Hello everyone, hope you're enjoying the holidays as much as I am! This chapter was an unexpected one, but after reading a certain TV Guide article, it was impossible to resist writing it. Enjoy!

'Hello? Anyone home?'

Meredeth called out as she brought the groceries in one hand from the car and Tessi's carrier in the other. She grinned at her daughter. 'Guess Daddy used our shopping trip to have a nap, huh?'

When she'd put away the food, she took her daughter upstairs to the nursery for her own nap, making kissy noises at her the entire time while she changed her diaper. When Tessi was in bed for her nap, Meredeth crept out of the room, closing the door quietly; she nearly tiptoed past the master bedroom when her world froze.

From the other side of the closed door she heard a woman's pleasured sigh. Heart pounding in her chest, Meredeth flung open the door and her heart shattered into a thousand pieces.

Her husband was in bed but he was most definitely not asleep. Naked underneath him, with legs wrapped around his equally naked body, was Lanie.

'Lanie?' was all Meredeth could manage for the moment.

She turned to face Meredeth and sneered in a superior female way. 'Oh, hi Mere, we're almost done,' she said.

'Lanie? Javi? I can't...Oh my god, I...how long has this been going on?'

'Does it matter?' Lanie cried out as she came, Esposito following close behind her. When he'd rolled off of her, Lanie wrapped one of Meredeth's bedsheets around her body, a subtle slap at Meredeth. 'Did you think you could stay looking like that and he'd want to keep having sex with you?'

'I...I thought he liked the way I looked,' she said on a wobble, then forced herself to steel over. No way would she give them the satisfaction. 'How long?'

'Since about Thanksgiving, when you started looking really fat. Turns out you're not the only who likes my shave head, Mere,' Esposito told her with a cocky grin, which only turned more vicious when he studied Meredeth's face. 'What, you didn't really think I'd love you forever did you? Besides it's just sex.'

Meredeth felt invisible hands grabbing at her shoulders trying to hold her back but nothing and no one was going to satisfy the savage, vengeful beast in her gut until she saw them both mutilated. 'Just sex?' she spat. 'You sonofabitch, I'll kill you!'

She lunged forward as she screamed and found herself awake in her own bed, panting and rocking back and forth as Esposito held her close.

'Mere,' he murmured, 'it's okay, it's okay, I'm here, Javi's here.'

'Javi.' His name escaped her lips on a sob and her arms came around him automatically. She began to cry in earnest, not the stressed-out tears of a new mother, but of a woman whose heart was on the verge of total destruction.

'What's wrong, Mere?' he asked, dangerously close to being choked up himself as he saw his wife shuddering while she wept. She hadn't had a night terror, he knew, so what could she have possibly dreamed to make her look so utterly sick and terrified?

'You were fucking Lanie.'

The absurdity of it had a laugh escaping his lips. 'No I wasn't.'

'Yes you were, I put Tessi down for a nap, and I heard a woman, so I opened the door and you were naked on top of Lanie. You said you'd been together since Thanksgiving but it was just sex, and besides, did I really think you'd love me forever, and Lanie added in there, did I really think I'd keep you looking the way I do?'

'Meredeth, you and I both know I never had anything going on with Lanie, I never even kissed her, except a friendly peck on the cheek when she told us she was pregnant.'

'I know, but...but...'

'Oh, my love.' Esposito pulled her close, let her cry it out. 'I love you, Meredeth Dakkars, I love you so much it hurts some days.'

'I love you too, Javier Jimeno, I can't see straight I love you so much.'

'I would never, ever, do that to you. You're my Danish angel, and the best part of my life, you and our gorgeous baby.' Esposito squeezed her tightly for the comfort. 'Lanie is a friend, and yes, she did have a crush on me but I never reciprocated it.'

'I know that too.'

'So what made you dream such a horrible thing, that I'd do that to you?'

'Probably because the doctor told me I can't start to actually lose baby pounds until after Memorial Day, and we were planning to make love again for the first time that weekend, and all I could think was, Lanie has that perfect post-baby body, you can't even tell she had a baby. Me, I look like a jelly-fish had a one-night stand with a bowl of Jell-O.'

'Mere, believe me, you're not. You're so beautiful and I'm not saying that to make you feel better. Remember that woman who took the picture of us after we left Sloan's?'

'Uh-huh.'

'She posted it on Twitter and that gossip column, Out and About, you know see the stars in their natural habitats, they posted it and all the comments were talking about how amazing you look.'

'I don't care about any of those, though. I just care about your opinion and you'd never do anything like that to me because you love me.'

'Now she's makin' sense,' he teased, pleased when he got a laugh. 'And recall if you will, the reason we're in bed in the middle of the afternoon is why?'

Meredeth squirmed and felt like herself again. 'Because after we finished grocery shopping and put the baby down, we came in here and blew each other's minds with an orgasm or two.'

'Exactly.'

'Oh God.' Meredeth shook her head, burrowed against her husband. 'I feel so stupid.'

'Don't. It's perfectly natural to have a dream like that. You're worried about your body, and Lanie's a woman you admire who's had a baby. It's completely understandable she'd pop up as the manifest of your own insecurities.'

'How come you never spaz like this?'

'Uh, hello? Who was the one who thought a pair of reading glasses was the end of the world? And that was a real thing, this was a dream. Not to mention the fact that I turned forty two weeks after Tessi was born and a bunch of guys at the precinct decided it'd be cute to call me Grandpa. I know you love me, and that you think I'm hot with or without my glasses and that it didn't bother you that I was almost at the big four-oh when Tessi was born.'

'I know you love me too and you are hot. You could make a paper-bag sexy.'

'So could you.'

Meredeth leaned in, kissed him deeply and almost wanted to start crying again when she felt him kiss her back. She leaned back when she realized the stickiness on her chest wasn't sweat but milk released during her crying jag. 'Oh, Jesus Christ. I leaked again.'

'It's okay.' Esposito kissed her again, then scooting out of bed, still naked, went to the ensuite and dampened a hand-towel with hot water. He hated seeing his beautiful Meredeth so upset, and as he waited for the temperature of the water to reach the appropriate degree, he thought of a little something he could do to reassure his still very-hormonal wife.

When he came back to her, he nudged her so she lay flat on her back and softly swiped at her tender breasts to remove the traces of milk there. Once he'd dried her and wiped off his own skin just to make sure there were no leftovers to go sour there either, Esposito tossed the towels aside and ran the palm of his hand over her face, down her throat, between her breasts, over the curve of her stomach down to between her thighs, where he let his fingers rest against the cotton there. 'Meredeth Dakkars Esposito, I love every soft, kissable inch of you.' He began to stroke her gently. 'No one makes me feel the way you do. No one loves me like you do, like I'm the sexiest man alive, even when I feel like nothing more than a musclebound muscle-head.'

'Javi-'

She was cut off when he held a finger to her lips, his other hand still softly touching her. 'I will never love anyone like my honey-haired, blue-eyed goddess.'

'Oh, Javi.' Meredeth reached up, pulled him in for a kiss, then whimpered in delight. 'You make me feel so sexy, and those extra bits I have, they've never really mattered, like deep down mattered, when I'm around you. I feel like a supermodel the way you look at me.'

'I know.' Esposito moved his mouth to her ear. 'I can't wait to taste you down here, to feel you, to slip inside you and hear you scream my name.'

'Thirteen days, my love.'

'I know. But until then...' He trailed off as he hips arched up off the bed against his hand, and he heard her strangled cry as the orgasm flooded through her; to her utter relief, her breasts stayed dry this time. 'We can still do that,' he finished off, watching her face as she came down from the peak of pleasure.

'I love you Javi.'

I love you too Mere.'

R&R&Enjoy!