A/N: Here's the next chapter of Not Alone... To all the people who read and reviewed the last chapter... thank you so much. :)

I am working on faster updates and more regular uploads for my other stories too... Please bear with me while I work something out with RL. Thanks for your patience in advance. :)

At first, she'd been leery of working as part of a team. All of them were thieves in one way or another and being a thief, you developed a paranoia about a lot of things in life. She'd only consented due to curiosity at some of the members and the money that had been offered. She'd heard about a couple of the people involved in her professional circle and she'd been quite curious as to what kind of people they were. She knew right from the start that working together was just going to be a disaster. And she'd been right... and wrong. The first part of it, things had gone well and just when they were about to be lulled into a sense of security, the floor had dropped out from under them...

The money they had been working towards had disappeared from in front of their hands and eyes, plus they'd all just barely escaped with their hides intact from an explosion. Of the whole lot, Parker had probably been the most disappointed and the angriest at the development. She'd learnt it the hard way to not trust anything and anyone and there was no way some one cheated her out of the money she'd worked for. But then, their planner or mastermind as he called himself, the older guy Nathan Ford, had called the group back in, and this time, he'd promised a bigger plan... a bigger payout.

Against their better judgement, they'd added another member to their group, a grifter named Sophie Devereaux, who it seemed had some sort of history with Nate. Not that Parker could confidently say that because, she'd always been extremely awkward when it came to relationships. Human interactions were not her forte and Parker knew that very well. So, when Sophie had acted her way out situation after situation flawlessly, no matter how badly she'd acted on stage, Parker had started to develop a startling amount of respect for the older woman. Sophie also took Parker under her wing, often explaining things that Parker found weird or unnatural, that were normal for everyone else.

After the success of their first plan, all of them had received pay-offs that could probably set them up for the rest of their lives... Not Parker. She already had enough money stashed in safe houses around the world to run several third world countries, but one could never have enough money... Or that's what Parker thought. While the rest of the group had spent some of their money on things they'd wanted or bought places they'd liked, Parker had just converted her share to gold (more for easy transportation than for any love of gold... she loved the green of banknotes much more than any other color) and stored another stash in a safe house... this time in San Francisco.

They'd all thought that it would be a one time job... But had been pleasantly surprised when they'd been called back. Meeting the group again hadn't been as uncomfortable as she'd thought it would be... And some of her favorite personal memories came from the job... Ahhh... She could never forget the sweet surprise of finding the crate full of cash... And the horror she'd felt at having to give it away... just give it back. That had taken some time for her to digest... voluntarily giving money away to someone else after having worked hard to get it in the first place.

But giving the money to the hospital had made Parker feel something that she'd almost never felt before when she wasn't robbing some priceless treasure from some unsuspecting rich guy... happiness. She'd never felt happiness while giving away money before... maybe because she'd never given it away before... but that was beside the point. Maybe there was something in this 'good guys' thing. Maybe they could give it more tries and see if it worked out the same way all the time.

They'd all known at the end of that job that while they were all fooling themselves that they might work a job or two more together, given a chance, they would love to do this more and more often. Thus, what had been a rag-tag bunch of individuals, each specially talented in their own area, had become a team... and lately they'd become something more... a lot more.

Sophie had already started forging a friendship with Parker and soon, Nate had become her go-to guy. The two older people had effortlessly donned the mantles of pseudo - parents in their team of misfits that fit so well together. Parker had somehow, when she hadn't been looking, hadn't known, fit into this weird family. And it still astonished her to this day what the small group of people had brought into her life.

To the parents played by Sophie and Nate, Hardison was the geeky, talkative man-child whose orange soda obsession was almost as bad as his obsession for all things electronic. Alec Hardison had undergone some of the same situations as she had in his life but had ended up with completely different results.

Even though he'd been in the system and grown up in foster homes, once he'd been found by Nana, his foster mother, he'd led an almost normal life that she couldn't even dream of. So, though Hardison thought that she and him were alike in a lot of aspects, he couldn't be more wrong. But there was something to be said about the fact that while most of the rest of the team were still bewildered by her antics, Hardison had been the first one to try and understand her.

On the other hand, there was Eliot Spencer - the gruff, rough and reticent retrieval specialist. At first glance, he'd seemed just like another dumb hunk of muscle... someone who fought more with his fists than his brains. But boy!... had she been wrong about that. Eliot Spencer had proven to be even more complicated than she was... and Parker knew that she was as complicated as they came.

In hindsight, she should've seen it coming clearly from miles and miles away but she knew that her only excuse was that she had wantedly been blind to anything involving emotions... they were unnecessary in her life, their line of work and just plain messy. But now as she turned around to look at the relaxed sleeping form of the man who graced her bed tonight and every other night, she could only marvel at the changes that had been wrought in both their lives by time and circumstances.

A/N: So there it is... another chapter done.

Please tell me what you thought of it... your suggestions and ideas are incredibly important. So don't forget to click that little review button and send me your thoughts.

Lotsa luv and Chocolate cookie sandwiches

Macybear