Thank you, guys, for all your support, although I'm currently not treating JS very well in the Now section…But…there is a reason for it all!

And thank you, jbird, for everything!

Tomorrow

-Chapter 2-

Soul Mates, Part 2

When Chet Collins arrived, almost 45 minutes late, Samantha went back to her desk. She had agreed to check some phone records for one of the other teams working on a case about a hot shot lawyer, gone missing while preparing for a murder trial. One of their agents had called in sick and she had been there anyway. Samantha felt guilty about spending her day like that. She felt even guiltier because she had not come in on a Sunday because she loved her work so much, but because she had known that Jack would be there, too. She was acting like a love-sick teenager, she scolded herself. But some things couldn't be helped and as long as they both stayed rational about it, liking each other's company was no crime. Samantha knew she would stay cool about it. She had experienced first hand what damage too much passion could do, first with her parents, then in her own ill-fated marriage that had lasted for barely five months. And Jack was safe ground. He was happily married and would do nothing to jeopardize that.

She sat down at her desk, smiling to herself. The pile of phone records was inches thick but that couldn't scare Mrs. Spade's ambitious daughter. She loved her work. And later on Jack would come over to tell her what was up with Chet. She loved Jack, too and that was okay because she had it all under control and so did he. Everything was right with the world.

12.15 p.m.

Jack lifted his eyes from an hour-long intense scrutiny of the file Chet Collins had accumulated over the past couple of months since they had last talked. He didn't think there were any real leads in it but he had promised Chet to check it out and so he would. He rotated his neck and winced at the pain in the tense muscles. Deciding that he would talk things over with Samantha he pushed back his chair and stood up. Damn if his knee wasn't acting up again. He took a few hobbling steps, glad that no one could see him, using his desk as support. He felt old and used up.

When the stiffness in his leg had eased a little he limped over to the bullpen. The big office was void of activity; all the other teams were out in the field.

Jack froze when he saw the man, perching on the edge of Samantha's desk. Her face was tilted up toward him, a sweet, flirtatious expression on her features. Jack had not been prepared for that or the pain that hit him low in the gut. He had reveled in the way she had looked at him all day. Now he felt like the world's dumbest fool. He retreated a step into the shadows of the corridor, watching them and cursing himself for feeling so off balance all of a sudden.

Eric Kellar was tall, fit and handsome. He was young. He was also obviously taken with Samantha. She was so obviously taken with him. Jack thought himself a fool to think that the looks she gave him meant anything special, a fool to derive any happiness from them.

"You want to have lunch with me?" he heard Kellar say. Jack clutched the file to his chest and if he hadn't turned around in that moment he would have seen her expression change into a look that said, 'I like you but let's leave it at that'.

Samantha didn't mind a bit of light banter with Eric Kellar to relieve the headache she was developing but she was annoyed that he had gone so far as to visit her in the office. She liked him, she even found him vaguely attractive, he just was a bit too insistent for her taste. And she never felt completely comfortable in his presence, she never really felt like herself when she was near him.

Another presence was hovering on the edge of her consciousness, one that felt deeply familiar and she looked across the bullpen only to see Jack's back.

"Agent Malone," she called out without thinking and Kellar looked startled at her sudden shift of attention.

Jack turned around, stepping back into the bullpen and there her eyes were again, seeing him. And the way she looked at him was nothing like the way she looked at Kellar. Even if he really was the dumbest fool in the world he could see that.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I totally forgot you wanted to see me."

He glanced at his watch, raising his eyebrows trying to look genuinely annoyed for Kellar's sake.

"Five minutes ago," he grumbled. "I suggest you see your suitors elsewhere."

Kellar had the decency to flush a deep red and Samantha, trying to hide her delight that Jack had been reading her mind, felt almost sorry for him. She raised her hands in a gesture of surrender, grabbed a random file from her desk and went after Jack, mumbling a half-choked 'Sorry' in Kellar's direction.

Eric Kellar stared after them, shaking his head, feeling sorry for Samantha. He had heard that Jack was one of the best agents in the New York office, and he hadn't earned that reputation by being kind and forgiving. The man was hard, appearing ruthless at times and willing to bend the rules out of the way as far as possible to get what he wanted. Kellar respected that and the results Malone's team produced; he just wished the guy would go a little easier on Samantha. She deserved it.

2.53 p.m.

Jack looked at his watch. The hands were closing in on three o'clock. He had promised to take his daughters to the park and barring flood, fire or a new case that was exactly what he would do. He crumbled up the paper the sandwiches had been wrapped in and threw them in the wastebasket.

"You have to go. I'm sorry I kept you," Samantha said, not feeling sorry at all.

He shook his head.

"Without your input it would have taken me much longer to sort through Chet's stuff. I've kept you. You wanted to have lunch with that Kellar guy."

"Yeah, right, that's exactly what I wanted," she said, giving him again one of those glances that made him feel wanted, loved, accepted and happy. Only this time was a little bit different.

This time he fell in love with her.

9.02 p.m.

Samantha's headache was getting worse again. She had spent the rest of the day checking out leads in the Sean Collins Case. She badly wanted that boy to be found. She thought that both his father and Jack needed some closure on it. It had surprised her when she discovered how deep emotionally Jack was involved in the case. She recognized the signs of burn out. That was something she didn't want to happen to him. But at the rate he was going it would be impossible to prevent. Sooner or later he was going to crack. For the first time she wondered how his wife dealt with his involvement in his job. She assumed that his marriage was happy. That was what she had wanted to assume. She thought back to this morning and to the emotional hunger she had seen in his eyes

"Oh my God, Miss-Always-Being-In-Control," she whispered to herself, "The ice is thinner than you thought."

"Everything okay, Samantha?"

Special Agent Jonathan Crane, who worked on the case of the missing lawyer, was leaning on the partition.

"Give me that," he ordered, pointing to the rest of the phone records she hadn't been able to look at, yet. "It's your day off. You should be out enjoying yourself."

She handed them to him and he departed, waving the papers at her.

"Thank you, appreciate your help," he called out, already halfway across the bullpen, probably on his way home to his wife and their newborn son.

Samantha heaved a deep sigh, slumping back into her chair. She put her head in her hands and rubbed at her temples. Tomorrow she would regret working all day today. Well, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

"I'm not even going to ask you what you're still doing here," a voice said beside her and she looked up genuinely startled, making a mental note that she really had to make sure the office was empty before acting all private.

Jack sat on the edge of her desk on the exact same spot Kellar had been in nine hours before. She checked her watch.

"You're pushing yourself too hard, Sam. I need you in prime condition, not totally overworked like this."

She swiveled around to face him.

"I forgot to check the time. I didn't plan to work all day. What are you doing back here?"

"I came back for the Collin's file. It's not on my desk. Do you have it?"

She pushed it over to him.

"What have you been doing all day," he asked, curious.

She motioned to the file in his hands.

"I have been following up on this, making a couple of phone calls and stuff like that. I wrote everything down. It's all in there."

He looked so taken aback that she started to apologize.

"Look, I'm sorry Jack. You probably wanted to do it yourself. I'm really sorry. I just wanted…I wrote everything down. You can check up on it if it's not good enough. I won't mind. There's some work for you left anyway. I couldn't check out all the leads because it's Sunday."

He opened the file, flipping through it, stopping to read what she had written in her meticulous handwriting. He took his time. She had reported on every lead she had followed, the questions she had asked, the answers she had gotten, the conclusions she had drawn. It was a lot of work. It was good work. She had asked most of the questions he would have asked himself and even a few he would never have thought of. It would have taken him days to be that thorough.

"It's great work. You haven't even been involved in that case but this reads as if… I would have expected this depth of involvement from Vivian maybe, not from someone who has barely…," he stopped himself because he heard his voice growing unsteady. He was touched that she had cared enough to do this.

She looked at him, shaken, because she had not seen him that unsettled since Steve died.

"Why does this case mean so much?" she asked.

"It's just one of these cases," he answered, unable to explain something to her that he had not even worked out for himself.

She took his hand. It was warm, burning with his inner passion. His responding grip was fierce.

"Thank you," he said, sounding as if she had saved his life.

Jack fought an overwhelming urge to pull her closer, to wrap her body in his arms, to rest his face against her neck, to smell that scent of hers up close. He would be at peace for a while.

'Right', a dry, rational voice was speaking up in his mind, 'and afterwards you'll be in hell forever. It's not worth it. If you do this now you won't be able to work with her anymore. Is that what you want?'

The thought that she would not be here tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after that, was like a squall of icy water, stinging like needles, numbing.

Gently he released her hand, shaken to the core by this sudden burst of emotion. For a while they just sat, not saying anything. He tried to recover, wondering despite himself if she would ever consider having a relationship with a man like him.

"You know," Samantha finally broke the silence, "I really don't like that."

Jack looked alarmed.

"What?"

"That Sam thing. The kids used to call me that at school, claiming I looked nothing like Humphrey Bogart. You know, Sam Spade, 'The Maltese Falcon'. It's a really, really old joke."

"What do you mean?" he asked, utterly confused.

"You called me Sam."

"I don't recall that."

"Well you did. Ten minutes ago. I heard it."

"How am I supposed to remember what I did ten minutes ago?" he said gruffly.

She gave him a bright, dazzling smile.

"Well, I don't like it."

"I'll never do it again," he promised. "By the way, where do those flowers come from?"

There were pink roses in a vase beside her computer screen. They smelled nice.

"Kellar left them at the reception," she explained. "I'm afraid he felt sorry for me. He got the impression that you treated me badly. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I can deal with Kellar. Is it something serious?"

She merely looked at him and he felt that he had to stop coming in on Sundays. It was bad for his heart.

"That's it," he said, "We're going home. I don't want to see you before lunch tomorrow, got it?"

"Aye, aye, boss."

"Good night, Sam."

"Good night, Jack."

He limped away and she slumped back in her chair, not looking after him, feeling content. Then his last words sank in.

She groaned.

Sam it was. It would never change.

TBC