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Katrielle Layton is an intelligent woman, but she has the habit of infuriating Emiliana. Not that Emiliana Perfetti is an easy person to annoy, but Katrielle has been known to irritate her on more than one occasion. She doesn’t do it deliberately, but Katrielle’s habit of endless optimism, not to mention her detective business that goes against everything her kind of job works on, just annoys her sometimes.
Although, she has to admit that Katrielle is not only very intelligent (albeit in her own rather abstract way), but rather pretty too. She does have a strange sense of fashion (just what is that headband all about?), but it does rather suit her. And then there is the way she smiles when she gets a puzzle correct that just…
Yes, she most definitely has an odd relationship with Katrielle. Part of her just finds Katrielle infuriating (because she somehow deduces all of the facts even more quickly than Emiliana, but without any of the profiling techniques Emiliana uses), but the rest… well… Katrielle is a very beautiful woman. And very kind and caring and rather professional for someone who rides a bicycle to work and routinely talks to her dog. Sometimes, she just doesn’t know how to feel about Katrielle.
She is a complete mystery.
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Another thing about Katrielle is her very blunt way of telling people things. When Katrielle tells her that she is autistic, that explains it somewhat (because Katrielle’s autism can make it quite difficult for her to hold conversations in a socially appropriate way), but it never fails to amuse her when Katrielle tells people things in the bluntest of ways.
One day, Katrielle walks up to her as she leaves Scotland Yard with her hand tucked behind her back and a nervous smile on her bright red face. That dog is following her, and Katrielle appears to be listening to the dog’s barks as though it was actually talking to her.
“Ah, Emiliana!” Katrielle says when she is close enough, waving with her free hand. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“What do you want to talk about?” she asks, glancing towards her car on the other side of the car park. It looks like it might rain, and she doesn’t want to get soaked.
“Uh, well, there’s something I need to tell you, actually,” Katrielle says, and she starts fiddling with the hem of her dress (apparently, that sort of fidgeting she does is called stimming). “You see… the thing is…”
And that is when Katrielle displays her famous ability to be completely blunt.
“I think I’m in love with you.”
Emiliana’s eyes widen. Of all the things she might have expected Katrielle to say, that wasn’t one of them.
“You… you are in love with me?”
Katrielle grins. “Yes! And you are in love with me.”
Emiliana stares at her, wondering what is going on in her life. She has never fallen for another woman before, but she knows that Katrielle is right. And for a profiler, she is amazed that she didn’t notice this before. Because Katrielle clearly loves her, and it seems obvious that she loves Katrielle too.
Katrielle takes her hand from behind her back. She is holding a bunch of flowers. “Here, these are for you.”
She takes them and inhales the fragment smell. They help to wake her up a bit; Emiliana just feels a bit dazed.
“I…” she says, trying to work out what to say. “I’m…”
“I’m sorry if I’ve confused you,” Katrielle says. “After all, this must be a bit of a shock. But you know what they say: the truth is always stranger than fiction.”
And she starts giggling as though she said something funny.
“No, that isn’t the problem,” Emiliana says. “I just don’t know how to… it is strange to say, but… I don’t think your feelings are unrequited.”
When Katrielle processes her words, a huge grin crosses her face. Her hands actually flap for a few seconds before she clasps them together.
“Wow, that’s… just wow,” Katrielle babbles. “Um… would you like to go out to dinner tomorrow night? I know a lovely Italian restaurant. It’s probably not as good as a real one from Italy like you must know, but—”
“Stop babbling,” Emiliana says, smiling. “And I would love to go with you.”
Katrielle beams and then gives her a quick kiss on the cheek. And then she rushes off with her dog following behind, calling something like, “Brilliant! I’ll send you the address! See you tomorrow!”
And Emiliana crosses the car park and gets into her car, not quite sure what just happened. But she does know one thing: for the first time she can remember, she is actually looking forwards to meeting up with Katrielle. And she just has a feeling that things are going to very different from now on. But that is completely a good thing.