Inferno

Chapter 8

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Early Tuesday Evening || Hollywood Hotel

Callen felt like Gibbs was sitting right next to him and hauled off and had given him the worst head-slap the senior agent had ever handed out to any of his probies. Nell just admitted to needing love, just like she knew he needed. Could it be? Dare he even hope?

He hurried and followed her into the bedroom. Without hesitation, he laid down next to her and pulled her face from the pillow and nestled it into his shoulder.

She looked up at his face and saw all the emotion it contained for the words she had spoken. But the tears in her eyes blurred her ability to understanding just what the meaning was that it contained for her. Unable to read whether he was showing her pity or compassion, she buried her face into his shoulder again and began to lament opening up to him the way she did.

Callen was rubbing his hand over her back and whispering in her ear, "Shhh, Nell. Don't cry. Shhh." He bent over and placed a small kiss on the side of her forehead.

Nell just continued to cry. How can he still be so nice to me. I acted like a silly little schoolgirl, and he acts like it just doesn't matter, she thought.

"Nell, please stop crying. It hurts me so much when I see tears spoiling the beauty of your face, especially when I know that I caused your tears."

The young woman turned to look at him again with her tear streaked face. Snuffling her nose several times, she made a valiant effort to stop her crying.

"Wh...What?" she finally was able to say.

"Nell, I don't want you to cry. I need you to answer a few questions I have. Can you do that for me?"

She just shrugged her shoulders, not trusting her voice to answer him.

"A few minutes ago, you said that you needed love too, and I felt from what you had told me earlier, that it's not with Eric, right?" the agent asked.

"Um, yeah," Nell sorta grunted out her answer, a bit apprehensive of where he was going with this.

His piercing blue eyes locked onto her amber ones as he hesitatingly asked her, "That wouldn't be because you would have feelings for me, would you?"

Damn damn, damn, I know he's a great agent, but how the hell did he figure that one out? And what the heck can I tell him? He'll know if I'm lying. And if I tell him the truth, I'm gone from OSP. Bad enough that I just screwed up this whole operation, Nell thought.

"Nell, I'm waiting for an answer," Callen said, even though her eyes had told him what he wanted to know.

Nell hid her face in his shoulder once more as she whimpered her answer, "Un huh."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" he asked in a very soft voice.

"Why didn't I tell you sooner?" she asked. She thought it over for a minute or two, then broke out in hysterical laughter. "Oh...Callen," she said as she tried to catch her breath. "You just don't know how ludicrous that question is." I've had these feelings for you from the first time that I saw you. But telling you then would have been absolutely comical."

"Why would you say that?"

"I had just landed a position on the first-string team of agents in OSP. Do you realize how exceptional you guys are? Of course not. You do this every day. It's second nature for all of you. You have no idea how exclusive a group you are. You don't know how admired and respected you are throughout NCIS."