A/N-Sorry for the skipped week yet again...I got the flu just in time for New Years and my scheduled update. Not sure which bummed me out more ;) Anyway, I'm all better now! With out further ado, and a reminder that I own nothing of value beyond my car, computer and cell phone, I present you with chapter 23...

It was so completely illogical that Maura had a difficult time believing it to be true. How could she, Doctor Maura Isles, chief medical examiner for the state of Massachusetts, know for her meticulous attention to detail and unwillingness to declare COD without first contemplating all of the evidence, have overlooked so many issues in her plan to escape Jane's apartment?

The escape effort was risky to begin with, but Maura had recognized that and decided to take the risk anyway because of her mounting anxiety about being trapped. But she'd failed to remember until she was halfway to the door that her car keys were in her purse, which was tucked behind the pillow, which Mrs. Rizzoli was leaning up against. She briefly thought of taking a cab before realizing that she had all of her cash and credit cards in the same purse as her car keys.

Maura was even more trapped than she'd been before, with absolutely no way out of the apartment and no way of knowing when Angela would leave or if she would, at some point, demand to speak to Maura while Maura was dressed in a way that would've been far more appropriate for picking up a date at a nightclub.

Realizing all of that in the span of a few seconds had been what had caused Maura to swear under her breath. She honestly didn't even realized she'd done it until both Jane and Angela were staring at her. Jane, with a mix of surprise and barely concealed arousal. Angela ,with surprise and confusion.

Maura stood perfectly still for a moment longer than she wanted to before stepping forward to shake Angela's hand and getting Jane to hide the shirt from the previous evening.

"Hello, I'm Maura Isles," Maura said.

Angela smiled in way that seemed sincere enough, though she still displayed an understandable level of uncertainty in her mannerisms and speech.

"Yes, I believe we've met," Angela said. "On vacation, if I'm not mistaken."

"Really? You think so?" Maura asked, modulating her tone in a way that she hoped would cause Angela to question her memory of that evening.

"Maura, she knows," Jane said. Maura was almost relieved that she wouldn't have to find new and interesting ways around the truth. At least until Jane continued. "About everything."

"Everything?"

Jane nodded, keeping her eyes carefully on her mother, who seemed to understand well enough what was going on.

"I'm very observant," Angela offered to break the increasingly awkward silence.

"And nosy," Jane added, sounding mildly annoyed though a smile formed at the corner of her lips.

"But mostly observant," Angela said.

"Yes, I imagine so, to have deduced that based on the few hours that you spent with us and given your...compromised motor skills and our attempts to conceal the nature of our-

"Do you want to sit down?" Angela said.

Though Angela had cut Maura off, it was as much for Maura's sake as her own. Maura was getting on one of those rolls where she nervous chattered while gradually moving towards saying something foolish. What, without context, would have been rude was actually an act of kindness on Angela's part.

Maura still hesitated to accept the offer, but she glanced at Jane, and Jane didn't seem nearly as mortified and tense as Maura would have predicted. Jane actually seemed almost at ease, though there was a sharp quickness to her motions, the way that her eyes moved, the way she nodded that told Maura Jane was still alert, cautious.

Maura took that as cue to sit if she wanted to, that it would not be wildly inappropriate or embarrassing for Jane.

"Thank you," Maura said, smiling politely as she sat in the puffy chair that Jane usually used as an unofficial coat rack.

Angela sat, and Jane did too. And a silence fell over the three woman. It lasted no longer than a few seconds, but it felt more like a few minutes. Maura quickly started to regret her decision to stay.

"So," Angela said. "You work with Jane?"

"Yes, I do," Maura said, then added to deflect attention from herself. "She's an excellent coworker. Very conscientious."

"What department are you in?" Angela asked, apparently undeterred by the bait Maura had offered in her praise of Jane.

"What do you mean?" Maura replied. She'd assumed that Jane would have told her mother that bit of information, she would also have mentioned that Maura was an ME.

"I mean, what department do you work in?" Angela asked out of sincere curiosity. "You just don't, you know, look like a cop."

Were Maura a guesser, she would have hypothesized that Angela was making an indirect reference to her dress, which got a bit tighter and a little shorter when Maura sat down.

"I'm not," Maura said. "I'm a medical examiner, so I work with the police force examining suspicious deaths and homicides."

"She's being modest. Maura's not just a medical examiner," Jane chimed in, smiling at Maura. "she's the medical examiner. Chief Medical Examiner for the state."

There was something in the way that Jane said that, like she was proud, admired, even looked up to Maura. It was affectionate and intimate, like Jane wanted not just her mother, but Maura too, to realized how truly great Maura was.

"A doctor!" Angela said. "And not just any doctor, but a head doctor too! I'm surprised you didn't lead with that, Jane. It's very impressive."

"Didn't really have the time to give you a bio or anything," Jane said, then added. "And I'm kind of offended that you are more impressed by her being a doctor as opposed to a cop when you have a cop for a daughter."

"Oh, Jane, that's not what I meant," Angela said as she waved Jane off. "And you know it. I've always been very proud of you."

Angela pulled Jane in with one arm and kissed her on the cheek.

"C'mon, ma. I'm so not a hugger," Jane complained good-naturedly as she swatted Angela away.

That part of Jane's disposition surprised Maura, because Jane had always been so tactile and willing to hug Maura at the drop of hat, whether it was to comfort Maura during a particularly brutal case or to celebrate after working together to catch a murderer.

Maura didn't comment on the incongruity, instead smiling a little bigger at the thought that Jane saved that kind of affection for Maura, and, it would seem, only Maura.

"If she didn't look so much like my mother use to I'd wonder if that girl was even mine ," Angela said to Maura. "Honestly not sure sometimes."

Jane smiled and laughed, as did Maura, and Maura felt a really unique sensation in that moment, something she hadn't ever felt before. It was a small, fleeting moment, but it felt like Angela had just let her in, made a conscious decision to allow Maura into the relationship between Jane and Angela. There was tenderness, a motherly warmth that Maura never saw in her own mother as Angela looked from Jane to Maura and back.

Maura swallowed back the surge of emotions before smiling sincerely as she spoke.

"Jane certainly is something else," Maura said.

Jane had not expected anything that happened from the time her mother burst into her bedroom. Not a single thing went as she imagined it would. Not the conversation, not Maura's guest appearance, and certainly not the extended visit with her mother and Maura.

What Jane had expected least of all though, was the fact that she enjoyed herself. Of course, all that was after getting over the awkwardness of having to introduce Maura in an outfit designed to be torn off, then the awkwardness while Jane suspected that, at any minute, her mother would ask Maura if she was working undercover in vice.

Nothing like that transpired. She sat there with her mother and her...Maura for a solid thirty minutes without a catastrophically embarrassing event in sight. She watched Angela talk to Maura with her usual animated exaggeration, but Jane especially watched Maura. Watched as Maura discretely pulled the throw blanket around her shoulders before leaning forward to listen more closely to Angela's story. Watched as Maura smiled and laughed and soaked up everything that Angela was giving her, every little tidbit about Jane as a child, or Jane as teenager, every bit of annoying motherly advice that Angela could think to give her captive audience.

Maura seemed to love it all, everything down to the moments of good-natured bickering between Jane and Angela.

Maura probably would have put up with the Rizzoli family gathering for another few hours if Angela didn't suddenly realize that she had left Frank an hour earlier with a promise of coffee and scones when she got back. Even then, she stalled another ten minutes before standing up and announcing that she really had to get going this time.

"It was really nice seeing you," Angela said as she took a step towards Maura, who stood and stretched her hand out. Instead Angela pulled her into a hug.

Then Angela turned to Jane and pulled her into a quick hug. She gave Jane a quick kiss on the cheek before whispering in her her ear, so quietly that Jane almost didn't hear it.

"She loves you too," Angela whispered.

Before the words entered Jane's consciousness, Angela was kissing Jane on the cheek again before smiling and heading towards the door.

"See you for gnocchi on Thursday?" Angela asked.

"What? Yeah, wouldn't miss it. See you then," Jane said as she followed her mother to the door and closed it behind her.

"Jane?" Maura asked as she walked towards Jane. Jane turned to face Maura to realize that the doctor had dropped the blanket so that it fell at her feet. There was a suggestive, playful lilt to her voice as she put her arms around Jane's neck. "I have a question for you."

"Yeah?"

"What did your mother just say to you?" Maura asked.

That definitely wasn't anywhere close to what she'd been expecting, which slowed Jane's response. Well, that and Maura's spectacular cleavage delayed Jane's response significantly.

"Uhh,um," Jane muttered.

"I think she was probably a little more fluent than that," Maura teased.

"Well, maybe she just wanted me to tell you that she liked your get up. Thought the plaid throw from Target really went with your high fashion dress," Jane said.

"Now I know you're lying," Maura said. "Because that was a horrendous combination, but it was the only alternative to inadvertently showing your mother my breasts."

"And I do appreciate you sacrificing fashion points for the cause," Jane said as she bent down to give Maura a quick kiss. "Why'd you ask?"

"What?"

"What my mom said to me," Jane said.

"Because you looked like, I can't explain it," Maura said thoughtfully. "Like, I don't know. It was a pleasant look, but I can't place it. It didn't match any of your usual expressions, so I was just curious what it was an expression of."

Jane shrugged noncommittally. She honestly wasn't sure exactly what it was an expression of because she hadn't been aware of making any kind of face at all. She'd been more focused on hearing what Angela said at all.

"Not sure what it meant, honestly," Jane said. "She likes you though."

Maura smiled brightly.

"Really?"

"Yeah, she likes you. Not sure why that always comes as a surprise to you," Jane said. "You're pretty awesome."

Maura, still smiling, put her hand in Jane's hair and pulled her into a kiss, longer and slower than the last one, and a hundred times more sensual.

"Mmm," Maura hummed as she smiled against Jane's lips. "This is nice."

"Very nice," Jane said, resting her head against Maura's forehead. "Want to make a day of it?"

"As amazing as that sounds, I do have to work at some point today," Maura said, though she didn't move. "I have two presumed natural cause autopsies to do, and, based on normal patterns, I can expect at least one more will come in today."

"But it's the weekend," Jane whined. "And it's not an emergency or anything. And you can't work in that outfit anyway."

"Unfortunately, it is my weekend on, and people do die regardless of whether or not it's the weekend," Maura said as she took a small step back. "And, as far as clothing is concerned, I have spare scrubs at work."

"Fine," Jane said, lightly tracing the neckline of Maura's dress. "I'll just have to rip this off you with my teeth and have my way with you some other time."

"Jane!"

"What? You look really hot," Jane said.

"I know. I mean, I know that you feel that way. For a detective you can be awfully transparent," Maura said, the trace of a smile on her lips. "I'd just rather you not use your teeth to rip a one of a kind McQueen dress off of me. I am, however, open to you having your way with me."

"Alright. Then, how about for foreplay, I slowly, gently unzip the dress, steam clean, and press the dress right in the bedroom," Jane said, raising an eyebrow. "Am I getting you all hot and bother yet?"

"Now I know you're patronizing me," Maura said, grinning as she walked towards the sofa to retrieve her jacket and purse. "But you will be forgiven if you join me for dinner tonight. Does 5:30 work for you?"

Jane raised her eyebrows. They'd made these kind of arrangements in the past, set up these post-work dinners, often in the same casual, joking way. But they'd never made such plans after spending a sexy night together. It felt suspiciously like Maura was asking Jane on a date. It shouldn't have surprised Jane, but it did, because she'd never been on an official date with Maura, and, given the closeness Jane felt to Maura, that suddenly seemed kind of strange to Jane.

"Yeah," Jane said, nodding and looking down at her fingernails, feeling strangely shy all the sudden. "Sounds great. Want to try the new Italian place off Boylston?"

"Perfect," Maura replied enthusiastically. "That sounds perfect."

She gave Jane a peck on the lips while buttoning her jacket. Maura paused when she had finished buttoning the jacket and rested a hand on Jane's cheek, just looking right at Jane in this really intense, adoring way for a good few seconds. Then Maura smiled softly and gave Jane another peck on the lips.

"I,um, I'll see you then," Maura said as she put the purse on her shoulder and glanced down at the ground. She hesitated another second before taking a step towards the door to slip on her heels from the previous evening.

"I'll be looking forward to it," Jane said as she moved towards the door too. Although she didn't want Maura to go, it seemed the polite thing to move with Maura to the door. It also seemed polite to open the door for Maura. As a way of reassuring Maura that Jane wasn't rushing her out, Jane gave her a quick, chaste kiss and a smile.

It all seemed to be the right thing, because Maura smiled her special Maura smile, the sparkly one that she seemed to reserve just for Jane.

"Bye, Jane," Maura said.

"Yeah, see you soon, hopefully," Jane said.

Maura nodded for lack of anything to say before heading down the hall. Jane watched from the door until Maura disappeared around the corner.

Then Jane went back into her apartment and closed the door. She leaned against it and smiled broadly, with more sincere happiness than she'd felt in a really, really long time. She'd had a realization during that goodbye, one that was all at once surprising and stunningly obvious.

And Angela's words suddenly became clear as day, as if she needed to have the realization on her own before the words would truly sink in.

"She loves you too," Jane murmured to herself, grinning like an idiot as she went to her bedroom to get dressed and set some things, up, buy flowers, stuff like that, in the time that Maura was at work.

It wasn't usually like Jane to plan so far ahead for a dinner out, but this wasn't any dinner. Detective Jane Rizzoli was going on her first date with Doctor Maura Isles.

A/N-This chapter went an entirely different direction than I had anticipated, but sometimes you just have to let the story develop naturally I guess...No worries, I still have a plan, just a different one than before I wrote this chapter :) Thoughts?

Reviews give me bursts of Rizzles feels, which inspires me to write more rizzles...it's a beautiful, beautiful cycle :) Care to keep that cycle going with some more reviews?