They woke up, no sun but a blizzard blasting against the window, to greet them. Celine was hoping for, at the most, a twinkle of snow but more sunshine. She wanted to play some soccer, but she knew that she wouldn't be able to anyway because first of all, it's Christmas morning and not one of the girls is stupid enough to waste her day the field. Second, the weather isn't looking promising for the next few hours, maybe even few days. And third, she didn't feel like leaving Ryan's side. She was still comfy against him under the blankets on the slightly too little couch.

Before she decided it was time to get up, it was almost nine o'clock, she checked under the big and beautiful tree, just like when she was a little girl, only there were no gifts. Well, there was one. Celine didn't see it yesterday, but she didn't exactly look either. Funny thing is, she was sure she hadn't moved since last night's event and she was pretty sure Ryan hadn't moved. She would have felt him. But, Celine has been known to be quite to hard sleeper. She can sleep through anything, so she wouldn't be surprised if he actually did get up last night and put the little gift under the tree.

Anyway, it was time to wake up and eat. Her stomach was grumbling so loud, she didn't even have to move to wake up Ryan.

"What the hell is that?" He asked, he was grimacing. Morning guy, Celine thought, then laughed inside.

"Sorry."

"Was that your stomach?" His eyes seemed to be starting to ajust to the lights but the frown/grimace he had going on didn't change much. Celine smiled. "Wow. That's loud."

"I have a stomach that should belong to a bear." She sat up and pulled the cover around herself, leaving Ryan lying on the couch naked.

"You think you can share? It's sort of cold." He asked, as he sat up, rubbing his eyes. He ajusted his eyes on Celine, walking over to the fridge, piling food onto the counter. He realised he had been staring for quite a while. He focused on the floor, looking at the mess of clothes they'd made last night. He thought about last night and smiled. That was quite a night, he thought. He picked up his faded out jeans he had worn to work the day before and strutted over to Celine.

"You ok for making breakfast? I'm gonna go take a shower." He asked her, arms around her waist and kissing her neck. She smiled.

"Yeah, go a head. You can finish up with breakfast so that I can take a shower, when your done."

"Of course." He kissed her neck one last time then walked up the stairs and slammed the door shut.

Celine started mixing up pancaked batter, with a cup of coffee with bailey's. She even blasted a little music, the radio wasn't working, it was a pretty bad storm out there, so she played the music on her iPod.

But, her little cooking session was interrupted by a doorbell. Celine thought who ever was ringing the bell was probably stuck in a snow bank and needed a phone to call road side assistance. She waddled over to the door, making sure only head was visible when she opened the door.

"Une boïte pour Monsieur Ryan Wolfe." The man was chubby, gray haired and covered in a big, probably down fill, postal office issued jacket.

"Sure. I'll sign for him." Celine started to reach for the electric pad thing but he took a step back, preventing her.

"You can not. It must be him." He said, with a very thick french accent.

"He's, busy." She plopped the door open wider so that the postal worker can see her bare body barely wrapped in a blanket. "If you don't mind." She smiled, took the electric pad thing, signed Ryan's name and pulled the package inside the door, thanking the big jolly man.

She walked back to the kitchen counter and looked at the box wrapped in brown paper with a card taped to it. She ripped the card off the box, she would see it eventually, so she figured Ryan wouldn't mind. Celine was a very nosy person, when something like this was put out right in front of her, she just had to peek.

Before she could sneak a peek, her phone buzzed on the counter. She flipped it open and answered.

"Hello?"

"Celine, it's Maxime. Are you busy today?" His french accent buzzing in her ears.

"Well, I hadn't planned anything," Celine was opening the card as she talked to him. "But with the weather outside, I wouldn't count on me getting far. Is this weather normal?"

It was a Christmas card, a card covered in pink with red and green polka dots and a beatiful Christmas tree.

"Yeah. If you've got the right vehicle, you can do anything here. Would you like to get some lunch? I might-" Then she opened it and there was a picture of Ryan and a pale girl with long strawberry blond hair and big blue eyes. Her face was angular and her eyes looked like they belonged to an egyptian goddess. In the picture, they were kissing. Celine read the rest of the card and then stopped everything, finshed her phone call, after reading the last couple words.

"I miss you, can't wait to have you back home. Ben misses you too..." Celine whispered. She couldn't move, she couldn't think properly. Then it clicked. Ryan has a girlfriend?!, she thought. Then she started feeling bad for the blue eyed girl, hating Ryan and-.

She dialed a quick number.

"I have a big, black truck. Will that get me to the restaurant?" Celine's voice was hysterical, almost shouting. The only thing preventing her yelling out her lungs was her sanity and the fact that Ryan was a floor away.

"Yeah. It's called Cochon Laiteuse..." He gave her the address, Maxime asked her what was wrong, she said nothing then hung up. She rushed to her bag of clothes in the hallway, threw on a dark boot cut jeans, a white tank top with black polka dots and a black bow, a gray cashmere cardigan with wide sleeves and a belt, purple four inched heels, purple earings and a brown leather jacket to keep her warm. She took Ryan's keys, leaving him with no transportation. She smiled at the thought then bolted into the cold, stormy air.

The drive to the restaurant was tough, but the tires on the four wheel drive truck kicked in and made it safer then she thought. The GPS was working fine too, brought her to a good parking spot too. Her phone rang every couple minutes the whole drive, and the caller ID said it was Ryan, and a couple girls from her soccer team. But she wasn't in the mood, didn't answer the phone once. When she parked, she left the phone in the truck and jogged over to the big front doors. She noticed Maxime's black hair and strutted her stuff over to the table in the back.

It was a chick restaurant for the younger, richer croud. Dim lights, booths for privacy. It was a place for either celebrations or lunch dates with very good looking detectives. I muscled my way through the crowd and wound up at the right table.

"Hi." She said, putting on a fake smile and sat opposit of him.

"Hi." She eyed him.

"You look like he was holding a proposal in. What is it?"

"Are you alright?" Celine's eyebrow flew up while the other one stayed low.

"I'm fine." She tested him. She said it sternly and as if she didn't want him to continue on the subject.

"Celine, my job is to find the guilty person, either through words or through their body language so obviously I can tell when a person is hiding something, it's the easiest of them all to figure out."

"I'm not hiding anything, because there's nothing to hide..." He put on the most obvious face that stated he didn't believe a word she said, then dropped it. "Did you solve her murder? Michelle's?"

"No, we all went home early last night, but I can promise you that we are working harder then ever to solve this one."

"What about Cory? Did you talk to him? Do you have any other suspects?"

"We talked to Cory and-" Maxime was interrupted by the waitor. A nineteen or twenty year old brunette with square glasses and a tight black skirt and low cleavage black shirt. They gave her their drink orders and she left to get them. "Cory wasn't here. There's proof. We've been looking through her things, I'm not supposed to be giving you any details, and found a boyfriend-"

"She doesn't have a boyfriend, I would know. Any of us would know. Were women, that's all we talk about, especially in the change room."

"Maybe she wanted to keep this relationship quiet."

"No! She didn't."

"Well we talked to him, he said they were dating-"

"So dating automatically means you rin a relationship with someone, they immediatly become your partner. Does that mean your my boyfriend." Maxime paused, throught about it and wished it was true, he really thought Celine was so beautiful, so full of power.

"Well, that's what he said. They met the night you came here. They went out, spent some time together, close together, then she died. Apparently they got into an argument, says a cabby."

"You think he killed her?"

"Well, the witness said he was being rough. Pulling her by her arm, she was trying to squirm away but he pushed up against a wall... Till we know why, and he's declining that any of that happened, we can't do much about it. We need to know more about what happened with her since she got here."

"Which is why you called me here..." The waitor brought their drinks, asked them for their order of an entree then left.

"Well, I mostly wanted to see you. Since I could bring you to have a Christmas Eve dinner, I figured a Christmas Day dinner would be the next best thing." He paused, took a sip of his beer, set down and starred at her. "Do you remember anything that she did since you landed here?"

"No. She was descrete about the things she did. When she was doing business, which was almost 24/7, we came first and she would do everything for us. Sometimes we don't see for hours after hours. She was very concentrated on her work. Like I said, she talked about her personal life but she didn't have much of one... She would always come back to the room when I was sleeping, late night, early morning. As usual. I never saw her with anyone, and like I also said, she didn't tell us about anyone."

"Well that wasn't helpfull."

"I'm sorry, do you want me to lie."

"No, I was just hoping for a little more. It's hard when you have almost no evidence, nothing to work with..." Celine looked at him, worry covering her face.

"Now what? Is there anything you can do? Anyway of getting that information?"

"It would be a lot easier if she could just tell me. Because at this point, there's no evidence and no murder weapon."

"She shot herself, just look for the gun..."

"The gun could be at the tip of one of the mountains, or it could be taped to a plane. There's no big arrow pointing to wear this gun could be, We searched the crime scene, we searched her boyfriends house, your hotel room..."

"My hotel room? Why, you think I did it?" Celine was shocked, they thought she did it. "I didn't kill her!"

"We know, it's just a precaution. Incase the killer premeditated the murder. Celine, there isn't an bone in my body that even think you are a possible killer. Never."

"Are you sure?"

"I promise."

Celine smiled. It was a relief that no one thought she was the killer. Because she didn't do it, but she was sure as hell going to help catch the guy.

"When can I go home?" She asked, because a sudden rush of homesickness just kicked in. She wanted to go home, cuddle up to her puppy and sleep for a couple days. She hadn't forgotten about Michelle over the past couple days, but she had her mind taken off of the whole situation, and now that she was pissed off at Ryan, which resulted in her meeting up with Maxime and getting the terrible reminder. It wasn't him, but how she met him that just got in the way of her emotions.

"When we solve this."

"What if you can't?"

"Don't say that. We can, we just need some time."

"I can't stay here forever." Maxime saw a tear form at her lashes and scooted over to her side of the booth, placed a comforting right arm around her and pulled her into his shoulder. She leaned her temple on his shoulder, in fact a little lower, and relaxed, closed her eyes. A tear or two slipped down her cheek, but she swiped them off righ away, not letting them be obvious to anyone.

They stayed like that for a long while, halfway through, Maxime got the courage to let his head drop on top of hers expecting her to jerk away, but she let him and he stayed like that a while longer.

TThe waitress interrupted their long moment, dropping off their food. Maxime had picked up his head and so had Celine. The waitress asked if there was anything else, giving Maxime a double look, then walked away. Maxime squeezed Celine far shoulder, took his arm from around her and found his seat across from her.

"I promise, you'll be home soon." Maxime said, staring in her eyes, making sure she's ok.

"Thanks." She looked down and stuffed a piece of canalony in her mouth.

Their dinner went as any other's. A bit of laughing, lost of little conversation, at one point there was even a debate over the best fruit you could eat. They didn't have any desert, being that Celine was a soccer player and that they just couldn't agree between a double chocolate pudding cake and a strawberry cheese cake.

Maxime paid the bill and they headed towards the door.

"You think you can make it back to your hotel?" He asked, putting on his jacket.

"I was planing on changing hotels, I don't like the one I'm staying at." She said, sliping on her leather jacket.

"Why not?"

"I just don't like it. Don't like the people there. Now I have to go look for a new one..." Maxime nodded, took off his scarf and wrapped it around Celine's neck.

"If you don't find a place, call me and I can help you."

"I will." She slipped through the doors and out into the snowy winds.

The blizzard had mild down to a very cool breeze with lots of little white flakes gliding.

"The weather died down a bit, but be careful." Maxime warned her.

"You don't have to worry about me. I used to live in Canada, up north, I can get through this." She said, walking along Maxime towards her, or Ryan's, car.

"This is your car? Or truck?"

"Yeah. It's rented. I figured that's what I needed to get through this weather, for now." She leaned into him, kissed his cheek and smiled. "Thanks, for lunch and for the therapy session." He smiled.

"I've learned quite a bit. I don't need a university degree in psychology to help peo-" He was interrupted by Celine kissing him, on the lips, which made him stop.

She broke apart, not long after, not letting it go far.

"I get it, your good."

"You should go look for a hotel, I heard it's supposed to get really bad." Maxime warned her.

"Alright. I meant to let you or that other guy, Delko. I am missing a very expensive watch. I think I may have missed it, going through the things at the lab."

"No problem. Go look for a hotel then stop by the lab."

"Thanks again!" She jumped in her car, waved, and drove off. She punched in 'hotel' into the GPS and started alphabetically, going through the city.