Kerry swirled the liquor in her glass, and eyed it meditatively before taking a slug. Dammit, she'd behaved unforgivably
today. Not by calling Adele - she still, even after Luka's angry words, believed that she'd done the right thing by bringing
DCFS into the case. Dillon was only eighteen years old, he shouldn't be saddled with looking after his brother.

But she could have been more diplomatic when she spoke to Luka in the x-ray room. And that terrible grief in his eyes had
stunned her then... and played itself over and over in her mind's eye now. His words to her - his wife and kids... taken, and
then killed, in the war.

Alcohol was frequently her anesthetic of choice; she often used it to run from whatever problems she'd had at work that day.
It was the only kind of running she was able to do, after all. Oh, she wasn't an alcoholic, not by any means. She'd been concerned
about that, once, but had finally decided that she had none of the symptoms. She was just a plain spinster doctor who drank too
much on her own time. She looked down at herself as she sipped - tonight, she was a plain spinster doctor who was working
toward getting plowed in an equally plain jogging suit. Jogging... hah. What a laugh. The fastest she ever moved was when she
was steam-rollering around the ER during her shifts, terrorizing the staff, and she usually paid for that, afterwards, with that pain
knifing through her leg.

There was a knock on the door. Kerry snorted; probably that smart-ass paperboy again. He was constantly coming around, trying
to collect for the paper, even though she always kept up on the bill. Kerry, though, had never noticed the admiring look in the
teenager's eyes; she usually ignored that side of life, with the very rare exceptions... that usually wound up confirming that she was
right to ignore it. She crutched over to the door, and threw it open, ready to blast the kid for his over-persistence, but was taken
aback to see Luka standing on the stoop instead, his hands thrust into his pockets.

"I came to apologize," he told her quietly. His head was bowed, and he wasn't wearing his coat. Must be in his car, she decided. He
looked eerily beautiful - but then, when didn't he look beautiful? - with snowflakes in his hair, the white a stark contrast to his greying
black hair.

"Apologize-- to me? Why?"

"For the way I spoke to you tonight." He looked up for the first time. She really wouldn't have blamed him for not wanting to look her
in the eye. He had certainly stared straight at her, barely blinking, the entire time that he was telling her about his family's murder.
She'd even seen some of the footage on the news at the time, of some of the monstrous ditches, filled with bodies, but she hadn't really
had a personal frame of reference for it then (except for Africa, of course, but that was long part of her past). But his soft gaze was on her.

"Uh, would you like to come in for a minute?" Her invitation clearly startled him. God knew, she'd certainly been surprised to hear those
words coming out of her mouth. He flicked a wary glance at her, then nodded with apparent reluctance.

"Sure." He shook his head vigorously, and brushed off his shoulders, to clear off the snowflakes, leaving his hair damp but snow-free
as he entered her house.

"Some... snow we're having," she ventured. She knew she wasn't good with social settings - give her a juicy trauma, or a committee
meeting, and she was right at home, but she had no idea how to handle, say, an extremely attractive co-worker who she'd inadvertently
hurt, and was now in her foyer saying that he'd come to apologize to her. People didn't apologize to her - they sulked at her, or bitched,
or even yelled, but they sure didn't apologize! At most, she got a half-assed, insincere "apology" like the one she'd received from Susan
(and Doug hadn't even really bothered with that... but what else was new).

He continued to look uncomfortable. But then, she never could tell what the man was thinking - she had even less of a sense of his feelings
than she did with most people. Kids were an exception - she liked kids. They were wonderfully blunt, artless, honest... usually to the point
of being hurtful. For the most part, kids didn't think one thing and then say another, up to a certain age, when they'd learned to lie and cover
just like the grownups. "Uh-huh," he replied absently. Just then, something clicked in Kerry's mind - there was no way that Luka had got that
much snow all over him from simply walking to her door from his car, even if he'd stood at the door for a time.

"Where's your coat?" He looked up sharply - he had gone back to examining his feet - and looked at himself in confusion.

"Still in my locker, I assume."

"You're not cold?"

"No. I-- Kerry, I'm really sorry. You had no way of knowing, uh, what I told you. I over-reacted."

"Join the club," Kerry told him bitterly, as she took another sip from her glass.

"Excuse me?"

"It's what I do best, apparently: hurt people." He eyed her suspiciously, and she shook her head. "No, not like that. Carter - John - was
living in my basement apartment, and Lucy asked me to be her mentor. Then I got promoted to permanent chief of the ER, so I kicked
him out and blew off Lucy. Stabbed Mark in the back while I was at it, too. That doesn't even count all the people I've offended and pissed
off over the years. 'Wicked Bitch of the ER', that's me." She knew she was wallowing a little, and definitely with the wrong person.

"That's not what they call you," he told her, and managed to hold a straight face for about eight seconds before he lost it and began to laugh.
Not the laughter of children mocking, being cruel - not the laughter of Doug and Susan making fun of her and her limp (and it still hurt, years
later!) - but the laughter of a man who hadn't always been so dour. Kerry stared at him, astounded. She'd seen him smile on a few, rare,
occasions, but a laughing Luka? That was just foreign to her. The pun caught her off guard, and she joined him, giggling at her own joke,
which she shared with him. There was a noticeable pause, as he translated, then she could see dawning comprehension and he was off again.
He gradually wound to a halt, and stood still, in thought, for a moment.

"You haven't betrayed anyone. Not really." Kerry didn't press; if he was going to talk, he was going to talk. And he finally did. "We... had
people at our hospital - they happened to be Serbian - they were people we'd been working with for a long time. They'd made it through the
siege with us, you know? We figured they'd continue to stick with us. But when the army took the town, our long-time friends and colleagues
wasted no time putting on the other side's uniform, and joining them. Like that." He snapped his long fingers, scowling at the memory. "I'm
not telling you this because I want you to feel sorry for me. Don't. But there are far worse ways to betray a colleague than by pushing for a
little power. You... you do a good job running the department - the hospital is lucky to have you." The compliment passed right over her head,
as most compliments did.

"Did you ever...."

"'Push for power'? No. I like being where I am." He sighed. "I've seen enough of your job to know that I don't want it." Kerry couldn't help
smiling at that.

"You mean you wouldn't be tempted, just a little?"

"I would do it, if the only alternative was a chief who was worse. Say, Romano back in charge of the department." He rolled his eyes at that
idea; he'd only been a temp, a... moonlighter, when Romano was still acting ER chief, but had noticed that the place seemed to run much
smoother with Kerry in charge. Even with her occasional missteps. "But only in that case, and not happily. The paperwork I already have is
bad enough."

"You're keeping up with your paperwork all right?" He shrugged.

"I assume I am, nobody's yelled at me about it." He shot her a sly little grin, and she ducked her head for a moment. That couldn't have been a
wink he'd given her - winks were for people you liked, and were flirting with! But he was right: he was one of the few doctors she never had
to chase down for missing or incomplete paperwork.

She saw him glance at her glass of Scotch. "Would you like something to drink? I have, uh, a few different things. Wine, Scotch," she waggled
her glass, "and probably some other stuff. I can look...."

"Oh, no thank you. Some water maybe, please. I'm, uh, not a big drinker." Not anymore, anyway.

"You're driving?" She didn't think she'd heard a car, but she hadn't been listening for one.

"No, I'm on foot tonight. And the El, of course. My car, uh, broke down in the parking garage, and I wasn't feeling brave enough to ask Dave
to look at it," he commented dryly. "I see he finally managed to fix yours?" he asked, tilting his head in the direction of the front door, where
he'd passed her car at the curb.

"It amazed me too, Luka," she told him, smiling a little at the memory of Dave Malucci presenting her with her car keys... accompanied by a
little bow that had made her think of Luka. "But-- how'd you find me?" she asked suddenly. "I'm not listed."

"No. But you forgot to tell Carter to forget your address," he teased. "He wondered why I wanted to know, but didn't ask." Luka didn't bother to
wonder why Carter hadn't expressed any curiosity.

"Oh. Well, sit down over there," she indicated the sofa, "and I'll get you that water."

Watching him approach that sofa and sit down was, she decided, a little like watching one of the big cats in Africa - tall, rangy, potentially
dangerous. Graceful, despite the barest trace of a limp. He even had the green, slightly slanted eyes of a cat.

She left her glass of Scotch on the counter as she crutched into the kitchen and poured a glass of water from the filtered pitcher she kept in
the refrigerator, then returned to the living room with his water and a little coaster. She set the glass down on the coaster, on the coffee table,
and sat next to him, noting both his slightly quizzical expression and that his lips looked strong and firm. His lips, in fact, reminded her a little
of Ellis's, and Ellis had been one damned fine kisser.

What the hell, she thought. I've been drinking, I have that Scotch as my plausible deniability if he freaks out. She was pretty sure that he would,
too, but she'd been wondering about those lips since summer. A little freak-out might, she thought, be worth finding out what kind of a kisser
he was (or it might give Romano enough ammunition to make it impossible for her to ever work in medicine again)... here we go, she thought,
and leaned in. He started slightly when she brushed her lips against his, but surprised her with his response: not only did he fail to scream in
horror and run away, but he wound his arm around her waist and enthusiastically returned the kiss.

He groaned softly as he nibbled gently on her lips, and let his free hand play with her breast a little. This was so inappropriate, he knew, to be
doing this with her, his boss, but right now he really didn't give a rat's ass about anything except the way she felt so soft and warm in his arms,
and that he... wouldn't mind at all if they were to go on and do more than kiss on a sofa. He wasn't quite sure why Kerry had kissed him; he'd
thought at first that it was just that she was drunk, but - despite the taste of Scotch in her mouth - for some reason he wasn't so sure anymore
that she was incapacitated. Not that he was complaining, of course - he was willing to go along with it as far as she was willing to go. His
hand crept toward the zipper of her top and tugged on it experimentally, half-expecting her to  push him away.

Kerry laced her fingers through Luka's hair, marvelling at its thick softness; she could feel his hand easing her zipper down, and gasped as he
slipped his hand inside her top and engaged in a few exploratory procedures that would never be found in the Annals. She never wore a bra
at home (she was small enough that she only wore one at work if her blouse was light-colored or especially thin) so she could feel Luka's long
slender fingers - dry, slightly cool - right against her skin... teasing, almost tickling her.

She was curious to see him. What she'd felt of his body through his shirt, both now - pressed right up against him - and sometimes brushing
against him at work, told her there was some good, hard muscle in there. The moment her fingers touched the buttons of his shirt, though, he
gasped and pulled away from her. She registered... panic? in his eyes just before he stood and turned away, raking his fingers through his hair,
and shook her head. "I should've known," she muttered. He turned back to her, breathing a little heavily.

"What?" He looked genuinely confused. Oh, good acting, Luka, she thought sourly. She reached for her crutch, and levered herself to her feet,
hoping that she could also blame any unsteadiness in her step on the Scotch; she didn't want him to know how he'd affected her. "Kerry," he
followed her as she went to the kitchen, and winced at the disgusted look she shot him. "What do you mean by that?"

"What I mean is, was it difficult to pretend I was Carol?"

"Carol? Why would I-- oh. You really think so little of me?" He looked away from her and licked his lips - Kerry had noticed that he seemed
to do that when he was nervous or unsettled - then looked back at her with a challenging gleam in his eyes. "If I was thinking about Carol, then
who were you thinking about when you kissed me?" She knew he'd set her up with that one:  if she admitted that she'd been kissing Luka
Kovac, and nobody else, she risked his ridicule and rejection. But if she denied it, and told him that she'd been thinking of someone else, too,
then that marked her as a hypocrite.

"You. I was thinking about you," she finally answered reluctantly, as she stared at the pattern her finger was idly tracing on the counter. He
was silent for a moment.

"Good," he finally said. She looked up at him, readying herself to explode again. "I really was only thinking about you the entire time, I swear."

"But Carol--"

"What about her? If I wanted to be with her, I'd be there," he replied irritably. "I don't play games."

"No. I guess you don't." She thought of the day she'd learned that she was to be an attending in the ER - she'd pressed Mark for countless
details about salary and benefits, whether she could negotiate the details of any of it - and compared it to the day she'd hired Luka. No
negotiating; he hadn't even asked about salary. Just a gentle, self-assured "you'll be fair" when she asked him if he didn't want to know the
pay. She'd lain awake half the night, thinking about that comment - what had he meant by that? Sometimes she almost thought that he would
do the job for free... but what would - what could - he possibly get out of the deal?

He hesitated a moment, then joined her in the kitchen. He put his hands on her waist and picked her up, in one effortless motion, setting her
down on the counter. She allowed herself to think for a moment about the butt-marks she'd have to clean off the counter later, and then returned
her attention to Luka, who was staring up at her with an odd look on his face. "I'm here because I want to be here. Nowhere else," he told her
quietly but firmly, and kissed her. Just then, with impeccable timing, the phone rang.

"I should let the machine get it," she muttered, but Luka smiled and shook his head.

"No, it's driving you nuts. I know it's driving me nuts." You're driving me nuts, he wasn't brave enough to add aloud. He scooped her up and
carried her to the phone, bending slightly so she could pick it up. It turned out to be Mark, calling to ask her where some supplies were. She
wasn't sure how she managed it, but she kept from yelling at him for disturbing her at home. Maybe, she mused, it was Luka holding her so
close to him - she tilted her head a little, to rest on his shoulder a moment, and he kissed her. She blushed, and wrapped up the call so quickly
that Mark was left wondering what the hell had happened. Luka hung up the phone for her, and discovered that she was trying to unbutton his
shirt again. "Please don't," he told her gently.

"So you get to see me, but I don't get to--" He gave her a fondly exasperated smile, then set her down in a chair.

"Do you really want to see me?" Before she could answer, he whipped off his tie and began undoing the buttons himself - pausing long enough
to stick his tongue out at Kerry when she started to hum "The Stripper", off-key, although he couldn't help laughing - then threw his shirt to her
defiantly. "So?"

Kerry studied him intently. He was every bit as muscular as she'd expected - with the gorgeous leanness of a man who got that way through
physical labor, rather than the bulk of a man who pumped iron. The scars, though... that, she hadn't really expected. She tried to get up, to
limp to his side, but fell back. "So... I think I'm stranded here, without my crutch. D'you mind?" He gave her an odd look, and retrieved her
crutch from the kitchen. "Thanks. I... can't and won't pretend that our experiences are the same, but--"

"But you have scars too," he guessed, and she nodded. Tonight, she decided, just for tonight, she could set aside the Kerry Weaver who
always worried about the rules. She could be the woman who'd once been described as a "bad, bad girl", and carpe herself some diem. Luka
was discreet - even if he rejected her tonight, he wouldn't spread it around the hospital that the "alpha-bitch of the ER" had hit on him.

"Wanna see 'em?" Her light-hearted question startled him, and he knew she was asking him about more than just scars. He was frequently a
little dense when it came to uniquely American terms, and he'd be lying if he claimed to fully understand Kerry and all of her moods, but....
He licked his lips.

"Hell, yeah."

 * * * * * *

He woke briefly during the night, confused by the difference in night-sounds, and by the presence of another person sleeping next to him, for
the first time in years. No... she wasn't quite asleep, he corrected himself, as she shifted position to snuggle against him. She was still as soft
and warm as she'd been on that sofa, and he knew he'd made the right decision when he chose to stay in Chicago and accept Kerry's job offer.
Oh, not because of the sex - though thinking of it, of her passionate response to him, made him quiver - but because he'd found someone who
could be so much to him. He kissed her, and fell asleep again.

Sun streaming through the curtains, and directly onto his face, woke him, and he smiled, a bit hesitantly, at the woman cuddled in his arms and
spooned against him. Last night had been... absolutely amazing. He couldn't believe that nobody else seemed to see this side of Kerry - warm,
funny, incredibly sexy - but the subtle inquiries he'd made seemed to indicate that nearly everybody accepted the face she wore at work, of the
hard, nearly-tyrannical slave-driving Kerry (and that was a part of her, he accepted that). Dave seemed to see the woman underneath, but he
could spot a woman anywhere. Luka had noticed that the man seemed to have imprinted on Kerry, like a duckling: to Dave, she was the one true
Chief. He didn't particularly respect the man's skills as a doctor, although he believed that Dave had a lot of potential, but he, of all people, did
respect that kind of loyalty.

Something suddenly occurred to him: what if he'd been wrong last night, and she really had been too drunk to be competent to make the
decision to sleep with him? He suddenly felt very depressed - when he woke up with her in his arms, he'd let himself hope that they might
have some kind of future together, but now he wasn't eager to see the look on her face when she woke up and realized what she'd done...
and with whom.

Why would she want him, after all? He was scrawny (he'd never really regained the weight he lost... back there) and a little fou. Bad-
tempered (he usually managed to hide it, but flashes of it still got out all the time), overly impulsive, pig-headedly stubborn... he was no
prize.

His train of thought was disrupted when he felt Kerry stir in his arms. Wow... moment of truth - how was she going to react? "Dobro jutro,
moja ljepota," he murmured, and kissed the top of her head where she was nestled against him. She rubbed at her eyes and then turned in his
arms to smile at him, a little wearily.

"Luka. Hi." He sighed in relief, and she looked at him a little oddly. "You're not regretting...?" He was surprised by the defensive note in
her voice.

"No, no. I was worried that you might have really been drunk last night, that you might be angry with me for taking advantage of you."

"That was only my second glass. How could you tell?" Only her second glass? He made a mental note to never let her engage him in any
drinking games; these days, he was a total lightweight.

"I don't know. You were acting different from usual, and you smelled and tasted..." he paused and licked his lips. Kerry wanted to lick
them for him "But I had a feeling. I wasn't sure whether it was just that I'd been celibate for too long."

"How... long? If you don't mind my asking," she added hastily. He shook his head.

"I don't mind. I've only been with two other women in my life: my wife, of course, and a woman I worked with when I first came to this
country, about five or six years ago. That was very brief." He started to say something more, then changed his mind. "What about you? I'm
sure a woman as beautiful as you has a lot of stories?"

"What do you want, Luka?" she asked him suspiciously, without answering his question.

"I want you, in my life. That's all. I don't expect you to treat me any differently at work, just because we--" He pinked up, and Kerry was
fascinated - she hadn't realized there were still real men out there who could blush. "Uh, do you have coffee? Or tea? I need some caffeine."

"Didn't you notice? You were in my kitchen last night, after all," she reminded him, enjoying the way his blush deepened and ran all the way
down to his chest, and then relented. "There's a coffee maker, and coffee in the refrigerator." He kissed her, then got out of bed and scooped
up his trousers, and headed for the bedroom door.

"Thank you. Would you like some?"

"Please. I take cream and a little sugar in mine." She watched him put his trousers on and leave the room, then settled back with a big grin on
her face. What a night that had been! The smile faded, though, as that familiar old voice of self-doubt began again: Ellis was great in bed,
too, wasn't he, Kerry? And look what happened there! He used you, and he broke your heart.

But Ellis hadn't used her, Kerry knew. He'd kept his job separate from his feelings for her. And now he'd moved on from her distrust; she'd
received a dry little announcement, back in September, for the marriage of Dr. Ellis Phillip West and Dr. Susan Elizabeth Lang. She'd sent an
equally dry little congratulatory note.

She slipped into her robe, a sleek, ankle-length forest-green silk kimono, and crutched out to the kitchen, where she found Luka deep in
concentration over the stove, doing something that smelled good. And he was singing as he worked - she'd never heard the song before
(something from home?). He had a good voice, she decided, it was competent, if nothing that would win him any awards. But even with
such a beautiful tush, he just shouldn't try to dance!

She watched him for a few minutes, grinning at the view. He'd retrieved his shirt from the floor, where she'd dropped it, and put it back on,
but the tails hung out over the waistband of his trousers; that, and his morning whiskers, gave him a rumpled look that contrasted nicely with
his usual ultra-tidy look at work.

He split whatever he was cooking between two plates, turned to put them on the counter and nearly dropped them when he saw her. "Hey,"
he said, surprised to see her standing behind him. "I was going to bring this to you in bed, you didn't have to get up."

"No, no. No eating in bed." She saw the gleam in his eyes, and cut him off before he could say what was obviously on his mind. "Don't even
say it," she warned him, shaking her finger at him.

"Say what?" But he was smiling, and trembling with suppressed laughter. "Okay, c'mon. Before it gets cold."

"You know how to cook?"

"My mother was a lousy cook. My father, and my brother and I, we all had to learn to fend for ourselves, if we wanted to eat. And... uh..." he
faltered, looking away from her, out the window, "I, uh, cooked both times my wife was pregnant. Just looking at a pot or pan made her sick."
He rested his chin on one hand, then extended the other in Kerry's direction, along the surface of the table. "You're okay with eggs, right? I saw
them in there," he gestured at the refrigerator, "and figured you must eat them." She accepted his abrupt change of subject.

"Oh... I usually just have an energy shake in the morning," she protested, but he shook his head.

"No. That isn't proper breakfast. C'mon. You can make me one of these 'energy shakes' next time." Wow, he thought. You're assuming a lot,
aren't you, Luka! Even if she hadn't been bombed out of her mind last night, that didn't mean she would want to be with him again. He licked
his lips, looking down, then suddenly began eating, too nervous to look at Kerry's reaction. He halted when he didn't hear any sounds from
Kerry's seat, and put his fork down when he saw her simply sitting there. "Kerry? Is something wrong? Did I do something wrong?" he asked
urgently, reaching over to touch her arm. "I-- last- last night, uh, it was good, huh?" She looked up at him, and was surprised to see anxiety in
his eyes; that wasn't something she expected from him. She took a bite of her eggs, to cover her confusion, then nodded.

"Incredible," she admitted. "So you want to do this again?"

"Now?" That gleam in his eyes was back, and he was eyeing her hopefully.

"Later. Let me finish breakfast." She saw that the gleam in his eyes had softened to something she couldn't identify, and gestured at him with
her fork. "Eat. Build up your strength."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied with mock deference, and pretended to cower in fear when she playfully waved her fork at him like a baton, but he
tucked into his eggs and watched her out of the corner of his eye.

"That was delicious," she told him as she finished, and began to get up. He was on his feet first, though, and  gently pushed her back down.

"I've got it." He took her plate, and carried it, with his, to the kitchen. "Do you use the dishwasher often?" he called to her.

"Sometimes. But I usually rinse everything before putting it in. You cook and do dishes?"

"Only for very special people."

"You're saying I'm special, then?" she cooed, using her crutch to help herself stand on tiptoe and put her arm around his neck... although once
he'd realized what she was after, he simply picked her up and carried her to the sofa. She could have sworn she heard him purr as he lay
down, still holding her, and began kissing her, as she lay sprawled across his chest.

She played with his hair as he untied the sash of her robe and reached inside; her startled exclamation reminded her of something. "Luka, last
night, when we were..." she hesitated to call it 'making love', although she knew he was a man she could love. But he seemed to understand
what she was getting at, and nodded. "You said something in Croatian." Something that had sounded passionate and intense to her. But she
could think of a lot of things that would sound passionate and intense coming from him - "pericardiocentesis", perhaps - for all she knew, he
could have been mocking her, calling her the foulest of names. She hoped she was just being paranoid.

"Did I? I... don't remember." That wasn't true, of course; he remembered perfectly well what he'd said to her last night. He... just wasn't ready
to say it to her in English. Not yet. He might never be ready, he knew; he was surprised enough that he'd let himself physically express his
feelings for her.

She happened to look up, and caught a glimpse of the clock. "Damn! Luka, look at the time!" He turned, keeping his arm around her to keep
her from falling off the sofa, and shook his head. "You're on in a few hours, right?"

"Yeah. I guess we can't call in sick, huh?" he said, smiling ruefully.

"No. I'll drive you home, so you can shower and change your clothes--" He playfully rubbed his chin against her cheek.

"And shave," he added, and stole a kiss before helping her to her feet. He loaded up the dishwasher as she showered and got dressed for her
own shift later, then scraped the ice off the car windows for her, despite her protests.

"How can you stand being out in this, without a coat?" He shrugged. It was pretty damned cold. Sometimes, though, he just didn't notice.

"It isn't the worst I've seen," he hedged, and knocked off the last bit of ice, then got in the car and suddenly warmed his hands on Kerry's neck.
She shrieked and pushed him away, then pulled up the collar of her coat.

"Oh! You jerk... do you want to walk home?" She tried to pretend to be angry, but she was laughing too hard to be convincing; he whispered in
her ear, and told her what he did want, and she listened, intrigued.

"That sounds tempting. I always have had a sweet tooth - I love chocolate. We should probably get going," she suddenly said, determinedly
breaking the mood. Not that she wouldn't like for them to go back inside and do exactly what he'd suggested, but she didn't want either of
them to be late... which they would definitely be. "Do you want to ride in with me, after you get done changing and... everything?"

"No," he said reluctantly, "I think I'd better take the El. I don't think I have any chocolate around the apartment, but you know how I am about
improvising." He flashed her a cheeky grin that slowly evaporated. "Uh, I assume you still want to be quiet about this? I don't really care who
knows, but if you want it to be private, I'll respect that." She nodded.

"I think it's best for us to keep quiet, for now. If Romano found out that you and I were... involved, he'd never believe that we didn't start back
in November, when I hired you permanently." He calmly removed her hat so he could ruffle her hair - he'd never even seen red hair until he
left his small coastal town to go to university up in Zagreb - and waited for her agitation to wind down a little before he kissed her again.

"Okay. So at the hospital, or when anybody from there is around, we are strictly colleagues. But outside of that, we can be more than
colleagues, huh?"

"Outside, or when... say... we find a quiet place and a quiet moment." He smiled at her.

"I like the way you think, Kerry. All right." He extended his hand to her and she hesitantly did the same - was he actually going to shake on this?
But he didn't; he took her hand and kissed it, European-style, then turned it over and kissed her palm. She came really close to dragging him back
inside, at that point, but turned the key in the ignition, instead. He gave her the directions, and settled back in his seat.

Kerry was surprised to see that he was completely relaxed; most guys who rode in her car tended to operate imaginary gas and brake pedals,
or at least have the door handle in a death-grip. He, on the other hand, looked ready to fall asleep. Then again, they'd pretty much worn each
other out last night.

When she pulled up in front of Luka's building, she cleared her throat. "Luka, would you like... um... would you like to go to a movie with me,
Friday night?"

"I'm not off until ten," he replied cautiously.

"That's all right. The movie isn't until midnight."

"What is the movie, please?"

"Fun," she told him unhelpfully. "C'mon, it's a surprise."

"Surprises and I don't mix very well," he grumbled. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see." He sighed.

"I know I'm going to regret this, but sure. Movie Friday night, at midnight, right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. I'll see you later, then." He kissed her, very thoroughly - which made her head spin - squeezed her hand lightly, and got out of the car. She
watched him walk to the door, then turn at the last moment and wave to her, smiling. She returned the wave and the smile, and leaned back in her
seat. Well, Friday night would be the acid test.

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