Chapter 6: Fall

Heads turned as they walked in. A subtle murmur passed through the crowd.

John pretended he didn't notice, but there was no way he could have not noticed the glances he and Joss were getting from all over the room. He scanned the room carefully for threats—no, they weren't here for a number, but that didn't mean that something couldn't rear its ugly head, so it never hurt to be cautious. You just never knew…

But in the meantime, Joss had approached the maitre'd and handed him the sheet of expensive linen-cotton blend paper that had been their invitation—and ticket—into the rarified atmosphere of high society's brokers of money and power. "Harold Burdett? Yes, his name's on the list here, he emailed to say he wouldn't be able to make it, but that two of his business partners would attend in his stead. Mr. John Riley and Ms. Jocelyn Carter."

"That's us. Thank you," and Joss smiled sweetly as she closed her purse and turned to look around the room. So many people. So many faces. But she noticed many of those heads were turned hers and John's way.

"Oh my God, what an absolutely delicious hunk!" she and John heard someone whisper to someone else as they passed. John's face stayed somber—the man had a hell of a poker face when he really set his mind to it—but she could tell from the slight vibration of his arm linked with hers that he was laughing internally.

"That is an absolutely gorgeous dress!" someone else whispered to her as she passed, and she smiled and thanked them, then she and John moved on.

And then, quite close—and in an insultingly loud stage whisper, a male voice at her elbow. "She'd look so much better on my arm than his."

Oh really. This she wasn't going to ignore, especially as that stage whisper had been specifically aimed at her. "No thanks. You wouldn't look half as good next to this dress," she said archly, then turned and swept away with John, leaving a dumbfounded loser staring at her back.

John snagged two glasses of sparkling champagne off a server's tray and handed one to her. "Joss Carter; one, loser; zero," he chuckled. "You've got a temper on you, Ms. Carter."

"And don't you forget it," she grinned as she sipped from her glass. "Look at loser back there. I think his girl just deserted him for someone else." Sure enough, the loser was now standing all by his lonesome self in the middle of the room.

John chuckled and let his eyes travel around the room. "Look over there," he said, nudging Joss's arm with one finger. "See that guy over there with that young woman on his arm he's introducing as his secretary? They're having an affair."

"Really? How can you tell?" Joss turned to look—and as she did, she saw the woman reach out with one hand and squeeze the guy's rear. "Oh my." Then she considered. "Well, I can see how she'd find him attractive. He does have some nice tight buns." A quick smile at him full of merry wickedness. "Not nearly as nice and tight as yours, however."

John nearly choked on his sip of champagne.

"Now look over there." She pointed behind him, and he leaned in toward her, turning for a quick look around as he did so. "See that girl with the tight red minidress on? I've seen her before—in the booking room at the precinct. She's an escort."

John casually reached out and appropriated a cracker with a slice of cheese on it from a passing server, in the process having to move to Joss's other side. Now he was looking the same direction she was facing. "You see that handkerchief tucked into the top of the guy's breast pocket? The logo's all scrunched up but that's the logo of one of Manhattan's high-priced escort and call girl services. He's here showing off the merchandise, hoping to attract clients." Sure enough, one of the men standing over in the corner watching the pimp and the call girl stepped forward and discreetly handed the girl a small white rectangle—a business card—but his hand lingered a little too long touching hers.

"She's not pretty enough to be a call girl. I'd certainly never take her out anywhere with me." John sipped his champagne, studying the call girl. "She's really not my type."

"Not your type? So what does the great John Riley call 'his type'?" She faced him squarely, smiling but with a hint of challenge in her eyes.

"Feisty. Independent. Fiercely self-dependent. Persistent and stubborn." He met her eyes with wry humor of his own. "Has to have a sense of humor. Thinks of everyone first before she thinks of herself. Self-sacrificing." He looked at her, and his eyes took a meditative gleam. "Sometimes too much."

"You give a lot of yourself too, John. Sometimes too much, too." The room faded into the background—in this moment, there was just the two of them. "You have a temper too, but you only lose it when you have to—or when someone does something stupid and deserves to get yelled at." They both grinned.

"Well, when we get back, there's a little something I'd like to give you…" And the look he gave her had enough heat in it to send hot desire sizzling down her nerves.

"I know…" she felt breathless, had to gulp a quick breath. "Taylor's going over to my mother's after the dance tonight, I told her I was working."

"You lied to your mother…" John grinned a darkly predatory, sensual male smile that did absolutely nothing good to her libido. If anything, he was even more intensely sexy in that moment.

"Well, I am working, sort of. Harold did say we had a number…I'm just not supposed to know it was a ruse."

"We should have known we couldn't get anything past you. Harold said he briefly considered taking Sam, but Sam's already planning on spending Valentine's Day with her current flame." A smile curved his lips. "Finch said Bear would benefit more from her heavy petting than he would."

Joss almost choked on her champagne. Her face turned red as she struggled to catch her breath. "Harold actually said that?" she finally gasped out through tearing eyes. "Oh my gosh."

Movement in John' peripheral vision caught his attention, and he turned—just as the person he'd seen in his peripheral vision moved into Joss's field of vision. "Joss?" came a male voice.

She turned to see who was talking to her, and the color drained from her face so suddenly John reached out a hand to her, wondering if she was going to faint. But she shook off his hand, took a step past him, facing the newcomer, and as he turned and saw who it was, he tensed.

Paul Carter.

"I didn't know you'd be here tonight," Joss said softly.

"My new girlfriend's boss was invited to this party, but he couldn't attend, so he asked her to come. I came with her to keep her company." Then, with a sidelong glance at John, "I didn't know you were into stockbrokers"

Joss flushed at the scornful look Paul gave John. "This is John Rooney. His boss, Harold Burdett, was unable to make the mixer so he asked John to come. I came along just to keep him company."

"Some company." Carter looked at John in what John assumed was supposed to be a challenging manner, but Paul Carter was not—and never would be—a match for John himself. There was no challenge necessary. John was clearly the superior male here, and he let his features and body relax in a subtle insult that said 'I'm not wasting time on you, you're not worth it'. No words were spoken between the two men, but none needed to be.

Paul Carter shrugged and turned away, dismissing John and Joss as unimportant. Joss took a step forward, caught his sleeve as he started to walk away. He spun quickly, yanking his arm out of her hand. She drew back, looking slightly hurt, and John gritted his teeth to keep from saying anything.

"Are you…doing okay?"

He gave her a cold, slashing look. "Apparently not as good as you're doing with White Boy here," he said almost sneeringly.

"Paul, that's not fair. We both have moved on." She nodded a head in the direction of Paul's girlfriend, who had drifted off to give Paul time to talk to Joss.

"Yeah. But I guess now I know why Taylor hasn't really warmed up to me. You've been telling him all sorts of things and White Boy over there probably been buying him off with expensive toys. Is this why he didn't want me taking him out to pick pout a suit for his school dance tonight? White Boy can afford to buy him something expensive—or have a suit tailored for him?"

"Stop calling him that, Paul. John hasn't bought Taylor anything. And I haven't told him anything. I want him to have a good relationship with you—he's your son." She sounded hurt. "And leave John out of it. He has nothing to do with this."

Carter shrugged. "I'll call him whatever I please. It's nothing to me if you want a little milk in your coffee." He looked Joss up and down, appraisingly. "Though I guess I can see what he sees in you. Is he seeing anything else of you?"

That was enough. John faced Carter. "I see a beautiful woman, inside and out, who loved you. You didn't care enough about her to love her the way she deserves to be loved. You don't deserve to even know her. Taylor's seventeen, he can make up his own mind about what and who he sees around him, and if you think I'm the reason he doesn't like you, then you're obviously not paying attention to your own son. He loves his mother. He's very protective of her. And what you say and do about and to Joss only makes him want to distance himself even further from you. You're the only one driving him away from you, and you don't even realize it. I'm sorry for you." He took Joss's arm. "Come on. Let's go dance."

"Dancing? You never wanted to dance with me," Carter snapped, no longer even bothering to be polite. "Guess you're the lucky one."

"Yes." John didn't bother to hide his dislike of Paul Carter anymore. What the hell had Joss seen in him, that she would fall in love with him and want to marry him? At this moment, the only thing John could see good about Paul Carter was the fact that he'd given Taylor to Joss, and that he'd managed to not pass on any of his more charming personality traits to the boy. Joss was flushed red with embarrassment, and she looked so hurt. "Yes, I'm the lucky one. I'm lucky Joss puts up with me. I'm lucky she tolerates me. I'm lucky she cares about me. I'm lucky she loves me.

"You were lucky that she loved you. Loved you enough to marry you, have your son. Still cares about you. You have no idea how lucky you were. And you threw that all away. Taylor sees that every day, every time he tries to talk about Joss in front of you and you dismiss it, dismiss him, and dismiss the mother he loves. That's why he doesn't like you." It was on the tip of John's tongue to say that Taylor's dislike probably also stemmed from the fact that he remembered his father's uncontrollable temper hurting his mother, but it wasn't something that had to be brought up in public. Joss was red-faced with embarrassment and he wanted to get her away from the whole disagreeable situation. "Come on, Joss." He took her arm and led her away from Paul Carter, and this time the man didn't try to stop them as they headed for the dance floor.

He didn't speak to her until they were on the dance floor and he had one hand around her waist, the other in hers. Her hand was cold and sweaty, and he could feel the tension in her body. They went through a few measures of the dance in silence, and it wasn't until he felt her body relax under his hand that he spoke. "Why did you do that, Joss?" he said. "Why did you ask him if he was okay?"

"He's been picking Taylor up from school on Friday afternoons for their weekend visits. I haven't seen him in months. Is it really so hard to imagine I would want to know how a man I was married to is doing when I haven't seen him in awhile?" she sounded bitter.

He hadn't known it had been that long since she'd seen Paul, and his anger at the other man only increased. "He's practically going out of his way to avoid seeing you. Like Taylor said, he obviously doesn't care about you or how you're doing. You don't owe him any concern either."

"But I'm not like that. I'm not like him. I can't just stop caring about him, stop thinking about whether he's doing okay, how he's doing in his therapy." She looked up at him. "I can't just turn it off, John. I thought I could. When I left Paul, I told myself never again. I told myself for a while that it was just Taylor and me, and that was all we needed and that was all we were ever going to need. But somehow, somewhere along the way, after I met you...things changed. Even that night at the station." A wry smile, a ghost of his Joss coming out after the storm.

"I had no idea who was hiding under those dirty clothes and wild hair. I had no idea how much my life was going to change after that one chance meeting. If someone had told me this was going to be the start of a wonderful friendship, I wouldn't have believed them. But then you started popping up at my crime scenes—and places where I knew I'd have had a crime scene if you hadn't been there. Mrs. Kovacs was only the first of many incidents."

"I heard your conversation with Eddie in the diner. You had sass and spunk. I liked that. I could respect that and admire that in you, about you. I told Finch that day—you weren't just another number. And you weren't. You never have been."

"Even when I was hunting you down?" Storm over. There was a mischievous sparkle in her eye, and she was suddenly floating in his arms.

"Even when you were hunting me down. Even then. I couldn't help but admire your tenacity, your adherence to your own moral code. And...that night on the roof...Finch told me you'd called the FBI on me."

"I knew as soon as I put that phone down it was a mistake. I knew I was going to feel horrible about it. And then, when Snow shot you on the roof..." she shuddered, closed her eyes. "John...I don't think I ever said I'm sorry for all that. It should never have happened. I should never have done that."

"You made a mistake. And Joss Carter fixes her mistakes. Like when you found Finch getting me into the car downstairs—you helped me the rest of the way into the car. Told Finch to get me out of there." He smiled at her. "I don't remember a lot from that night, but that I do remember. Your voice. You didn't have to say you were sorry, Joss, I could hear it. Feel it. See it. And then, later...the night at the hospital I was sitting alone on a bench with a paramedic's shirt draped over me, but somehow you knew it was me. You came up and offered me help." A smile. "You're always offering me help, Joss. And yet, whenever I offer to help you—with HR, for instance—you turn me down." Another smile. "Or you say I don't have to. You always take the higher ground, Joss, you give me an out even when I don't want an out."

The music ended, but Joss didn't step away; she lingered a moment in his arms, wondered for a brief moment if Paul was watching, and then suddenly decided she didn't care. She stepped in close, felt his arms close around her, felt the smooth fabric of his tuxedo jacket against her cheek. "So...I guess I'll break with tradition this time and not give you an out. Did Taylor tell you about my arrangements for him for the evening? That he's going to my mother's after his friends drop him off from the dance?"

Her voice dropped to a soft husky purr and his blood was suddenly racing, heart slamming around in his chest so hard he wondered if it would burst. "He did," he said quietly. "If you're having second thoughts..."

For answer, she kissed him.

Long, deep. Her lips didn't part, it was a touch of their lips together only, but there was enough thinly-disguised passion in the connection to heat the air around them, heat their bodies, heat their blood. And when he finally broke off the kiss, pausing long enough to look into her eyes, the question he'd been about to ask died unsaid on his lips.

He didn't have to ask. Not when she looked like that.

Author's Note: And now, folks, of you're of age, or if this interests you, feel free to wander on over to the M-rated section for the smutty version-not too much, just a little extra on the end of chapter 3, then an extra chapter-chapter 7-that isn't in this version. Enjoy!