"It's pašticada and gnocchi," Kate said proudly as she dished up her dinner, spooning a hearty serving of the stew over a bed of pillowy gnocchi.
Rick had already taken his first taste - at her insistence - and, if the moans and sighs that accompanied his chewing were any indication, she'd say she did a pretty good job following her Nonna's recipe.
"Well, its cheats pašticada. If I wanted to do it properly I'd have to marinate the beef for twenty-four hours prior to cooking but I didn't have the time or the patience for that so I just bought pre-marinated meat."
"Your secret is safe with me," Rick said in between bites. "I won't rat you out to Nonna."
Kate smiled, tried to stifle the laughter that crept up her throat. "I wasn't too worried about that."
Rick's spine stiffened, his fork stopped half way to his mouth. "Nonna's, uh, no longer with us, is she?" he asked, regret already weighing heavy in his voice. Kate shook her head. "I am so sorry."
"It's fine," she insisted. "In fact, my Nonna would probably be in tears laughing right now. She loved a good foot in mouth moment."
Rick visibly relaxed, placed his fork down on his plate and turned in his chair so that he was facing Kate. "Sounds like good company," he said, placing his hand on Kate's knee.
"She was." Kate placed her hand over Rick's, curled her fingers and tucked them under his palm. "I think you would have liked her. My grandfather, too. He was an amateur magician."
Rick gasped and she couldn't help but giggle at his excitement. "No way!"
She nodded. "You kind of remind me of him sometimes," she told him. She reached out, cupped Rick's face with her palm and brushed her thumb along his stubbled cheek. "That child-like wonder and enthusiasm. My Nonna would half-heartedly scold my Grandfather and tell him he needed to act his age," she added with a slight laugh.
"Acting your age is overrated," Rick countered.
"That's exactly what he said!"
Rick smiled, placed his hand over hers and turned his head to place a kiss to her palm, another to the tips of her fingers. The way he stared so deeply into her eyes - like he could see right through to her soul - made her stomach flutter like the wings of a million butterflies. Each quiet moment with him felt as though he had cracked open the armour she wore as a shield and let it fall from her body.
He made her feel lighter. Unburdened.
He made her feel safe enough to leave herself vulnerable, to not be grasping for the shreds of that armour and trying desperately to keep them in place.
Oh, the progress she had made in just a few short months.
"We should eat," she said so quietly her words were almost a whisper. An emotional, choked back whisper. "Before it gets cold."
Or before she did something stupid like cry because she suddenly felt so overwhelmed by this feeling of being saved. By Rick, from herself, from her darkest demons.
She thought she would never let anyone in like this again.
But here he was.
Rick hummed in agreement. "It tastes so good," he declared as he spun back in his seat, lifted his fork and stabbed it at his gnocchi.
But before Kate got even one bite, her phone sounded from the other side of the room. She and Rick both looked up at the device, sitting on the kitchen bench.
"You could just ignore it, right?" Rick suggested. "I mean, how much trouble would you get into, really, if you just left it for twenty minutes?"
Kate shrugged. "None," she answered confidently. "Ryan would cover for me. Still, that's not really fair on him. He's already doing my a favour by letting me be here now." She rose from her chair. "Sorry."
"It's okay," Rick mumbled as he continued with his meal.
When Kate picked up her phone and looked down at the message, she smiled and let out a relieved sigh.
"It's just Lanie."
"Oh, tell her I said Happy Birthday."
She typed out her response - including Rick's birthday wish - as she made her way back to the table.
"She said your place is amazing," she told Rick once she was sitting by his side again.
She took her first bite of the meal she had spent the afternoon preparing, smiled to herself as the of rich, sweet-and-sour flavours burst in her mouth. Just like Nonna's.
"Does that mean she's enjoying her weekend away?" he asked.
Kate nodded. "She is. Thank you for saving the day."
"Well, what can I say?" Rick shrugged, then added, "I'm an everyman hero."
Kate rolled her eyes, but smiled brightly. "You're humble, too."
If she closed her eyes and allowed her mind a moment to shut off, she knew she could be asleep within seconds. Wrapped in Rick's arms, a tangle of limbs, she was sure she would sleep quite well tonight. But she wasn't ready for that, felt like sleeping was such wasted time. She wanted to talk to him, to laugh with him.
If only her damn eyes would refrain from fluttering and fighting to close.
"You know, I'm a little jealous she got to see it before I did," she said sleepily, only partially joking, as her fingertips traced patterns along Rick's bare chest.
Rick smoothed his hand up her spine, pulling her closer against his body. "See what?"
"Your house, in the Hamptons," she clarified.
Of course Kate would never begrudge her best friends a much deserved weekend away - and she was eternally grateful that Rick had been able to help make that happen - but a small part of her did wish it was them on some beach getaway right now.
"If you stopped volunteering to take the weekend shifts maybe you could have," he retorted.
She propped herself up on her elbow, rested her head in her hand and looked at Rick. "I don't volunteer for the weekends, babe, they're a part of my contract," she explained. "One weekend each month. It just so happened that last month's weekend and this month's weekend were consecutive."
"Well, just for future reference, I think it would be great if your rostered weekends coincided with my own weekend commitments because three weekends in a row that I don't get to spend with you is, in my opinion, too many weekends," he complained.
"You knew I was working," Kate reminded him. "You could have planned around that."
"I tried." Rick let out a heavy sigh. "Meredith was busy, apparently."
Kate made a quiet, displeased noise - one that didn't go unnoticed by Rick - and placed her head back on his shoulder, moulding her body to his side. "How are the Family Day Extravaganza plans going?" she asked.
Rick began to comb his fingers through Kate's hair, gently massaging her scalp. "They're, uh- they're going. Can we talk about something else, though?"
"Of course."
"Did you manage to get through to Mr I-don't-answer-my-phone-until-the-sun-is-up?"
She huffed. "Yeah... eventually."
Rick picked up on her hostility instantly and he shifted so that he could look at her. "Everything okay?"
Kate took a deep breath. She knew she shouldn't talk to him about an active case, but the details kept swirling in her mind and it was bothering her to no end. "I'm just... frustrated," she admitted. "One of those cases, I guess."
"No leads?" he surmised.
No. No leads, just a gut feeling.
"I think the husband did it," she blurted. "I just can't prove it."
Rick frowned. "I thought you said he wasn't in the country."
"He wasn't. Well, I'm not convinced."
Rick's confusion grew, she could see it on his face.
"He flew to Lisbon two days before the murder. Then he flew from Lisbon to Boston."
"Oh, and Boston's only a few hours away," Rick added excitedly. "Meaning he could have driven to the city, committed the murder, and then gone back to Boston."
"Well, no."
"No?"
Kate sat upright, leant back against the headboard and clutched the sheets to her chest. Rick followed, mirrored her pose.
"He didn't fly to Boston until the day after the murder,"" she explained. "That's why we couldn't reach him, he was mid-flight."
"But... you don't believe him?"
She shook her head and her brow furrowed as she mentally went over the facts. "Something just doesn't feel right. When I talked to him he sounded... I don't know. I mean, I know there's no right way to react to the news that your loved one has been murdered but I-" She shrugged. "Maybe I'm just reading too much into it."
"Tell me," Rick encouraged gently.
"His reaction just didn't seem genuine," she said reluctantly. "Like he was... forcing himself to be sad."
Rick pondered that for a short moment. "Consider this," he requested. "Maybe they weren't entirely happy together. Maybe their marriage was hostile and they were constantly fighting. Fighting to the point where he is taking business meetings in another country just to get a little distance from her. And, upon learning that his wife is dead, maybe he felt a little rush of relief. Not necessarily because she is dead, but just because there'll be no more fighting. That part of his life is over, he doesn't have to live through that toxicity anymore. It's not uncommon to feel conflicting emotions when you learn of someone's death. Maybe he just didn't know how to deal with the guilt of feeling relieved, and that's why he didn't seem genuine."
She thought back to her own experience, to the wave of emotions that rushed through her so violently, overwhelming her so completely that she didn't know how to react. It wasn't just that first night, either. She could distinctly remember one morning she was sitting in the living room of her family home - staring at the empty teacup and novel that her mother had left on the side table weeks earlier - so overcome with emotion that she burst into a fit of laughter. She laughed, uncontrollably, until tears streamed down her cheeks. Any outsider could have thought she had been filled with joy, not a pain so raw she had needed to get it out in any way possible. She had stormed over to that teacup, stared down at the sticky, coagulated ring that stained the inside of the ceramic and then hurled it at the wall. The cup exploded and, as she stared at the tiny shards that littered the floor, she felt perfectly numb for a whole of three seconds.
So, yes, she understood that there was every chance this man just didn't know what to do with the emotions he felt, that he didn't know how to 'correctly' express them. But she just couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to it than that.
And now, on top of feeling frustrated that she couldn't prove this theory of hers, she was also fighting a fresh wave of sorrow regarding her own loss. She didn't want to deal with that right now so she deflected in the only way she knew how.
"You speaking from experience, Rick?" she joked.
Rick chuckled. "No. Unfortunately I was very much in love with my wives until the very end," he said somewhat wistfully.
Another wave washed over her, drowning out that small, irrational pang of jealousy she felt whenever she thought of Rick ever being in love with anyone else. Regret and guilt: for running her mouth, for making a joke out of what had undoubtedly been an incredibly painful part of his life.
But, before she could apologise, he spoke again. "Maybe you're right, though. Maybe he's just a total ass and he murdered his wife. What a tool."
Kate huffed out a laugh. "Such a tool."
"I'd go with your gut, just personally," he said and she sighed.
"Yeah, well, I think my gut could be wrong with this one. A passport is a pretty solid alibi."
"Is it, though?" Rick asked. "I mean, it's not that hard to get a fake passport."
"And you know this... how?"
"Research," he explained, very quickly. "For a Storm book."
"Right," she acknowledge with a smirk. But then her smirk dropped. "Wait. A fake passport?"
"Yeah. I mean, they're actually frighteningly easy to forge- where are you going?"
Kate had crawled out of bed and slipped into her robe before Rick could finish his thought.
"Need to make a call," she called back over her shoulder, distracted by her phone in her hand. She dialled a number, smiled victoriously as she held the phone to her ear and waited for the person at the other end of the line to answer.
"You do know what time it is, right?" Ryan grumbled.
Kate ignored him. "Did your friend at TSA send through their flight manifests?"
"Not the whole manifest, just the details needed to confirm the husband's alibi. Why?"
"How much sucking up would we have to do to get the manifests of all incoming flights from Lisbon?" she asked. They both knew that by 'we' she meant 'you'. "From the time our suspect landed up until the time of the murder?"
"What do you think he snuck back into the country and somehow didn't get his passport stamped?" Ryan asked, his curiosity so obviously piqued.
She looked at Rick and smiled as she spoke to Ryan. "Or he had a second passport."
"So you want to check all the passports?" Ryan asked for clarity. "That's gotta be over a thousand people."
"I'm sorry."
He sighed heavily. "I'll give them a call, see if they can have the information to us first thing in the morning."
"I appreciate you."
"Yeah, well, next time Jenny complains that I work too much I'm sending her your way."
"Tell her I owe you one covered shift, no questions asked," she promised.
"I'll hold you to that."
He hung up the phone and so did Kate.
With a smile firmly plastered on her face, she slipped back into her bed and cosied up beside Rick. "You may have just solved my case."
"Yeah, I was just making stuff up," Rick admitted. He wrapped his hand around Kate's thigh and pulled it over his legs, guiding her as she straddled him. "Mystery writer, you know, it's kinda what I do."
"Uh-uh." Kate shook her head. "You're a genius."
"If I'm right," he said, trying to set her expectations.
She rolled her eyes. "If you're right."
But he had to be, right? It was the only thing that made sense.
Rick wrapped his arms around Kate, pulled her down onto his chest. "You should try to sleep," he whispered into her hair. "You've got to be exhausted by now."
She nuzzled into him, brushing her nose against his jaw. "A little."
Slowly, Rick shifted, repositioning them into a more comfortable position for her to sleep. Held firmly against his body with one hand on her back and the other combing through her hair, sleep quickly began to pull her under.
"A girl could get used to this," she mumbled.
She felt as Rick pressed a kiss to her forehead and continued to play with her hair.
"I sincerely hope you do," he whispered softly.
Butterfly wings fluttered in her stomach, spread to her chest. It took almost no time at all for her eyes to close and her breathing to even out, for her need for sleep to take her over entirely.