Chapter 26

Saturday, 6 December 2003

0800 EST

Mac's Apartment

Georgetown, Washington, DC

Chloe woke early that morning for her and headed out to the living room. She wanted a chance to talk to the Admiral about Mac before her big sister woke up. Seeing that he was still sleeping she crept up on the couch, figuring to surprise him. Instead, she was the one that was surprised.

Sleeping in a place other than his own bed always had AJ's senses on alert. He heard the bedroom door open and cracked his eyes open, thinking it might be Mac. But he saw Chloe come out of the room and decided to get his own back a bit for the comments she had made the night before.

Sneaking up on the couch she peered over the back to see that AJ was still sleeping. 'Wow! He really was good-looking for an old man!' she thought. She reached out her hand and was about to tickle him when he grasped her hand and hauled her over the back of the couch on top of him and began to tickle her instead!

Both of them tried to keep their laughter at a lower volume so as not to wake Mac. AJ sent Chloe into the kitchen to see what she wanted for breakfast while he got his jeans back on. He entered the room barefooted as Chloe buried her head in the fridge.

"Do you know how to make French toast?" she asked from the depths of the fridge.

"Yes, I do. Why?"

"'Cause I love it, and Gran has no clue how to make it. She's tried a couple times but it always comes out a soggy mess."

"Well, I've had no complaints so far. We better make sure Mac has all the ingredients, though, before we get started. Look for bread, eggs, milk, vanilla, and then see if she has butter and syrup, while I get the coffee started."

Suiting his words to action, Chloe started pulling the things he asked for out of the places that she knew Mac kept them. "This bottle of vanilla is unopened and dusty. Does that matter?" she asked, holding it out to him.

"No," he replied with a chuckle. "Looks like baking is not high on Mac's to-do list."

"Hey! We made Christmas cookies once when I was here visiting," she protested.

"And you didn't use vanilla?"

"Well…um…we just cut them out of the plastic tube. You know the pre-made ones that you can buy in the store?" she grinned sheepishly. AJ could not help but laugh at this.

While he was laughing, Chloe hoped to catch him off-guard, "So, Admiral, Mac said you were the best kisser in the world…how would you rate her kisses on a scale of 1-10?"

His laughter died instantly. He didn't know what to respond to first! Her impertinence again, or the fact that she had been talking to Mac about him kissing her. He could hardly believe the fact that Mac would tell Chloe that! He felt proud that she thought that about his kisses, but knew that he shouldn't tell Chloe that he also thought Mac was the best kisser in the world. Of course he shouldn't! He should take the child to task for asking such questions.

The smell of strong coffee was what drew Mac from her bed. She knew that she did not have a pot that started itself, although she had been meaning to get one of those, for months now. Figuring that it must be AJ who had made the coffee, she reached over to wake Chloe, only to find the bed next to her empty. 'Oh, god! The child is alone in there with him! Who knows what she will say to him, after the conversation the two of them had here in this bed in the middle of the night!' Mac jumped out of bed and grabbed for her robe, not even wanting to take time to dress before she made sure that Chloe was not giving away all of her deepest darkest secrets.

To be continued….