Chapter Eleven
He was dressed and still feeling like death warmed over by noon when his phone rang. It was her; it had to be. He felt his mouth go dry and his palms begin to sweat. She'd be mad, confused and befuddled all in one breath.
"Hey," he answered sounding calmer than he felt.
"Tidwell needs us at work," she said tersely. The line was filled with empty air and tension so thick you could cut it with his knife. "Crews?" she questioned. He could hear the edge in her voice.
"Yeah, I'm here," he reassured. "I'll….I'll…uh meet you there. I have a stop to make first," he bought some time. He hadn't the foggiest idea what stop he'd make, where or what he'd get there, but he needed to think.
The line went dead as she hung up.
"Shit," he swore softly. He dressed quietly in a navy suit and pale blue shirt with purple tie and then walked to his car. The soles of his Johnston Murphy wingtip echoed in the emptiness of his house. It hadn't seemed empty six hours earlier when she was there with him.
He made one stop on the way, at a Starbucks for coffee, his and hers, like he'd done so many times before. He gave no thought to how he looked. He gave no thought to the looks he got or how much the coffee cost, only to the dark eyed woman who he'd be sitting across from in twenty minutes and what a dark path he'd set them both on.
As he stepped off the elevator, holding a Styrofoam cup in each hand, so deep in thought that he'd nearly run into Bobby Stark. He wasn't looking anywhere but their conjoined desks, the place she should be but wasn't.
"Easy there, big fella," Stark easily dodged their near collision. He let out a long low whistle, "call for backup next time," he joked.
Charlie's dark look was an obvious "don't go there" comment but Stark just kept on talking. "Who kicked your ass big guy?"
Charlie stood there unable to make his mouth move, so instead he pasted his standard plastic smile on his face and said nothing.
"I did," came a voice he knew from behind him. It was her. He looked down and she was there, looking whole and normal and fine.
"That for me?" she questioned.
He mutely stuck the coffee cup at her with a solemn "yep" in response.
Stark just laughed, unfolding a piece of chewing gum and stuffing it into his mouth. As he put the gum in his mouth and looked from Crews to Reese and back musing the possibility that what Reese said might have some truth to it.
"Don't you have somewhere to be?" Reese inquired in her usual annoyed tone when it came to Stark.
Stark slapped Charlie on the shoulder and looked at him as if to say "sorry buddy" and then shouted "Juarez, let's go," into the break room.
"Thanks for the coffee," Reese directed at Crews. "Can you function? Can you work?" She was all business, not one sliver of his mouth fused to hers and their hands all over each other hours earlier bled through.
"I….uh," he was unusually unsure of himself.
She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him into the stairwell. "Look," she said dropping his hand as soon as they cleared the door. "I got a boss in there that up until two days ago I was sleeping with," she chided him in a terse whisper. "If that wasn't bad enough I can't have you walking around all sheepish and moon-eyed," she chastised him.
"Now, you stop this or I'm getting a new partner," her eyes delivered the seriousness of her warning. "And I don't want a new partner," she softened it a bit with a tight smile and a bit of humor as she turned to leave.
"But you don't want me," he said quietly to her back. He wanted to let it go, but seemed incapable now she was nearly his. He was in love with the idea of her, of them together. He didn't have the faintest idea of how it would work, just that he wanted it, them, her.
She froze with her hand on the door. They stayed there a long moment as time stretched, then he stepped close and rumbled his assertion again, "but you don't want me either - do you?"
He felt her temperature rise and knew without seeing she was biting her lip. "Reese?" he questioned.
"I do," she admitted, "and that's the problem." She opened the door walked through and let it close with a solid thud in her wake. She left him standing in the stairwell with a stunned look on his face for the second time in twelve hours.
The silence of the cloistered area descended on him and he pulled a Zen rabbit out of his hat. He breathed deeply and centered himself before stepping into the rest of his day. The air was pregnant with possibility and heavy with danger.