Lee, Bob and the boys entered the house after their impromptu soccer game at the park, the boys whooping loudly.
"That was the best," Jamie gushed being a much bigger fan of soccer than basketball. "Thanks for playing with us, Colonel."
"Yeah, thanks," Phillip agreed.
"Hey, guys, why don't you head on upstairs and get cleaned up while I get dinner started?"Lee said as he stepped across the staircase landing and into the kitchen to wash his hands before beginning dinner preparations.
Bob shook his head in amazement at how easily the two boys obeyed Lee's instructions, not just now, but while they were out as well. He stepped into the kitchen behind his nephew and said, "I'll be damned, you're a real father," with a backward glance toward the staircase at Phillip and Jamie's departing figures.
Lee reached for a towel to dry his hands on, turned to face his uncle and said, "Not really. I mean, they have a father of their own and I would never try to take his place. I'm just trying to do the best I can with them."
"Well, I'd say you're doing a bang-up job with them," Bob said proudly.
"Wow, was that an actual compliment you just gave me," Lee teased. "Twice in one day, that's got to be a record."
"Don't be a smartass, Son," Bob scolded. "You should just shut up and take credit where credit is due."
"You know I would, but Amanda really deserves most of the credit. She's raised them by herself until now."
"But you've clearly been a positive influence on them," Bob replied. "I never thought I'd live to see the day that you'd be a dedicated family man, which reminds me, I have something else from your parents to give you."
"I thought all their stuff was in that storage unit," Lee said in confusion his curiosity piqued.
"All except this," Bob said as he pulled and envelope from his pocket. "I've been carrying this around since before I got on the plane Friday to go to your wedding celebration and I've been just hanging onto it until I was sure that you were really committed to the family life."
"What is it," Lee asked.
"A down payment on your new house when you find one," Bob said as he handed the envelope to his nephew.
Lee opened the envelope and his eyes widened in shock, "This is a check for a hundred grand," Lee said with a gasp.
"It is, indeed," Bob said.
"Thank you, but I can't possibly accept this," Lee said as he tried to hand it back to him. "It's too much and there's no way you can afford this."
"It's not my money," Bob said with a sigh and refused to take it. "I can see one thing hasn't changed. You still don't listen worth a damn. Didn't I just say it was from your parents?
"But how?"
"Life insurance," Bob answered.
"But that doesn't make any sense. You told me that their life insurance was spent on their funeral expenses and in raising me. I still don't get it."
Bob sighed and said, "Always the spy, aren't you? Is this an interrogation? Can't you just accept the money for your growing family and be grateful for it?"
"Okay, no, it's not an interrogation, but if you expect me to accept this money for my family, I'd be more than happy to be grateful for it if I knew where it came from." He eyed his uncle warily sure that there was something that he wasn't telling him.
"Okay, here it is," Bob said with another sigh. "Your parents had a separate life insurance policy set up just for you. They knew just like you and Amanda do how dangerous the work that you do is and they knew that if anything ever happened to them that you'd most likely end up leading the nomadic life with me. Your mother was a one smart lady, very much like your Amanda. She had a feeling that if that happened, you'd have trouble settling down for a long time. She knew you so well, you mom. So when they set this up, she insisted that there be a provision in it that you weren't to have it until the birth of your first child."
"Huh," Lee said in amazement that even though they'd been gone for thirty-plus years, in a way, his mom and dad were still looking out for him. "You're forgetting one thing, though. My first child hasn't been born yet. The babies aren't due until late October."
Bob nodded toward the stairs and said, "I beg to differ. Your first child is up those stairs cleaning up right now. In what I witnessed these past couple of days, I know that there's no way you could possibly love your own children any more than you do those two boys upstairs."
"You're right about that," Lee said.
"Look at that, we actually agreed on something for once, Bob said with a chuckle.
Lee couldn't help but laugh and said, "Yeah, I guess we did, didn't we?"
Their conversation was interrupted by Dotty and Amanda entering through the back door giggling and chatting animatedly. "Well, if you didn't get enough for your weekend getaway, there's something really wrong," Amanda said as she closed the door behind them.
Lee looked at the numerous shopping bags the ladies were carrying. "What did you two do, buy out the whole mall?" he asked with a chuckle.
"Don't be silly, Lee," Dotty said with a laugh. "We didn't even get to half the stores in the mall, did we, Amanda?"
"No, Mother, we sure didn't," Amanda said with a giggle.
"I'm going to go put these things away," Dotty said. "Thank you, my darling girl, for the wonderful day together." She kissed her daughter's cheek and then scurried up the stairs.
Lee laughed and said, "She's not taking the rest of it with her?" He indicated the three bags still in his wife's hands.
"Oh, you mean these?" she said with a mischievous grin.
"Yeah, those," he said impatiently.
"Well, these aren't Mother's, these…" she said holding them up so he could see them but held them just out of his reach, "… these are mine."
"Oh?" he glanced at the bags and fixed her with a devlish grin. "And what, pray tell, Mrs. Stetson, could you possibly have in those bags from Victoria's Secret and Rebecca's Fantasies?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" she teased pulling them behind her back to keep them out of his reach.
"Hey, come on, Amanda, don't tease a guy like that," Lee said as he reached behind her in an attempt to snatch the bags from her hands.
Amanda squealed and darted away from him to the other side of the island, "No. I bought this stuff for next weekend when we'll have the house to ourselves."
"Next weekend?"Lee said his eyes dancing in merriment. "You're gonna' make me wait that long?" He quickly sprinted to the other side of the island and captured his wife around the waist, causing her to squeal again.
"Yes, next weekend," she said with a giggle as she still struggled to keep her shopping bags from him. "Now, let me go."
"Mm-mm," Lee said as he lightly nuzzled her neck. "Not until you let me see what's in the bags."
"Mm-mm," she said as she took a moment to enjoy her husband's nearness. "And don't think that's getting to me, Buster." She turned to face him.
"You can't tell me it's not," Lee said taking in her flushed face.
"I'll tell you what, if you behave yourself at dinner tonight, I just might give you a sneak preview of what's to come next weekend, after the boys got to bed." She planted a quick kiss ot his lips, then wriggled out of his arms and trotted up the stairs.
Bob who'd watched the whole interaction with some amusement laughed and said, "Boy, has she got your number."
Lee laughed, shook his head and said, "Don't I know it," before he started dinner preparations in earnest.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Phillip and Jamie listened with rapt attention all throughout dinner as Bob told tales of his travels over the years. "Wasn't that weird for you though, not to have a permanent place to go home to?" Jamie asked him with a sly glance at Lee.
Bob glanced at Lee and said, "I think it was harder on Lee than it was on me, since he was just a kid."
"That's what our dad wanted to do with us, wasn't it, Mom?"
Bob glanced over to where Lee and Amanda were sitting side by side and noticed that Lee had visibly tensed at Jamie's mention of his father. Before Amanda could answer, Lee said, "The way your mom tells it, she didn't want that kind of life for you and having grown up that way myself, I think she made the right decision for you. It's not easy for a kid to grow up spending six months here, a year there. It's hard to make friends. I went to something like seventeen different schools before I graduated from high school."
"Nineteen," Bob corrected.
"Okay, nineteen, then" Lee said a look of surprise on his face that his uncle knew that right off the top of his head. The conversation was temporarily interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell.
"I'll get it," Dotty said rising from her seat and exiting the room.
The conversation carried on with Phillip saying, "But, Colonel, wasn't that rough on you too. I mean, like Jamie said, you never had a home to go to. Wouldn't it have been better to just stay one place all the time?"
"I guess it might have," Bob said. "And enough of this Colonel business; we're family now. You boys are more than welcome to call me Uncle Bob."
"Uncle Bob," Lee questioned with an arched eyebrow. "I never got to call you Uncle Bob."
"What, I can't mellow a little in my old age," Bob replied with a chuckle. "I mean, it boys. Don't listen to your step-dad's negativity. I insist that you both call me Uncle Bob."
"Cool, Thanks Uncle Bob," Phillip said just as Dotty re-entered the room with Joe and Carrie on her heels.
Dotty was just resuming her seat when Joe looked at Amanda inquisitively and said, "Uncle Bob?"
Amanda frowned at seeing her ex-husband in the doorway. She bit back what she really wanted to say to him as she didn't want to berate him in front of their children Instead, she nodded toward Bob who was seated across the table from her right in front of where Joe was now standing, and said, "Yes, Joe, this is Colonel Robert Clayton, Lee's uncle. He's just been transferred to Bolling."
"And Amanda here was kind enough to invite me to dinner," Bob said as he stood and turned to face the other man in an attempt to ease the tension he'd seen arise in both Lee and Amanda at the intruder's arrival.
"Joe King, nice to meet you," Joe said politely but the fact that he didn't all appreciate this man buddying up to his boys was obvious. The two men very briefly shook hands before, Joe said, "This is Carrie."
"Hello," she said in a pleasant tone, but with a glare at Joe. She also shook Bob's hand only very briefly then looked expectantly at Joe.
Joe sighed and said to her, "I know. I'll get to it." He then turned to Amanda and said, "Amanda, could Carrie and I talk to you in private for a moment?"
"No, Joe," Amanda said testily. "In case you can't tell, we're right in the middle of a family dinner. Besides, there's nothing you can say to me that you can't say in front of my husband." She then made an obvious display of linking her left hand with Lee's right.
"Mom, May I be excused," Jamie asked clearly agitated by the reappearance of his father after his two-week absence.
"Me too?"Phillip said a look of pure fury on his face as he gripped his fork like a dagger.
"No, you may not," Amanda said firmly. "You both need to finish your dinner."
"I'm not hungry anymore," Phillip said as he tossed his fork and his napkin into his plate and left the table anyway tearing past his father and up the stairs.
"I'm with him," Jamie said as he followed his brother's lead.
Amanda also rose from her seat and yelled, "Phillip, Jamie, you both get your butts back down here right now and finish your dinner!"
Lee rose from his seat as well, placed a hand on her back to calm her and said, "Amanda, don't. Yelling at them is not going to help right now. You deal with your ex, I'll go see if I can calm them down, okay?"
"Yeah, Thanks," Amanda said giving him a quick kiss before he headed up the stairs after the boys. "Do you see what you've caused," she said coolly to Joe.
"Me?" Joe said incredulously. "It seems to me that a lack of discipline is what caused this. It's just like I said the last time that we talked, you've done nothing but coddle them."
"How dare you," Amanda said. "You have no right to judge my parenting skills when you've been MIA for the past two weeks and broken plans with them, not once but twice in that time with no real explanation. You have no idea of the hell that Lee and I have been going through here trying to get them to trust him after all the times you've put your own needs ahead of theirs. I put up with it for ten years when we were married, but I won't put up with it anymore. We are finally getting into a stable routine here. You can't just show up here when you feel like it and disrupt that!"
"What are you saying that now that you've got your James Bond, I'm no longer welcome in a home that used to be mine?"Joe shouted.
"And when exactly was that Joe? You didn't seem to care a whole lot about this being your home when we were married, when we were supposed to be living in it together and raising our children together."
Bob, feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the escalating argument once again rose from his seat and said, "You know, I should really be going and let you deal with this in private."
"No, Bob, stay, please," Amanda said. "You were invited, he wasn't." She then turned back to her ex with an icy glare.
"You need to leave, Joe, now," Dotty said as she also rose from her seat.
"I'm not going anywhere," he snapped at Dotty then turned back to Amanda. "You may have remarried, but that doesn't mean that your new husband has any say-so over what happens here. Phillip and Jamie are still my sons!"
"This has absolutely nothing to do with Lee, so just leave him out of this! As for them still being your sons, that true. That will never change, but you should try remembering that a little more often!"
"Hey, what the hell is going on down here?" Lee said as he barreled down the stairs. "We could hear you two all the way upstairs in the boys' room!" He looked from Amanda to Joe and seeing the look of pure ire etched on Amanda's face, quickly raced to her side and wrapped one arm around her. "Are you ok?"
"Fine," she snapped. When Lee only looked at her, she said, "I'm sorry, Sweetheart, I didn't mean to snap at you. I'm just...you know...a little upset."
"A little? Amanda, I've seen you less upset when we were trapped in a nest of KGB agents." Lee then turned his attention to the man causing her upset and in a cool tone said, "Joe, I think it's time for you to say good-night. I won't have you coming in here unannounced and upsetting my pregnant wife."
Joe's eyes widened in shock at Lee's statement, "You're pregnant?" he said.
"Yes," Amanda said in a quieter tone than before. "We got the news a few days ago."
"Well, it's no wonder the boys are upset," Joe said. "You drop a new stepfather on them, and then announce that they're going to have a new sibling too. That's a lot to take in."
"Two new siblings, actually," Lee said smugly as he wrapped his arms around her middle protectively. "We found out yesterday that Amanda's carrying twins."
"And for the record, Joe, the boys are not upset about it," Amanda said as she leaned in to her husband's protective embrace. "They're very excited about it, especially Jamie because he's going to be a big brother."
"And they're excited about getting a bigger house where they can each have their own room," Lee said. "Since they only have a half-day at school tomorrow, we plan to use the time to do some house-shopping."
"Wait, you're moving too? When the hell were you planning on telling me than you plan on moving my kids?"Joe said hotly.
"When have we had time to, Joe?"Amanda fired back. "You haven't been around to tell anything to for the past two weeks!"
"Amanda, Honey, calm down," Lee said as he held her tightly. "You know what Dr. McJohn said about how added stress could affect your pregnancy."
"Okay, Amanda, you're right," Joe conceded. "I haven't been around, but there's been a reason for that. That's what Carrie and I wanted to talk to you about." Joe then reached for Carrie's left hand with his own and said, "We've been on our honeymoon."
Amanda gaped at their joined hands blatantly displaying the gold bands that both of them now wore. "Honeymoon?"
"Yes, you know," Carrie said in a joking tone trying to lighten the tension in the room, "The trip a newly married couple takes to spend some time alone together?"
"Of course, I know what a honeymoon is," Amanda said, "especially since we were just on ours a few weeks ago."
"Well, sort of," Lee said as he tightened his graps on his wife sensing she was about to explode again.
Amanda bit her lip, trying to keep herself calm, immensely grateful for her husband's reassuring touch. "I...I...um...I guess I'm just surprised. The way you talked the last time we spoke, it seemed as if you thought your relationship was over and now...now...you...you're...married. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to react to this."
"Humph," was Joe's response. "You know, most people say congratulations or that they're happy for the newlywed couple."
"You know, someone should really go check on the boys," Dotty said. "Bob, maybe you'd like to come with me. You could possibly calm them down by telling them some more stories of your travels."
"Excellent idea, Dotty," Bob said as the pair quickly escaped the tension-filled room.
Amanda sighed and said, "Joe, of course, I'm happy for you if you're happy, but I won't like and say that I'm not also worried. This is...this is just so sudden."
"And that's on top of the fact that the reason Carrie tried to break it off was because she didn't want to spend so much time with the boys," Lee said icily as he couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to be around those two great boys.
"You told them that?" Carrie said to Joe at the same time Joe said to Amanda, "He knows about that?"
"Yes, Lee knows," Amanda answered. "We don't keep secrets from each other."
"No, just from everyone else," Joe fired back.
"Joe, stop," Lee said. "You know we can't talk about what we do for a living, but that has nothing to do with this situation here. I think Amanda has a legitimate concern about Phillip and Jamie having a stepmother who doesn't want to be around them."
"Can we just pause on that for a second?" Carrie said. "This whole thing has been blown way out of proportion. I never said I didn't want to be around the kids. I merely said that I needed a break after Jamie screamed at me that I wasn't his mother, and that i would never be his mother, then yelled at me to stop trying to be. All I have ever done since I met them is try to be nice to both of them, to be their friend. I have never tried to replace Amanda, but I felt like that was how he was taking it. I...I just needed a break."
"Well, here's a tip. You don't get breaks from parenting," Lee said. "It's not like on the job where you can take a coffee break or a vacation. When you're a parent, you're in it for the long haul."
"What would you know about it?"Joe said coolly.
"A hell of a lot more than you," Lee countered.
"Lee, don't," Amanda said placing a calming hand on his arms that were still wrapped around her. She then turned to Carrie and said to her," Lee makes a good point though, parenting isn't supposed to be part-time," Amanda said, glancing briefly at her ex then back at Carrie.
"I get that. I just was upset and wasn't thinking clearly," Carrie said. "Jamie really hurt my feelings and I...I don't know."
"So what changed your mind?" Amanda said.
When Carrie didn't answer, Joe said, "I took your advice."
"There's a first," Amanda interjected.
"Come on, Amanda," Joe said.
"Okay, okay, go on."
"I told Carrie what you told me about how Jamie was giving Lee a hard way to go too and we talked, really talked."
Carrie picked up where her husband left off. "When Joe told me what had been happening over here, I have to admit that I felt incredibly stupid for letting a scared eleven-year-old get to me. I would really like a chance to make it up to the boys since it's really my fault that they've missed their weekend time with their dad."
"Well, that's going to be up to the boys," Amanda said. "You're both going to have to do some serious groveling, especially since you just got married without telling them about it."
"Look who's talking," Joe said. "You two ran off to California and got married without telling them about it, so you have no room to pass judgment on us."
"I'm not passing judgment," Amanda explained. "I'm stating a fact. Lee and I have had to work really hard to regain their trust after what we did and I think you're going to have the same rough road that we did."
"The first thing to do is get them back down here to do that," Lee said with a glance toward the door and up the stairs. Now that things were calmer, he finally released Amanda and called up the stairs. "Phillip! Jamie! Get down her now!' When there was no response, he tried again. "Don't make me come up there!" He was soon rewarded by the thundering of two sets of feet on the stairs.
"What," Phillip snapped as he and his brother reached the landing.
"Carrie and your dad have something they want to talk to you about and I think you should listen while you finish your dinner," Lee said as he hustled them into the dining room, following behind them to keep them from bolting again.
"Listen, Lee," Amanda said. "Why don't we go finish our dinner in the kitchen so they can talk without us interfering?"
"That's a good idea," Dotty said as she also entered the room, Bob right behind her.
"There's plenty of food on the table if you two are hungry," Lee said.
"And extra plates in the china cabinet," Amanda said with a nod.
"Thank you, Amanda," Carrie said warmly. "That actually doesn't sound bad since we just got off a plane before we came here." She then glanced at the boys and added, "We haven't even been home yet because we wanted to see Phillip and Jamie right away.
With that decided, Bob, Dotty, Lee and Amanda took their plates into the kitchen closing the door behind them to give Joe and Carrie some time alone with the boys. "So, is every Sunday dinner this eventful?" Bob said.
Lee and Amanda looked at each other and couldn't help but laugh, "Dinners around here in general, are pretty eventful," Lee answered. While he laughed out the outside, he couldn't help but wonder how this one would turn out.
