Author's Note: Hi everyone, and welcome to the new story! Those of you who have been following along for awhile will note that the first few chapters look quite familiar! As I mentioned in the last chapter of Such a Winter's Day, I realized I let that story go on a few chapters too long, when they actually belonged in the sequel story. Because there is no mechanism to fix that on either of the sites I post on, I have instead copied those chapters in their entirety to this work, and marked in Such A Winter's Day where readers are supposed to stop reading and switch stories. Not the most elegant kludge in the world, but it'll do the job. I hope you enjoy where the story goes from here, and feedback is incredibly welcome. I'm worried readers won't follow me from one story to the other, so even a wave hello to tell me you're still here would be great. Chapter Four is all new, by the way! Enjoy!

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Donna woke slowly, luxuriating in the softness of her bed, cuddled into the soft warmth of arms around her. She was the only one who really slept in the middle; Josh and Sam were both sleep-rollers and couldn't handle it. But she loved it, on the few occasions they'd been able to manage nights together. This morning she was snuggled up to Josh, her back pressed to his chest and his arm slung around her waist as though she were a particularly favored stuffed animal. At the same time, she and Sam shared one extra-long pillow, their heads close together and one of his arms tangled with hers. The guys were both still sleeping, so she idled for a few moments and just enjoyed the feeling before yawning and stretching, stirring them both. "Mmm, morning."

Josh shook his head, tightening his arm around her waist. "Nuh-uh," he muttered. "I'm declaring a moratorium. No morning."

"I second," Sam agreed drowsily. Between one thing and another, they hadn't gotten to sleep until very late, especially considering that Josh's body was still on East Coast time. But Donna was a creature of habit and it was after eight in the morning, hours later than her normal wakeup time.

She extracted her arms from Sam's and wriggled out of Josh's grip so she could sit up and nudge them both. "Come on," she urged, "we're going to show Josh the beach today! Go out sailing," she reminded Sam, to no avail.

"Later," Sam suggested, reaching up to try and pull her back down.

Donna sighed at both of them. "I'm getting up, you two can stay in bed all morning." She slithered off the end of the very large bed she and Sam and now Josh shared and padded into the bathroom.

"Good idea," she heard Josh mumble from behind her. Sam rolled over into the space she'd left, and Josh wrapped an arm around him instead. Donna snorted a laugh and closed the door behind her. Her body was twinging in a few places this morning, but all good aches, the sort attached to pleasant memories. She wasn't much of a shower singer, but her mood this morning was enough to bring out a little humming anyway.

After Zoey and Charlie's wedding in June, they'd spent an amazing night together in Nashua, and then two weeks later, she and Sam had flown down to Florida for a long weekend at Josh's sparsely furnished condo. It had been another full month before Josh had been able to arrange some time off from his punditry obligations and fly out to California, but that was all right with her. Just the fact that he was coming to them this time was important, a milestone in their relationship. Donna loved Josh, and she knew that Sam loved him too, but neither of them could be in a relationship with him where they did all the work. This was a good start.

By the time Donna finished her morning ablutions and wandered back into the bedroom in her towel, the guys were awake, if not exactly fully cognizant. She gave them a cheerful smile and started to get dressed, rather enjoying Josh's suddenly poleaxed look. Sam was always an appreciative audience, but he'd gotten past the stunned reactions months ago. Despite temptation, she kept her dressing quick and mostly functional, lest they miss out on any more of the morning. They'd made that mistake in Florida, and though Donna had no real regrets about a weekend where they never went outside, Sam had been talking about finally getting Josh out onto the boat almost since he'd gotten the boat.

Breakfast was easy enough, the bagels and muffins Donna had picked up from the bakery combined with butter and a pot of coffee did the job just fine. There were not, she realized quickly, enough copies of the newspaper to go around. Even that wasn't too big a deal; she simply hid the one copy they did have in the back of the pantry to be read later. President Vinick had ruined enough perfectly nice mornings already, and she didn't even want to know what he might have up his sleeve today. She liked keeping up with current events, and she loved talking about politics, but one day off wasn't really too much to ask.

Having all three of them together at the table was surprisingly domestic and not-weird (and one of these days Donna was going to stop checking her not-weird meter about this, but probably not just yet), with most of the talk concerning Sam's little yacht and all the things he'd done to it that he planned to show off to Josh today. Josh knew from boats about as much as he did from alien spacecraft but he was a good sport about it, listening with an only slightly glazed expression and making occasional jokes about polishing the bowspirit. Finally, though, as they were finishing the last of the coffee, Josh looked up from his mug. "I guess we need to talk about what happens when we go out."

Donna glanced at Sam, then looked back at Josh. "How so?" she asked cautiously. His tone of voice said he was talking about more than who had to ride in the backseat on the way to the marina.

Josh grinned a little, his favorite half-sarcastic smirk. "I know it probably doesn't even need to be said, but none of this leaves the apartment, right?" He gestured to the three of them around the table. "You never know who's going to be hanging around taking pictures, especially in LA."

That got a frown from both his dining companions. "So what," Sam asked, "you want us to act like strangers when we're out together?"

"I don't think it has to go quite that far," Josh replied, a sardonic note to his voice, "but the, you know, the touching and stuff, that's not gonna play well if anybody catches it."

"We've always touched each other," Donna pointed out, toying with the edge of her napkin. "All of us, all the time we've known each other. Nobody's said anything before."

"Yeah, but that's different," Josh insisted. "It's different when there's nothing underneath it to dig up. If somebody had looked at us in the White House and gotten suspicious and started looking, it wouldn't get them anywhere so it didn't matter. What about now, though? There's a hell of a lot more to find!"

"So maybe they find something," Sam responded, getting the stubborn set to his mouth that Donna knew well. "What does it matter? It's nobody's business but ours, and we aren't doing anything wrong."

Josh literally smacked his forehead with his hand, hard enough that it sounded painful. "Do you even hear yourself? A candidate for the U.S. Senate, talking about publicly engaging in a three-way relationship, including sleeping with another man? You wanna think about how that's going to play in Orange County? What about the Imperial Valley? What about if you ever want to even think about running for President? God, Sam, if anybody ever heard about what we've done already, your career is probably over." He clenched his fists on the table and looked down at them, his voice strangled as he spoke. "If we were half as smart as we all say we are, we'd stop this here and now."

Donna reached out and covered one of his clenched fists with her own hand. "Maybe that would be the smartest thing to do," she allowed calmly, "but it's not really what any of us want, is it?"

"It's not about what we want!" Josh insisted. "It's about what we can possibly hope to have without destroying everything we're working for! Politics is ugly, Donna, you know that!"

"Not everything can be about politics!" Sam insisted, his own voice growing louder to match Josh's. "There are things that are more important than politics! If we give everything up just to win an election or gain a few points in the polls, then what the hell are we doing any of it for anyway?"

"You're right that it's dangerous, Josh," Donna agreed, even as she took Sam's hand with her free hand. She deliberately underpitched her voice, lowering the volume and knowing they'd both stop to listen. "You're right that it might not be wise. Sam and I being together is probably not the wisest thing either. He could do a lot better in terms of a political match. But it's not what we want." She looked at Josh, waited until he raised his eyes to look back at her. "We are more important to us than politics. You are more important to us than politics. God, look at everything we lost for the sake of the Bartlet administration! I'm not going to go through that again! We shouldn't have to give up everything just to serve the country."

Josh didn't say anything, just looked away. Sam took a deep breath. "I know politics is your life, Josh, but it's already just about killed you two or three times over. If there's an opportunity someday for me to run for president, then yes, I want to do it! But I don't want it more than I want you or want Donna. And if that means I wind up spending the rest of my life working in transactional law in some little LA firm, I can live with that. We've already changed the world, don't you think we deserve a chance to finally live in it?"

"Yes," Josh said, sounding like the word was being dragged from his unwilling throat. "But I need you to be able to change the world again. I need you to go to the Senate and fix all the stuff that's getting screwed up out there." His hand relaxed slightly under Donna's, so that she could slip her fingers around his and squeeze them. "I can't do this if I'm going to ruin things for you." He scrubbed his face with his free hand. "And honestly, I don't know how I'm not."

Donna looked over at Sam and quirked an eyebrow. He sighed, but nodded a little. "If it's what you want," she told Josh, "we'll just be your best friends in public. We can go easy on the touching. But you may end up getting jumped in a broom closet sometimes, I make no promises." She managed to say that last bit totally deadpan, despite Sam's snort of laughter.

Josh laughed too, soft enough that she felt it through his arm more than heard it. "I guess that's a risk I'll have to take," he replied. "In private, things can be the same, but in public..." He shrugged. "This is just how it has to be right now."

"The way it has to be really sucks," Sam began, and Donna worried that he was going to start the argument all over again, "but I see your point."

"It's nobody else's business anyway," she offered. "This gives us our privacy. Politics or not, I don't want to give that up."

Sam stood up and started to clear plates to the kitchen. "That's another good thing about ocean travel," he called over his shoulder. "There's a lot of privacy!"

Josh looked at Donna and grinned. "I knew he'd be able to bring it back around to that boat," he murmured to her, sotto voce. She laughed.