Chapter 51
"Related? How so?" Mac asked.
Francesca answered her, "I hoped that you and Papa would get together."
"Oh Francesca, that could never have happened! AJ…your father was my Commanding Officer and there were regulations preventing anything like that from happening."
"Nonsense! The heart doesn't listen to regulations! And I know there was a time the two of you were attracted to each other."
Mac wondered if AJ had told his daughter about that almost kiss in his bedroom. No, he wouldn't have done something like that! Especially after the speech he'd given her in his office the next day. So then what could Francesca be basing her guess on? Hoping to get off the delicate subject, Mac said, "Well, he is happily married to a very sweet woman and I am about to marry a man I love very much, so it's for the best that things turned out the way they did."
"Yes, you are probably correct. Still, as much as I like sweet gentle Luna, I honestly believe he could have been just as happy married to a kick butt Marine!"
Laughing, Mac told her, "The term is kick-ass Marine, and your father and I are much too stubborn to be together, we would always be fighting to be the one on top!"
Mac immediately knew she had said something very wrong. The stunned silence on Francesca's end of the phone as well as the look on Blake's face would have told her that even if her mind hadn't already been screaming in protest. Oh sure, she'd had fantasies about AJ during her days at JAG, he was after all a very handsome man, and those fantasies had been fueled by a few very emotionally charged incidents over the years, the most earth-shaking one had been that almost kiss. But she hadn't thought about those things in years! She'd been dating Clay and AJ had been engaged to Meredith. Both of them had finally been getting on with their lives, then his engagement had ended and she'd truly been sorry, but there had been no thought of going after him for herself, even if she had ended things with Clay. When he married Luna, she'd really been happy for him and now she was engaged to a wonderful man. What had possessed her to say what she had?
All those thoughts had raced through her mind in the space of a few heartbeats, just long enough for Francesca to recover and say, "But who is to say that even if you lost that argument, you would come away the loser?!"
Mac gave a relieved chuckle and told Francesca to let her know when she would be arriving on Tuesday and a car would be sent for her.
"If I can arrange it I will fly in Monday evening and spend the night at Papa's. Could you have the car pick me up there?"
"That shouldn't be a problem, just let me know what time."
"Well, we will need to go over the sketches, I will need to make any changes you want, then I'll need to take a complete set of measurements, so we should probably start first thing in the morning! Have the car pick me up at 9AM."
Hardly able to keep from laughing out loud at Francesca's idea of the 'first thing in the morning' she agreed to do so and ended the call.
The end of the incident wasn't over yet; she still needed to face Blake. Turning to face him she said with a glare, "Okay, get it off your chest!"
"There's no problem Ma'am, I was informed that agents often had to keep those kinds of secrets. President's having affairs and their wives as well."
"Well you can be damn sure that is never going to happen with Kenneth or I! My few stray thoughts along those lines about Admiral Chegwidden were over years ago and only brought to mind when his daughter said that she thought he and I would end up together. I love Kenneth and would NEVER cheat on him! Have you got that?"
To be continued…..
