"Sarah," she finally began. "I'm not--Quit worrying! I know you, and you think it's personal. It has nothing to do with *you* at all. It has to do with. . ." Rubbing her forehead, Amanda reached down and picked up her purse. Riffling through it, she tried to explain to her new daughter-in-law. "I don't want him to be engaged to the Lioness." Sarah's heart broke, hearing the words. "I love you like a daughter already, but I don't like your profession."
Sarah thought about that statement for a moment. Sarah had the same job that Amanda did, the same job that Amanda loved. "Amanda, I don't understand." They were words that she had used often in the beginning of their partnership. Amanda had a unique way of saying things that had confused the logical Lioness.
Putting down her purse, Amanda took the two aspirin that she had found. She took a deep breath and leaned forward, causing Sarah to relax. As long as her mentor could look her in the eye, she knew that everything was going to be all right. "Sarah, you are great for my son. I know that even if I am just finding out about your relationship! It's just that I don't want my son involved in my life. One of the reasons, I got involved in the Agency is because I wanted a safer world for my boys! I didn't want them to go out and dodge bullets for a living."
Sarah smiled weakly. "That doesn't--"
"Have anything to do with you marrying Philip?" Amanda shook her head. "No, it doesn't really. He was involved in this world before you even meet him, but he was. . .Sarah, being a courier is dangerous, but it usually is a short term job."
Sarah was beginning to see the picture. "If he wasn't marrying me, it could all be over. Amanda, just because I'm an agent, doesn't mean my husband's going to be! You and Lee are the exception, not the rule!"
Laughing, Amanda smiled up at the waiter as he set their salads down in front of them. She thanked him and then waited a minute for him to leave. "Remember, Lee and I are the exception in a lot of things," she teased. She lost some of her smile. "Philip might decide to ignore the fact you are an agent, but *you* are an agent. It does affect your family, even if you don't want it to." Shacking her head, Amanda stopped Sarah from answering. "I know, Sarah. I do."
Sarah leaned across the table some. "I do, too, Amanda. If it wasn't me that was the fiancée, you would be here today talking about Philip being engaged to some agent."
Amanda sighed in obvious relief. "Yeah, I would be. Sarah, I'm so confused right now, but I do look forward to having you as a daughter-in-law. Don't doubt that, please."
Sarah shook her head. "I won't doubt it again." Picking up her fork, she smiled. "We'd better eat. We'll need our energy later." The two friends sat back and enjoyed their lunch together, discussing what each wanted to see at the wedding.
Back at the agency, Lee was talking to his friend, Sam Williams. Many of the fresh faces at the Agency thought it was an odd friendship, but then they hadn't known the pre-Amanda Lee Stetson. Sam reminded Lee of an earlier version of himself. Raised by an emotionally distant father, Sam had learned to keep his emotions close at an early age. After the loss of his wife in a robbery attempt, he had let no one close except his younger brother. Lee and Amanda were the only other people that knew the real Sam Williams.
Besides the need to get in touch with his feelings, Sam also reminded Lee of himself in another way: He was a damn fine agent. One of the best, and that was why Lee was going to entrust the safety of his son. "Sam, we don't have a clue. The package Philip had on him made *no* sense to our code guys." Sighing, Lee leaned back in his chair so that he could look up at the ceiling. "I almost wish it said 'Peach Cream Puff'."
Sam laughed at his friend's comment. "What?" He had never heard of the food code before, and he thought he had a general knowledge of most of the Agency's codes.
Lee shook his head. "Sorry, I've just been thinking about the past a lot today." Sam's eyebrow raised as a silent inquiry. Both men understood the need for distance, so they seldom pushed for answers. They were close enough that they didn't hesitate to ask the questions though. "When this is all over with and settled, remind me to invite you over for dinner and tell you the story of how Amanda got involved in this business."
Sam glanced out of Lee's office window and watched as Philip greeted his returning fiancée and mother. "Amanda? I just assumed she got involved like the rest of us."
"My wife?" Lee's amusement was obvious. "No, my wife has her own unique way of doing *everything*."
"Well that is certainly true," Sam said, thinking of a few cases he had worked with the spirited Mrs. Stetson.
Standing, Lee said, "Lets go. I want to tell Philip and Amanda what the game plan is."
Philip stood up when he noticed Amanda and Sarah walking back into the bullpen. He was glad to see that they were laughing together, because he had felt a little tension between them when they had left earlier. Lee told him that they were close friends, as well as partners, but he had still been worried. After all, he thought with some mirth, that every man wanted his mother to approve of the woman he loves.
"Looks like you had a good lunch," he said, puzzled at how nervous he felt in front of his mother. She seemed to be different to him to him now. In his mind, he knew that she was still the same loving woman that she always had been. Finding out that one's mother was a spy was a. . .unsettling experience.
Amanda hugged her son close, looking down at the desk he had been sitting at. There laid the remains of his own lunch. "Chicken salad sandwich from Victoria's pub? They do have good Chicken salad."
Sarah giggled. "But stay away from the tuna salad!"
Amanda's laughter joined Sarah. "Oh, yes, *always* avoid the tuna salad!"
Philip felt a moment of jealousy at the easy way Amanda joked with Sarah. He felt like an outsider looking in, unable to play. He was an outsider. These two women, so precious to him, had done things in their life that he could only begin to imagine. Had his mother ever killed anyone? Had someone ever died in her arms? Had Sarah? He didn't know. Sharing an understanding about tuna salad was a small thing, but it represented an entire life to him. He wanted to get to know these women, the real ones that loved hard and then went out to save the world.
"Victoria's? Yuck, why did you have to remind me?" Philip turned to see Lee and Sam Williams walking towards them. He had thought he recognized the voice. Sam Williams was one of them, too? Philip was really beginning to wonder just how many of his parent's friends were agents, and he had a sinking suspicion that most of them were. At least, he could be certain that the nice Lady Emily wasn't a spy. That sweet woman was British!
"How are you holding up, kid?" Philip had always liked Sam. Jamie was a little leery of the man, but Philip always enjoyed the few dinners at home that the man had joined.
Philip frowned, feeling uneasy in Sam's presence for once. An image flashed across his mind's eye: The Professor's murderer walking out of the library. Philip shook his head, forcing himself to smile. "I'm doing okay," he answered. Sam's concern was written all over his face--something astonishing in itself--but he just nodded at the answer.
Lee went over to stand by Amanda's side. Philip was use to the sight. It always seemed to him that if the two were in the same room together, they preferred to be close. Very seldom had he had ever walked into a room at his home and found the two of them far from one another. "Sam's going to be the Agent in Charge of taking care of Philip at the safe house." Philip watched his mother relax and realized that she trusted the man, even with his safety. He felt himself relaxing, too. "He's taking first shift, since he knows Philip, and he can help get him situated."
Sarah started to speak up, but Lee stopped her. "I need you here, Sarah. You knew your father better than anyone, maybe you can help us see something that we are missing. Philip didn't find any matches in our database." Philip squeezed her hand. He understood everything. He knew that she had a job to do, and he also accepted the fact that she wanted to be here. Staying with him at a safe house would drive her mad right now, because Sarah needed something to focus on, to keep her mind off her grief.
At the safe house, the printer whirled and banged. Sam had laughing told him that he was lucky to be staying in a safe house with TV, VCR, and computer. "State of the art," he had joked when they had first walked in earlier. Philip had at first wondered around the house bored, unable to find a good show on television--or at least one that would take his mind off today's events. Sam had been busy coordinating the team guarding the house, so Philip had sat down and wrote a letter to Lee.
The letters had somehow started early in Lee's "fatherhood". All of the men in the Stetson-King household wrote to one another now when the subject was important. They could talk, but somehow the subject was always started in letters. It helped everyone realize what each held important, and if there was a conflict, emotions were dealt with before the confrontation. Most of the time though, they were simply letters to let each other know what was going on in their lives.
"Sam, are you going to see Lee tonight?" Philip asked when the printer finished its job.
"Sure will, kid. Need me to take that to him?" Sam reached for the letter. He stared down at it. Philip could see the conflict pass across his face, as if he hesitated to say anything. Then, Sam looked up and gave Philip a half-cocked grin.
"I don't want you think Lee tells everybody about these letters. He doesn't." Philip flinched in surprise. He didn't even think his mother knew about the letters between her boys and their stepfather. "I'm sorry, I didn't--" Sam took a deep breath and let it out loudly. "I don't handle this. . .kind of stuff well. I just wanted to tell you--" Sam sank down into the nearby couch, putting the letter down on the table in front of him. "I am probably the only person outside of yourselves who know about the letters, and I found out more by accident." Philip sat down across from him. Sam's eyes never left the letter. "We were working on a case. He walked in one morning with one of these. Your mother was out working a different part of the case, so she wasn't anywhere around or he would have probably have talked about with her." Sam gave a half laugh. "Then again, maybe not. He just sat at his desk, looking at the this letter. It--It kind of scared me. I thought it had to be really bad news, but I've never been one to hesitate to ask. . ."
He picked up the letter, almost reverently. "He said it was a letter that one of his son's had wrote to him. Knowing that you were both teenagers at the time, I thought it had to have been horrible. Lee just laughed and said it was just something you all kind of did. I wouldn't thought much about it, but Lee didn't read the letter."
Philip sat, fascinated to hear about this Lee. The man he knew always seemed sure about everything. Philip doubted he had ever seen Lee hesitate over a decision. It was also gratifying to know that the letters meant a lot to him. Philip knew that they did, but it was nice to hear it from another source. "I prodded a little, and he finally admitted that he always read each letter as soon as he could--except this one. He was pretty sure that he knew what this one was going to be about, and he was right. I watched him open it slowly, and read. Then, he closed his eyes for a minute, and for the first time ever, I saw that man go into a mild form of panic."
Waiting for a few heartbeats, Philip finally asked, "What was in the letter?"
Sam looked up from the folded pages in his hand. "Uh, I think that--"
Philip blushed. "Oh, that letter."
"Yeah, that letter." Sam smiled and then finished his story. "I never thought to see Lee Stetson--Ladies Man Extraordinaire--panic because his son had lost his--"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it," Philip interrupted. Of all the letters--
"I thought it was pretty neat myself. Kind of blew me away. I never had that kind of relationship with my old man, and you were having it with your stepfather. Hell, you were having it with Lee Stetson! Until that moment, I thought it was temporary." Sam's voice showed his admiration for the other agent. "The only advice my old man ever gave on that subject was a warning not to be stupid like him and get caught." Sam snorted at the memory.
Philip, his mind still on the letter he had written years ago, was confused by Sam's comments. Lee? A ladies' man? Not in this century! "What was temporary?"
"The changes your mother had brought." Sam laughed. "You really don't know much about Lee's past, do you?"
He had never thought about it. Lee didn't talk much about his past. Philip knew that Lee had been raised by an uncle, a colonel, because his parents had died at a young age. He had died of a heart attack before Philip could meet him, but Lee seemed to have a warm relationship with him in the few phone calls that Philip had heard. "No, he doesn't talk much about it."
"Look close at me, Philip, and you will see a man that was very similar to the one that Amanda met." Philip's jaw opened. He liked Sam, but he didn't consider him anything like Lee. Lee was a family man who liked staying home. Sam, a loner, was a man who liked anything *but* staying at home.
"How did Mom meet him anyway?" The question had been in the back of his mind all day.
Sam sighed, leaning back in the couch. "I honestly don't know. Lee said he'd tell me the story after everything settles. I knew him before and after, Philip. I saw him two or three times when he was just your mom's partner, but never when he was with her. I'd like to know what happened those years myself."
The room was quiet, the only sound was the gentle electrical hum of the computer. Philip thought about what Sam had shared with him tonight. Today had definitely been a day of revelations. "Sam," Philip finally broke the silence. "Was Lee really like you?"
Sam's radio squawked before the man could answer. "Replacements approaching," the disembodied voice yelled into the tranquil room. Sam picked up the radio, standing. "Acknowledged," he answered back, ending the conversation for the night.