IX

"Hey, dad."

"Mallory." Her father gave her a warm but tired smile. He looked smaller than she remembered, washed out and grey. She hugged him tightly, and wondered if she was only imagining that he was so much more frail than he had been.

The wry, sadly guilty smile remained in place as she pulled back. He was expecting her to be disappointed in him, and she didn't know whether to curse him for his short-sightedness or hate the tiny hidden part of her that was.

The president had called her. She was grateful for that. Taking the news of her father's relapse from the man himself would have been too much to bear; the combination of the crushing guilt she knew would lace his voice and the effort of controlling her own voice. At least she'd been able to soak herself in the comfort of the president's concern, both for her and for her father.

When she'd hung up the phone, Mallory hadn't known whether to be relieved or cry or who knew what. After all this time, she still didn't know how to react to the expected unexpected.

Again, again, why did it have to happen again? Why was it never, ever over?

Her father was giving her the hangdog look she remembered so well from her childhood. And she didn't hate him, she could never hate him, but she hated the fact that she couldn't ever let any of her own feelings out because of how it would hurt him.

And God, she hated how he could never escape from the way he always ended up hurting himself.

They'd spoken on the phone in the two months since she'd heard, and there had been a brief, awkward meeting over coffees in his hotel. But she'd sidestepped around all invitations to come to the White House, and she wondered quietly to herself what he'd made of that. She wasn't sure she was ready to admit to herself quite what the reason was, yet.

There was so much to say, and how did you say it?

"Dad, you're getting too thin," was all she put into words.

"I've been on a crash diet," he said dryly.

"Dad..." she shook her head, and he lowered his apologetically. There was an awkward moment of silence before he looked up.

"Has your mother arrived yet?"

"She'll be here in the morning."

He nodded slowly to himself, and she felt compelled to hug him again. "Oh, sweetheart, I'm okay," he murmured softly.

"I worry about you, daddy," she said plaintively.

"I know, I know." He smiled gently at her. "I'm right there in the White House, honey, you can come and visit me any time."

"Yeah," she said, a little awkwardly. She noticed he was still clutching his suitcase - pitifully small compared to the volumes of luggage this trip had required for her - and pried it out of his fingers, to his visible amusement. "You need to get some rest," she told him. "It's going to be a long day tomorrow."

He shook his head as he trailed after her. "Okay, between you and the president, I have entirely too many substitute parents right now."

Mallory giggled, and at least for a little while, things didn't feel quite so strained.

It would have been nice to be able to turn up as a pleasant surprise, but circumstances made it a little difficult. On the plus side, it meant that the time between his limo rolling up at the hotel and Abbey reaching his side was negligible.

"Hey there, father of the bride," she smiled, falling into step beside him as he walked. It was late, but people were waiting up - people had a tendency to do that when he came calling. They both smiled and acknowledged and said "hi" to people without breaking their stride or their conversation. They conversed in the low tones which were all too often all they had for privacy.

"How's Zoey doing?"

"She's good. How's Charlie?"

"Well, he hasn't passed out or thrown up yet, so I'd say he's doing fine."

"Better than you." He rose above that playful jab with a quiet smile, knowing that any discussion of whether or not his dizzy spell at their wedding had been marriage jitters or manfully staving off food-poisoning from a hasty breakfast was not likely to maintain the level of dignity required. "How did your flight go?" she asked.

Knowing this would inevitably turn to the question of whether he'd slept, Jed deflected the enquiry. "Well, mostly it coasted along using its engines. There was a slight rough patch where they asked us to all get out and flap our arms, but-"

Abbey gave a theatrical sigh. "Why did I marry you?" she asked, of the ceiling more than of him.

"I bedazzled you with my vibrant aura of sexual magnetism," he supplied out of the corner of his mouth, smiling innocently at a group of miscellaneous hotel staff as he passed.

"Is that so?"

"Well, you didn't say as much. But I read between the lines." Their arrival at their suite was timed well to coincide with his smirk, and Abbey held the door open and ordered him in with an eyebrow. It closed behind them, shutting the outside world as far away as it ever got.

"It's late," she said, moving to help him take off his tie.

"See, there goes that sexual magnetism again," he noted as she tugged it off over his head.

"You just keep telling yourself that, babe," Abbey agreed mildly, sitting on the edge of the bed to remove her shoes.

"I sense that you're doubting. You're a doubting Thomas." He stole a quick kiss as she was removing her earrings.

"You think I'm a man now?" she smirked. "Are you wearing the same glasses you had on when you 'read between the lines'?"

He gave her a quick squeeze. "Well, the evidence suggests you're not a man. But I think the issue bears further investigation." Jed scooted closer to her across the bed, and she laughed and pushed him away with a hand against his chest.

"You, my friend, are getting nothing but beauty sleep on this fine midsummer evening," she chided. "You've got a big day out in front of the cameras tomorrow, and don't think I don't know you've been distracting me from asking if you slept on the plane."

He heaved a hugely put-upon sigh, but without any rancour, and flopped back against the bed to look up at the ceiling. He locked his hands behind his head. "This is all very familiar," he noted.

Abbey snuggled up against his side. "Yeah." He absently put out a hand to stroke her hair.

"It's not the honeymoon suite, though." He remembered their own marriage as if it was yesterday, and the ecstatically terrifying whirlwind of anticipation in his belly as they retired hand in hand to this hotel. It had been almost more than they could afford back then, both young students not prepared to take their parents' charity, although now it was pretty low down the opulence scale for a presidential rest stop.

He could see Abbey's smirk without rolling over to look at her. "Well, you know, they've reserved that for Charlie and Zoey this time around." He grumbled low down in his chest at that, and she laughed at him, cruel woman that she was. "Everybody's children grow up, Jed," she said gently.

"Not so soon," he objected. "They're still babies."

"Zoey's twenty-three," Abbey reminded him. But that was just a number, not something he could associate with the youngest of his children, because he could still remember the days when he'd been twenty-three.

"I remember when she used to fit in the palm of my hand," he said softly. He did, too, a tiny little baby with eyes so huge and fascinated that you could see right through them to the freshly-minted soul beneath.

His little girl. How could she be getting married?

"Yeah." Abbey's head shifted against his shoulder, and he sensed that he'd transmitted his mood.

"I'm sorry, babe," he apologised, brushing a curl of hair from her forehead to kiss it. "I'm just dwelling on the past, lately."

"Yes, well, that's what happens when you're old."

Her playful tone surprised him into a laugh, and he tugged her tightly into his arms. "I love you," he said quietly, against her hair.

There wasn't anything else that needed to be said.

"Mr. Seaborn?"

"That's me."

The desk clerk ran an efficient finger along his register. "A double; 23A?"

"That's right," he confirmed, taking the card key. "Thanks."

The clerk flicked his eyes to Steve standing next to him. "And you're-?"

"Oh, we're sharing," Steve said, casually wrapping his fingers around Sam's wrist. Sam tensed as the man's face went carefully blank, but all he did was lower his gaze.

"Very good, sir," he said neutrally.

They picked up their suitcases and headed off to find their room. "I'm sorry about that," Sam said awkwardly as they passed out of the lobby.

Steve flashed him a sudden boyish grin. "Are you kidding? I love doing that," he smirked.

Sam shook his head, and had to smile back. Then he shifted his bag to the other hand, so he could slip an arm around Steve's waist as they walked.

Who gave a damn what anybody thought?