Title: The Price We Pay
Disclosure: Warner Brothers Television Distribution and Shoot The Moon Productions owns these characters, as well as to the writers, and actors who created and portrayed them. Generous references to the past and the events of the 4th season… I don't make any money off of this – my only reward is my personal satisfaction at having written a decent story (and the story is all mine). Oh, and any new characters that you meet along the way - those are creations from my own twisted imagination, so hands off, unless you ask for permission to play with them.
See Chapter 1 for more information on timing and all that other good
stuff...
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Meanwhile, up in the Q, Becca Dobson sat staring out the window, watching the sleek silver Corvette pull out of the adjacent driveway and head down the street. Lee had gotten a phone call a few minutes earlier and had run out of there like greased lightening without a word to Becca. She had been working in the vault and trying to figure out the best way to get the door locked and her dress undone in as quickly a manner as possible. Lee had been looking through his desk for something, and then disappeared as soon as he'd put down the phone, just as Becca had almost figured it all out.
And he'd left his desk unlocked. The desk, that for some unknown reason, she had been unable to pick open.
'Opportunity is pounding on the glass door,' Becca thought to herself, and headed over to the desk. She pawed through a couple of the top drawers reading everything she came across carefully so that the desk wouldn't look too trashed – she found incomplete paperwork, scraps of notes, reminders to pick something up from one place or another, pictures of Amanda and the boys. Upon seeing these, Becca let out a frustrated sigh. "How utterly domestic of you, Scarecrow, now when are you going to get your head out of your OZ and come back to reality?" She giggled at the joke she had made out loud, instantly grateful that no one else was around to hear it. She put them all back and started making her way through the heavy lower file drawer.
Fifteen minutes later, she'd gone through all the files in the drawer, and realized that there wasn't enough there to justify the weight. She struggled to pull the drawer out a little further and found a metal strongbox. She tilted her head slightly, and spoke softly.
"Well, well, well, Lee… what do we have hidden away in here? And does your dear Amanda know this box exists?" She stood up to pull the heavy box out of the drawer and placed it on top of Lee's desk. There was nothing on the outside of the box to indicate what it might be, and from the size of the box it was clear that files weren't kept inside unless they were folded in half. But that still wouldn't justify the weight.
Becca reached over and snagged her purse to pull out a little leather wallet. The tools inside were standard issue and had proven themselves invaluable to Becca in other situations. This, she assumed, would be no different. She selected a diamond cut half-rake and went to work on the lock. Just as she started to realize that the tool she had wouldn't quite cut it, or the lock was better than she thought, the door to the Q opened and Francine walked in.
"Becca, Billy wanted- just what do you think you're doing?" Francine looked around Becca and could see that the other woman had been busy rifling through her friend's desk. And immediately looked both guilty and nervous about it. "Becca, did you pull that from Lee's desk?"
"Francine… I, ah, well…" Words failed Becca at that moment, and she knew that any excuse she came up with wouldn't adequately explain what she was doing. "I found it in Lee's desk, and it didn't have any markings. I thought it might be related to something we're working on."
"Becca, I've known you way too long. What case could it possibly be related to, what's in the box, and why isn't it with the evidence guys?"
"I, um, don't know." Becca's eyes were darting around the room, settling anywhere but on an even level with her friend.
"That's Lee's personal strongbox, isn't it?" Francine stood there, arms crossed and looking down at Becca as she stood before the desk. Becca slowly stood up and tucked the half-rake back into her wallet.
"Probably. What are you doing up here, anyway?"
"Billy wanted me to give you a hand with the files. Becca, if Lee caught you with that box you'd be toast right now." Francine realized she had said the wrong thing, and the other woman's eyes brightened with interest as they moved from her friend towards the box and back again.
"Why? What's in there?" Becca put her palms down on the box and leaned forward towards Francine. "Come on, Francie, I won't tell."
"I don't know what's in there, Boo, and I don't want to know. All I know is that Lee guards his privacy and his property and that private property box obviously belongs to him. Now put it back," Francine pointed at the box, "and let's get back to work." Francine waited while the other woman put the strongbox back into the drawer it had come from. She realized that she couldn't leave Becca alone in the Q until someone had either come up and changed the locks or told Lee what had happened so that he could finish locking up his own desk. Francine didn't relish the thought of either, but decided that, for now, a change of locks would be less painful on her ears.
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As they wound their way through the streets of the District, Lee couldn't help but notice that Amanda was shaking. She had kept her arms crossed and her hands were lightly rubbing her upper arms as if she was cold. Lee started to speak several times, but couldn't think of anything to say. He finally decided that work would be the best topic to try and get this all off of Amanda's mind. "You know, Billy's going to recheck backgrounds, and clearances…" he let his voice trail off as he realized that the topic he had brought up was the exact reason they were leaving the office in the middle of the day. He wasn't sure what else to do, and closed his eyes for a moment as they were stopped in a long line of cars at a notoriously long stoplight.
"Amanda," he began, "In all of this, have I ever told you what a great agent I think you are?" He opened one eye to peek over to where she was sitting. She was perfectly still, and then turned her head to look at him instead of out the windshield as she had been since they'd left The Agency. He quickly shut his eye, but knew she had caught him peeking. He could almost feel the smile that was on her face at the compliment. The sound of a horn behind him had him open his eyes and focus on traffic again.
"You are, you know. You're great. At Station One, you were fantastic. Both times! I just didn't know what to say, I… All those times that I put you down, or didn't give you the credit you deserved – I never meant to hurt your feelings… I just didn't know how you'd take the compliment." Lee snuck a glance over at Amanda, who had turned her head to watch him while he spoke.
"You thought I would fall at your feet in hero-worship, right?" Amanda turned her body slightly to match the angle at which her head was turned.
"Right! Wrong! No. I just didn't know how to tell you that you were doing a fantastic job without showing how much I felt about you."
"Awww, that's ok, Lee."
"No, Amanda, it's not. You never deserved that kind of treatment – not from me or anyone else. You deserve all the compliments that you earn for the hard work you do. You deserve the fairy tale storybook ending, but we seemed to have taken the long way around to that."
"Yes, we have. But I just wonder…" her voice trailed off, and she shifted in her seat again, this time to look out the passenger side window.
"What do you wonder?"
"Well, everyone keeps putting expectations on us. That we won't make it, that we're doomed to failure. That you're going to wander off-"
Lee was instantly angry at where Amanda's line of thought was going, and it showed when he cut her off "Amanda, you make it sound like I'm three years old, and going to wander off in the grocery store. Do you really think we're going to fail, or are you just comparing me to Joe?" As he spoke, he moved the car into a turnout, and shut off the ignition. Lee had had enough of this, and it was going to end now, and end there. "Amanda! You are usually so sure of yourself when it comes to emotions and how to handle them – what has gotten you so spooked now? Why have you been questioning us? I'm not about to leave you. I don't want to leave you. I've been looking for something that has been out of my reach for my entire life. I don't know, and I don't care if it's been out of reach by fate's design or because I wouldn't let whatever it was hit me in the head to come to my senses. And then I met you, and started working with you, and became friends with you. I didn't know what I was looking for my whole life until I fell in love with you." Lee stopped for a moment to reach across Amanda and pull a tissue out of the glove box and hand it to her. She accepted it, and wiped her face, letting her hands fall loosely back into her lap when she was done. Lee reached over with his index finger and raised her chin up for her to look at him. Tears still ran freely down her face. "I'm not Joe. I'm not the Lee Stetson you met in that train station who didn't need anyone. I'm not about to walk away on the best thing that's ever happened to me. Do you understand that? Why is it when things get a little rough for us, you want out? We've worked so hard to get to this point. I denied my feelings for so long, and I know I frustrated you over the whole situation for a long time, and now that we're here, one little crisis and you sound like you want to throw all of this away? What are you scared of? I'm not going to abandon you." Lee dropped his finger from her chin, and used it to wipe away a tear that was rolling down Amanda's face.
Amanda simply looked at him, and scrubbed her face one more time with the already soaking wet tissue. "I love you, Lee. I know you're not going to leave, but-"
"No buts." He said this as she was continuing on through her statement.
"-all these notes, and the phone calls, and we're not working together anymore. I think it's all finally getting to me."
A thought popped up in Lee's mind about how Amanda wasn't handling all of these things all at once – this, a woman who was a single mom, a PTA member, a den mother and intelligence operative all rolled into one. "Amanda, have you been blowing off appointments with Pfaff?"
"You mean, like you do?" She smiled through the tears at her husband and the look on his face that she knew about all the times he had ducked The Agency psychoanalyst.
"Ok, you got me. Fair enough. And I know I shouldn't throw your own words back at you, but you should go see him. See if there's anything that you need to talk out. Amanda, he's there to help you."
"And so are you. I won't miss my next appointment. I promise." She turned to pop open the glove box and get another tissue to blow her nose. "Let's go home before the agents who are trailing us think that we've pulled over for a quickie." She leaned forward to place a light kiss on Lee's lips, and another on his cheek.
Lee laughed and started the ignition, firmly believing that everything was going to be all right.
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The house was amazingly quiet and cool for the middle of the day in the middle of the summer. Lee and Amanda watched while their newly appointed shadows found a nice place in the shade across the street from where they could watch the house. As the day wound down, Philip and Jaime came in and packed up their things to head over to their father's house for a couple of weeks worth of parent/child bonding. Neither boy was really looking forward to it, but Jaime was the only one who would open up and talk to Lee about it. When his mother was cleaning up the coffee cups they had had out earlier in the day while they worked in the living room, Jaime pulled Lee aside and had asked him if he'd be around in case Joe decided to start working on their vacation.
"Why do you ask, Jaime?" Lee furrowed his brow at the question his younger stepson had asked of him.
"Well, if Dad isn't around, maybe you could come pick us up and we could all spend some time together." Jaime looked up hopefully at his stepfather.
"Jaime, I'd love to spend some summer time with you, but this is supposed to be your time with your Dad, and I don't want to intrude on it. I'd only step in if your Mom said it was OK or felt like you were being neglected. Give it a try, sport, and I think your Dad might surprise you." Lee patted Jaime's shoulder, as the boy looked down at his shoes.
Philip, walking by at that moment, shot an angry look towards Lee, and jostled Jaime's other shoulder with his own, and shot a comment backwards over his shoulder. "See, doofus? Told you he wouldn't want us around."
"Philip! Don't call your brother names! And come back here when I'm talking to you!" Jaime sat down on a nearby chair, while Lee stood at the bottom of the stairs staring back at his older stepson's retreating back.
"Spoken like a true parent." Amanda came from around the corner, and headed for Jaime. She squatted down next to the chair he was sitting in, and took his hands gently. "Jaime, honey, Lee's right. You have to spend some time with your father, and we don't want him to feel like Lee's trying to steal more time with you when he already lives here and sees you every day. You have to spend some time with your father whether you like it or not. And-" she held up a hand before Jaime could speak the words that he had opened his mouth for. "-whatever Philip said doesn't matter. He's just being a pain." Jaime smiled, surprised, at his mother's comment.
"Don't tell him she said that," Lee said in a conspiring tone of voice. "We don't want Philip to think we're ganging up against him."
"He already thinks that, Lee." Jaime pushed the bridge of his glasses further back up the bridge of his nose as he looked up at the older man. "I don't know why, but for some reason, Philip thinks you're out to get rid of the two of us. We're spending more and more time with Dad, and something doesn't feel right." He turned to look at his mother. "Why *are* we spending more time with Dad this summer?"
"Well, honey, Lee and I need to do some work at home for the next couple of weeks, and your Dad's been feeling a little, um-" Amanda looked to Lee for help.
"Hey, sport, your Dad's feeling like I might try and replace him, so he asked your Mom if he could spend a little more time with the two of you." Amanda smiled up at him, knowing that that was only a half-truth, but one that her son would accept after everything that had happened in the last couple of months.
"But Lee couldn't replace Dad! They're not interchangeable!"
"I know that, sweetheart, but sometimes adults lose sight of what's going on around them, and you kids help keep us in line. And I think your Dad would really appreciate the extra time he gets to spend with you and Philip this summer. So you'd better get packing."
Jaime nodded. "Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Lee. I'll see if I can get Philip to lighten up a little too. I know he's been giving Lee a hard time, and I don't know why, either."
"Well, we'll just have to talk to your brother too, later, and find out what's bothering him. Now, scoot." Amanda hugged her son and then pushed him towards the stairs so that he could get packed up for the next couple of weeks.
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After Joe left with the boys, Lee and Amanda had a light dinner and watched a movie. They had started out cuddling together, but had moved apart because of the sticky heat that had settled on the evening. Near the end of the movie, Amanda brewed a little iced tea, and brought a thermos full to the agents sitting outside the house, wishing them a goodnight and letting them know that the windows at the front of the house would remain open for the night to let some cool air in. She headed back inside the house, and she and Lee went to bed.
After she had left, one of the two agents turned to the other. "Mrs. King is sure one heck of a lady. How many others of our assignments make things this easy for us?"
"True, Stetson couldn't have done better than her." The two agents were relatively close in age, one being only a year older than the other, but with much more field experience, and had had the privilege of working with Scarecrow in the past. He'd known him for many years, and had watched the transformation that had taken place in the man when the housewife entered his life and turned it upside-down – for the better.
"Why do you say that, Stevens? I'm amazed that he's even with her." The younger agent, Russell Lynne, had admired Lee Stetson's old reputation for a ladies' man and wasn't doing too badly himself making his way through the steno pool, but at a much slower burn rate than Lee had years earlier. "This is a guy who could have any woman he wanted. And has."
"Don't be so surprised, they certainly don't surprise me. Stetson just needed the right woman to settle down with, and Amanda King came along at the right time, with all the patience he needed. Those bimbos in the steno pool didn't have anything to offer." Jack Stevens reserved the rest of his comments to himself about how Lynne wouldn't find paradise anywhere but by the dashboard light with one of those twits he was currently dating.
"Yeah, sure. And pigs are flying over the Capital as we speak."
"Go ahead and laugh, Lynne, that's one partnership that's going to last until they're old and gray and can't walk anymore. Stetson's as loyal as this summer day is long, and he's obviously hooked. Didn't you notice him sitting at the window while she brought the iced tea out? He's not about to let something happen to her."
"That's fine by me. It leaves Becca Dobson for the rest of us." The younger man smiled and wiggled his eyebrows at the thought of the dark-haired, blue-eyed beauty that had returned to The Agency. "Although I hear she's still got something for Stetson."
"Hope that wears off. Mrs. King can outclass her any day, and she doesn't deserve that kind of trouble." 'No one does,' Stevens thought to himself.
"Then again," the younger agent continued as if his partner hadn't spoken, "what woman doesn't still have a thing for Stetson." He settled back into his seat for the night, thinking about the pretty blond in ciphers whom he was seeing and who was constantly comparing him to Stetson. He briefly wished that he had just one of the pages of those fabled black books of Stetson's, but shook that thought out of his head. 'The rest of the women would probably keep comparing him to me, too.'
Disclosure: Warner Brothers Television Distribution and Shoot The Moon Productions owns these characters, as well as to the writers, and actors who created and portrayed them. Generous references to the past and the events of the 4th season… I don't make any money off of this – my only reward is my personal satisfaction at having written a decent story (and the story is all mine). Oh, and any new characters that you meet along the way - those are creations from my own twisted imagination, so hands off, unless you ask for permission to play with them.
See Chapter 1 for more information on timing and all that other good
stuff...
~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~
Meanwhile, up in the Q, Becca Dobson sat staring out the window, watching the sleek silver Corvette pull out of the adjacent driveway and head down the street. Lee had gotten a phone call a few minutes earlier and had run out of there like greased lightening without a word to Becca. She had been working in the vault and trying to figure out the best way to get the door locked and her dress undone in as quickly a manner as possible. Lee had been looking through his desk for something, and then disappeared as soon as he'd put down the phone, just as Becca had almost figured it all out.
And he'd left his desk unlocked. The desk, that for some unknown reason, she had been unable to pick open.
'Opportunity is pounding on the glass door,' Becca thought to herself, and headed over to the desk. She pawed through a couple of the top drawers reading everything she came across carefully so that the desk wouldn't look too trashed – she found incomplete paperwork, scraps of notes, reminders to pick something up from one place or another, pictures of Amanda and the boys. Upon seeing these, Becca let out a frustrated sigh. "How utterly domestic of you, Scarecrow, now when are you going to get your head out of your OZ and come back to reality?" She giggled at the joke she had made out loud, instantly grateful that no one else was around to hear it. She put them all back and started making her way through the heavy lower file drawer.
Fifteen minutes later, she'd gone through all the files in the drawer, and realized that there wasn't enough there to justify the weight. She struggled to pull the drawer out a little further and found a metal strongbox. She tilted her head slightly, and spoke softly.
"Well, well, well, Lee… what do we have hidden away in here? And does your dear Amanda know this box exists?" She stood up to pull the heavy box out of the drawer and placed it on top of Lee's desk. There was nothing on the outside of the box to indicate what it might be, and from the size of the box it was clear that files weren't kept inside unless they were folded in half. But that still wouldn't justify the weight.
Becca reached over and snagged her purse to pull out a little leather wallet. The tools inside were standard issue and had proven themselves invaluable to Becca in other situations. This, she assumed, would be no different. She selected a diamond cut half-rake and went to work on the lock. Just as she started to realize that the tool she had wouldn't quite cut it, or the lock was better than she thought, the door to the Q opened and Francine walked in.
"Becca, Billy wanted- just what do you think you're doing?" Francine looked around Becca and could see that the other woman had been busy rifling through her friend's desk. And immediately looked both guilty and nervous about it. "Becca, did you pull that from Lee's desk?"
"Francine… I, ah, well…" Words failed Becca at that moment, and she knew that any excuse she came up with wouldn't adequately explain what she was doing. "I found it in Lee's desk, and it didn't have any markings. I thought it might be related to something we're working on."
"Becca, I've known you way too long. What case could it possibly be related to, what's in the box, and why isn't it with the evidence guys?"
"I, um, don't know." Becca's eyes were darting around the room, settling anywhere but on an even level with her friend.
"That's Lee's personal strongbox, isn't it?" Francine stood there, arms crossed and looking down at Becca as she stood before the desk. Becca slowly stood up and tucked the half-rake back into her wallet.
"Probably. What are you doing up here, anyway?"
"Billy wanted me to give you a hand with the files. Becca, if Lee caught you with that box you'd be toast right now." Francine realized she had said the wrong thing, and the other woman's eyes brightened with interest as they moved from her friend towards the box and back again.
"Why? What's in there?" Becca put her palms down on the box and leaned forward towards Francine. "Come on, Francie, I won't tell."
"I don't know what's in there, Boo, and I don't want to know. All I know is that Lee guards his privacy and his property and that private property box obviously belongs to him. Now put it back," Francine pointed at the box, "and let's get back to work." Francine waited while the other woman put the strongbox back into the drawer it had come from. She realized that she couldn't leave Becca alone in the Q until someone had either come up and changed the locks or told Lee what had happened so that he could finish locking up his own desk. Francine didn't relish the thought of either, but decided that, for now, a change of locks would be less painful on her ears.
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As they wound their way through the streets of the District, Lee couldn't help but notice that Amanda was shaking. She had kept her arms crossed and her hands were lightly rubbing her upper arms as if she was cold. Lee started to speak several times, but couldn't think of anything to say. He finally decided that work would be the best topic to try and get this all off of Amanda's mind. "You know, Billy's going to recheck backgrounds, and clearances…" he let his voice trail off as he realized that the topic he had brought up was the exact reason they were leaving the office in the middle of the day. He wasn't sure what else to do, and closed his eyes for a moment as they were stopped in a long line of cars at a notoriously long stoplight.
"Amanda," he began, "In all of this, have I ever told you what a great agent I think you are?" He opened one eye to peek over to where she was sitting. She was perfectly still, and then turned her head to look at him instead of out the windshield as she had been since they'd left The Agency. He quickly shut his eye, but knew she had caught him peeking. He could almost feel the smile that was on her face at the compliment. The sound of a horn behind him had him open his eyes and focus on traffic again.
"You are, you know. You're great. At Station One, you were fantastic. Both times! I just didn't know what to say, I… All those times that I put you down, or didn't give you the credit you deserved – I never meant to hurt your feelings… I just didn't know how you'd take the compliment." Lee snuck a glance over at Amanda, who had turned her head to watch him while he spoke.
"You thought I would fall at your feet in hero-worship, right?" Amanda turned her body slightly to match the angle at which her head was turned.
"Right! Wrong! No. I just didn't know how to tell you that you were doing a fantastic job without showing how much I felt about you."
"Awww, that's ok, Lee."
"No, Amanda, it's not. You never deserved that kind of treatment – not from me or anyone else. You deserve all the compliments that you earn for the hard work you do. You deserve the fairy tale storybook ending, but we seemed to have taken the long way around to that."
"Yes, we have. But I just wonder…" her voice trailed off, and she shifted in her seat again, this time to look out the passenger side window.
"What do you wonder?"
"Well, everyone keeps putting expectations on us. That we won't make it, that we're doomed to failure. That you're going to wander off-"
Lee was instantly angry at where Amanda's line of thought was going, and it showed when he cut her off "Amanda, you make it sound like I'm three years old, and going to wander off in the grocery store. Do you really think we're going to fail, or are you just comparing me to Joe?" As he spoke, he moved the car into a turnout, and shut off the ignition. Lee had had enough of this, and it was going to end now, and end there. "Amanda! You are usually so sure of yourself when it comes to emotions and how to handle them – what has gotten you so spooked now? Why have you been questioning us? I'm not about to leave you. I don't want to leave you. I've been looking for something that has been out of my reach for my entire life. I don't know, and I don't care if it's been out of reach by fate's design or because I wouldn't let whatever it was hit me in the head to come to my senses. And then I met you, and started working with you, and became friends with you. I didn't know what I was looking for my whole life until I fell in love with you." Lee stopped for a moment to reach across Amanda and pull a tissue out of the glove box and hand it to her. She accepted it, and wiped her face, letting her hands fall loosely back into her lap when she was done. Lee reached over with his index finger and raised her chin up for her to look at him. Tears still ran freely down her face. "I'm not Joe. I'm not the Lee Stetson you met in that train station who didn't need anyone. I'm not about to walk away on the best thing that's ever happened to me. Do you understand that? Why is it when things get a little rough for us, you want out? We've worked so hard to get to this point. I denied my feelings for so long, and I know I frustrated you over the whole situation for a long time, and now that we're here, one little crisis and you sound like you want to throw all of this away? What are you scared of? I'm not going to abandon you." Lee dropped his finger from her chin, and used it to wipe away a tear that was rolling down Amanda's face.
Amanda simply looked at him, and scrubbed her face one more time with the already soaking wet tissue. "I love you, Lee. I know you're not going to leave, but-"
"No buts." He said this as she was continuing on through her statement.
"-all these notes, and the phone calls, and we're not working together anymore. I think it's all finally getting to me."
A thought popped up in Lee's mind about how Amanda wasn't handling all of these things all at once – this, a woman who was a single mom, a PTA member, a den mother and intelligence operative all rolled into one. "Amanda, have you been blowing off appointments with Pfaff?"
"You mean, like you do?" She smiled through the tears at her husband and the look on his face that she knew about all the times he had ducked The Agency psychoanalyst.
"Ok, you got me. Fair enough. And I know I shouldn't throw your own words back at you, but you should go see him. See if there's anything that you need to talk out. Amanda, he's there to help you."
"And so are you. I won't miss my next appointment. I promise." She turned to pop open the glove box and get another tissue to blow her nose. "Let's go home before the agents who are trailing us think that we've pulled over for a quickie." She leaned forward to place a light kiss on Lee's lips, and another on his cheek.
Lee laughed and started the ignition, firmly believing that everything was going to be all right.
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The house was amazingly quiet and cool for the middle of the day in the middle of the summer. Lee and Amanda watched while their newly appointed shadows found a nice place in the shade across the street from where they could watch the house. As the day wound down, Philip and Jaime came in and packed up their things to head over to their father's house for a couple of weeks worth of parent/child bonding. Neither boy was really looking forward to it, but Jaime was the only one who would open up and talk to Lee about it. When his mother was cleaning up the coffee cups they had had out earlier in the day while they worked in the living room, Jaime pulled Lee aside and had asked him if he'd be around in case Joe decided to start working on their vacation.
"Why do you ask, Jaime?" Lee furrowed his brow at the question his younger stepson had asked of him.
"Well, if Dad isn't around, maybe you could come pick us up and we could all spend some time together." Jaime looked up hopefully at his stepfather.
"Jaime, I'd love to spend some summer time with you, but this is supposed to be your time with your Dad, and I don't want to intrude on it. I'd only step in if your Mom said it was OK or felt like you were being neglected. Give it a try, sport, and I think your Dad might surprise you." Lee patted Jaime's shoulder, as the boy looked down at his shoes.
Philip, walking by at that moment, shot an angry look towards Lee, and jostled Jaime's other shoulder with his own, and shot a comment backwards over his shoulder. "See, doofus? Told you he wouldn't want us around."
"Philip! Don't call your brother names! And come back here when I'm talking to you!" Jaime sat down on a nearby chair, while Lee stood at the bottom of the stairs staring back at his older stepson's retreating back.
"Spoken like a true parent." Amanda came from around the corner, and headed for Jaime. She squatted down next to the chair he was sitting in, and took his hands gently. "Jaime, honey, Lee's right. You have to spend some time with your father, and we don't want him to feel like Lee's trying to steal more time with you when he already lives here and sees you every day. You have to spend some time with your father whether you like it or not. And-" she held up a hand before Jaime could speak the words that he had opened his mouth for. "-whatever Philip said doesn't matter. He's just being a pain." Jaime smiled, surprised, at his mother's comment.
"Don't tell him she said that," Lee said in a conspiring tone of voice. "We don't want Philip to think we're ganging up against him."
"He already thinks that, Lee." Jaime pushed the bridge of his glasses further back up the bridge of his nose as he looked up at the older man. "I don't know why, but for some reason, Philip thinks you're out to get rid of the two of us. We're spending more and more time with Dad, and something doesn't feel right." He turned to look at his mother. "Why *are* we spending more time with Dad this summer?"
"Well, honey, Lee and I need to do some work at home for the next couple of weeks, and your Dad's been feeling a little, um-" Amanda looked to Lee for help.
"Hey, sport, your Dad's feeling like I might try and replace him, so he asked your Mom if he could spend a little more time with the two of you." Amanda smiled up at him, knowing that that was only a half-truth, but one that her son would accept after everything that had happened in the last couple of months.
"But Lee couldn't replace Dad! They're not interchangeable!"
"I know that, sweetheart, but sometimes adults lose sight of what's going on around them, and you kids help keep us in line. And I think your Dad would really appreciate the extra time he gets to spend with you and Philip this summer. So you'd better get packing."
Jaime nodded. "Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Lee. I'll see if I can get Philip to lighten up a little too. I know he's been giving Lee a hard time, and I don't know why, either."
"Well, we'll just have to talk to your brother too, later, and find out what's bothering him. Now, scoot." Amanda hugged her son and then pushed him towards the stairs so that he could get packed up for the next couple of weeks.
~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~SMK~~~
After Joe left with the boys, Lee and Amanda had a light dinner and watched a movie. They had started out cuddling together, but had moved apart because of the sticky heat that had settled on the evening. Near the end of the movie, Amanda brewed a little iced tea, and brought a thermos full to the agents sitting outside the house, wishing them a goodnight and letting them know that the windows at the front of the house would remain open for the night to let some cool air in. She headed back inside the house, and she and Lee went to bed.
After she had left, one of the two agents turned to the other. "Mrs. King is sure one heck of a lady. How many others of our assignments make things this easy for us?"
"True, Stetson couldn't have done better than her." The two agents were relatively close in age, one being only a year older than the other, but with much more field experience, and had had the privilege of working with Scarecrow in the past. He'd known him for many years, and had watched the transformation that had taken place in the man when the housewife entered his life and turned it upside-down – for the better.
"Why do you say that, Stevens? I'm amazed that he's even with her." The younger agent, Russell Lynne, had admired Lee Stetson's old reputation for a ladies' man and wasn't doing too badly himself making his way through the steno pool, but at a much slower burn rate than Lee had years earlier. "This is a guy who could have any woman he wanted. And has."
"Don't be so surprised, they certainly don't surprise me. Stetson just needed the right woman to settle down with, and Amanda King came along at the right time, with all the patience he needed. Those bimbos in the steno pool didn't have anything to offer." Jack Stevens reserved the rest of his comments to himself about how Lynne wouldn't find paradise anywhere but by the dashboard light with one of those twits he was currently dating.
"Yeah, sure. And pigs are flying over the Capital as we speak."
"Go ahead and laugh, Lynne, that's one partnership that's going to last until they're old and gray and can't walk anymore. Stetson's as loyal as this summer day is long, and he's obviously hooked. Didn't you notice him sitting at the window while she brought the iced tea out? He's not about to let something happen to her."
"That's fine by me. It leaves Becca Dobson for the rest of us." The younger man smiled and wiggled his eyebrows at the thought of the dark-haired, blue-eyed beauty that had returned to The Agency. "Although I hear she's still got something for Stetson."
"Hope that wears off. Mrs. King can outclass her any day, and she doesn't deserve that kind of trouble." 'No one does,' Stevens thought to himself.
"Then again," the younger agent continued as if his partner hadn't spoken, "what woman doesn't still have a thing for Stetson." He settled back into his seat for the night, thinking about the pretty blond in ciphers whom he was seeing and who was constantly comparing him to Stetson. He briefly wished that he had just one of the pages of those fabled black books of Stetson's, but shook that thought out of his head. 'The rest of the women would probably keep comparing him to me, too.'
