Chapter Eighteen: Where Little Jack Fit In

Michael woke the next morning to the sound of the alarm, quickly followed by Sydney's soft voice at his ear.

"Rise and shine, baby," she whispered, following her words with a trail of kisses down his neck.

"Mmm," he murmured drowsily. "Five more minutes, sweetheart."

"If you spend the next five minutes in bed," she said, her lips dropping to his shoulder. "You're not going to be sleeping."

"That takes more than five minutes, Syd." He opened one eye to look at his beautiful wife, who was now planting kisses on his chest. "Give me a little credit."

"It usually does," she allowed, her lips moving dangerously lower. "It doesn't have to."

"Syd, what's gotten into you these last couple of days?" he laughed.

"Me?" She lifted her head to give him a quick kiss on the lips. "I believe you're the one who marched into my office and started undressing me yesterday."

"Oh, believe me, I'm not complaining," he assured her, running a hand over her hair. "I'm just wondering if something's going on that you maybe want to talk about, or if I'm really that good."

"You're really that good." She kissed him once more on the lips before resting her head on his chest. He let his arms move around her shoulders. "Michael?"

"Yes, sweetie?" He planted a loving kiss on the top of her head. God, he loved her. He would do anything if only he could guarantee her safety and comfort.

"Do you really think everything's going to be okay? That my dad's going to be able to work everything out for us?"

"I do," he responded, stroking her hair.

"Why?"

He froze momentarily. Why, indeed? "I guess because I have to," he answered honestly. "I have to in order to be able to do what we're going to do."

She gave him a soft kiss on the lips. "It's the right thing, isn't it?"

"Yes." He returned her kiss, not breaking the hold his lips had on hers until they were interrupted by a tiny knock on the door.

"Mommy! Daddy!"

A laugh escaped Sydney's lips. "What is it, sweetie?"

"I'm up!"

Michael couldn't help laughing, himself, as their doorknob turned back and forth while their daughter struggle to open the locked door.

"You locked me out!" she yelped.

"Just a minute, sweetie," Sydney called, climbing out of bed and throwing a robe over her nude body, the sight of which made Michael very much want to forget the little girl standing on the other side of the door.

"You decent under there, tiger?" Sydney asked, offering him a smirk.

"You should know," Michael responded with a grin. "You were heading that direction just a minute ago." In fact, he was wearing a pair of boxer shorts that he had made his way into at some point during the night, and they both, of course, knew it.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," she teased, unlocking the bedroom door so that their tiny daughter could scramble in.

"Morning, Mommy," she said, and Michael took the opportunity to throw on the undershirt that lay, discarded, beside the bed as Sydney bent so that the little girl could throw her arms around her neck.

"Morning, angel," Sydney said warmly.

Emily released her mother from her grip and scrambled toward her daddy, climbing onto the bed and hurling herself at Michael. "Morning, Daddy."

"Morning, princess,' he said, kissing the top of the little girl's head and marveling, for the millionth time, at how much she looked like her mother.

"I'm going to hop in the shower," Sydney said, eyes twinkling as she smiled at her husband and daughter. "Michael, honey, be a dear and get Jack up, won't you?"

"Only if Emily will help me," Michael said, ruffling his daughter's hair.

"Okay!" Emily said brightly, scrambling off of the bed and out of the room. "Jack!"

Michael smiled and got up to follow her, pausing on his way out of the room to kiss his wife. "Take your time," he said huskily. "Maybe I'll join you in a minute."

"Michael," she teased. "What's gotten into you these past couple of days?"

"Nothing," he responded with a grin. "You're just that good." He kissed her one last time before heading down the hall towards Jack's room.

He had expected to find his son still half-asleep and his daughter trying to shake him awake; instead, he encountered Jack, sitting up in bed, talking on the cordless phone while Emily sat at the foot of the bed sucking her thumb.

"Take your thumb out of your mouth, princess," he told the little girl distractedly, just as Jack said goodbye and put the phone down.

"I didn't hear the phone ring," Michael said with a frown.

"It didn't," Jack responded, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "I called Grandma."

"What?" Warning bells chimed in Michael's head, though he couldn't have said precisely why. Of course Jack had called his grandmother on the phone before. Michael just couldn't recall a single occasion when he'd done so at six-thirty in the morning without permission. "Why?"

"I needed to ask her something," Jack said, shuffling past his father into the hall.

"Oh." Michael followed his son out of the room, Emily at his heels. "Did you get your answer?"

"Nah," Jack said, continuing down the hall to the bathroom he and Emily shared. "She's going to pick me up from school and we're going to talk some more."

This really didn't sit well with Michael. The information he had learned over the course of the past week was swimming around his head wildly.

Jack Bristow had offered Sydney a deal. Brooke, and presumably Irina, knew about that deal. Only Michael and Sydney knew for sure that they were taking that deal.

So where did little Jack fit in?