Chapter One can be found here.
Chapter Two can be found here.
Paris is lovely this time of the year.
Right now I’m sitting out on our little balcony, sharing a glass of red wine and a nice Brie with Joanne, watching the sun go down over the rooftops. We’ve got the cutest little apartment in an old building just a few blocks from the Seine, with a great view and a bakery right across the street where we can buy fresh croissants every morning.
We’ve got it all worked out. In a few weeks, Joanne will tell her father that those goons trying to kidnap her in the hospital made her so nervous she can’t face living alone and wants a full-time bodyguard. I’ll say the money’s too good to pass up, and hand in my resignation to the SFPD. Mello will have testified by then, so the heat will be off, and with any luck we’ll just quietly slip out of sight here in France.
Joanne has plenty of money from her father, and she’s planning to open a quality dress boutique, so we won’t have to worry about starving. At first I didn’t feel right, knowing where the money comes from, but Joanne says women have to look after themselves because nobody’s going to look after us. If her father had really cared about his family, he wouldn’t have gone into the rackets in the first place. She says I should look at it as us using his money to give ourselves a chance we’d never have had otherwise.
One thing I won’t be trying again is acting. I was so stiff and awkward during that road trip with Starsky and Hutch I nearly messed everything up. I was lucky neither of them tried to put the moves on me; it would have been embarrassing no matter how I turned them down. And I couldn’t have gone along with any funny business, not with Joanne waiting and worrying about me.
I just hated having to play the spoiled little rich girl with them. It isn’t me, and it’s not Joanne either. I kept feeling I was letting her down by acting so helpless. But we’d decided in advance that if my escorts thought I was a little dumb and useless they wouldn’t bother to ask me any hard questions. It was a struggle to keep up the act when the goons were shooting at us, though. I kept grabbing my purse back from Hutch because my gun was tucked down in the bottom, and I wanted to have it where I could get at it fast.
The SFPD trained me well. I’d figured out before we even got to Bay City the leak was in Dobey’s office. And I didn’t trust any of them to make sure Joanne would be safe. None of them cared enough to get between her and the bullet.
That’s the only bad thing about not going back. I really enjoyed being a cop.
But not as much as I enjoy being Joanne Mello’s girlfriend.
Yay for the plot twist! Happy travels for these two!
NICE!! Even though I often wear femslash goggles, I never considered this pairing, but you’ve laid out a convincing argument in the form of this story! And I do love the idea of them gently conning the people around them to grab a little slice of happiness.
I’ve always really enjoyed this episode, so it’s great to have a new spin on it!