to bed. When Simon got back from wherever it was that he'd gone, he called Maura first thing, sounding tired and worn out for the first time since she'd begun to talk to him.
"Are you okay?" she asked, a little worried.
"I'm wiped out, hon."
Elizabeth flushed. Simon rarely used endearments. "Then why don't you go to bed? I'll still be here when you get up."
She could hear him yawning loudly in the background, as if he'd turned his head away from the phone to do so. "I know. I just wanted to hear your voice. Chatting online doesn't cut it any more."
That was an interesting admission, she thought. And it went both ways. She nibbled her lip.
"Yeah. It doesn't, does it?"
He growled directly into the phone, and it sent a chill up Maura's spine; it was so blatantly male, so like how she'd come to think of him - uncompromisingly masculine. "I'd like for us to meet, whenever you're comfortable. I'll come up to you. I'm not trying to pressure you in any way, though. I just want you to know that that's where I 'm thinking we're heading in the relatively near future."
The idea of meeting him did two opposite things to her: it made her nervous in the extreme, and it made her privates clench. She was so caught up in the dichotomy of the feelings that she didn't say anything immediately.
"Am I moving too quickly for you?" he asked laconically, as if he really wasn't worried much about it. And he wasn't. Maura tended to be a little hesitant about things, but Simon felt that they were working on a nice bond, and if she was truly not interested in meeting yet, then he'd simply lay off for a while. He'd learned the art of patience the hard way - in various life or death situations. He could wait for her to trust him enough to meet him face to face.
Simon completely understood her reservations, too, and would honestly have been more concerned if she hadn't been as cautious. Any woman nowadays who met a stranger from the Internet without having first taken certain precautions was asking to get raped - or worse.
"No, not really. I'm just . . . nervous."
He could hear the truth of it in her voice. "Nervous is actually good, I'd say."
He'd managed to surprise her, as usual. "It is?"
Maura didn't often sound like she needed reassurance, but this was one of those times, he guessed. "Of course. As close as we've gotten over the past weeks - almost two months - you still don't really know me." Simon didn't add that she probably would never really know him, considering that he would only ever let someone see what he wanted them to see about him. But that was not something he wanted to get into with her. "I'm glad that you're not rushing headlong into meeting me. That's the smart approach to dating - whether you've met them at a church social or on the Internet."
"Thank you.” It sounded kind of funny to think of dating Simon, considering what they knew about each other – it was like they had completely skipped those tawdry preliminaries and gone straight to 32
the heart – or, rather, the genitals – of their relationship. “It's more than that - I'm naturally reticent about meeting anyone, but I like you, so I'm probably more nervous about meeting you than I would be about most other people - although I don't like meeting new people in general, anyway . . ."
Simon laughed softly. "And I had you pegged as pretty gregarious - "
"Gregarious but shy," Maura corrected ruefully, shrugging. "So I'm a bundle of contradictions."
"Yup - most women are."
Maura blew a big raspberry at the phone.
"Watch yourself there, little girl."
"Uh huh," she replied, not particularly chastened.
He sighed. "Well, I think, as much as I would love to stay awake and talk to you, that I'm fading fast and I need to crawl into bed.
An all-too-detailed, fantasy visual of him doing just that - stark naked, of course - flashed into Maura's mind, making her shiver loudly enough for him to hear.
"Are you okay?" he asked solicitously.
"Y-yeah. I'm fine." Her
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