Malcolm sighed with relief as he set his hand to the garden gate.

It had been good to visit San Francisco again, and to spend a week deep in highly technical discussions with like minds. The fruits of his many months of study and experimentation on the creation and modification of EM fields had been extremely well received, and he was confident that Starfleet would soon benefit hugely from the work that he and others were carrying out. It compensated enormously for the moments – that still came, now and then – when he missed being part of Enterprise's crew in her ongoing adventures.

Not that he would trade a single moment of his new life for his old. He had a wife, a family, and a home to come back to, and those were the most important things of all.

That thought reminded him that if all had gone according to his fiendish plans, he was about to become the innocent victim of his own children's nefarious schemes. He smoothed the grin from his face and replaced it with a look of tiredness – not hard to do, as the flight from California had been long and wearing. As advanced as intercontinental flight was these days, it was still nowhere near as effective as warp drive, and it still necessitated hours of near-immobility and sometimes terminal boredom; security considerations prevented him from even using a PADD to review the latest Starfleet research on weapons design, which was his chief topic of interest.

He didn't even have time to glance into the retinal scanner before the door was jerked open.

"Dadda!" "Dad!"

He was used to being greeted like a long-lost traveller on his return from his occasional forays to the USA, and today was no different. Not that he thought he would ever tire of such a reception, or that he ever ceased to marvel at the contrast between the outright demonstrativeness of his children towards him and the strict restraint imposed on both his and Maddie's behaviour towards their father. One of his deepest fears had been that he might unwittingly recreate the distance and reserve between himself and his son that had existed between him and his father, and the daily proof that this was not so was a source of constant joy and relief. Hoshi had taught him about relationships, Hoshi was his guiding star in this as in so much else, and he put entirely down to her his success as a loving father; notwithstanding the fact that he had quite simply adored both of his children the moment they were put into his arms...

"Hey, did you miss me then?" He braced himself against the onslaught of arms wrapping around him, though taking the opportunity to wrap his own in return. "Whoa, steady, you'll knock me down!"

"We always miss you, Dad!" Charles hugged him even harder. "And you know we couldn't knock you down if we tried!"

"Oh, I don't know. Growing like bloody weeds, the pair of you. Come on, let me get in the door. And I hope someone's got the tea on, or I'll divorce her."

"She's in the shower!" Jessa giggled. "Washing her bum 'cause you like it so much!"

"JESS!" Her brother was scandalised.

The muscles in Malcolm's jaw fairly ached with the effort of keeping his face straight. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings...

"Well I heard him telling her how much he likes it!" the tot said indignantly. "You did, didn't you, Dadda?"

Malcolm coughed, and tried not to catch Charles' accusing eye. "I may have mentioned something about it," he evaded.

"You shouldn't listen to grownups when they're talking lovey stuff anyway." His son pulled a gargoyle face, and took the briefcase and jacket from him. "Mom'll be out of the bathroom in a minute, Dad, the water isn't running any more. Then you can get in. Best be quick, though, the dinner's nearly ready."

One eyebrow rose. As pleased as his children invariably were to see him, it was unusual to have his schedule plotted quite so meticulously.

"I'll just run up and see," he responded disingenuously. As he took the stairs two at a time, a wail of delighted accusation followed him.

"DADDA WANTS TO SEE MUMMA'S BUM!"

=/\=

It could not be truthfully claimed that he passed up altogether the delightful if brief opportunity to admire his wife's bottom as they exchanged places in the bathroom. If a woman was so obliging as to raise the towel that wrapped her slender body just enough to let that most delectable set of curves catch her husband's eye, it would have been ungentlemanly indeed of him to let such a kindness go unacknowledged. He might even have considered himself thereby licensed to allow one hand to explore that enticing roundness. But fearing that if he detained her for more extensive exploration he would be the subject of further denunciation from their youngest child, Malcolm paused only to give Hoshi a smacking kiss before fairly pushing her out of the bathroom, mitigating his knavish conduct with only the whispered word 'Later!'

As blissful it was to wash off the stresses of travel under his own shower in his own bathroom in his own house, for once he didn't linger about it. He was quite acute enough to interpret his wife's gleaming smile and nod as all the evidence he needed that his baited trap had been sprung, and that the only thing remaining was to enjoy being manoeuvred into buying the puppy he already owned.

He had always maintained his intention to buy a dog, as soon as his children were old enough to treat the animal responsibly; he did not approve of the risks inherent in combining large teeth and small babies. He had been looking around with care for some months now, and finally found a local breeder whose pedigree German Shepherd bitch was about to whelp. He had been embarrassed to find himself recognised, and had had some ado to prevent having a puppy pressed on him as a gift; the deal was finally settled with a slightly reduced asking price and a little harmless play-acting when the pup should be ready for its new home.

Hoshi, who liked dogs too, and whose part-time home-working would allow her time to help him train the new arrival to fit into the household, had been only too happy to play along. From that moment on there was nothing to do but wait till they got the message that the puppy was ready, and fortuitously that had come the day before his return home from San Francisco. His wife was already primed with the route she had to take home (ready to cite 'traffic problems' if Charles noticed they'd diverted from the usual road), and there could be little doubt that if the notice was there in place their sharp-eyed, dog-mad son would do the rest.

As he dried himself quickly and got into the tracksuit that was laid out waiting for him, Malcolm allowed himself a small, satisfied smile; it appeared that his tactical skills had not deserted him. Catching sight of his expression in the mirror at the top of the stairs, he once again had to erase an unmistakable smirk – his old colleagues aboard Enterprise wouldn't recognise him now, smiles came to his face so easily and so often.

Dinner was eaten at the table, and manners were expected, though the governance of them was far less strict than had ever been the case at his parents' home. His children were allowed to talk freely, unlike himself and Maddie, but inclusion in the family meal was a privilege and was expected to be treated as such. A children's table and chairs were still in the garage, and there was the implicit (if not particularly serious) threat that they could be resurrected for use if proper table manners were not observed. On this particular evening, a far less observant man than Malcolm would have noticed that both the youngsters were eating their food as though they hadn't been fed for a month, and casting reproachful glances at their parents' rather slower pace of consumption.

Meals in the Sato-Reed household tended to vacillate between the respective cuisines. Tonight, to celebrate his return, Hoshi had served up his favourite 'Toad in the Hole', and for all that aboard Enterprise his appetite had been second only to Trip Tucker's (Trip could eat like a wolf in a famine winter and still go back for more), it was a close-run thing to finish the last delicious mouthful.

"Why don't you go and sit down in the lounge and have a little nap?" suggested Hoshi, starting to gather the empty plates.

"I'll take care of the table!" Charles fairly snatched the dinnerware from her hands. "Jess, you bring the glasses – and don't drop any!"

Husband and wife traded a small, secret smile as the children rushed to ferry the dinner things into the kitchen. A whispered conference took place as the dishwasher was loaded, but was hushed into a tense silence as the placemats were whisked away and restored to the sideboard and the crystal rose-bowl placed carefully in the exact centre of the table.

Normally Malcolm and Hoshi would sit together on the sofa, but tonight Hoshi deliberately took one of the armchairs. From the way she was biting her lip, it was obvious that she was waiting with delight for the fun to start, and for the third time that evening he was obliged to wipe a smile off his face.

His parental radar picked up a moment of intense if wordless communication between his children, and then they came around the sofa and sat one on either side of him, cuddling up to him.

"Well, this is a pleasure!" he said lightly, one arm around either of them. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you two were after something!"

"It's not like that, Dad!" The sting of a rather-less-than-easy conscience lent a guilty note to Charles' indignant denial. "We do love you, of course we do!"

"Yeah! We love you loads!" piped up Jessa.

There was a short silence, while he pressed his lips together to keep them straight. Hoshi picked up a magazine and took refuge behind it, but he saw the infinitesimal shake of the pages; she was giggling her head off.

"Da-ad – you know when we were coming home from school..."

"Well, yes, not personally, because I wasn't there, but I daresay you did," Malcolm said encouragingly.

"Well, there was this sign..."

"A sign. A road-sign?"

"No, a cardboard sign." Charles was far too deep in the minefield to realise his father was teasing, and went on, now with a note of unmistakable anxiety, "You – you know you've always said about having a dog?"

"I may have mentioned it now and again," nodded the head of the household, with the appropriate gravity.

"Well, it said on the sign they had puppies for sale!"

"And we went and looked at them!" Jessa could contain her excitement no longer, and burst out, almost climbing up him in her anxiety. "And they only had one left, and it was a Sherman Jepard, and they said they'd keep him for us, and oh Dadda can we have one, can we, pleeeeeease?"

"Well, we haven't heard what your mother has to say about it," he pointed out.

"Mum, tell him!"

"Oh Dadda, he was lovely, he had ears and everything!"

"Well I wouldn't even consider buying a puppy who hadn't any ears. How would he hear us talking to him?" The pressure on his jaw muscles by now almost unbearable, he looked across at Hoshi, who took a moment to compose her face before emerging from behind the magazine, her eyes bright with unshed tears of laughter. "Well, Mrs. Sato-Reed, do you have anything significant to add to the tale of this paragon among puppies, complete with ears?"

"He was a cute little guy," she replied, with only the smallest of tremors in her voice. "And it was really lucky we just happened to see the sign, and they just happened to have one left."

Charles looked at her closely, and she was undone; she started to giggle uncontrollably. A frown of suspicion creased his brow as he swung around to stare at his father. "Dad, did you know about those puppies?"

The man who had been trained by Starfleet's covert ops branch to withstand torture crumbled like a month-old digestive biscuit and began to laugh his head off. He couldn't help it, even when Jessa started to punch him in the chest and squeal "You did! You did!"

Her brother began to land a few punches of his own on Malcolm's heaving ribs. "Dad! You – you rotter!"

"Oh, God. Oh, I'm too old for this! Pack it in, you pair of maniacs!" He fended them off with difficulty. "I admit it. I might have heard something about them. A while back."

"You've seen them?"

"No." He captured Jessa's flailing fists and held them still. "I haven't seen them, because when I visited they weren't born yet. I talked to the breeder and I saw the parents, and I liked what I saw. But in the end I wanted my kids to see the puppy first and decide they wanted him to be one of the family. And you did and you have, and that's good enough for me. We'll go over there and you can show him to me, and he's ours."

"Now! Dadda, we go now!" howled Jessa.

"No, sweetheart, we do not go now." He held up his hand, stilling her protest. "I'll make a phone call, and arrange for us to go there tomorrow so I can meet him, and then we'll collect him on Saturday after we've had time to buy all the things we need – he'll need a basket, and food, and a leash, and toys, and whatever else. He's not going anywhere and nor are we. It's only two days away."

Her lip trembled, but she recognised the voice of authority, and seeing satisfied acceptance in Charles's face she nodded dolefully.

"I think you should both thank your dad for this," Hoshi said gently. "It was his idea from the start."

"Well, I still think he's a rotter for playing a trick on us, but – thanks, Dad." The boy buried his face in his father's chest and hugged him, and Jessa swallowed her brief disappointment and did the same. "I can't wait till you see him. He's just beautiful!"

"'S got ears!" came a muffled voice.

Above their heads, Malcolm winked at his wife. "My pleasure."