Despite his promise, it was late when Lee finally drove back to his apartment, wishing their secret marriage wasn't turning out to be so frustrating. Remembering his joke about "The Godfather" earlier just made him remember Don Corleone's line, "A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man". He thought back to Amanda's quiet complaint about being dragged in too many directions. How can she think this doesn't bother me just as much? he grumbled inwardly. I want to spend time with the boys as a family too... It's not like I'm leading some kind of great bachelor existence when she's not around.

He opened the apartment door with a sigh and looked around the empty rooms. I should be in Arlington, climbing into bed with my wife, not into a cold bed alone.

He got as far as stripping off his work clothes and pulling on his pajama pants before realizing that, tired as he was, Amanda had been right about that coffee earlier. Between the coffee and worrying about his wife's state of mind, he wasn't going to be falling asleep anytime soon and with the idea of climbing into a lonely bed so unappealing, he decided he wouldn't even try. I'll bore myself to sleep, he decided.

He went back to the living room, poured himself a scotch and went to the closet to pull out one of those boxes Amanda had told him to go through. The one on top turned out to be a mix of theatre programs, printed itineraries from travels abroad, receipts for flowers for girls long in his past and he soon realized there was nothing there he needed to store anymore. Carrying it down the hall to the garbage chute, he tipped out the entire contents and watched it vanish without regret.

"One down, two to go," he thought with satisfaction, trudging back to the apartment and pulling out another box. When it too turned out to be full of miscellaneous paperwork he didn't want or need anymore, he shook his head at the idea that he'd been moving these same boxes from apartment to apartment for years. No wonder Amanda did spring cleaning at her house every year – he couldn't even imagine how much clutter she'd have if she kept everything the boys collected. He shoved the box beside the front door and pulled the last one off the shelf. As he did so, something that had been underneath it, pulled free and fluttered to the floor, landing by his feet.

Lee went to put the box down by the couch and walked back to see what it was he'd lost in transit. It was a sealed envelope, but he couldn't recall ever having seen it before and there was nothing written on the outside. Turning it over in his hands for a moment, he suddenly caught a whiff of something and brought it up to his nose to sniff. Amanda's perfume.

He grinned, wondering what she was up to. He stared at the envelope then at the last box, hesitating.

Nope, work first, reward later.

The last box was sorted at high speed, although he was glad he hadn't just gone with his first impulse and dump it without looking through it. Halfway down he'd found a treasure trove of photos of Julie as a child from the months he'd spent in Nevada along with some of the letters Maggie had sent him after his return to Washington. He slowed down then, looking through the papers more carefully, setting aside quite a few mementos he'd forgotten were in there, but like the others, this box was mostly what Amanda would classify as junk.

Smugly satisfied that he'd accomplished at least one item on the Honey Do list, Lee picked up the envelope at last and flopped back on the couch to open it. At the first few words, his eyes widened in shock. If it hadn't been Amanda's handwriting, he would never have believed what he was seeing. Glancing down the rest of the page quickly, he gasped and then started to laugh uncontrollably.

Definitely a bedtime story, he grinned. He got himself back up off the couch, headed to his bedroom, and climbed into his too-empty bed before picking up the letter again and settling back against the headboard to read, still laughing.

Dear Penthouse Forum, it began,

I'm writing to tell you about the most amazing experience I've ever had in my whole life. I know that some of your readers will think I'm making it up but it's absolutely all true. It all happened a few years ago. I had driven my then-boyfriend to the train station and well, because it was a last-minute thing, I was only wearing a nightgown with my coat over it. Suddenly this incredibly handsome man stopped me on the platform and asked me to give him a hand. He had a five o'clock shadow straight out of a Miami Vice episode and he was wearing some kind of white tux that really showed off his great shape. He had on tight trousers that left nothing to the imagination, if you know what I mean, and I was really hoping I'd be able to get a closer look sometime when he leaned in really close and said "I need you to help me with my package."

Lee stopped reading for a moment, laughing too hard to go on. Catching his breath and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, he started to read again.

Well, as you can imagine, I was absolutely all over that in a New York minute. I could feel myself getting wet just thinking about it and my nipples had gotten so hard at the sound of his deep husky voice that it was even painful to feel my very flimsy nightgown against them.

He had his arm around me now and he was leading me back down the platform. He kept looking behind him like someone was following and I started to wonder if he was a secret agent or something, like James Bond. I wondered if he could feel the heat coming off me at the idea of his hands on my bare skin. I mean I'd always had fantasies about secret agents…

Even as his grin broadened, Lee's hand drifted down his body, beginning to lightly stroke the erection that had been growing as he'd continued to read.

He explained that he really was a spy and he was being followed by two men who wanted the information he was carrying. All I wanted to do was grab his hand and put it between my legs so he could feel how turned on I was. "Now what was that about wanting me to look after your package?" I asked him. Those tight pants made no secret that he was feeling the same way….

Lee's hand began to stroke more firmly as the letter went on with its tongue-in-cheek sexy version of their first days together until finally he had to put it aside and close his eyes as he gave into the pure physical sensations brought on by the letter's imagery. After lying there for a few minutes to recover, he pulled himself back out of bed and into the bathroom to clean himself up. Meeting his own eyes in the mirror, he remarked "Your wife is one in a million – you are one lucky son of a bitch, Lee Stetson." His reflection nodded in agreement and he walked back to the bedroom, even more saddened at the sight of the empty bed. Picking up the letter to set aside somewhere safe, he glanced at the last lines.

And then he asked me if I wanted to go for a spin in his helicopter and he'd show me his stick and throttle moves. Of course I said yes, but that's a whole other letter…

"A whole other letter?" he asked out loud to the empty room. He looked around, wondering where else she might have hidden letters for him. He climbed into bed, chuckling. "That To Do list suddenly seems a lot more interesting."

He lay there for a moment, content and relaxed now, but staring at the empty pillow on the left side of the bed. He was almost sleepy enough now to finally give in to the exhaustion but something was wrong and it took him a moment to place what it was.

"Clean sheets," he muttered with half a grin. Amanda had obviously been by at some point during the last day and changed the bedclothes and while he loved these little touches from his wife, it meant that the bed smelled of crisp linen and that was not what he needed right now. He rolled onto his back, thinking for a moment before pulling himself upright and padding to the laundry hamper. It only took a few seconds to find what he was looking for and soon he was back in the bed, Amanda's Georgetown sweatshirt draped across his pillow.

This time he was asleep in seconds.