A/N: I do not own Criminal Minds. This is where the third person writing starts.

Another short, "filler" chapter. The next is longer, considerably longer. I'm almost done with it.

Chapter Two: This Is Certainly…Unexpected

Life is full of surprises, but never when you need one.

― Bill Watterson

Rossi turned to face Hotch once they were alone in his office. "Aaron, do you believe this?"

"Dave, it's possible. You were married to their mother at around the time-"

The Italian shook his head. "Danielle wasn't pregnant when she left me. She must have been having an affair and that's who their father is. Hotch, if they were mine she would have told me."

"Not if she didn't want you to know about them." Hotch said solemnly as he picked up the birth certificates and handed them to his friend.

Rossi took them and looked them over, looking for any possible sign of a forgery, though he knew he couldn't tell the difference even if he tried. The birth certificates stated that Haylee Xaviera and Harper Amélie Rossi were born in Coventry, Rhode Island in February of 1994.

It's possible, Dave thought. His ex-wife grew up in Rhode Island, and had family there at the time of their divorce. Another glance at the birthdates got the wheels in his head turning. If they were born in late February of '94 and if they were born a few weeks early as multiples often are, then it was very possible that he could be their father.

The girls' middle names fit Danielle's ancestry as well. Danielle's father was from Quebec and was the son of a French-Canadian woman and a Spanish-Italian man, and her mother was a full-blooded Italian from Providence, Rhode Island. Danielle was always very proud of her heritage, so it made sense for the middle names to be Spanish and French.

It made sense.

"What do I do Aaron?"

"Do you think they're lying?" Aaron Hotchner questioned, getting to the point.

Rossi thought about it for a moment. "I think it is possible that they are telling the truth."

Hotch nodded briefly and said, "Dave, they have nowhere else to go. Let them stay with you for tonight. I'll give you the rest of the week off to figure out what you want to do."

"Thank you. Have Penelope send me the phone numbers of Danielle as well as her parents and siblings. I want to talk to her and her family and find out more about this."

"You'll have an e-mail waiting by the time you get home."

~.*~.*~.*

Harper twiddled her thumbs as she waited outside of Agent Rossi's office. Nervous habit. Harper always seemed to be an emotional wreck; at least that's what her mother would tell her. The younger Rossi was never as put-together and composed as the elder. Even at a time like this Haylee kept her cool. Harper knew that it was a façade on her sister's part, but was stunned at how well she pulled it off. Inwardly, Harper was sure that her sister was hurting, was scared, and was just as uncertain as she was about their future.

Harper didn't like it at the BAU office, or whatever it's called. She would rather have been anywhere else in the world- even at Auschwitz, where she almost had a panic attack on the tour the previous summer. At least while touring the Nazi concentration camp she knew that nothing could happen to her; the atrocities committed there were committed about seventy years ago.

She jumped when she heard Agent Rossi's office door open. Haylee drew in a breath and peered out of her peripheral vision to see which agent was exiting. It was the younger one, the one Agent Rossi called 'Hotch.' He told the girls that they could come back inside. The girls grabbed each other's hands and stepped inside.

Agent Rossi cleared his throat and gestured to the chairs in his office. Once the girls were seated, he sat across from them and said, "I've reviewed the information in the folder that you girls handed me, and Agent Hotchner and I both believe that it looks credible."

A short, unnerving silence followed before Haylee quietly chimed, "Thanks for, um…letting us stay tonight."

"I'm not just going to toss you and your sister out on the street. You'll stay as long as you need to."

~.*~.*~.*

The drive to his home was silent until Dave looked into the rearview mirror and asked, "Are you girls from Louisiana? Your accents kind of give it away."

Haylee smiled halfheartedly and said, "Yes, sir. We've pretty much lived in New Orleans since we were two."

"Did you like it?"

"We loved it," the girls said in unison. Haylee continued, "We could walk or ride bikes to get to most of the places we wanted to go. Worse-came-to-worse we used the transit system. We rarely had to have Mom drive us anywhere."

Dave's grip on the steering wheel loosed just a little as his nerves began to relax. "Big cities are like that."

"I like big cities. There's so much diversity; I like diversity," Haylee said.

At least the talkative one isn't stuck in a unicultural bubble, Dave thought.

Haylee's jaw dropped when they pulled into the long driveway of the house on West Foxcroft Place. "You didn't mention that you lived in a freaking mansion!"

Dave chuckled and shrugged, "Comes with the whole bestselling author thing, I guess."

"In the mountains! Wait," Harper chimed in. "Are these mountains, or the lookalike hill-things? It's so…pretty."

"Mountains," Dave replied. "I'm ninety percent sure."

He led them up to the door and put the key in the lock. Before opening the door, he asked if either of them were allergic to dogs.

"No, sir," they replied in unison.

"He doesn't bite, I promise. He'll just lick you to death," He opened the door and a dog came bounding forward to greet him. The animal then proceeded to sniff, lick, and jump on the girls excitedly as they walked inside.

Harper giggled and scratched his ears as her licked her elbow, unable to reach her face. "Slobber," she laughed, wiping her elbow on her hip.

"Down, Mudgie."

The dog licked Harper once more as if being deliberately defiant and pranced away.

The interior of the home was just as impressive as the exterior. The décor was well thought out but not cluttered so that every little thing served a purpose. The kitchen cupboard doors were those glass ones you could see through that Harper always found adorable, and one peek around the corner into the rest of it, and she could picture herself cooking the most delicious tartiflette her father had ever tasted. The foyer was a reasonable distance from the kitchen, which had a clear view into the living room but far enough away so that the noise from either area didn't completely pollute the other. Yellow was never either twin's favorite color, but the yellow-tinted walls were just bright enough to add light to the atmosphere and not so bright that it would induce headaches, plus, the color matched everything else in the house so well.

It was a nice house, a very nice house, one that Harper could certainly see she and her sister finishing out their high school years in. Danielle had implied that David Rossi was a well off man, but she never said how well off, and the fact that all of the houses in his Insert-Mountain-Town-Name-Here neighborhood made him appear wealthier by the minute. If he owned the only large, fancy house in the neighborhood, then that would have made him 'that one pretentious affluent jerk who brags to his neighbors about how much money he has in a middle to lower class neighborhood, what an asshat.' But, since the rest of the town – well, the rest of that particular part of town – mirrored his wealth, it made him 'one of those guys from the pretentious affluent jerk neighborhood who clearly has to be rolling in dollars to afford it.' Not only that, but property worth factors in the worth of surrounding properties, and Harper wasn't a genius, but all she saw when she looked at the neighbors' homes were dollar signs.

Having grown up in the more upscale part of New Orleans' French Quarter, spent summers and holidays either traveling overseas or at her Nonna and Grandpere's beachside mansion in Newport, Harper was no stranger to perks of the financially gifted, but even so, David Rossi's home was a jaw-dropper. Though her grandparents' home was larger – much larger – it was far nicer than her uncle's place in the city. Frankly, she couldn't believe this man was her father.

When she finally got over her initial shock, she timidly asked, "Where exactly is this? Like, what's the name of the town?"

"Delaplane, Fauquier County," Dave answered. "I was in early retirement for about ten years when I moved in, so I wasn't exactly expecting to make an hour long commute to and from work every day, but the view is worth it. Private enough to the comfortable, but not secluded…it's nice. I grew up on Long Island, this was a welcome change."

"I can imagine," Harper said, throwing cautions to the wind and actually touching the curtains covering the window nearest her. "As much as Hayl and I love New Orleans, we always liked our trips to Cape Elizabeth, Newport, Fountain Hills, Canada, overseas…Haylee likes Europe and Dubai. Personally, I prefer things on this side of the Atlantic, but I guess traveling is nice."

"I blame myself for that," Haylee offered light-heartedly, almost sounding like she was making a joke. "I turn every international venture with our aunts and uncles into a nerdfest. I start talking about minority languages of the area and spouting off facts like anybody actually cares. Poor Harper over here humors me, isn't that right little sister?"

"Not even one full minute older than me and I get a lifetime of this," Harper said to Dave, pointing at her sister.

He smiled at the girls, admittedly, whom he was starting to grow fond of already, and a thought occurred to him. "Have you girls eaten lunch? You must be hungry."

"No sir," they said in unison. "The food on the train was pretty good, but we weren't really hungry." Haylee added.

Dave nodded, understanding completely. "In that case," he said. "Is home-cooked Italian alright with you?"

Harper's eyes widened in disbelief; there they were strangers in this man's home and he was going to cook for them? She and Haylee's mother hated having to cook, and she raised them! "Yes sir,"

He shook his head and chuckled, "Call me Dave; sir makes me feel old."

Once lunch was started he showed the girls to the guest rooms upstairs. When he told them that they could take their pick, the sisters both slipped into the same room, opting to sleep together. "They didn't want to be apart any more than necessary in the midst of this drastic life change. Thank God it was summertime and they don't have to worry about going to a new school yet. At least they had the summer to make the adjustment.

"Um, Dave? I-" Haylee started, then closed her mouth and eyes, sighed, and opened her eyes but turned her head away. "Thank you."

"No thanks necessary, kiddo," he replied, trying to keep his smile from betraying the pity he felt for them.