Unexpected

By Didi

Disclaimers: ABC and the Walt Disney Company owns everything… and I mean everything! No infringement intended with this little piece of fluff. For god sakes, one would think that we wouldn't have to write these damn things.

Summary: Amanda and Josh find commonalities and other things.

Chapter Summary: The morning after and an unusual offer.

Timelines: After Baby Jenny is returned … and there's not Hannah in this story, at all. (Most unless character to be introduced.)

Author's Note: Um… really not sure what I'm doing right now so hopefully this story doesn't suck too badly. I like Josh's character, mostly when he's with Kendall and Bianca, neither of whom lets him get away with stuff that he could usually pull on others. And I like the redeemed Amanda with all her spit and fire and regrets. Now I'm going to throw them together and shake it up a bit. 

Key: "Spoken" "Thought"

Chapter 2 - Sanctuary

Upon coming slowly awake, Josh realized three things: 1) he was cold, 2) he was naked and 3) he was alone in his bed. The first two really wasn't that big of a surprised, he often slept in the nude and his apartment was notoriously difficult to heat; he's been meaning to talk to a contractor about that little problem. The fact that he was alone in his bed really shouldn't been a surprise either considering his recent complete and utter lack of interest in any females that weren't named Babe Chandler, but he instinctive knew that there should be…

A muffled crack of toe against wood followed by a sharp intake of breath directed his attention to the foot of the bed and solved the little issue of his missing bed companion. Amanda Dillon had one hand pressed against her mouth to muffle the cry of pain that was undoubtedly attempting to make its way to the audible levels of existence and one clutching the end of the bed to steady herself. Even from his position, Josh could see that the toes of one foot was firmly pressed against the calf of the other, no doubt trying to apply enough pressure to ease some of the pain that was clearly written on her expressive face.

The fact that she was trying to be quiet was amusing all in itself but her position at the moment made it that much more comical, as was her reaction when he causally asked, "Going somewhere?"

Screeching in surprise, her pained toes forgotten, Amanda turned to face him and promptly lost her precarious footing. It was rather unfortunate that she fell at a bad angle and missed the bed all together; there was an perceptible thump when she hit the floor.

Rather then laughing, Josh felt a moment of surprise followed by concern when Amanda didn't immediately reappear over the edge of the bed. "Amanda? Are you all right?" There was a whimper followed by a moan. "Well at least she's still alive," he rationalized as he crawled over the length of the bed and looked down at the prone woman who was currently blinking up blankly. "You okay there?"

With a sigh and some more whimpering, Amanda managed to sit up on her own… then quickly averted her eyes. "Clothes?"

Josh looked down and then back up again with a grin. "Why? It's not like you haven't already seen everything."

Rolling her eyes, Amanda got up to put her back to him and fumbled around for her stuff.

"Where are you going?" Josh cheerfully asked once more. It amazed him how he really wasn't all that concerned about the fact that he was sitting there naked with Amanda Dillon, a woman that once upon a time would have like to maim him rather than talk to him. "Hey, hey, you're going to end up hurting yourself that way?" he caught her as she stumbled once more. "How's your head?"

"Just great," Amanda replied, carefully avoiding looking at him.

Because it really was just really funny watching the color creep from her cheek to neck and how she's managed to look everywhere else in the room except in his direction, Josh took her arms and forced her around to face him. She was as stiff as a board. "Well you relax a moment?" and when she resisted tugged at her hard enough to unbalance them both and sent them tumbling onto the bed again. "Okay, looks like the alcohol hadn't completely left the system yet."

Scrambling up again, Amanda blushed furiously from head to toe and firmly have him her back again.

"I can't believe you're being all puritanical about this," Josh said with an unholy grin before taking pity on her and tugging the sheets off the bed to drape over his body. "Happy now?"

After peeking at him sideways, Amanda finally turned toward him willingly with a sigh of relief. She then scowled at him when he stood there grinning like an idiot. "What?"

Josh held up his hand defensively. "Sorry. This is a little new to me."

She made an irritated noise and attempted to leave once more.

"Oh come on," he protested and reached for her hand and pulled her back. Because she was still so unsteady on her feet, he gently guided her to the bed and sat her down without any trouble. "I've never had a woman so eager to leave my bed the morning after."

Again, she gave him a look that said for him not to push her too far.

"We didn't do anything wrong, you know," he pointed out rather reasonable, just waiting for her to jump on him about last night. "We're both consenting adults that derived mutual pleasure from each other's company last night that didn't hurt anyone else in the world."

Amanda slanted him a look that was difficult to read.

"Neither of us are involved with anyone… physically," he added because he knew both their histories with unrequited love. "And for the record," tugging on the sheets to keep it high enough so as not to expose her to any more embarrassment; though why she would be embarrassed at the sight of something she had so intimately been acquainted with already was quite beyond him, "I have absolutely no regrets about last night." When she didn't comment, he felt a little tug of concern. "Do you?"

There was flash of something in Amanda's eyes that didn't sit well with Josh.

He searched his memories of last night quickly. Details were fizzy at best after they finished the second bottle on his couch and he really remembered very little but the exquisite pleasure. "Amanda," he asked softly, "Did I hurt you last night?"

Eyes wide with surprise, "No, of course not."

A wave of relief rushed him. "Then what's wrong?"

She hesitated a moment, her face impossible to read. "Did… did I take advantage of you?" At his raised brows, she rushed on quickly, "You were so drunk last night and neither of us was really in any shape to…"

"I think we did just fine," he interjected with a leering grin. "Better than fine if I remember correctly."

She hit on him on the arm with the back of her hand. "Will you be serious for a moment?"

"No."

"What?" befuddled.

"No, I don't want to be serious," he clarified with a sigh. Apparently, Amanda was having some difficulties this morning. "Amanda, you didn't take advantage of me last night… if anything, I may have taken advantage of you," he confessed settling himself a little comfortably on the sheet. "If you will recall, I'm the one that got us in the bed."

"So?"

"Sobriety was necessary for such a feat," he pointed out with a great deal of patience. He waited while that thought ran its course through her head. "And I believe I was the one that kind of initiated our little…um… merger; though honestly you can't blame me for that either. I am, after all, a lusty young man..."

She flushed red.

Maybe it was the alcohol that was still in his system but he was rather delighted to discovery that Amanda was easily flustered with talks of intimacy. "I'm not ashamed," Josh said, tipping her chin up to look into his eyes. "And either should you." Watching her eyes clear, he smiled at her again. "I think last night was necessary for both of us."

Taking a breath, something deep and cleansing, Amanda nodded her head slowly and really faced him for the first time. "I just… I don't know what to think right now. Last night was a little more then I had intended it to be."

"I was just going to get really sloppy drunk until you came along; not that I'm not grateful or anything," Josh admitted and lay back down the bed, relaxing a moment and letting the morning after aches and pains catch up to him. Covering his eyes with one arm, he groaned and wished to hell he hadn't decided to do an inventory of his systems. It was easy to ignore his body's complaints when he was distracted by something else.

"You all right?" Amanda asked, her sweetly soft voice tinged with concern.

"Yeah, last night finally caught up with the rest of my brain," he replied with a great deal more amusement than he actually felt. "Don't worry, it'll pass."

Amanda sat there for a while in silence, as if waiting for Josh to tell her what comes next. When he finally got up enough energy to move again, he sat up and swung one lazy arm around her shoulders and pressed a quick kiss to her temple. "Don't fret, we're okay."

"Don't fret?" she asked with a quick amused smile. "Did you seriously just say that?"

"Shut up," he said nudging her with an elbow and a laugh.

She grinned back and sighed. "So…" she looked around the bedroom, admiring the clean lines of the room and all the shiny surfaces. "Did you decorate this place?"

Josh gave her a frown and looked around the ultra modern room. "Heck no. Bianca picked most of it out with a little help from Miranda apparently. I didn't get around to the bedroom because I was a little distracted by…" he didn't continue, not sure what the correct protocol was about mentioning a past lover while sitting in bed, naked, with someone you were just intimate with.

Amanda nodded her head, knowing where that was going. "Um… About last night."

"It was necessary," Josh repeated with a shrug.

"Really?" she asked skeptically.

He studied her slightly confused face and came to a quick conclusion. "I wasn't talking about the sex, Amanda; I was talking about the drinking and the talking."

"Oh."

Laughing at her profuse embarrassment, he sat back up. "You want breakfast?"

"What?"

"Okay, we're going to have to work on your attention span, maybe get your hearing checked or something," Josh informed her as he got up and went to the closet for his robe. He didn't often wear the blue terry robe Zoey had insisted he have when walking around the house in his boxers, he still couldn't understand the purpose of it, but this seemed like the appropriate time to break it out. "I can make some mean scramble eggs."

She gave him a funny look in return.

"Yes, I can cook," he informed her before tugging off the sheet from beneath the robe and pulling her to her feet.

"Scramble eggs isn't cooking," Amanda informed him as she followed him into the kitchen with a grin, not sure why she was finding this whole situation to be funny now.

"It is when it's all you can make," Josh replied cheerfully as he sat her down at the breakfast counter and went to look in the fridge. Besides beer, a bottle of champagne, maraschino cherries, jars of olives that Zoey left behind and some bottles of whipped cream (there were too many cartons of ice cream from Bianca in his freezer to go with those bottles of whipped creams), Josh also had a fresh carton of extra large grade A eggs, butter and milk, staple of necessary foods. "Where we go."

Amanda smiled as Josh puttered around the kitchen making scramble eggs with an clever hand. When he finally sat down with her with platters of eggs and hot coffee, she stood up on the footrest of the barstool to reached over and kissed his forehead.

A little stunned, mostly because no one has kissed him there since his mother, "What was that for?"

She regarded him with a kind of serene smile, "For last night, for this morning, for thanks, for the distraction, for peace." She took a bite of the eggs then paused. Looking up, she pointed her fork at him, "But not for the sex."

Josh grinned back at her. "Kitten's got her claws back."

"The aspirin I took this morning finally kicked in," she replied in the way of an answer and eating more eggs. "Oh, thanks, by the way, for whatever it is you gave me last night."

"Good stuff, huh?" Josh said drinking his coffee black.

"Kept me from turning my stomach inside out this morning," she admitted with a sigh and looked around for sugar for her coffee.

"Good stuff then," he replied and ate some more eggs and kind of wishing he had bread for toast. He'll have to remember to go grocery shopping sometime this week. "So, tell me about the boathouse."

"What?"

"Again with the 'what,'" he sighed and set his fork down. "Come on, Amanda."

Rolling her eyes, "It's just somewhere I go to be alone and to think and to…"

"Not have to deal with everyone else, friend or foe?" he interrupted with.

Tilting her head, she considered it for a moment and finally nodded. Honesty seemed to be the theme of the day for both of them. "Yeah, sometime it's just too much to have people there looking at you and telling you that everything is going to be all right and it's not your fault and you shouldn't blame yourself, blah, blah, blah." She stabbed her eggs with a little more force than necessary.

"I hate that," Josh said quietly as he sipped more coffee; he was beginning to feel more human now. "I can't help the way I feel and telling me to not feel it only pisses me off."

"Makes you want to scream," she added, "'Cause it's really not their place to tell me how to feel and act…"

"And you don't really need them telling you what you already mentally know. But emotionally…"

"There's no controlling emotions," Amanda said softly, "Just like there's no controlling things that you can't do anything about." She set her fork down, her appetite gone now.

Josh was silent, his eyes watching the dejected girl before him with sympathetic eyes. He's never given Amanda's pains much thought until last night. He would bet his next paycheck that the Martins couldn't pile as much guilt onto Amanda for the recent events as Amanda could all on her own. It couldn't have been easy for her to live in a house full of people that were always so understanding and affectionate; ready to forgive and forget at a drop of a hat, especially Jamie Martin, when she herself could accomplish such a feat. She must have needed some alone time more than once in the recent weeks. "I'm sorry I dragged you away last night."

She looked up at him. "You didn't. I left because I wanted to."

"Not because you were afraid I'd do something really stupid while intoxicated?" he asked dryly.

Shrugging, "Okay, maybe that too."

He smiled. "Well, I'm sorry all the same. I know that's where I go when I need to just… just unwind."

"Not here?" she inquired causally.

"Here too," he answered honestly, "I like it here. It's not… not tainted with anything, know what I mean?"

"No Dr. Madden, no Babe, no anyone," she added bluntly, "No memories, no fingerprints."

"Yeah… except Bianca and Zoey… and to some extent, Kendall." He picked up a glass cat shaped salt shaker, "She thought these were cute and simply had to have them… until Spike decided to use it as a teething toy."

Amanda laughed and glanced around the room at some of the odd pieces of novelties: a porcelain dog with blue spots, a black vase with turquoise feathers, three rather large sparkling globes. "Let me guess…"

"Yeah," already confirming her thoughts. "They're all from Kendall; said my place was too sterile." He shook his head in exasperation but did feel a cornel of warmth at his sister's interest in his life, especially now that he's finally put Babe Chandler behind him. "Like she doesn't have enough to think about with Spike and the new baby."

"There's really nice; gives the place some character," Amanda pronounced and heaved a large glass frog with a gold crown. "Though this…."

He took the frog prince from her hands. "That's Miranda's. She gave it to me for safe keeping until she comes back."

Studying him a moment, Amanda was amused to see that he wore a goofy smile remembering his sweet niece. "You love her."

He rolled his eyes and set the frog down. "What's not to love? She and Spike… frighteningly beautiful kids with the personalities of their respective moms. God, this town better brace themselves for the next generation of Kane children."

Amanda laughed, a twinkling sound that had Josh smiling as well.

"So yes, I love this place," Josh admitted with a reluctant sigh. "It feels like home now."

She nodded in perfect understanding. "It's a nice place; good sanctuary."

"Good what?"

"Sanctuary," she repeated, taking her dishes and his to the sink. When he stopped her from cleaning up, she shrugged and headed to the couch. "A place of peace; somewhere that you can hide from the rest of the world. Place of refuge and…"

"Okay, okay," following her to the sofa, "I know the definition of sanctuary, thank you very much. I only have a medical degree to prove my IQ."

Sighing, she dropped onto the couch and closed her eyes. "You're lucky."

He watched her weary face. "Wildwind too crowded for you? Let me guess, some people don't understand that term 'personal space?'"

She smiled without opening her eyes.

There was a languishing silence for a while before he looked up suddenly with an idea. Josh wasn't all together sure why he offered but at the exact moment, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do. "Well you're welcome to consider this your own sanctuary if ever the boathouse becomes too crowded."

She opened one eye to gage his expression then sat up straight when she realized he was perfectly on the up and up. She frowned when he continued to watch her without blinking an eye. "Come again?"

Wondering a little at it himself, he made clear to her his intents. "You can come here and use my apartment as you place of peace whenever you need it. The boathouse is getting to be kind of a popular place to be and there's always someone there looking for..." he made a face, "Whatever it is they're looking for. I know there's the Fusion rooftop, another popular place for the lonely hearted; but that place gets more traffic than Grand Central Station sometimes. Here, you only have to worry about me and I'll make sure to stay out of the way if you need to be alone or if you want company and someone to hear you out," he caught the her skeptical expression and added, "And no, sex will not be involved…" and then considered that a moment, "Unless you want it to be."

She whacked him hard on the arm.

"Ow…" he rubbed the sore spot and have her a frown of irritation, "I was trying to be honest here. Sheesh, I'm a guy in case you didn't notice last night, I have needs. You're a lovely girl and if you feel like you want some company, I'm not stupid enough to say no."

"You're a jerk," she said and stood up to go.

It didn't take much to pull her back and into his lap. He held her still and gave her a look of extreme annoyance. "I'm trying to be a friend," he said with less patience than before. "I'm not exactly good at something I've not had a whole lot of practice in."

Raising a dark brow at him, she regarded him with caution. "Friend?"

"Don't really have a whole lot of those around here," he said tucking her against his body and ignoring his physical reaction in lieu of his intellectual one. "Plenty of so-call family but really, not too many friends. I think… I think we have a lot in common," he smiled. "If nothing else, we both have had some pretty screwy childhoods with crazier parents."

Amanda gave a reluctant laugh at that and gave up trying to escape his hold. It's extremely annoying that he was so damn strong. "Crazy is putting it mildly."

"So…" he eased her onto the seat next to him and faced her with serious intent. "I'd like you to consider me a friend, as weird and out of the blue as this is, and let me provide you with a little place that you can run to when you need to… if you ever need to."

She eyed him carefully. "And in return?"

"In return," he acknowledged the question with a quick bow of his head, "I'd like you to do two things for me."

There was a rather sour expression on her face. "What?"

"One, don't let me go chasing after Babe Chandler anymore. Remind me why I can't keep doing that to myself or to her. She's made her choice and I have to accept that, for better or worse." It was really the first time he's admitted to anyone that he's accepted defeat, a first in his life. The pain of the loss left him a little stunned and unsure at times but he was learning to not allow the sudden stabs of aching heart to turn him into something that makes Kendall spitting mad – Kendall didn't need the stress right now.

Josh was startled out of his revere by a soft hand on his own. Amanda's doe eyes expressed a great deal of understanding and conviction all at the same time, letting him know that she was going to do just that: remind him of things that cannot be. "And the second thing?"

"The second thing is," he took a breath to brace himself, "I'd like you to help me remember my dad… Greg Madden, not as the monster that he became but the father that he was to me. You saw a good side of him that most people didn't and… I don't want to hate him. I want it to be okay to have loved him and knew that he loved me. It doesn't diminish what he did but…"

She stopped him and nodded her head in agreement, "I think I can do that for you."

He smiled and covered her hand with his, knowing that she understood something that he wasn't sure he had expressed adequately in words. "Thanks."

-&-&-&-

Shutting the door after Amanda left, and only after she insisted on doing the dishes first, Josh gave a sigh of relief – not because she was gone but because he got to share something he couldn't with anyone else in the world, it felt surprisingly good to have done so. This may not work out in the end but at least he was making an effort to put something right in his life. Without Babe, his medical career, and what was had been his family, he felt a little at sea; not sure where he was drifting off to.

Now he was slowly connecting with his sister and Jeff Martin, building his family literally from ground up once more. He had an excellent job with Cambias Industries that while lacking in the same kind of challenges his medical career had was still exciting enough to get him up in the morning. There had been some successes in trying to forget Babe Chandler where he could now go almost three hours without thoughts of her invading his peace. Distracting himself helped, so did drinking for that matter. And last night, he hadn't thought of her at all.

Going into his bedroom, Josh picked up the sheets he had careless dropped on the floor and glanced at his rumpled bed with a grin. He was still greatly amused by the fact that the woman he had spent last night with, made unspeakably passionate love to, had blushed like a virgin this morning. That was a quirky characteristic he hadn't expected from Amanda; it was ridiculously endearing. Straightening his room, he made a cursory search for used condom wrappers and such but found none before stepping into the shower to get cleaned up. Shrugging, he figured Amanda probably did a little clean up of her own this morning before he woke and was probably hoping he wouldn't remember the night before at all.

It was difficult to imagine that he wouldn't remember taking Amanda to bed. She had been intensely fervent, giving herself over so completely that Josh thought his world had shattered and reform a thousand times. And while he could completely understand if they never again come together has they had last night, he would definitely miss it a great deal. But he had given Amanda his word that sex wasn't going to be a part of this 'friendship' and he wasn't about to go back on that; especially not after what happened between her and Jonathan Lavery. He wouldn't do that to her.

Dressing himself in a dark suit and a tie that Miranda had picked out for him at Christmas, Josh smiled at his reflection. He hadn't felt this relaxed and good since… He could honestly say that he couldn't remember when he last felt so good.

To be continued…

As always, reviews are encouraged to let me know what you thought of the story.