can handle it don't you worry, way. She saw the resentment in his eyes when her smile had betrayed the sympathy she felt for him but what was she supposed to do pretend she didn't feel for him? She knew going home had been hard for him and he was clearly cut up about it whether he wanted to admit it or not. She looked around the apartment. She needed a cat or something to commiserate with. Lacking a pet Eva turned on the tv filling the lonely living space with meaningless noise in a language second to her own. Was it an infomercial, was it a soap opera? She didn't know and she was too busy being angry at herself and Tommy to figure it out. Eva looked like she looked, she knew she couldn't change it and it had opened a lot of doors for her in the past but when it came to her work her beauty only seemed to get in the way. Sure people were nice to her and they smiled and opened doors for her but when she'd been training everyone had seen her as some Italian bombshell good for a fucking but likely not good at catching criminals unless it was a honey trap. There was also the pesky little detail of her being the daughter of a family with heavy mafia connections that had made her comrades distrustful of her. They weren't quite convinced that any connections to crime she had were gone the moment her parents hearts had stopped beating. At the ICC people took her seriously, they asked her advice and they trusted it. They didn't look at her and ask her to lure male criminals out with her looks. Sure they might not have trusted her at the beginning but she hadn't trusted them either. The team was a collection of flawed individuals there were bound to be teething problems but her looks had never been an issue.

Until now.

Until Thomas McConnel had told her she was beautiful proving once again that what was infront of people would always be what occupied them most. Did she think it would stop him from taking her seriously? She didn't know. Did she think he could accuse her of using her looks, her femininity, to get something she might otherwise not deserve? Absolutely. Everyone did. Would he think her looks got her where she currently was? He better not. She couldn't be sure and so even if she did want to kiss Tommy right on his Irish mouth she wouldn't because that would mess everything up. That would take her out of trusted co-worker into a woman who could be manipulated by her sexual and romantic feelings. If a man was no more able to be influenced by those things she didn't see why a woman would be. She knew when to be appropriate and possessing a pair of ovaries and a pretty face wouldn't stop her. Kissing Tommy was inappropriate. Her pretty face was telling her that.

Eva flopped back on the couch and closed her eyes. When she woke the tv would still be on and she'd still be annoyed.

The office was busy the next day. Paperwork might have been able to wait until morning light but now the sun was up it called out to them like a terrible ghost.

"Complete me," Sebastian moaned theatrically. Arabela laughed.

Eva grinned behind her desk quietly typing out her report. Her emails were numerous and all claiming to be urgent but she couldn't concentrate on more than one thing at a time because there was something huge fighting for her attention. Tommy. He was sitting at his desk grinning at Sebastian and Arabela's carrying on acting like last night had never happened. Either he was being professional pretending that he'd never come on to her and that she'd responded or he had forgotten all about it. She didn't know which she would have preferred. Being office gossip was the last thing she wanted but she didn't want to think it had been a blanket pass, although she hated to admit it even silently to herself she had hoped that Tommy's advance had been dependant on a specific person. The specific person being her. She looked over at Tommy but he was looking at Sebastian, still laughing at something Eva had been too busy obsessing over the Irishman to hear.

It was pathetic. What did it matter. Yesterday was yesterday and today was today, there was a whole ten hours between then and now. Ten hours was ample time to forget and move and it was time she did it.

"I'm going to grab some brunch does anyone want anything?"

Sebastian looked up "I would love to say yes but I'm watching my figure."

"Aye Sebastian's trying to fight off the inevitable Dad bod." Tommy grinned teasingly. He looked very good doing it. Eva scolded herself for noticing.

"Dad bod?" Sebastian frowned at him.

"Yeah it's what happens when you become a dad. You work too much and you're having too much fun to work out so you get kind of soft and pudgy around the middle." He grinned and ducked the soft mascot Sebastian threw at his head.

"One day it will happen to you." Arabela said knowingly.

"Nah not me," Tommy replied confidently leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers over his firm stomach, "I still care what I look like. The ladies like a toned physique." his eyes snapped straight to Eva's making her start and blink in surprise. There was a tick to his smile almost as if he knew what she had been thinking earlier.

Tilting her chin up and looking down her nose at him she quipped, "Or at least they would if you had any ladies."

Sebastian and Arabela guffawed at Tommy's loss of composure. "You wound me." he put his hand on his heart affecting pain.

Eva grabbed turned to grab her coat. "If no one wants anything..."

"I'll come." her unfiltered surprise must have shown on her face because Tommy's grin grew goading.

If she refused it would look weird. If she let him go with her it would be weird. 'So much for getting over it Eva' she thought to herself adding in a mental eye roll and a reminder to kick her own ass later.

To Tommy's credit he waited until they were outside the building before he mentioned the one thing she was both dreading and hoping to talk about.

"So about last night."

"We don't have to talk about it." she strode down the road suddenly in a hurry to be done with this ruse of an errand. She wasn't even hungry.

"I think we do."

"No, really Tommy we don't."

"Come on Eva," Tommy stopped. Eva took four more steps before she too stopped and turned back, "I made a pass at ya and I shouldn't have. For that I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

Hopes dashed. Eva scowled at him unable to school herself before she did it. Tommy scowled back but it looked more like confusion than frustration which she could understand because she supposed this was confusing. In any normal situation this would have been how you handled an incident like this. But this didn't feel like a normal situation because Eva was okay with Tommy making a pass at her, what she wasn't okay with was his reasons for doing it. Because she was pretty. But then isn't that why you made a pass at anyone you didn't really know? Then again Tommy did know her, they'd been working together for nearly two years, that was a long time in a job like this where everything happened at super speed. Especially when their job forced them to confront so many emotions, other peoples and their own. This was why she couldn't explain to Tommy the scowl on her face because it wasn't fair to make him jump through hoops and expect him to do it while she figured out how she felt about him and herself and him and her.

"Say something will ya?"

Eve's nostrils flared as she inhaled. "It's okay. I'm sorry I lead you to believe that it was okay to make a pass at me."

Tommy's expression softened, "You didn't lead me on." he caught up with her, "I was feeling kind of emotional and you were nice to me like you're nice to everyone. I should have known better."

"Better?" she didn't know why she asked it wasn't like she thought she'd like the answer.

"Come on," he drawled, "pretty girl like you doesn't go for a guy like me."

There was that word again being used to exclude her, to excuse her some kind of perceived rudeness. Oh she hated her face! "Is that what you think? That because I'm pretty I'm stuck up?"

"What?" Tommy stuttered, "No."

She could see the patience on his face fading but she didn't care, she was running out patience too. "That I think I'm too good for you? Do you think the same about Arabela?" His hesitation was damning in her eyes. "You are unbelievable I can't believe I was so stupid." she stormed off down the road not even certain where she was going just trying to put some distance between her and the man who had no faith in her as a person. She thought she was a good person, thought that people considered her a good person. At the very least her co-workers should have known that she was a nice, kind, good person but apparently Tommy hadn't gotten the memo.

"Eva!" she could hear him calling behind her but she didn't dare stop. She ducked into the first little cafe she saw. Cakes glittered under warm amber lights and the staff smiled at her politely pretending not to notice the troubled expression on her face. "Eva come on." Tommy burst through the door. The staffs manners did not extend to him. They stared at him as if he were some kind of wild animal come to ransack the place. His expression of exasperation didn't help.

"What do you want?"

She could feel Tommy behind her. Broad and solid. He smelt good. The bastard.

"I want to talk."

"From the counter." she snapped impolitely.

Tommy made a strangled sound "I didn't come for brunch I came out because I wanted to talk to you."

"Well we're here now so you might as well order something."

"We're currently fighting and yet you're still going to buy me brunch?" he asked disbelievingly.

"It'll look weird if I come back with something and you don't." she grumbled to him. "Besides I didn't say anything about paying for yours."

She heard Tommy's amused snort. "You are truly one of a kind."

"No," she replied snottily, "I am just another pretty girl." she leant forward over the counter and began to order.

Tommy caught up with her while they were waiting for their orders. They stood in awkward silence for a while both watching the out of place art deco clock on the wall tick by seconds, then minutes. Five minutes passed and neither said a word to each other. Someone slid Eva's food over the counter to her. McConnel retrieved a styrofoam cup and nothing else.

"Just coffee?" she peered down into the pitch coloured liquid.

"My dutch isn't great." he snapped dumping three packets of sugar into it and then some milk.

"I would have thought you'd have taken it black."

"To go with my bastard soul? No, I take it with enough sugar to make me palatable." he replied sarcastically.

Infuriating man!

She bit her lip to prevent the situation from escalating again.

They returned to the office in silence, the air between them taut. Arabela and Sebastian both pretended not to notice.