He was early. Shockingly early. And I was running late, but not for him.

His first words to me: "You make me nervous."

My first words to him: "Holy shit. How did you find me?"

He understood, Diary, never fear. But then, I knew he would. It's why I had wanted to see him. 

But him turning up so early and in such an unexpected place? It was another strange thing in an already strange day.

What? Did I start that wrong, Diary? Am I making this hard to follow when I go back someday to this entry and try to remember this?

Maybe. But, then, the good reporter that I was - and occasionally am even now - knows to start with the essential, most compelling fact. It's unnatural for me to write in straight chronological order.

But, then again ... That's part of the conflict within me, isn't it, Diary? You already knew that nothing with me is ever simple.

Once a reporter and now - only irregularly in that role. You want me to uncomplicate this for you, Diary? That's rich. Well, let's see. I was a crime reporter before I became a political reporter. But that was before I left reporting a while ago and segued into public relations. A great career move for me. I took to it like Cort took to preaching. Love it, live for it; revel in the way I get to work with media people and yet adore the way I get to advocate for something I believe in. It felt so good to finally be able to take a public stand on issues and to state your convictions. You can't do that when you're a news reporter and you're supposed to be neutral.

But then something weird happened about two years ago. My old editor called and asked me to come back to the paper. No way, I said, I like the fact that people love taking phone calls from me now, as opposed to back in the days when so many thought hearing my voice on the phone meant I was on deadline and about to ask some tough questions they didn't want to answer. How about only as an occasional feature writer and we'll come up with the leads, he countered. When I resisted, he added the lagniappe, the thing he knew would get me back writing for them. Only human interest features, he said, and we'll work around your schedule.

So far? It was actually working pretty well. They toss me things with the oddball twist, the screwball interview, the animal novelty ... the ones that take someone with a sense of humor coupled with the cynicism deeply ingrained in me by years on the hard news side. The features people say they always know the ones that are perfect for me.  Plus, they play my stories a lot bigger than I would have ever hoped for.

Still, my clients are always my first priority and my primary source of income. 

The only negative is that the editors have found ways to drag me into covering the odd news stories here and there. I grumble and gripe about them breaking their word, but the truth is, sometimes I miss the news business like it was my first-born.

This, then, was a déjà vu day. A day when the news division needed me - not the features division. 

So here's the Metro news editor, the big guy himself, on the phone to me. Bringing up ancient history and asking if I remembered it. Hell, yes. What news reporter ever forgot the last really big case they covered? And the editor was in a bind - something was breaking that was making this ancient story into news again but his beat reporters for the police department were covering simultaneous murder trials. He needs someone he can send to cover the breaking story. I ask him, what's the story about? He ticks it off: big arrest, press conference, drug counts, prostitution, sounds sordid, maybe some perversion, sending a photog for art.

And, I'm thinking, you're calling me because?

After all, I had other things I was planning to use that day for. I'd already taken Jack to the airport so he could visit Vix and I was getting ready for a visit from Bud. Oh, gosh. Bud. I'd really been looking forward to finally seeing him in person. He was coming in that night. I had blocked out that day to get ready and the next two days to simply exist with him. And I was trying hard not to be nervous but it was important to me for things to go right so I was definitely strung a bit tight that day.

Well, screw it all, the editor's calling because I'm the only writer with the paper who's familiar with the ancient history. Christ. But that had been such a story. Bad cop, bad police department ... I'd covered it when it broke - was it really that long ago? - at least ten years earlier. And I'd covered it when they said they'd cleaned it up. Ah, Metro editor tells me, the bad cop's back and with a vengeance. They'd told us then, they'd sworn on a Bible, they'd testified before a judge - the bad cop was a good guy. We always knew differently. I'd always been afraid of the implications of the cover up.

But I don't cover crime anymore, I tell the editor. Do this for us today, you're all we've got to be sure we get it right, he replies. Knowing I'd go. Knowing I wanted to go. Knowing inside me still beat the heart of a reporter who had loved dirt, scandal and bad cops.

I could just barely squeeze this in. Mentally calculating. An hour for the news conference. Thirty minutes for the perp walk; maybe one or two follow-up phone call interviews. An hour to write and file. Then I could leave for the airport. Yep. I'd make it.

I just never expected Bud to be early.

He saw me first. Came into that news conference, sat in the back and listened to reporters ask questions. After the softballs from reporters who didn't share my historical perspective, I threw the curveball and when the police chief whiffed his swing, I pounced like the hardball hurler I used to be. Never realized I still had that in me.

So, when Bud told me later that I made him nervous, I knew it was because he identified with the brass who'd just undergone a virtual castration courtesy of me.

It sure wasn't the best way to start with Bud. But thank God we'd had an earlier chance to get to know each other over the phone when he helped me out with that Hando arrest. I knew from that experience that he'd be one of the Crowe Brothers I'd always adore. And he'd found out that I got along with cops well enough to have stayed friendly with a lot of them even years after I'd left the crime beat.

"I've read a lot of the fiction you've written. I found a lot of it, um, contradictory with who I saw today," he told me as we left the press conference. It gave me another sense of déjà vu. Some other man had told me something a lot like that once recently and I hid from the memory.

"Oh, I'm a mass of contradictions. I'd like to think that's one of my charms," I told him. We smiled at each other.

I knew I wouldn't be afraid of him. First times, dear Diary, have to be more than special. They have to be right. They have to give you the incentive for second times.

I dropped him off at my house and then went to the newsroom to file my story. When I got home, Bud was on my back deck, sipping from a glass that I knew held plain scotch, leaning back in one of the chairs and watching the pine trees in my back yard twitch in a sporadic breeze. I observed him from the window in my dining room and sipped a beer. Damn. He was something and I was so glad he was there.

"You only wrote one thing about me," he said when I came on the deck. Like he'd been sitting there thinking this over. Waiting on me and waiting to see how I'd answer.

"You're too perfect to corrupt," I grinned at him and he gave me this look that told me I'd surprised him. "I thought maybe we'd grill out tonight. The weather's perfect for it. How does that sound?"

"It'll give us some great time together," he said.

Pausing before I went back inside to get the charcoal and lighter, I stopped and peered hard at him. "Two questions, Bud. How did you find me and did I have the wrong time for your flight?"

He stood up and came to where I was, halting part way there as if he needed permission to be that close. Then so close, I could reach out and touch him. He tilted his head and drew a shallow breath. "I wanted to get the drop on you. Thought I should surprise you, upset your plans and that maybe you'd stop worrying about whether or not I was still pissed off with you about the shit with Hando. Besides, when Vix told me about the press conference, I figured it gave me a chance to go in person and thank the detective who helped with the Hando situation."

It made me smile. Vix. Of course. She knew I was anxious about meeting Bud. And I had called to verify Jack's arrival time at her city and then started this whining rant about the fucking press conference and how I'd never get the house cleaned before I had to leave for the airport again.

Bud's hand touched my upper arm and he smiled the briefest and yet most heart-felt smile at me. "Do you mind that I did that?"

"No. Not really. It just seems so weird for you to have seen me in that setting. Cops and reporters, eh? Not always the best combination." Then feeling, like a delayed reaction, the impact of his smile.

Inside my kitchen, I rummaged in the pantry and hauled out the charcoal. Hey, you get it lighted and I'll fix the sides, I told him. When the door to the deck closed, I sighed hard. One of those good, cleansing sighs. The ones you take where you're saying inside, okay, let it all go away and start over. Because here's the thing. Did it really matter the day hadn't gone like I'd planned as long as it was ending like I'd hoped?

Hope. There was something I didn't want to think about, Diary. Just accept the Game as it comes and you will not be disappointed. You get back only what you're willing to give.

Bud's voice snapped me out of my pending pity party. I had been so far gone that I hadn't even heard him come in. That's saying a lot because Bud's not exactly the lightest walker in the world. "You shouldn't just leave it with him like that. It's not his fault."

I looked up and blinked twice, until he was sharp in my vision. Studying him for long moments and knowing he was like all good cops, able to read people like it was a sixth sense. "I never said it was his fault. It's my failing. And I've gotten real tired of having the subject of him come up all the time," I told him. "Besides, he's doing great. And I just want to forget it all so I can play the Game with a light heart like I should."

"Yeah, baby, I know. But you asked me here for a reason. And I think we both know what it is. You wouldn't talk to Cort about it, you can't talk to Jack about it. Me? I'm the one you can tell anything, right?"

Black and white. That's how it is for cops. Did you know that, Diary? Well, it's true. I get cops, I do. Don't always agree with how they look at the world, but I get along well with them. And one reason I do is that, unlike me and my kind, cops can see things in black and white. Not too many shades of gray, which can be really refreshing when you need simplicity and the ability to make clear-cut decisions. There have been times in my past when I've taken great comfort from cop friends who could look at some gray-shaded issue I was facing and put it to rights by their ability to take away the tones and tell me the black and white of it all.

So I told Bud. It took all of fifteen minutes to give him the burden of my secrets in this matter. Bottom line? He helped me see it. What I have with Jack, even being with him this briefly, is so powerful and so unexpected. But the closer I get to Jack, the more I realize that I'm never going to stop missing what I had with Terry. One doesn't erase the other, Diary, not at all. And I wouldn't want that to be the case because the reality is both have brought me to great heights. But now, in the present, Jack's the gratification while Terry's the pain. One's got my heart and the other's still holding my soul hostage. Only I have the power if I choose to wield it to do something about the part of that equation I don't like anymore.

Eyes at the ceiling, big sigh. "I'm such a wuss sometimes."

"But a cute one." My eyes dropped down to his and I couldn't help giggling at his expression, and feeling the tension leave me. "Wish I had the answer for you, baby. But you're the only one who knows what you want."

"Yeah, well, you might not have all the answers, Bud, but you have helped me see things much cleaner. Black and white. It's one thing I love about cops. The other thing I love about cops is how damned cute they can look in uniform."

He shook his head at me as I chuckled at his blush. "You're like all broads. Love a guy in uniform. That's why you're all panting over Jack and his breeches."

"No, no, you've got it all wrong. It's the epaulets we adore, not the breeches."

"It's the frigging breeches, Ann. You women don't fool me."

Snap. Just like that. Sweet as can be and we were laughing like we'd known each other for years. And it made it so easy for me to coax him into telling me about his days on the force. And, all during our dinner, I think he forgot I was a woman because he just talked, in that plain, unmistakable way cops do more amongst themselves than with civilians. As dinner was winding down, he was telling me an old, nasty war story of battling crime in LA.

"And then Stens whipped out this sack full of marbles and if you woulda seen their fucking faces, then you'd have known that we ..." Suddenly he stopped. Blinked into the candles on the table. We were on the deck and night was pressing in on us. "You're so easy to talk to but I shouldn't be telling you all this, sweetheart. You don't want to listen to cop talk."

It made me laugh. I'd been listening to cops talk for so long. "You're not gonna say anything that will shock me, Bud. Honest. You won't say anything some other cop hasn't already tried to shock me with anyway."

I didn't catch the shift in him right away. It was only when he was quiet for long enough it became awkward that I studied his face. He was looking off into the night and I tapped on the table to get his attention. He looked at me hard. "Couldn't figure you out before but now ... Is that it? You're a cop doll?"

Suppressing a giggle, I said, "Cop doll? As in a woman who gets off on cops? Nah. In fact, the thought of that might send most of the men in blue in this area into hysterics. You saw me in the news conference today. Did I seem inordinately sexually attracted to any cops?"

"It's just that you're pretty ... well, you like to talk about ..." he was stammering slightly and I knew I was making him nervous again.

"Look. Here's how it was with me and cops, Bud. Covering crime can be a real adversarial relationship with law enforcement if you let it. I never did. I treated them with respect but I didn't roll over and just accept anything they tossed at me as hard facts. It's just the way I did my job. I questioned everything," I told him. "But once a cop earned my trust, it was absolute. And it was a two-way street. So consequently, I made a lot of friends in the department. I still have a lot of friends. In my book, that makes me someone who did a fair and diligent job."

"Yeah, but you probably dated a bunch of those cops," he said, giving me this odd look.

I crossed my heart, sputtering out between attempts to not keep laughing at him, "Honest, Bud, never dated one cop. Ever. I swear."

"Why not?"

That gave me pause. Deep breath and I leaned back in my chair, looked up into the night, noticed how the moon was lighting up the clouds moving in. He kicked the foot of my chair and I grumbled at him, "Give me a second. I'm trying to put this into the right words."

Five seconds later, he was drilling one finger against the tabletop in a slow, deliberate beat. It drove me crazy.

"Okay, okay. It was nothing personal. But, well, when I first started in crime, going in that police department was like walking into testosterone central. No girls allowed, that kind of thing. So I had to be tough, no nonsense and able to withstand their shitty little attempts to make me squirm if I was going to do my job and be accepted by them as a professional. I made a firm rule - no cops. Don't flirt with 'em, don't wonder how they looked without clothes, don't talk to 'em on the phone about anything but police business, never be caught in a social setting with one, and, absolutely, positively, do not ever screw one."

"Did it work?"

I slid my eyes down toward his. "What do you think?"

It made him laugh. "I think they never stood a chance."

"No shit, Sherlock. I already told you I never dated a cop." But I didn't tell him the rest and maybe, Diary, I owed it to him? No, Bud wouldn't have really cared about it all, I think.

But there's this thing about cops, Diary. This other thing that's different. Think about the mindset necessary to walk out of your safe home every day and willingly put your life on the line to protect and serve people who so often treat you like you are lower than dirt. And add to that the fact that the vast majority of the civilians they deal with lie to them or are in the midst of some sordid activity and it just beats the Hell out of me how anyone surrounded by that day in and day out wouldn't become pretty jaundiced when it came to human behavior. Sometimes, the cops I knew out and out scared the shit out of me with their haphazard, fatalistic and decidedly degenerate views of life.

"There's no greater degenerate than a man who carries a badge," I muttered. Oh, Diary, I swear to you, I hadn't meant to let that slip out of me.

"You don't know the half of it," he half whispered back to me.

I sat up and stared at him. Raised my eyebrows at the shy evil look on his face. "Is there something you need to tell me, Officer White?"

"C'mon. You read Uma's diary. You two are pretty tight."

"Uh huh. Yes indeedy, I did read it. But, Bud? I'm not into cuffing you. Sorry," I deliberately sassed him. As I watched the blush creep across his cheeks and he looked like he wanted to hide, I said, "Besides, that's not exactly degenerate behavior in my book. You'll have to do a lot better than that to be rated a degenerate."

He cocked his chin at me. He accepted the challenge and I knew he was enjoying this little exchange. "Yeah? Maybe you should come over here and whisper in my ear about just what you would consider degenerate behavior. Then I'll let you know if I'm up for it or not."

I leaned sideways and took a long, very obvious look at his crotch. "So far, I'd say you're not up for anything."

His mouth dropped open in surprise and I blew him a kiss. He crooked a menacing finger at me. "Come over here and say that."

"I don't fucking think so, Bud."

"You say fuck a lot."

"So do you."

"That can mean only one thing, honey."

"Oh, no, you don't, Officer White. No getting all gushy on me."

"I was just gonna say it meant you'd spent too much time with cops."

"Oh. I don't know. I don't think I've spent nearly enough time with the cop sitting here with me." Giving him an impudent look as I got up to clear the table. Stopped in mid reach across the table for his plate and said, "You do know I'd be willing to break my own rule for you?"

And as his hand grabbed for my wrist and pulled me around the rim of the round table toward him, he muttered, "I should hope so, honey."

It was amazing. The feel of his strength and the way I gave in to it with such willingness. I resisted only enough to enjoy the way he had to put some effort into getting me on his lap. Once there he leaned in to kiss me but I put my fingers on his lips. "I don't know about this, Bud."

"What is it you really want?" he asked, his hands slowly smoothing up and down my back. Making me feel absorbed into him.

There wasn't an easy answer to that. Honestly, Diary? Let me tell you what I really wanted: for him to simply read my mind and make this whole thing so easy and so fulfilling that I was kick started into a new reality where I never again thought about what I'd lost.

"I want you to be tender with me, Bud. That's what I need tonight."

His mouth nuzzled at my neck and he snuggled me in against him. "So that means I'm shit outta luck on the degenerate stuff you were gonna teach me?"

We chuckled against each other. "We can do degenerate stuff tomorrow."

"Now, baby, that's an offer I'm gonna take you up on," he told me in that husky honey voice and it made me shiver in his grip. He took advantage of the way I gasped in a breath by capturing my bottom lip between his.

Good Lord. A Bud White kiss.

I tried not to choke, Diary.

And counted it as a success when his tongue finally pressed forward into my open mouth and then he let me explore him. 

"Annie, oh honey..."

Whispering to him, soft soft: "Please don't call me Annie, Bud. Okay?"

His eyes latched on to mine and he read it there. Knowing smile. "No problem, sweetheart."

See, Diary? Vix and Uma were right. Bud and me, we were reading each other so well it was astounding and not at all unexpected. It might have taken a while to figure out what I wanted, but I was making up for lost time.

His hands took a measured trip down my sides and then back up to my breasts. Great hands, Diary. Sure, strong and unafraid. Between his hands and his mouth, which was now getting incredibly familiar with my neck and shoulders, he had me melting into this experience.

"Bud? Baby, maybe we should take this inside. Don't want the neighbors calling the cops on us for indecent exposure."

Inside my bedroom, I turned the lights off and lit candles I'd set out in hopes that I'd be using them that night to light up his form. When I turned back to him, he was holding out his hand to me. The look on his face was just what I needed in the moment because he was seeing me, simply me.

He has this way of undressing you that ... well, at least that night, it was this way of taking my clothes off like he was unwrapping a present and he wanted to be careful not to rip the wrapping paper. He wasn't at all tentative, but he was so careful and measured. Like time was on our side and nothing else in the world mattered but getting this part right.

I adored the way he waited on me to get his shirt off. One thing I like, Diary, are those times when you can undo each button, one at a time, and as you undo each one, you both take a breath because it's like you're ticking off how much closer you're coming to the joining but you just want to fully savor each individual step along the way.

Just as we settled into my bed, I did a purely 'Ann thing.' It flashed through my mind what Uma had told us about the wreck Bud had made of her bed. I couldn't help it. He had a hand on my breast and he was leaning over me to kiss me and I started laughing. Told him what I was thinking and he growled at me. Said he was gonna kill Uma next time he saw her because he figured now all the women in the group were going to be worried about him destroying their beds.

"But, Bud, that's one of your many charms," I whispered to him. "We love that about you. Didn't you know?"

"What? That I'm some big bruiser who destroys furniture?"

"No, baby. That you're a big strong man who fucks like a Mack truck when you want to."

"Christ, honey. Is that what you think?"

"Oh, you better believe it, sweetie." Then pausing and changing from horny to needy. "But, remember? Tonight I need tender, Bud. I need that side of you. That's the other reason we all adore you. Will you give it to me?"

With Bud, I was to learn, words were often superfluous. I really like a man who can communicate that well. I liked the way he overwhelmed so many of my senses and kept me guessing but yet never truly surprised me.

And there was something about the way he treated my body that helped me see things differently. Yes, Diary, I know that sounds odd, but it's the truth. Perhaps not all of the truth, but enough. Yet all I can add is that when he finally came on top of me, my legs spread of their own accord because by that point ... well, by then I was beyond a barrier thanks to the way he can touch and kiss. And all I felt like doing was whimpering when he pressed my knees up almost to my shoulders. I watched his face as he entered me, saw the concentration and the effort he took to make it good for me. To make it right.

It did something to my heart, just to see how he regarded me. And I was crying even before I was coming, while he muttered these shushing noises soft in my ear. He rode out my orgasm with me and then I encouraged him to his own, grinding back into him even harder than before. Getting a bit rough with him while he worked hard to stay gentle with me in that night.

There is something intoxicating about watching a man lose it when he's trying to safeguard you. It's like they fight it, like it might hurt you or them, to come hard in that instance. His struggle made me drunk.

And after, he rolled over and pulled me into his side, his lips buried in my hair and his arms giving me these occasional big hugs. I simply listened to the beat of his heart and felt clearer.

So, he was tender with me. In that way that only means something when it's coming from a man with enough brute strength to do anything he wants with you. Sweetest Diary, let me just say that I will always be there if he ever needs me because of what he was to me in that night.

Because he did some things for me that I wished for but would never have been able to verbalize. He held me close to him after and let me feel the way his arms could give me shelter. More than that, he didn't abuse his ability to read me so well that he knew I'd wanted him there because I was still troubled, despite what I was telling myself and everyone else.

"Am I making it better?" he asked me, his mouth right at my ear. Waiting on my response, his care giving me strength.

I nodded against him but couldn't speak just then. What I wanted to say, the thing that flitted instantly into my brain, was something Dudley Smith had said about him: 'Bud has a sentimental weakness for females.' Dudley thought it was a character flaw; I knew it was the gift he gave me.

It was why so many of us sought him out, I knew. He was more than our knight, he was the one who made the night better when it didn't seem possible.