Northern Lights

scratch that itch before I hurt someone and you had to arrest me."
    "That's a plan."
    "I was going to just go, but I didn't. I want the points for doing it this way."
    "Scoreboard's adjusted. Why don't you bring that back? I'll dig up something to wash it down with."
    "Got that." She dug one-handed into her duffel, pulled out a bottle of red. "Liberated it from the bar at The Lodge. We'll have to drink it all, to dispose of the evidence."
    She passed him the bottle as she walked past him, then turned into his office and set the pizza on his desk.
    He'd closed his files, both hard copy and computer, and had tossed the blanket over the board when he heard the outer door open.
    "Napkins?" she asked.
    It wasn't gentlemanly, but he couldn't leave her alone in the office. "Under Peach's counter." He pulled out his Swiss Army knife, levered out the corkscrew. "Never actually used this one before. Lot of damn work, but hey." He muscled out the cork as she came back in. "Success."
    She tossed down the napkins, got two mugs from beside his coffeemaker. "What's this?" she tugged the side edge of the blanket with a finger.
    "Don't." At her look of surprise, he shook his head. "Just don't. Let's eat."
    They sat, divvied up wine and pizza. "Why are you working so late, and alone? Are you killing time until I finish my moonlighting for the night?"
    "That's one part. But tell me, what did you fight with Charlene about?"
    "You're changing the subject."
    "Yes, I am."
    "Her being demanding, me being ungrateful, and so on and so forth. Then we came around to my father, and . . . other things, and some of it made sense to me. Enough for me to be able to admit he wasn't the easiest guy to be with, as a partner, and that she, in her own strange and annoying way, probably did the best she could. That we both loved him, more than we can love each other."
    She poured more wine, deliberately picked up a second slice of pizza though her stomach had gone knotty. "Under that blanket's about my father, isn't it? I've seen enough cop movies, enough cop TV, Burke, to know you people stick up photographs and reports and what have you when you're investigating."
    "I'm not investigating anything, officially. Yes, it has to do with your father, and I want you to leave that blanket where it is."
    "I told you before, I'm not delicate."
    "And I'm telling you now, there are some things I don't share. Won't ever."
    She was silent, studying her pizza. "That the sort of statement that had your wife doing another man?"
    "No," he said evenly. "She couldn't have cared less about my work."
    She closed her eyes a moment, then made herself open them and meet his. "That was a cheap shot. I'm not above a cheap shot." She tossed the pizza down. "I don't like myself very much tonight. That's why I have to get out, get away, get back to who I am when I like me."
    "But you came here first, to bring me pizza and wine."
    "You've got a little hook in me somewhere. I don't know if it's going to stick, but it's there for now."
    "I love you, Megan."
    "Oh, Jesus, don't say that now! " She sprang up, pulling at her hair as she paced. "When I'm in this pissy, bitching mood. Do you look to be kicked in the face by women, Ignatious? Are you just itching for somebody else to smack your heart around?"
    "It was that big blast for me," he went on calmly. "It took a big blast to break through, I'd guess, since I've been pretty busy wallowing for the last year. Most of the time, lately, it banks down to a nice simmer. Easier to live with the simmer than the blast. Now and then it kicks up again though. Goes right through me like a fireball."
    She stopped, dropped down again because her knotty stomach was busy doing flips. "God help you."
    "Yeah, I thought the same myself. But I do love you, and it's different than it was with Rachel. I had all this stuff planned out then, a nice, steady, sensible, normal kind of step and stage."
    "And you're not looking for sensible and normal with me."
    "Be a waste of time."
    "Don't give me that. You've got home and hearth tattooed on your butt."
    "Do not. You're the one with the tattoo, which I find incredibly erotic, by the way. Maybe when you decide you're in love with me, we can think about what happens next, but for now—"
    "When I decide."
    "Yeah, when. I'm patient, Meg, and relentless in my way. I'm starting to get my edge back. It's been blunted a long time, but it's coming back. You'll just have to deal with that."
    "Interesting. A little