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A/N: The long-awaited moment has come... :)

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Chapter 27: April 1998

Forensic Academy Conference

I almost didn't speak at the conference. They'd petitioned me in January, and I'd turned them down—I never spoke at conferences in April… not because I had actively decided not to do so, but because ever since I'd lost Amber to the witness protection program, I got very, very sick in April.

I'm sure it's psychological—I'm making myself sick, thinking about her birthday, and when I'd lost her—but it still happens, no matter how hard I try to tell myself that it won't if I decide it won't. So I'd just stopped scheduling anything that I'd need to cancel.

But a week before, they called and asked me to reconsider—they'd had someone drop out at the last minute—another forensic entomologist—and I was the only other one even remotely close to San Francisco, where the conference was being held. And so, grudgingly, I had agreed. I wasn't sick yet—maybe this was the year that I would break the habit.

I was strangely grateful to be away from the lab—Ecklie had been promoted to the day shift supervisor position, after their former supervisor had retired. He, curiously, had been staying late a lot more lately, as if he wanted to see me, but I avoided him.

I didn't care about his promotion—he was better at playing politics for those above him, because I had no interest in such things—but I knew if the man made a single snide comment to me I might do something uncalled for, and he wasn't worth my job or my reputation. Mostly due to the efforts of the night shift, our lab was now ranked seventh in the country.

It had been difficult to find a hotel room—the city apparently had several major events taking place at the same time. Although the conference went on for two weeks, I was only able to find rooms—between two different hotels—for the first week. I figured that, worst case scenario, I would book a room in a surrounding city and do a long commute—I wasn't staying anywhere that would still have openings at this point—a UV scan of the bed alone would prevent that.

The flight was long, and I arrived late, taking a rental car to my hotel and collapsing in bed, well after midnight, not eager for the early morning ahead of me. I should have slept more on the plane—I was never good at sleeping at night. I'd been on the graveyard schedule for too long. Still, I managed a few hours, and was up with the sun to shower, dress, eat a poor excuse for a "continental breakfast," and get directions from the desk clerk to my destination.

I still got lost, but managed to arrive and park a half an hour before I had to speak. I got directions to the information desk that had been set up, talked to someone about getting my equipment moved into my lecture hall from my car, and snagged a flier. I read it while cases of bugs and boxes were moved in. Glancing over the schedule, I was glad to see that this room would be mine for the duration of the convention—maybe, if I could ascertain the security of the building, I could leave all this stuff here over night.

Fifteen minutes until I had to speak—people were starting to file in. It was a professional conference, but I didn't feel nervous, even though my students were people I would normally view as colleagues—there were only fifteen forensic entomologists in the country, and my lab was one of the best in the country… so I wasn't likely to step on any toes here.

I left quickly, to grab myself a large cup of coffee and a bottle of water, and made my way back into the room.

Seven minutes until I was scheduled to speak, and the attendance was still pretty sparse. I repeated this particular lecture the next day, in the afternoon. It was not entirely unlikely that most of the people interested would take the time to sleep in. I was scanning the room, wondering whether I should just cancel it—tell everyone to take the extra hour and a half to get a decent breakfast—and that I'd just do the lecture once—when I saw her.

She walked down the steps, slowly, her eyes on the flier before her, but her feet not missing a step. She was dressed up, but not as professionally as the others around her—a soft, flowing white skirt, tailored but still floaty, falling just below her knees, a brown shirt with a round neckline—low enough to be enticing, without being inappropriate, short sleeves, a seam below the bust and buttons down the front, and brown flats—still dressy, but not heels.

She had her hair up, with a pencil stuck through it—perhaps holding it up. Her left arm carried a notebook, upon which rested the schedule and flier she was reading so intently, her right hand clutched a large cup of coffee and a pen still strung between her fore and middle fingers at the tip, and against her thumb at the back, like she'd been in the process of writing just before she'd picked up the cup and hadn't thought to move it.

She moved down, looking up in surprise when she reached the bottom of the steps, and then moved to sit in a chair quickly, resting her coffee on the table top and immediately beginning to write on the papers before her with the pen still held so aptly in those delicate fingers. I realized I was staring, and was about to attempt to tear my gaze from her when she looked up at me.

Our gazes met and electricity passed through us—both sets of eyes widened simultaneously in surprise, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen this girl before. And she really was a girl, not a woman—she was so young. She must be very new to the field…

And that made me close my eyes and turn away, despite the magnet attraction her eyes held on mine—she was too young, and I certainly wouldn't be of interest to her, whatever connection I had invented in my mind over this breathtaking brunette. I glanced at my watch, realizing that it was time to start, and I cleared my throat, beginning.

"Hello, I'm Dr. Gilbert Grissom, forensic entomologist with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. I know it's early, and I do tend to go overboard when I get caught up in details or, worse yet, discussing insects, so please, stop me if I'm going on a tangent, and feel free to interrupt with any questions… this doesn't need to be a lecture—we're all professionals, and a dynamic debate would be far more engaging.

"So, the topic of this particular discussion is about the influence of first impressions in forensics—whether instincts and gut reactions can give us insight we would otherwise have ignored, or whether they distract from the evidence… lead to crunching evidence to fit a theory, rather than forming a theory to fit the evidence. In order to discuss this, I'll use a case my team worked on a little over a year ago—a double murder in a garage…"


Forensic Academy Conference

I had had to get two professors and my boss at the lab to talk to the forensic academy people so I could get a damn invitation, but I had one—I was going to the conference! Of course, I would have been invited on my own had it been held a month—hell, two weeks—later. I just hadn't graduated yet. I'd taken my finals and I was on the May schedule as a CSI level 1 at the Frisco lab.

The Forensic Academy made the exception for me, and most my friends at the Frisco lab laughed at the effort I put into being invited—most of them were only attending a few of the lectures, and then only because it was expected as we were the host city and because it counted for required training hours.

But I was ecstatic! I was most interested in the lectures by a final addition to the schedule—replacing someone else last minute, I guess—whom a teacher of mine said I would thoroughly enjoy. She claimed that he was one of the best CSIs in the country, and that I sometimes reminded her of him—our natures were similar, apparently.

So I'd made a point to schedule my days around his lectures—I would have gladly slept in this morning, because the drive from Berkeley took a good hour in morning traffic, but his later lecture had overlapped with an extremely interesting one on facial reconstruction to identify skeletal remains from which no DNA could be extracted, so here I was.

I had found parking in a hurry, a pen still clutched in my hand—it had been used to hold my place on the page of the conference flier I was reading, in traffic. When the cars would all stop, I'd look over to the passenger seat and read, or write a note to myself—when we started moving again, the tip of my pen held my place.

I gathered my pile of papers and my notebook, along with my pen and coffee and purse and keys, and somehow managed to balance it all and move towards the building where he would speak.

I had heard from everyone else that this particular speaker was kind of dull—dry sense of humor, serious—lots of quoting and intensive evidence explanation—not very dynamic. But I thought that that style might suit me—I liked details. It was one of the reasons I caught things that others didn't.

Still, I was thankful I'd thought to stop for a large coffee—if he was as dull a speaker as they'd claimed, I would need it to remain awake. I didn't want to embarrass myself, here, where I was surrounded by people I couldn't even really call colleagues yet.

I was still glancing over the explanation for this particular lecture as I made my way into the lecture hall and down the steps, one by one, careful not to slip while my attention was otherwise involved. I was so glad I'd worn flats. When I reached the bottom—not feeling the edge of a step against the ball of my foot—I was surprised, and quickly moved to take a seat in the front row. I hadn't necessarily intended to sit so close, but my steps had gotten away from me, and I didn't want to backtrack. We'd be starting in a minute.

As I sat, I released my coffee, finally, making a note next to the title—"Double Murder in a Garage—Instinct vs. Evidence." Why not both?

I smiled softly, and finally turned my eyes upward, to see the man who had been described to me in such conflicting terms. Our eyes met—and a jolt went through me, like nothing I'd ever felt before. I felt my eyes widen in time with his, and knew that he had felt it too. I felt butterflies in my stomach, and as he broke the eye contact, I felt myself letting my eyes slide over his face and body appreciatively—Yes, I definitely liked older men.

His soft curls were a beautiful, soft brown, with just a hint of gray at the temples—which was perhaps the sexiest part. I felt a compulsion to run my fingers through those curls, to see if their texture was as soft as their appearance. His eyes—the ones that had shaken me so deeply—were the brightest, most intense blue.

His face was soft, but with a few angles—the line of the jaw, the nose, the cleft chin. I had the feeling that he would look very much like a little boy when he smiled—the softness in his face promised that. His lips looked soft too—and beautifully shaped—when he began speaking, I marveled at the delicate way they moved.

The voice itself was gentle but deep and masculine, and it felt like a caress. He adjusted his glasses while speaking, an offhanded gesture he probably wasn't even aware of, and my eyes focused on his hands—strong, wide, with short, clean nails.

I felt my face flush as my mind, without my consent, imagined how they would feel—broad fingers entwined in mine, a gentle thumb against my face, soft palms trailing down my body, full and capable hands holding me in a moment of intimacy. I shake my head slowly, trying to clear the images, and the haze lifts only enough to allow me to continue my adoration of him.

He was tall, broad shouldered—he rolled up the sleeves of his button-up shirt after only a few minutes of speaking, and I nearly fainted at the sight of his forearms. Weird, I know, but muscled arms do something to me that muscled anything else just can't… something about how safe I would feel, tucked inside them.

I realized, after a few minutes, when he had asked a question to the group, that I had no idea what he'd asked… I had no idea what he'd said, since introducing himself and telling people to ask questions…

Focus, Sidle, you're not here to eat the eye candy. You're a professional.

And surprisingly, once I started listening, I was more enthralled with the man than I had been when I hadn't heard him—he was decidedly logical, but insightful, and confident. He quoted a lot—but they were appropriate and enlightening—they added so much to the discussion, and I was impressed that he didn't read them from his note cards—he just seemed to pull them from his memory, as the moment required. I felt myself drawn to his striking intelligence, his steadfast argument that while intuition was important in a job like this—sometimes, you really did just know—the evidence was always more important.

If your intuition was right, but you couldn't prove it, then it didn't matter. A killer went free.

If your intuition was wrong, and you ignored evidence that would prove it to be, a killer went free, you could send an innocent person to jail or possibly their death, and you could be risking your credibility as a CSI—your whole career, really.

The only way to walk the line was to be simultaneously aware of intuition and logic, and to separate the two in your own mind. First impressions were important, of course, but when the evidence changed, you had to change with it.

I asked too many questions—I couldn't help it. I wanted to glean every last detail and nuance of his experience and expertise—and I loved when he looked at me, made eye contact with me, answered me directly. It sent shivers down my spine, and I noticed that he smiled, when I asked a question. He didn't do that for the others.

Maybe I was disillusioned—I wasn't even really in the field we were discussing, at the moment, and he was teaching the professionals. He was an expert—one of the best in the country—and just about the sexiest man I'd ever laid eyes on. Truthfully, I had little to offer him compared to the women around me—they were older, more mature, more advanced in their careers… but I felt like he noticed me, more than he noticed the others.

I couldn't just let that go.

I smiled to myself, relating my internal debate to his lecture. My intuition, my first blush, was that there was a mutual attraction. My logic was telling me that he would have no reason to be attracted. The evidence was telling me… so far, that he at least did not look down on me. So far, I was at least equal to any other woman here… and he had smiled at me… we had had the electricity…

Still, it was inconclusive. You couldn't convict someone on circumstantial evidence… and so, I would have to make the effort to gather more.

The last twenty minutes of his lecture I reigned myself in—become less involved—because I wanted to save some questions to ask him personally. How else was I going to gather evidence?

When he finished up with a final glance in my direction, I noted gleefully, people began to rise and I gathered my papers too. Noticing that several others had gone up for questions, I allowed myself a moment to organize myself—I didn't want to be in complete disarray once I reached him.

At which point I realized I hadn't even done my hair this morning—I'd been so worried about leaving on time, in case traffic was bad, that I'd just wrapped it around a pencil and intended to fix it later. I hastily slid the pencil out, using my fingers to brush my brown locks up into a ponytail I'd had around my wrist—it wasn't much, but it was better than the pencil situation.

Finally, the group around him was thinning. I stood, hooking my purse over my shoulder and gathering my notebook and papers into my left arm again. I tucked the pen into the purse, and tossed the empty cup in a garbage can as I made my way up to him. He was speaking to a woman, but his eyes kept flickering from her face, over her shoulder, to me. He answered her too hastily, bade her goodbye, and fixed those sapphires on me. My heart fluttered as our eyes locked again—good lord, they were so brightly blue.

"Hi, Dr. Grissom, I, um, I'm Sara Sidle." We shook hands, and heat flowed neatly between our fingers. It didn't surprise either of us, this time, but I smiled shyly… I couldn't help myself. I didn't feel like I had wanted anything… anyone… so badly in my whole life.

"I, um… maybe this is too personal… But I listened to your lecture, and while you gave hypothetical examples or referenced members of your team having intuition that was helpful or hurtful…you didn't mention yourself. I was just wondering how you balance logic and intuition—how much you let your intuition guide the way you view and analyze a scene."

He smiled, softly, and yet still brightly—he did look like a little boy when he smiled. Somehow, it made him all the more attractive. I tried to control the emotions ranging over my face as I watched him.

"Well, Ms. Sidle, you… you look fairly young, so… correct me if this is presumptuous of me, but I imagine you haven't had too many years on the job?"

I blushed. "No, sir."

He grinned. "You can call me Gil, Dr. Grissom if you must… not sir."

His grin was contagious. "Okay… Gil." The name fell from my lips awkwardly, but my mouth liked the feel of it… my tongue ached to say it again, just so it could feel its path up to my teeth again.

"Well, after you've seen enough cases through to the end, you start to notice how a homicide feels different from an accident. Granted, in twenty years, I'll still spend most of my cases not sure what happened… but a lot of intuition isn't really instinct, as people like to say, it's experience."

"How do you avoid making mistakes, then, when you're new to being a CSI, like myself?"

He stretched and relaxed his jaw, and I wanted to kiss my way up the delicate line of it. I curled up my toes in my shoes, to keep control of myself. "Well, Ms. Sidle—"

"Sara." I interrupted, and the smile that broke across his face was breathtaking. I never, ever, wanted to see it go.

"Sara." He amended, continuing, "For some of it, you'll just have to wait… make sure that evidence collection is impartial and impersonal… but, I imagine, in a lot of scenes you'll have a sense about things, even now… You're a very insightful person; your mind seeks out details. That's a really good thing, for a CSI."

I felt the flush spread across my skin, covering my chest, neck, and face, and I stuttered to answer him. "I… I… How do you… I am?"

He chuckled softly, and I swear he let his eyes flicker up and down my body, quickly… like he couldn't help but allow himself one look.

"Your questions were not the typical questions I receive from bored or half-assed attendees. You… you looked like you were trying to solve the double murder as I went along. Like you wanted to know who'd done it before I revealed the killer."

I grinned. "I did know. I knew when you mentioned the unusual cast-off and directionality of blood drops, near the outside wall of the garage."

He smiled, but his eyes narrowed sharply. "Really? How did you know?"

I laughed—really laughed; even though he'd smiled, he seemed put out that I'd solved it so easily.

"Intuition."

I laughed again, and I heard him join me. His laugh did things to me I can't even begin to explain. I found myself short of breath, and hoped the hunger in my eyes wasn't as apparent as it felt. I tried to clear them, but his expression changed, just a little. When he spoke, his voice was a little softer.

"See, Sara, I knew it." My breath caught in my throat. I wanted him to speak to me in that light, feathery tone for the rest of existence. "Listen, uh… I don't know if you're doing anything later, but—"

"Yes." I interrupted him again, in complete disbelief that he was actually asking me out. He seemed startled, and then laughed at me.

"How do you know what I was going to ask?"

I grin. "Intuition?"

"Great!" He said teasingly, "I have some hissing cockroaches who just love new people to play with…"

I tilted my head to the side, grinning, but still unsure how to respond to that.

He chuckled again. "Dinner?"

I'm beaming again. "And here I had my heart set on the cockroaches… I, uh… Do you want my number or… my address?"

"Yeah… yeah… you know what? Are you… are you attending another lecture right now?"

My eyes opened wider. I had been planning to—I was actually a few minutes late to it—but I shook my head. "No, not right now."

"We could grab a cup of coffee, if you'd like to? I'll probably need directions to pick you up; I haven't really mastered the city yet."

"It is only the first day of the convention." I tease.

He rolls his eyes, gathering up his things—my acceptance is tacitly assumed. "I've lived in California most of my life. It's hardly my first time in San Francisco…"

I smile, glad to have something in common with him. "I grew up here too. Well, not in Frisco, but just north of the city… Tomales Bay."

He grins at me, and we're slowly walking out of the lecture hall, engrossed in our conversation. "Frisco?" When I just smile, he continues. "I lived in the L.A. area pretty much my whole life… the first 25 years of it, anyway."

"Lemme guess, UCLA?"

He grins. "For my undergrad and masters degrees, yeah."

"Where'd you go for your doctorate?"

"Chicago."

My eyes light up. "Wow, that's a change from California. Why'd you go there?"

He shrugs, "I wanted to see a different part of the country, and one of the few other forensic entomologists in the country was teaching there, at the time. It seemed perfect... do you mind if we stop at my car? I can drop off all of this…" He lifted his stack of papers from his lecture, to exemplify what "all of this" was.

"Of course. I'm not really familiar with this campus as it is, so we'll probably have to search for a coffee place…"

"When's your next lecture?"

I grin. "When's yours?" I already know—noon. I was attending it.

He smiled, understanding my meaning. "Are you sure you're not a closet entomologist?"

I giggle. "No, I'm a physicist. …I'm just interested in timeline regression… and, well, honestly… you."

He blushes a little, and this makes me feel good—the attraction has to be mutual if I'm making this much older, very respected, man blush. "Oh? Why's that?"

"I actually had a professor who told me that you were one of the best CSIs in the country, and that… well, that I reminded her of you. She thought I would learn a lot from someone whose thought processes worked so similarly to mine… I had planned to attend all of your lectures."

He looks embarrassed under such praise, but also thoroughly intrigued. "Who was your professor?"

"JoAnne Kemmel."

A surprised grin crossed his face. "Wow, really? Dr. Kemmel? Where's she teaching now? She was one of my supervisors, in Hennepin County, when I first started out."

I grin. "Berkeley."

He lets out a low whistle. "Impressive, Sara Sidle. I imagine you took her classes for grad school?"

I nod.

We reach his car, and he unlocks it, setting his stack of papers and files into the back seat. I take the opportunity to tuck my notebook, filled with my own papers, into the large purse slung over my right shoulder—it fits easily, with room to spare. I've never been a purse person, so if I'm going to bother carrying one on a daily basis, it had better be useful.

"Was that your only school?" he asks, while closing and relocking his car doors.

"Huh?"

He smiles, moving over to my left side and guiding me back up to the sidewalk with a hand on the small of my back. It sends tingles up my spine. "Berkeley. Did you get your undergrad degree there as well?"

"Oh… no."

He chuckles softly. "So, then, you went to another school…"

I laugh. He doesn't want to ask, and I don't want to volunteer it without being asked—people react too strongly when you say you went to Harvard, especially outside of Boston. "Yes, that is generally how the process of higher education works."

He groans in frustration and I nudge his shoulder softly with my own. His eyes flicker to the side, to look at me.

I sigh. "Harvard."

His eyebrows shot up. "Harvard? Wow, you don't mess around, do you?"

I laugh, and then draw in a shaky breath and smile—he had slipped his hand into mine, and held it now. My fingers had never, ever, felt warmer. My whole body felt warmed with the contact. "Well, I dunno if I'd say that… I spent ten years pursuing higher education, and I'm nowhere near a PhD. I mess around a little…"

He stops walking then, his head tilting in confusion. "Ten years? …Sara, you… you don't look like you could be older than 25… and… how could it take you ten years?"

I laugh again, because he looked so confused, and squeeze his hand gently, starting us walking again. "I started at Harvard when I was sixteen. Five years, a physics and a credit-short-of-a-chemistry degree later, I started grad school, still at Harvard. But… after a year I… I decided I needed… a change of pace. So I transferred to Berkeley, and spent four years getting my masters degrees in physics and forensics."

He nods, thinking, and I expect him to ask about me starting school when I was sixteen. I don't expect him to be doing math.

"…How old are you?"

I'm surprised, to say the least. "I, uh… 26."

He looks at me, and then pulls his hand from mine, a little alarmed. I feel its absence acutely. "It's… April."

I'm confused. "Yes…?"

"Following your ten-year-plan… if you're twenty-six right now… you… you haven't graduated yet."

Shit. I close my eyes and open them slowly, taking a deep breath. "It's a technicality—my finals are finished, I've talked to my professors… I had a 4.0 this semester. The diploma will be given in a little over a week and I have a job as a CSI level one at the Frisco lab waiting for me."

He stays rooted to the spot he's standing in. "Sara… I, uh… I can't take you out tonight. …I can't even take you for coffee."

I know there's hurt and confusion on my face, and I try to hide it. I don't want to be so transparent. "I… I don't understand."

"You're a college student. Until you actually have that diploma in hand, Sara… I feel like your teacher, almost. It… it doesn't feel… ethical. The… power structure…"

I don't know if I'm angry or sad—tears brim in my eyes, and I think I'm even angrier because of it—angry and irrational, and already feeling the loss. "But in two weeks, you could fuck me and leave me and it would be more acceptable than a coffee date today?"

He looks alarmed—at my anger, at my swearing, and at the point I'm making—but he doesn't disagree.

I scoff, disdainfully, my temper rising within me once again.

"You know, Dr. Grissom, if you had found out and responded by gently telling me that you were concerned… or if you had ended our date tonight without a kiss, telling me you wanted to wait until you felt right about it, until no part of you could argue that our difference in positions was making me anything less than consensual, I would have understood that… respected that. I don't want your credibility, your ethics, put in question anymore than you do… I know how those things come under scrutiny in court. …But to tacitly agree that holding my hand now is more unethical than sleeping with me and never calling me again two weeks later…" I shake my head in disbelief. "Maybe I need to be attending another speaker's lectures.... Your judgment seems a bit skewed."

I turn from him, walking away, cursing my temper and how much it hurt to lose a man I had never had. He didn't follow, but then, I didn't really expect him to.