Summary: Logan's business endeavors have been keeping him away from home, but Rory has just the solution. A pre-epilogue one-shot within the "The L's Have It" universe.
October 2012
It was late, way past Lori's bed time, but Rory couldn't get her to go to sleep so she had resorted to playing with Lori as she tottered around the living room in the hopes of tiring out her almost two-year-old.
Rory heard Logan's car pull into the driveway and the engine cut off.
"Daddy's home!" she said excitedly to Lori, scooping her up in her arms and going to the front door.
Logan walked in a moment later, his suit a little rumpled, but then almost ten hours of traveling will do that. He smiled wider than he could remember having done in the past two weeks when he saw Lori reaching for him upon his entrance into the house.
"Hey there, baby girl," he said to Lori as Rory transferred their daughter into his arms.
"Dah," she replied earnestly. Logan's face lit up even more.
Logan looked up at Rory and gave her a kiss. "What are you both still doing up? It's late." He put his bag down and advanced into the house, removing his suit jacket carefully all while refusing to let go of Lori. "Not that I'm complaining that I get to see my girls."
"We missed you," Rory said. "And she wouldn't go to sleep."
Logan kissed the top of Lori's head. "Well then I get to put you to bed, don't I?" he appealed to his daughter. Lori smiled and waved her hands.
"Did you eat?" Rory asked.
"Yeah, on the plane." Logan looked down at Lori. She was already drifting off in his arms. Rory followed him upstairs. He went into the nursery to put Lori in her crib while Rory went into their bedroom. When Rory came out of the bathroom after washing up, Logan was sprawled out on the bed, his shoes removed but the rest of his clothes still on, half asleep.
"Is she asleep?" Rory asked.
"Yup. I guess I have the calming touch. She went out like a light."
Rory lay down beside him. "Hi," she said, snuggling up under his arm that had come to rest around her shoulders.
"Hi," he said back, his eyes half closed.
"How was your trip?"
Logan sighed. "It was good, very productive. Everything is coming along well. Murdoch seems happy. This traveling is just killing me."
Rory frowned. She could see what a toll it took on Logan every two weeks when he came home from a business trip. She hated to see him this exhausted, but business was good, so Logan would never complain. Not really.
"When does he want you back there?"
"Two weeks, same as always."
"Did you show him the pictures of Lori I sent you?"
Logan smiled. "I did. He thinks she's cute. Who wouldn't? But my appeals on the basis of needing to see said adorable daughter more often are falling on deaf ears. This is what we bargained for, you know?"
Rory knew. She remembered telling Logan to go ahead with the European expansion even when they knew Lori would be here at the height of the need for Logan to be elsewhere.
"How's work? Still dealing with that delinquent writer of yours?" Logan half mumbled in his sleepy state.
They Skyped daily when Logan was in London so it was easy to keep each other apprised of what was going on in their lives.
"He's been better about his deadlines. Normally, I wouldn't care and I'd just edit the piece when he got it to me as long as it met the paper's print deadline, but one good thing about this job is having more time to be home with Lori, and I'm not going to sacrifice that for work."
"Nor should you. If there's anything we learned from Paris your junior year at the Yale Daily News, delegation is key. Glad you whipped him into shape so I don't have to kick his ass."
Rory smiled, remembering how Logan had totally saved the day when they were sure the paper wouldn't come out on time. She loved newspaper mogul Logan mode sometimes.
At some point, they both fell asleep, neither quite remembering where they had trailed off in the conversation.
Rory and the other section news editors were just wrapping up their daily briefing with the Executive Editor, Jill Abramson. Keller had left two years ago, but Rory stayed in touch with him, and they had lunch from time to time.
Rory let the other editors leave before turning around to ask the chief editor a question. "Jill, who's running the London bureau now?"
Jill thought for a second. "Erlanger, I think. Yes, he just moved there from Paris. Why?"
Rory cleared her throat. "Oh, I had heard the position was open but I guess it's been filled."
"Jonesing for an international trip, are you?"
"Well, it comes with the territory, I guess. Actually, my husband's work has been taking him to London fairly often and I thought if I moved departments or positions we might be able to move there, but if it means giving up this job then I won't do that."
Jill searched through some drafts on her desk. "Well I can't make you bureau chief, but you're the international news editor. You could do that from anywhere, as long as you were still able to check in by conference call for weekly meetings and that sort of thing. If you want to be in London, they'll clear a desk for you at the bureau."
Rory was floored. She didn't actually think this line of questioning would lead to anything. "If you're serious…"
Jill perched on the edge of her desk. "I'm serious. You let me know when you want to move, and we'll figure out the details. Ideally it shouldn't be for more than two years. But we're not about to lose you, Ms. Gilmore. I think you know your worth to this paper."
Rory nodded curtly and left Ms. Abramson's office to return to her workday.
When Rory got home around seven she was already yelling apologies into the house to their caregiver, Sylvie. She was a retired sixty-something year-old who treated Lori like a granddaughter, but she was strict about what time she had to leave at the end of the day. She'd never leave Lori unattended, she just wanted advance notice if Rory or Logan was going to be late. She had cats to feed, after all, and on occasion, her own grandchildren to visit.
"Sylvie, I'm sorry I'm late, I was stuck in the tunnel leaving the city and couldn't get a cell signal any earlier."
Logan came downstairs holding Lori. "It's okay, Ace, I got home about an hour ago and relieved her." He put Lori down in her playpen.
Rory kissed him. "You know sometimes I forget what days you're here and when you're not. But I love having you home."
"I love being home." Logan went to the coffee table and grabbed one of the glasses of wine he had poured. He handed it to Rory.
Rory removed her heels and took the glass. "Well this is a nice surprise."
Logan smiled. "And I cooked dinner."
Rory mimed being shot. "How do I ever manage when you're in London?"
"Beats me," he said, sitting down on the couch.
Rory bent down to give Lori a kiss and pass her a toy she was trying to retrieve that was just outside the playpen. Lori stood almost on her tiptoes, holding onto the side of the playpen, but she couldn't quite reach, which Rory reasoned meant the playpen was doing its job. She gave Lori the toy and joined Logan on the couch.
"She's been doing that a lot—we won't be able to contain her for much longer. Then she'll be tearing up the house."
"And here I thought we had a few more months at least." Logan took a sip of wine and put his head back. "I don't want to go back to London," he groaned.
Rory took his hand in hers. "You still have a week and a half."
"It's not enough, though. I hate missing all this stuff. I didn't get to see her take her first steps in person. I know you showed me on camera, but I want to be the dorky dad with the video camera capturing it all. She's going to grow up and hate me for missing all of this."
Rory set her wine down. "She is not going to hate you. She won't even remember when she took her first steps. This isn't going to be forever, and the stuff she'll remember, you'll be there for. You were here for her first words," Rory offered.
Logan thought about that. Lori's first word hadn't been "dad," but he wouldn't have expected it to be even if he had been around more. And when he was putting Lori to bed last night, she had managed three or four words, nonsensical though they were in combination. "Still. I don't care if Murdoch dissolves the partnership, I'm going to tell him my next trip to London will be my last for at least six months."
"How much longer does he expect to need you there?"
Logan shook his head. "A year, maybe a year and a half. But that's her whole childhood. Then she'll be in kindergarten…middle school…high school—"
"Stop. Logan, she's not even two years old, relax. Besides, if you want to spend all that time with her, you're going to have to do it in London."
Logan gave her a confused scowl.
"I talked to Jill today. I'm the international news editor, Logan. I can do that from anywhere. She said they'd have a desk for me at the London bureau whenever I asked for it, so what's stopping us? It'd just be for a year or so, and we'd keep the house, we'd still have Stars Hollow to come back to."
Logan sat up. "Are you serious?"
Rory nodded in earnest.
Logan searched for the right words to say. "But your mom, our families—"
"—will all still be here when we get back. I'm sure my mom will be our first visitor, and of course she'd bring Will and Richie so Lori could see her uncles."
Logan was choked up. "You'd do that for me? Just uproot our life for this?"
Rory shrugged. "Logan, I love you. I hate spending this time apart and we don't have to. Lori won't even be in school yet. Really, for once, the timing couldn't be any more perfect."
Logan looked around. This was perfect. His life was perfect, but this would make everything so much easier. He didn't know what to say.
"Should we eat?" Rory asked, scooping up Lori to put her in her high chair.
"Sure," Logan said. "And then you and I can look for flats in London."
"Oh flats," Rory said, following Logan into the kitchen.
Logan smirked as he doled food out onto their plates. "Don't worry, I'll teach you the local vocabulary."
"I didn't know I'd have to learn a whole other language. Never mind, I don't want to move to London anymore."
Logan could feel one of Rory's crazy rants coming on. He bent down to kiss her before sitting in his chair. "Thank you. Thank you for London, you have no idea how much this means to me."
"I do. That's why I did it."
