"Could you hand me that rag?"

Nathan looked up at Kristin who was standing on a ladder with a paint roller in her hand. He followed Kristin's pointing hand to a pile of painting supplies lying on the tarp covering the floor. Taking a guess that she didn't really care which exact rag she got he passed one up to her.

"Thank you."

"Sure." Nathan finished the last bit of paint on the door frame and looked over at Kristin again. She was just finishing up painting the last wall of her bedroom. He grinned as he noticed that at this point she had paint on the ladder, her shirt, her pants, her arms, her hands, and several smudges of ‘light dusky rose' on her face.

"What are you laughing at?" frowned Kristin.

"You. I was wondering if you've got more paint on yourself or the wall at this point."

She came down off the ladder and threatened him with the paint-loaded roller. "You want to see how it looks on you?"

Bridger held up his hands in defeat. "No ma'am. I think you make a much better looking canvas than I do."

"Are you finished with the door and the frame?" Kristin asked as she inspected his work.

"Yup."

"I think the white contrasts nicely with the rose, don't you?"

Nathan appeared to be considering the paint and then looked back at Kristin and, using his paintbrush, placed a small smudge of white paint on the end of her nose. Right in the middle of a dusky rose smudge. "Yep, it looks pretty good," he said backing up through the door.

Kristin brought the roller up again. "Bridger, you're dead," and headed down the hallway after him.

Nathan slid into the bathroom where they had been cleaning their brushes and rollers in the tub. As Kristin came through the doorway he deftly twisted the roller out of her hand and put it in with the other items needing to be cleaned.

"Hey, that wasn't fair," Kristin complained as she started tickling him.

Nathan squirmed to try to avoid her assault. "Kris, stop... or you're going in the tub with the brushes."

Kristin settled for grabbing him around the shoulders and nuzzling into his cheek which left him with various paint transfers on his shirt, neck and face. "There, now you look like me," she said triumphantly.

Nathan shook his head as he started running the water to clean up the supplies. "If you want that tray cleaned you better bring it in here... or you're doing it yourself."

After making a face at him Kristin headed down the hallway to get the paint tray. She unhooked the tray from the rest on the ladder and stood back to look at the room. This was going to be just lovely. It would be so nice to have a home that she could call her own for a while. With a satisfied smile she headed back to the bathroom with the paint tray.

"What's next?" Bridger asked as she came into the bathroom and handed him the tray.

"Well, if you're up for it, we need to wallpaper the kitchen."

"Your wish is my command, lady. You've got me for the whole weekend."

Kristin sat on the edge of the tub and watched him wash out the painting tools. "So, what's Lucas up to this weekend?"

"Today, he's at a baseball game... tomorrow, I understand he's going to the racetrack."

"Goodness, a regular social butterfly. I'm surprised."

Nathan grinned up at her from his work. "I think Ortiz and O'Neil are trying to be sure that he feels at home here. They're becoming quite a matched set, the three of them."

Kristin rubbed her hand across Nathan's back and shoulders. "Well, that's nice of them, to include him in... I'm sure he appreciates it."

Nathan dried his hands off after cleaning the last roller and stood up. "Yeah, he's having the time of his life. I think he's going to like New Cape Quest."

Kristin kissed him on the chin. "You ready for the wallpaper?"

He put his hand on her back and turned her towards the door. "Lead on, my love."

An hour later found a frustrated Nathan doing his best to remain reasonable in light of what he considered to be overwhelming odds.

"You know, you could have found a pattern that was a little easier to match."

Kristin glared at him and went back to trimming the wallpaper around a cabinet. "The pattern is just fine... just because you can't tell right-side up from upside down…"

Nathan regarded the section they had completed, rotating his head first to the left and then to the right. No matter what he did, the cream wallpaper with the ivy vines on it looked the same to him. "How the hell are you supposed to tell?"

"Because when you put it on upside down, it's upside down," Kristin said in an annoyed voice. She looked over to where he was still trying to tell the difference. "Look, Nathan, perhaps you shouldn't be helping me with this." He raised his eyebrows and looked at her. "Do you think, perhaps, you could put the border up in the bathroom?"

"Is it easy to tell when it's upside down?" Nathan asked seriously.

"Yes," said Kristin patiently. "The bottom of the shells goes at the bottom of the border."

Nathan nodded, "Oh, shells I know." He looked at the kitchen wallpaper again. "Ivy, I'm not too keen on... how far down off the ceiling?"

"About three inches." He nodded and headed out of the room. "That's three inches from the ceiling itself... not a plumb three inches from one point," she called after him.

Nathan stuck his head back in around the door frame. "Got it... borders I know how to do."

Kristin finished the last piece of the kitchen wallpaper and stood back to inspect her work. How in God's name did he not know right-side from upside down in this paper. It was just beyond her. Shaking her head she turned and went down the hallway to see how Nathan was getting along.

The door to the bathroom was closed and as she started to open it she felt the door bang against something solid. "Hey, I'm on the ladder here... do you mind?" came his voice from inside the bathroom.

Kristin quickly pulled the door shut again. "Sorry, just checking to see how you're doing."

"I'm on the last piece," said the voice from the other side.

A short time later Kristin heard the scraping of the ladder being pulled away and the bathroom door opened. "Come on in and have a look," Nathan said with a smirk on his face.

Kristin walked into the bathroom and made a circle inspecting the border. "Perfect."

Nathan grinned. "Not upside down or anything?" he asked facetiously.

"No," Kristin said pinching him in the side. "For once you figured out which way was up."

"What's next?"

Kristin sighed. "Oh, I don't know, Nathan." She looked at her watch. "It's almost six. Are you hungry?"

"I'm starving," he ran his gaze over her, "but I don't know of any respectable restaurant that's going to let us in looking like we do."

"Well, that leaves us with carryout or delivery."

After a bit of negotiating back and forth it was finally decided that Kristin would go out and get chicken sandwiches from the drive through while Nathan cleared up the tarps and masking tape in the bedroom.

Left alone in the condo, Nathan began removing the protective material from the furniture and floor in the bedroom. He carefully bundled everything up ensuring that no wet paint dripped out or touched any of the furnishings. After securing the tarp and such in a trash bag Nathan went back in the bedroom to double check that he hadn't forgotten anything.

He smiled as he noticed that even with the smell of paint in the room it still smelled like Kristin. As he moved the bed back against the wall where it had originally stood Nathan saw that the light dusky rose color picked out by Kristin would be perfectly complimented by her dark mahogany bedroom set. She must have had this furniture in storage somewhere because Nathan knew that she hadn't gone through the buying spree that Lucas and he went through to furnish their new house. All he knew was that shortly after purchasing this condo Kristin had taken a day off and when he arrived to pick her up for dinner later that evening the condo was furnished. He had to admit that the furniture in it now fit the condo perfectly.

The only piece of furniture left to move back into place now was the vanity and Nathan was going to wait for Kristin to do that. From the look of the legs that particular piece of furniture should be moved by two people. He looked around the room again, smiling at the obvious, purely Kristin touches in the room. His reverie was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell and Nathan went over to the monitor to check who was there. He saw Kristin standing in the vestibule with two bags. He pressed the button on the intercom. "Yeah?"

Kristin glared up at the camera. "Nathan, let me in. I left my keys up there."

Nathan pressed the door release and the intercom button at the same time. "Since you've got food I'll be happy to let you up."

Nathan was standing with the door open when the elevator stopped at the third floor and Kristin exited. "You know... it's pretty lazy of you to take an elevator up to the third floor."

She frowned at him. "As long as the lift is there, I may as well use it, Nathan," she said disapprovingly.

Nathan relieved her of the bags. "Where do you want to eat this stuff?"

"Oh, on the couch I suppose."

Nathan looked down at the paint splotches on his pants. Although they looked to be dry he didn't really want to test it out. "You sure about that?"

She held up her hand. "Hold on a tick," and she disappeared down the hallway only to reappear moments later with a sheet in her hands that she covered the couch with. "There we are. The upholstery should be safe now."

They sat on the couch and ate their meal in an agreeable silence with only a few comments and questions to each other while eating. As they finished their sandwiches Nathan asked about the furniture.

"So... did you have all this stuff in storage somewhere?"

Kristin wiped her lips with her napkin. "Yes, it was all up in Sarasota. I'd been working at the university before I got the offer for the job on the seaQuest." She cleaned up the paper that had held the sandwich and put it into one of the bags. "I'm afraid the offer came on rather short notice so I just had to dump everything into storage."

"Looks like everything right down to your stuffed Mickey Mouse."

"Cynthia gave me that," she chuckled. "She got it for me on the one time we went to Disneyworld. She said she figured I needed something to sleep with at night."

Nathan had leaned his head back on the top of the couch. "You're kidding," he chuckled. "How old was she?"

"She was fifteen... and a very precocious fifteen at that."

"Sounds like it." He rolled his head until he was looking at Kristin and brought his hand up to brush the back of his fingers across her cheek. "I can't believe that you went out looking like that."

Kristin frowned, "Looking like what?" She started to get up but Nathan put a hand on her arm.

"Stay here." He stood and gathered up the bags and trash from their dinner and headed into the kitchen. Kristin heard the water running and when Nathan returned he had a damp washcloth in his hand. He sat down again on the couch next to her and started cleaning the paint off of her nose. "You've got paint all over your face," he explained.

"And you let me go out in public like that?"

"You were only going to a drive through."

Kristin frowned as he moved to a splotch on her forehead. "Men have a different perspective on that. Men don't mind going out looking like hell but women always try to look better than men."

Nathan moved closer to her so that he had a better angle on where he needed to clean. "Trust me, darling. You always look good."

Kristin watched the concentration in his dark blue eyes as he moved down to a paint splotch on her cheek. He gasped as she reached out her hands and ran them over his ribcage.

"There, all clean," he said in a slightly breathless voice.

She reached down and took the washcloth from his hand. "Your turn," she said in a voice with a decidedly sultry tone. Kristin used the washcloth to first take the paint off his cheek and then she turned her attention to the splotch on his neck.

Their eyes locked as Nathan brought his hand up to run it through her auburn hair and it was only a moment before their lips met in a burning kiss. Kristin dropped the now unneeded washcloth onto the end of the sofa and slid her hands around to knead the strong muscles of his back. Their bodies pulled together and Nathan slid his hand up under Kristin's blouse as she attacked the buttons on his shirt. Their lips broke from their passionate kiss to anoint each other's face and neck with light, tender kisses. Nathan trailed little kisses down Kristin's face and chin and then down her neck nuzzling the point where the swell of her breasts formed a valley.

Both of them jumped as Kristin's vid-phone sounded. Kristin's hands halted in their exploration but Nathan continued to stroke her back underneath her blouse.

"Ignore it," he said against her chest.

Kristin ran one hand down the side of his face. "I can't."

Nathan groaned and leaned against the back of the couch again with his eyes shut and his hands by his sides.

Kristin cast him a sorrowful glance as she got up and crossed over to the vid-phone. Pressing the connect button, she was surprised to see Lucas' face appear on the screen.

"Ummm... Hi, Doc..." Lucas appeared to be more than a little embarrassed although he couldn't have known what he had interrupted. "Is Captain Bridger there by any chance?" Lucas saw Bridger raise his head off the couch in the background. "Oh. Hi, sir... I've got a little problem... umm, I can't find my key."

"Again?" Bridger asked in a calm voice. Lucas knew that particular calm voice and he really didn't want to be on the receiving end of it.

"Yeah," Lucas mumbled. "And I thought I had it so I had Tim and Miguel drop me off. I'm calling from Rossini's."

Bridger sighed and hazarded a quick glance at Kristin who appeared to be having trouble keeping from laughing. At least the neighbors had let the boy use their vid-phone. He looked back at Lucas. "I'll be home in about 15 or 20 minutes. Why don't you wait on the dock?"

"Yes, sir... and thank you... sorry for disturbing you, Doc."

"Goodnight, Lucas," Kristin said as she turned towards the vid-phone again. As she pushed the disconnect button Lucas' last impression was of the Captain staring at him and shaking his head.

Kristin turned back from the vid-phone to see Nathan getting up off the couch. He walked over to her and put one hand on her cheek. "Have I mentioned before that his timing sucks?"

"Yes," she said with a smile.

Bridger leaned down and placed a quick kiss on her lips. "Goodnight, Kristin."

Kristin was still smiling as he turned away. "Good night, and thanks for all the help."

"My pleasure," he said as he waved and walked out the door.