Okay, so the wonderful inspiration for this story came from the brilliant Hilary Parker, who gave me the idea to write this (and the permission to, for which I shall love her forever! :D) The basic plot of Lester's wife being a head-hunter was completely her idea, I just thought it would be brilliant to see her and Jess together!
It took me a while to decide what type of personality I thought Lester's wife would have - but I hope you like what I came up with. :D
I don't know where the name Colleen came from, but it wouldn't leave oncE I thought of it. :D
I hope you like it, and this is dedicated to Hilary Parker for being awesome. :D
Colleen Lester wasn't a woman who took 'no' for an answer.
She was a busy woman, widely known as a firm, no-nonsense head hunter for the Home Office. She believed that good manners went a long way, and scruffy clothes simply meant a lazy countenance.
And Colleen Lester did not have the time or patience for anybody with a lazy countenance.
Despite this, she was friendly, and willing to help anybody who she could. She was the type of person who stayed in contact with everybody she met, and was never unorganised.
She didn't have the time or patience for unorganised people either.
How she fell in love with sarcastic, complaining, abrasive James Lester, she still didn't know.
But she had. And they'd now been happily married for ten years, in April, with three children.
Running a successful career in which she'd risen through sheer determination and an excellent work ethic with three children to look after was difficult, but Mrs Lester wasn't one to quit. Sure, she'd cut back her hours to spend time with her children, but she still got just as much work done.
As time progressed, her reputation became stronger, and people admired her more. It became easier to get a job done properly. Whenever her name was on a file, the workers at the Home Office knew they couldn't do half a job. They got on with it.
So when she'd been assigned to searching for employees at the new ARC after the disappearance of Abby Maitland, Connor Temple and Danny Quinn, her husband had been more than willing to defer to her.
Of course, James Lester chose Matt Anderson. The field team was something she knew he had to personally overlook, and she knew exactly why - curt and aloof, he could be, but her husband wasn't cold and unemotional. Losing three members of his team had knocked him back and filled him with guilt, so it was only right that he was the one to choose the next employee to put at risk.
Besides, Matt Anderson hadn't exactly been hard to decide upon - the man was practically trained for the job.
But Colleen was in charge of the other position, one which her husband was more than willing to let her fill.
She'd searched through hundreds of applicants, filled with clichés, pleas, excessive boasting and an increasing number of ridiculous references, until she'd finally given up.
This wasn't just a top secret government position she was trying to fill, it was someone her husband was going to be working with for years to come. Whoever she hired was going to have to be strong-willed, intelligent, appropriate and determined, and that was just the Home Office's limitations.
Colleen had her own set of standards.
Jessica Parker wasn't what she was expecting.
But she knew the young girl was perfect as soon as she met her: she was kind, unassuming, caring, willing to help, clever, cheerful and polite.
But she was also capable of giving as good as she got.
She reminded Colleen of how she had been at her age.
The young woman had just left a good job with a lot of potential in Human Resources when Colleen bumped into her outside the Home Office.
She was wearing a bright green skirt and orange blouse, purple heels and a purple bow in her hair. Colleen stood opposite her in a black suite with a ridiculously violent shade of pink matching her shirt and shoes together.
Jess had dropped all the folders in her hands, her laptop, her coffee and her lunch, but she was more interested in apologising to Mrs Lester than picking up any of her stuff.
"I'm such an idiot sometimes," She'd offered cheerfully and apologetically by way of explanation.
Colleen had offered her an interview right then. Of course, she couldn't just give her the job, and she did have a duty to the government to ensure that this woman could actually do the job well, but as soon as that was proved, Jess Parker had been declared the 'perfect' candidate in her report, and the Minister had had no choice but to hire the only referee who had impressed the notoriously unimpressed Colleen Lester.
Ever since then, Lester's wife had enjoyed hearing how Jess was, and making sure she was getting on okay at the ARC, even if it was behind scenes where the young Field Coordinator had no idea.
So one Tuesday afternoon, when Colleen had made a rare visit to her husbands office at the ARC to remind him that it was their youngest daughter's piano recital that evening, and to bring him the lunch he'd forgotten, she wasn't surprised when she walked right into Jess Parker on the way into his office.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" The woman exclaimed optimistically as she exited Lester's office, adding an aside of, "Don't take him personally. It's lunchtime - Lester's usually quite grouchy around this time."
Colleen smiled, indicted the lunch with her free hand and replied with a friendly, "Don't worry, I brought a peace offering."
"I can hear you two, you know!" Lester called irritably through the glass. The women shared an amused smile, then went their separate ways.
"Who do you think she is?" Abby whispered much too loudly to the others as they stood by the ADD, pretending to look busy, but really staring through the glass into Lester's office.
"MI5?" Connor suggested excitedly. "SAS? Assassin?"
Matt rolled his eyes. "Assassin?"
Connor shrugged, "Why not?"
"Why would somebody send an assassin to kill Lester?" Matt pointed out in his flat Irish tone.
"An assassin with lunch," Jess added, tapping away at the keyboard to the ADD, the only one out of the four of them actually doing any work.
She glanced up at the others and even Matt was looking confused.
"Maybe she's a dinosaur in disguise-"
"Your ideas are just getting worse, Con," Abby smirked.
"Maybe it's from the really really distant future?" He supplied, chuckling at his own humour.
"Why would dinosaurs evolve to look like humans?" Abby grinned.
"Okay, okay," He held up his hands in mock surrender. "Just sayin'… I don't see any of you lot coming up with a bright idea, do I?"
There was a long pause, whilst they considered the challenge.
Matt pushed away from the ADD desk.
"Foreign Secretary," He supplied, causing the others to glance at him out of surprise.
He was playing Connor's game?
There hadn't been an anomaly for almost two weeks now. Matt was bored.
Abby hesitated, then saw Connor's gleeful, expectant expression, and exhaled with an unsure, "Scotland Yard?"
Connor gave a whoop of delight, high-fived her, and then rushed out with an excited, "Maybe they've come to take him away?"
"Try not to sound too hopeful, Connor," Abby teased.
Before he could answer, Jess interrupted them.
Spinning her chair 180 degrees in one swift movement, she spun to face Lester's office, where the others were still looking.
"Or maybe," She smiled, nodding towards the office where the two figures were deep in conversation. "That is Colleen Lester."
Connor, Abby and Matt snapped round to face her.
"What?"
"What?"
"Eh?"
Jess allowed herself a smug smile, then elaborated. "That's Lester's wife. She works for the Home Office, she was the one who recruited me for this job. She's nice."
"'Nice'?" Connor spluttered. "Lester's… Lester's Lester! How can his wife be that… that…"
"Colourful," Abby supplied. Colleen was wearing a navy blue skirt-suit with sleek black heels and a pastel yellow blouse.
"When I first met her, she was wearing sleek pink Prada's," Jess sighed dreamily.
The others were saved from having to respond to that - none of them really knew how to anyway - by the arrival of Becker.
He dragged his feet over to them, not noticing that they were all staring in the same direction, and collapsed in a chair next to Jess.
"Abby, the new recruits wanted to 'play' with the Dracorex. Should I tell them he's a carnivore, or does he need feeding?"
Abby smirked. "They can't be that bad, Becker."
"One of them tripped over his own shoelaces," Becker told her flatly, talking across Jess. Then he blinked and focused on her dreamy stare, turned to Abby and sighed, "Who mentioned shoes?"
Connor, Abby and Matt laughed, and Jess came out of her daze.
"Guess her super-sensitive Becker senses out powered her love of shoes," Connor muttered to Abby under his breath. He didn't see Jess blush, or Becker roll his eyes.
Abby did, so she elbowed him.
"She's coming out," Matt suddenly told them all, cutting across Connor's whining, and spun to lean down as if he was consulting with Jess over something on the ADD.
Becker sat up, giving himself just enough time to run a weary hand over his face, and pretended to join their conversation.
Abby and Connor started up a terribly obvious conversation about plants right there in the middle of the Ops Room.
There was a moment of awkward silence as the Lester's emerged into the Ops Room.
"When you've all quite finished pretending to work," Lester drawled from above the steps. They all gave up immediately and turned to him and his wife. "I suppose I'd… like you to meet my wife."
"It's nice to meet you all, finally," Colleen smiled at them all in a friendly manner, gracefully descending the few steps to give Connor and Abby a firm handshake each. "It's nice to know you two are alright."
They exchanged confused, alarmed looks, then glanced at Lester, who was giving nothing away.
"Jess?" Lester addressed her instead, beckoning her over.
She complied, giving Becker a stern warning abotu messing with her computer as she got up, and went to stand in the spot Colleen had just vacated, whispering to Lester sincerely, "It was lovely of you to introduce us to your wife."
"Well, I tried to dissuade her," Lester grumbled. "But what can you do?"
Jess smiled and shot him an eye roll. Lester shrugged his shoulders in mock-innocence in that aloof manner he'd perfected.
"Don't be so grumpy, Lester," She grinned at her boss. "You love us really."
He scoffed but didn't deny it. Instead, he asked, "Did you find those files, by the way? The ones I was supposed to send to the Minister yesterday?"
"Yep," Jess sung happily. Lester winced at her cheerfulness. "All sent off on time."
"And the meeting with the new private investors?"
"All organised and ready to go. I also created you a very fetching PowerPoint."
"Oh, great," Lester sighed dryly.
Mrs Lester continued to greet the others, all with the same handshake and a few polite words, complimenting Matt on his credentials, and Becker on his work on improving security.
When she came back to stand by Jess she gave up the handshake in favour of a hug.
Jess let out a surprised squeak but nervously hugged the woman back.
"N-Nice to meet you again, Mrs Lester," Jess stammered out as Colleen broke the hug, smoothing down her suit and moving to stand on the other side of her husband.
"I'm glad to see you've settled in well, Jessica," Colleen smiled. "And that you've been keeping my husband in line for me."
"Of course," Jess tried not to giggle at Lester's affronted expression.
"He can be very difficult."
"Oh, I know," Jess laughed. "But if he's eaten, and he's not busy, then sometimes I think he actually cracks a smile."
"You might want to try doughnuts whenever you want something out of him," Colleen told Jess conspiratorially. "They're a far sight better than that secret stash of whiskey he has."
"Yes, yes," Lester sighed, throwing his head back in exasperation. "Bond over me, why don't you."
Jess and Colleen laughed.
Back down the few steps by the ADD, Abby, Matt, Connor and Becker exchanged disbelieving looks throughout the exchange.
Connor leaned over at the last moment and whispered loud enough for everybody to hear, "Is it just me, or is anybody else watching Lester and his two wives?"
Abby snickered as Lester gave up interrupting the discussion his work-wife and real-wife were having, and sulked back into his office.
"Which one do you think he's more afraid of?" Abby grinned.
Please check out Hilary Parker's fic "Say It With" - it's actually genius. Her writing's awesome, and she has the characters down so well. Go on, you know you want to... :D
Also, before you go anywhere - I hope you liked this! Please leave me a review, as I don't think I've actually even read a fic with Lester's wife in before, so I have no idea if anybody will like this? Thank you!