I've been having some formatting problems so I hope this posts okay. Yvonne
CHAPTER ONE
It was becoming somewhat of a typical scene for them which was a good thing. Lucas and Sami were sitting on the couch in his apartment. Sami had just finished the dinner dishes and was channel surfing for something acceptable to watch. Lucas was lounging in the corner reading the evening paper. Will was at the table finishing up his homework so he could maybe play some video games before his bedtime. Normally, he would be rushing through his homework so he could hide out in his room from his parents, but ever since they had announced their engagement, Will was enjoying spending his evenings with them as a family.
It wasn't so long ago that it was common for at least two of the three family members to be mad at each other-usually Lucas and Sami, of course. There was hardly an evening where at least one of their doors wasn't slammed or a few choice insults weren't exchanged, whether in anger, annoyance or just plain habit. Now an air of contentment had settled over the Roberts-Brady family and they couldn't help but enjoy their time together away from the troubles and stresses of the outside world.
In what seemed like another lifetime, Sami would have been running around worrying about her and Lucas' upcoming wedding. But in their siblings' infinite and quite selfish wisdom, they had decided that they just had to have Lucas and Sami's original wedding date. Forget that Lucas and Sami had picked out that particular date with their son or that they had already rented rooms and made down payments. Sami had said some pretty nasty things to Belle when she found out. She had since apologized for some of the things she had said but some of it she had repeated in even more colorful detail. Even Lucas was disappointed about the whole affair despite being sympathetic towards Philip's situation.
When Sami had later explained things to him through a series of heart wrenching sobs, it was clear to Lucas that Belle had hurt her terribly with her callous, selfish behavior and he reluctantly admitted that he hadn't exactly helped by not backing her up. So in the end, they had decided to postpone their wedding for a while until the drama of their siblings' marriage died down.
Sami had also made the difficult decision to distance herself a bit from her sister. Taking Sami's wedding date had been the last straw in a string of disappointments from Belle. Sami had always tried to be a good sister to Belle but from her bizarre friendship with Kate to her blatant disregarding of Sami's feelings, Sami was convinced that Belle couldn't really care about anyone but herself. Then again, it seemed appropriate that Belle would go the way of the rest of her fairweather family.
Sami stopped her channel surfing when she reached what appeared to be a promising episode of A Wedding Story on TLC. She suddenly scrunched up her face at the scene before her and continued flipping through the channels. She either didn't notice or chose to ignore Lucas' soft grin from behind his newspaper. He looked up to see an identical grin from his son's face and gave him a wink before returning his attention back to the day's headlines.
The channels flew by as Sami scrolled from movie to football game to music video and finally through a series of reality shows. She let out a dissatisfied sigh from time to time but never came close to settling on one thing to watch.
Finally Lucas reached out from his end of the couch and grabbed the remote control before she shorted out the television set with her frustrated search for the perfect evening program. "Give the television a break, Sami. Maybe this is a sign that you should find a good book to read tonight." Sami tried to get the remote back from him but to no avail. They both could hear Will giggling while Lucas continued to dodge Sami's grabbing hands and taunt her with the object of her abuse.
When fatigue won out over the desire to bicker with Lucas, Sami plopped back on her side of the couch. Lucas waited for that cute little pout that he knew she couldn't help but elicit. He was not disappointed when he spotted her lip poke out in her most adorable show of protest. When both he and Will broke out in a fit of laughs, Sami did not look too amused. "Don't laugh at me! I had a very stressful day at work and I just want to relax and watch some T.V. but nothing's on this stupid thing tonight. What's the point of paying all this money for cable if there's nothing worth watching?" She crossed her arms and glared at the cable box as if it were the root of all evil in her life.
Lucas took pity on her and set the remote on the table along with his newspaper but Sami didn't move to reclaim it. He moved over closer to her and took her in his arms in a loving gesture. "What can I do to make you feel better baby?" Sami looked over at him warily but then smiled sweetly at his kind gesture before giving him a quick kiss on the lips.
"Do you guys want me to leave?" Will asked from across the room. "Because I'm finished with my homework and I can just go play some games in my room." He was getting used to his parents spontaneously making out in front of him so he'd learned to cut things off early before they got out of hand in his presence. He supposed it would get old at some point but he was too happy to have his parents together to get grossed out like most of his friends would be. He planned to support his parents' affection having experienced the bitter alternative-even if it was a bit much at times.
Sami smiled adoringly at her son. "No, sweetie, we'll behave ourselves," she said innocently. Lucas, however, proceeded to nuzzle her neck and plant soft kisses along her shoulder. "Right Lucas?" There was no mistaking the insistence in her tone even though she continued to smile at him.
Lucas reluctantly ceased his exploration of her for the sake of their son's sanity. "Spoil sport," he jokingly replied to Will. However, he kept his arms tightly wrapped around his fiancée. "How about we whip out a game since you're so bored? We've got Monopoly in the closet and Scrabble, I think. By the way," he said turning his attention towards Will. "You can add Poker to the list of games that we can't play with you anymore along with Chess since you seem to have developed a nasty habit of beating your mom and I."
Will didn't even bother to deny it as he gloated from his father's praise. "What can I say Dad? I've got skills. Just like my mom and dad."
"Flattery will get you everywhere, my boy," Lucas responded. "See what kind of a monster we raised?" he directed at Sami. "This must be your doing being so smart and all."
His loving gaze was not lost on Sami but she couldn't let him get away with such a comment. "Oh no you don't General. Our son gets that smart mouth directly from you. Why don't we settle this like adults over an intellectual game of Monopoly?"
"You're on!" Lucas and Will shouted at the same time. Will walked over to the closet and returned with the board game as Sami cleared off the table. "I wanna be the racecar!" Will declared immediately.
"I want to be the thimble," Sami added. She opened the game and started taking out all of the different parts to spread out on the table.
Lucas reached over the table and picked the moneybag for his own piece. "You can be whatever you want, dear, as long as it's clear that I'm in charge of the bank." Before she could protest, he grabbed the rack of money and kept it close to his side of the board.
"Will and I won't take that personally, Ebeneezer," Sami said rolling her eyes.
"Don't be like that Sami. Let's be honest here. We all know that I'm better with money than either of you-especially Mr. Blow-All-of-My-Allowance-on-Junk-Food-and-Video-Games over there."
It was Will's turn to roll his eyes as he grabbed the dice and prepared to start. "Okay, Mom, we've got to take Dad down now. He's insulted our honor and we must repay him with a scathing defeat at Monopoly." Sami giggled at her son's dramatics and shook on an agreement to gang up against his father.
They were well into the game and surprisingly Sami was beating both her men. She was being kind of reckless in the beginning and they thought she would go bankrupt for sure but she owned both Boardwalk and Park Place as well as all of the railroads. It was Lucas' turn but before he could roll, the phone began ringing. Sami answered the phone since she was closest to it, keeping an eye on both Lucas and the bank.
"Hello?" No one answered back although she could hear noises in the background. "Hello, Roberts residence." Still nothing. "Is anybody there?" The only response was a click before the phone went dead. "Well that was rude." Sami shrugged her shoulders and returned to the game.
A few minutes later, the phone rang again and Sami again picked up the phone only to have the person hang up on her immediately. "What the hell?" Sami answered clearly annoyed.
"Maybe it's just a wrong number," Lucas said focusing his attention on mentally willing Sami to land on Pennsylvania Avenue where he had 2 hotels.
"Whatever," Sami answered rolling the dice, bypassing Lucas' property and landing on Chance. "They could have at least said something instead of hanging up on me." She scowled as she forked over 100 for some stupid hospital payment. "It was probably one of your old girlfriends or something," she added with a smirk hoping to provoke him into rolling a bad turn.
"Hey, if one of my old girlfriends calls here, they're going to have to answer to you, sweetheart," Lucas responded not taking the bait. He rolled the dice and landed on a utility reluctantly handing over a sizeable amount of money to Will who owned them both.
Will happily took his father's money from him. "Thank you very much. I told you that purchase would be very lucrative, Dad."
"That you did, Buddy." Will rolled right as the phone began ringing again. This time Lucas answered the phone as he watched Will gratefully land on one of his own properties. "Hello...anybody there? If you have the wrong number we'd appreciate if you stopped calling." After a few moments of silence, the caller hung up on him as well. "Hopefully, they'll stop calling now that they know a man is in the house."
Lucas didn't miss Sami's look of skepticism. "Of course, Lucas." She safely landed on Boardwalk now adorned with three houses. Lucas rolled and landed on Community Chest. His card advised him to take a ride on the Reading Railroad. Luckily, this allowed him to pass Go and collect his 200. Unfortunately, Sami owned all of the railroads so he had to now hand it all over and then some to his lady. "Oh stop pouting and hand over my money, Lucas." Lucas smiled at her mischievously and folded the stack of bills before stuffing them slowing into her low-cut top.
Sami tried to ignore the sensual way his hand lingered on her skin as he drew his hand back from her cleavage. "It's a pleasure doing business with you as always Ms. Brady." He winked at her before handing the dice over to their son.
"You guys are out of control, you know that? This is supposed to be a family game. Rated PG, PG-13 tops!" Will added. They all laughed and resumed their game.
They played on until Will bankrupted Lucas before finally conceding defeat to his mom. To her credit, Sami tried not to gloat too much especially in front of those persons in the room who had a business degree. She told Lucas that it was too bad that she hadn't bankrupted him since she was sure they would have been able to work out a pleasurable arrangement by which he could work off his debt.
By that time they finished packing everything up, it was almost an hour past Will's bedtime. They decided to head back over to Sami's apartment since neither Sami or Will felt like going back over there in the morning before they headed off to school and work.
Will headed straight for bed and Sami changed into her pajamas while she waited for Lucas to join her. As she was brushing her teeth she decided to check her phone messages. She absently pushed play and looked through her mail. The first message had a few nondescript sounds and then a hang-up so Sami deleted it. The second call was a hang-up as well and Sami deleted that one too. She quickly checked the caller ID but no numbers showed up in the system. When the third and fourth calls were hang-ups she looked at her machine and was astounded to see fifteen more messages on the display. As she went through the messages one by one, her sense of alarm rose when they all proved to be hang-ups.