The Button

—

'Roarke: "We'll see each other again"

She (Eve) nodded. "Count on it."

He let her go, knowing Summerset would slip out of some shadow, to give her the leather jacket, bid her goodnight.

Alone, Roarke took the gray fabric button from his pocket, the one he'd found on the floor of his limo. The one that had fallen from the jacket of that drab gray suit she'd worn the first time he'd seen her.

Studying it, knowing he had no intention of giving it back to her, he felt like a fool.

—

...Perhaps it was time to take a risk. He (Roarke) dipped a hand into his pocket, drew out what he carried there.

Baffled, Eve stared down at the simple gray button in his palm. "That's off my suit."

"Yes. Not a particularly flattering suit -- you need stronger colors. I found it in my limo. I meant to give it back to you."

"Oh." But when she reached out, he closed his fingers over the button.

"A very smooth lie." Amused, he laughed at himself. "I had no intention of giving it back to you."

"You got a button fetish, Roarke?"

"I've been carrying this around like a schoolboy carries around a lock of his sweetheart's hair."

Her eyes came back to his and something sweet moved through her. Sweeter yet as she could see he was embarrassed. "That's weird."

"I thought so myself." But he slipped the button back in his pocket. "Do you know what else I think, Eve?"

"I don't have a clue."

"I think I'm in love with you."'

— It is his talisman. We love it because we all wish that our guys felt that same kind of romantic need. It's like the knights of old who carried a ribbon from their True Love; the soldier who carries his darling's love letters into battle with him; the guy who has stolen a scrap of something belonging to the woman he loves -- perhaps a handkerchief that still carries the scent of his beloved. We are touched by his need to have the talisman, the ever-present reminder that the one he loves truly exists and belongs to him. Conversely, when he is away, Eve frequently wears one of his shirts to bed and finds comfort in it. I think all of us want something -- anything -- that belongs to the one we love. It's like a touchstone, it grounds us, reminds us of what is truly important.

—

The damn button on the jacket was still missing, she realized as she stared to fasten it. And she remembered Roarke had it, carried it like some sort of superstitious talisman. She'd been wearing the suit the first time she'd seen him--at a memorial for the dead.

She ran a hasty comb through her hair and escaped the apartment and the memories.

—

... he toyed with it, studied it as though it were some intriguing puzzle to be solved.

He was an idiot, Roarke realized. It was humiliating to admit what an incredible fool love could make of a man. He stood, slipped the button back in his pocket. He had a board meeting to complete, business to take care of.

— Scowling at him, she engaged the memo. "I owe you, Roarke, fifty credits, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve." She shoved the memo at him. "Satisfied". In every possible way." He thought, sentimentally, that he would tuck the memo away with the little gray suit button he'd kept from their very first meeting.

—

As Roarke walked toward them he remembered that the first time he'd seen Eve they'd been at a funeral. Another woman whose life had been stolen. It had been cold, and Eve had forgotten her gloves. She'd worn a hideous gray suit with a loose button on the jacket. He slipped a hand into his pocket now, idly fingering the button that had fallen off that baggy gray jacket.

Roarke: "Are you flirting with my wife, Brian?"

Brian: "I would if I thought I stood a chance with her."

—

He slid his hand into his pocket, rubbed a small gray button between his fingers for luck. For love. It had fallen off the jacket of the very unflattering suit Eve had worn the first time he'd seen her.

"You're good to go." Feeney told him.

"Booting up then. Start the clock."

—

With his hands in his pockets, he walked beyond the back gardens with their tidy rows of vegetables, their tangled cheer of flowers, and fingered the little gray button he carried.

Eve's button. One that had fallen off the jacket of a particularly unattractive suit the first time he'd seen her. One he'd carried like a talisman ever since.

He'd be steadier if she were here, he was sure. Christ, he wished she were here.

—

He needed to call Eve.

He looked across the field, across the silvered mists and gentle rise of aching green. Rather than pull out his pocket 'link he continued to toy with the button. He didn't want to call her. He wanted to touch her. To hold her, just hold her and anchor himself again.

—

"Let me know. Darling, not that jacket." More resigned than appalled, he rose to take the one she'd yanked out of her closet, and after a quick study, drew out one with pale blue checks over cream. "Trust me."

"I don't know what I did before you were my fashion consultant," she told him.

"I do, but I don't like to think about it."

"I know a dig when I hear one." She sat to pull on her boots.

"Mmm." He slid his hand in his pockets, and fingered a small gray button. One that had fallen off possibly the most unattractive, ill-cut suit he'd ever seen. One she'd been wearing the first time he'd laid eyes on her.

"I've a 'link conference shortly, then I'll be in midtown most of the day." He leaned over, laid his lips on hers. Left them there for a long, satisfying moment. "Take care of my cop."

—

Roarke: "...Do you remember the day I met you?" He reached in his pocket, took out the gray button that had come off the only suit she'd owned before he blasted into her life. He rubbed it between his fingers as he watched her.

"You struggled then with procedure, the book of it. But you had then, and always had, I think, a clear sense of justice. Those two things will always be true. You'll struggle, and you'll see . Its what makes you as much as that badge makes you. Never in my life have I ever known anyone who has such a basic dislike of people, yet has such unstinting and bottomless compassion for them. Eat your oatmeal."

— Bugger it. He was going to demand trust, he thought as he rose to stand at his wide window. That was non-negotiable. Almost everything else was, he admitted, and slid a hand into his pocket to finger the gray button he carried with him. Hers. As she'd been his, somehow, from the first time he'd seen her. Nothing and no one had ever struck him as she had, standing in that truly deplorable gray suit with her cop's eyes on him. Nothing and no one had ever held him as she did and always would.

— "He wished he knew the name of the gods who'd looked down on him the day he'd met her. If he could stack everything he owned, had done, had accomplished, on one side of a scale, it still wouldn't outweigh the gift of her. As he waited for time to pass, he slid a hand into his pocket, rubbed the button he carried, one that had fallen off her suit jacket the first time he'd met her."

—

"Took a hell of a knock, he thought now, but temper had been riper than pain. He'd seen that, too. Just as he'd seen her compassion for the distress and confusion of a scared little boy inside a man's body.

And here she was, moments later, taking charge of the room, putting all of that behind her.

It was hardly a wonder that it had been her, essentially from the first minute he'd seen her. That it would be her until his last breath. And very likely beyond that.

She hadn't worn a jacket for the briefing, he noted. She looked lean and not a little dangerous with her weapon strapped over her sweater. He'd seen her drape the diamond he'd once given her over her neck before she'd put on the sweater that morning.

The priceless Giant's Tear and the police-issue. That combination, he thought, said something about their merging lives.

As he listened to her brisk update, he toyed with the gray button -- her button -- he always carried in his pocket."

— He reached in his pocket, took out the gray button that had fallen off her suit the first time they'd met. When she'd viewed him as a murder suspect. "And I have my talisman to remind me." It never failed to baffle her—and on a deeper level delight her—that he carried it with him, always.^[2]

— He slipped [the charm] in his pocket, felt it bump lightly against the gray button he habitually carried there. Eve's button, he mused, and wasn't that a kind of charm?^[3]

— His life had taken a sharp and strange turn the first instant he'd laid eyes on a cop, his cop, in an ill-fitting coat and a truly ugly gray suit. He fingered the button from that suit, one he kept for luck and sentiment in his pocket.^[4]