Disclaimer: "Criminal Minds" and the characters from the show are owned by CBS and whoever else was involved with the creation and production of this show. Chuck Norris, Aaron Norris, CBS and others own the characters of "Walker Texas Ranger" and "Sons of Thunder". Any new characters and story lines that come into play are of my own creation. No copyright infringement is intended. This is a fanfiction intended for entertainment purposes only and no money is being made off of it.

Chapter 3

Lucy parked her Jeep and looked up at the sign for Uppercuts. She was originally going to eat at CD's, but she changed her mind. Usually, the Rangers would be eating at CD's, but with the case Walker and his team were currently working on meant that the Rangers would get food delivered at Ranger headquarters.

She knew by going into Uppercuts that she would likely run into the people of Thunder Investigations, well, unless, they too, were working on a case.

She was lucky that someone had left a few seconds before her or else she wouldn't have been able to find a parking spot within two blocks of the bar.

Getting out of her car, she grabbed her coat and locked the Jeep before walking down the block to the entrance of the popular bar. The door opened and two sets of couples exited the bar, all chatting excitedly about a movie that they were going to go see. She grabbed the door before it closed, opened the door wide enough for her to enter and slipped inside.

It was loud and most of that was due to a lot of the patrons watching, cheering and talking about the various fall sports that were playing on several large flat screens mounted on the walls.

She saw Butch fill a pitcher of beer, handed it to one of the servers and filled another. She gave Butch a wave and he had nodded his head in response, knowing that she was there and would take her usual.

Spotting an empty table in the back, she maneuvered her way to it, glad to see that it had already been cleared off and wiped down. She set her coat on the back of the chair before sitting down.

It was a few minutes later when her server Xander dropped off her beer. He returned her thanks with a smile, telling her that her food order would be out in a little bit, and then he rushed off, delivering drinks to a handful of the other patrons.

She was watching an NFL game replay from the Sunday before when a familiar voice asked, "Care if I join you?"

She looked up and saw that Carlos was standing before her, carrying a plate in one hand and a beer in another, an optimistic sparkle in his eyes.

She wasn't surprised that she hadn't seen him when she had entered, since the bar was busy, but she was a bit annoyed that he had seen her. She nodded her head to the empty chair opposite from her and then took a long drink from her bottle of beer.

He sat down across from her, beaming his usual wide smile.

"Where is everyone else?" She asked, indicating his usual dinner companions.

"Trent and Nancy are out on a date. Kim is hanging out with a couple of friends from high school."

She nodded her head and saw that her order of burger, onion rings and coleslaw were on the way. She thanked Xander and prepped her burger to her liking, which meant adding the coleslaw and a couple of the onion rings on top of the burger before she replaced the top bun.

The dark-haired private detective cocked an eyebrow. "That looks interesting."

"It's delicious."

"I am going to order that next time and do the same thing you just did."

She hid her smile behind her burger as she began took a decent bite from her burger, realizing just how hungry she actually was and was glad that Carlos didn't try to talk to her.

Carlos began working on his dinner which consisted of a pulled pork sandwich, French fries and coleslaw.

Xander came around again, dropping off two beers, before zipping off to fulfill more orders.

Lucy finished off her second beer noting that she had finished her dinner as had Carlos.

As Carlos and Lucy sipped his or her beer, they talked about various things, including which NFL teams they thought would make it to the Super Bowl. Discussing the new coffee, that Tess at the Perfect Cup had put on the menu and a few new restaurants that had opened that they each wanted to try at some point.

Carlos commented on one of the recipes that he enjoyed before he looked at her closely before he asked her, "So, the case that we worked on together went rather well, didn't it?"

She held back a sigh, surprisingly disappointed that he had changed the subject. "Considering that you almost ruined it by pulling that stupid stunt, and then yeah, I guess it did."

"Well, it did work out," he pointed out, with a grin.

"Just barely," she reluctantly admitted.

Carlos shrugged his shoulders and finished off the rest of the bottle of beer in his hand.

Lucy finished her beer, wanting to give Carlos a piece of her mind for putting his life in danger, but she reminded herself that Carlos used to be a cop, a decent and hardworking one, until a serial killer had murdered his partner right in front of him.

She wondered would he would have been like if his partner hadn't been killed and he hadn't left the police force. Would they have gotten along better?

"Want to go for a walk?" Carlos asked.

She snapped back to the present and raised her eyebrows. "Go for a walk?" She repeated, taken by surprise at the suggestion.

"Uh, yeah," he answered, as he rubbed the back of his neck, a sheepish smile on his face.

Glancing at her watch and seeing that it was nearly midnight, she was stunned that they had been talking to each other for several hours. "No, I should head home." She pulled her wallet out of her pocket and put cash on the table.

"Oh, I'll cover you."

"I got it," she answered as she put her wallet away.

"Right," he answered with a hint of disappointment in his voice.

Lucy got to her feet and pushed in her chair after she grabbed her coat. She looked at the private investigator and said, "Have a good night, Carlos."

"Good night, Lucy," Carlos responded.

She put on her coat on the way out, noting that the nights were being to become cooler, even though the days were still warm.

Lucy had arrived home in record time and after taking a shower, she propped her feet up on the ottoman and turned on the television. She turned it on to an old detective movie, but she didn't focus her attention on it.

Her thoughts went to the last case that had led her and her partner Darryl to the address of a possible suspect of a murdered man. When they had entered the residence, Lucy had surprised Carlos and had pointed her gun at him.

Carlos had raised his hands in the air while she had threatened to arrest him and actually put him in a cell for twenty-four hours and he had merely grinned.

After being invited to the office of Thunder Investigations and discussing the fraud case that the private investigators had been working on, that it wasn't long before the connection between the two cases had become apparent.

Darryl had convinced her, without much prodding, to work with Thunder Investigations and when the two private investigators had come up with a plan to draw out the suspect, the plan had, thankfully, worked.

Then, her thoughts flashed back to couple of months ago to a case that had eventually led to Carlos being abducted and when Lucy had arrived to rescue Carlos, the abductor had been about to kill him.

She shook her head to clear out the invading images of a bruised, bloody and bound Carlos and decided to focus on the movie instead.

When the movie ended, she prepared for bed and once she had gotten into bed, her mind decided that it wanted her to dream about Carlos Sandoval.

Carlos closed the door to his apartment, locked it, hung up his coat and walked over to the recliner.

Green eyes appeared in his mind and he couldn't believe that he had botched it with Lucy, yet again. He sat down on his recliner and rubbed his face with his hands. He hadn't known why he had asked her to go for a walk. It had just come out.

He leaned back and sighed, sinking down into the leather recliner. He had wanted to ask Lucy out for a while, but there had never been the right moment. He knew that she liked him, he just had a feeling about it, but he didn't know why she didn't want to go out with him. Of course, it could be that when they had met, he had been standing over a dead body and she had arrested him. It had been a few months since then, and a couple of their cases had ended up being connected, but he believed that she was beginning to warm up to him.

He rose to his feet and headed to the shower, stripping off his clothes as he went. He got into the stall and started up the shower, shivering under the cold water, but after a few moments of his body adjusting to the temperature, it felt refreshing. As he worked on shampooing his hair, his thoughts continued to drift to those emerald-green eyes and the amazing person behind them.