I pick up the phone calmly, and dial. "Hello?"

"Yes, I'm calling to speak with Shira Huntzberger? It's about her son Logan."

"One moment."

I hear hold music come on the line and sigh. Jesus. Who has hold music in their house? Not even Grandma has hold music at home.

"This is Shira." A warm voice says calmly. "Whom am I speaking with?"

I smile. "Hello Mrs. Huntzberger. My name is Rory Gilmore, I'm a friend of your son's."

She laughs. "You're the girl Mitchum was telling me about. Richard and Emily's granddaughter."

"I am." I pause. "I need some help with something. About a week ago, Logan and his friends arranged it so that all the coffee on campus and in my hometown mysteriously went missing."

There's silence on the line. "That was Logan?" her voice asks carefully.

I scrunch my face. "What do you mean?"

"Darling, there was no coffee in the state. Except at one little coffee shop in Hartford."

"Java Hut." I state.

"That's the one. His father was livid."

I smile. "Would you like to help me return the favor?"

"Taking coffee away from him won't affect him."

"There are other things that would."

"I think I like you Miss Gilmore."

"I had a feeling you might." I bite my lip. "We probably shouldn't plan this on the phone."

"Would you like to come by for coffee? I promise we have some now, and I think Mitchum would be very happy to help us."

"I'd like that very much Mrs. Huntzberger."

I ring the doorbell to the massive house as calmly as I can. What am I getting myself into? This is insanity. I smile at the maid who answers the door.

"You must be Miss Gilmore. Mr. & Mrs. Huntzberger are waiting in the sitting room." She gestures to an arch off to the right and I nod.

"Thank you." I move towards the room, and step in slowly, taking in the sight of the newspaper mogul and his wife. "I'm Rory Gilmore." I offer carefully.

Mitchum Huntzberger stands. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Mitchum, and this is my wife Shira. None of this Mr. & Mrs. crap, you hear? We're in this together."

I nod. "Thanks. Although I should warn you, I'm likely to slip from time to time."

Shira grins. "Just don't let it happen too often."

"Sounds good." I smile.

"So, you have a plan to make my son pay for his little coffee stunt." Mitchum states plainly.

I nod. "To be fair, the initial idea stemmed from my mom, but I can't do it without your help."

"I like the sound of that." Mitchum grins at his wife. "Always good to be important in a plot."

I nod again, feeling ridiculous. "You control his money, right?"

Shira laughs. "Oh darling, that's perfect!" she smiles, standing up. "Get up and give me a hug." I stand, and note clinically that she smells like vanilla as she wraps her arms around me. "I'm going to like having you around Rory."

I shrug. "I don't know if I'll be around all that much, but thank you for the compliment."

"Don't be so sure dear. Not many people can keep a Huntzberger on his toes. You're the girl who wrote the article on the Brigade, aren't you?" Mitchum comments calmly.

I nod. "Yes sir, I am."

"I should tell you that my chain was one of the first to pick it up."

I stare at him. "Seriously?"

"Your editor didn't tell you?"

I am going to kill Doyle. "No, he didn't."

Mitchum sighs. "He always was a sniveling whiner. Can't admit when someone below him shows talent. Anyways, it will be published in about two weeks – I'll let you know when, but it's part of a series featuring promising students in the field."

"Wow." I blink a few times. "Wow, thank you."

"You're the one who wrote it. Thank you."

I smile. "So, Logan's financial situation." I offer. "There's one tiny glitch that occurred to me on the way over here. If Logan is suddenly broke, Colin and Finn are likely to just cover for him until he can figure out what's going on."

I see Mitchum glance at Shira. "What if Colin and Finn were having troubles of their own?" she asks. "Would that put a kink in their lives?"

I grin. "I think it would."

"Perhaps you should be positioned properly for when they figure it out. Would you be able to come and stay here next weekend? We'll give you a room."

I shrug. "So long as I can study, I don't really care where I do it."

"Good. It's settled. We'll see you Friday night, I'll make sure Emily knows you'll be dining here." Shira says calmly, smiling.

When I pull into the large garage I sigh. What have I gotten myself into? He's not going to take this lying down. He'll find some way to get back at me. I step out and walk into the house narrowing my eyes at the luggage near the door. What the hell?

"Oh good! You're here!" Shira's voice calls from down the hall.

"Hi Shira." I smile.

"Now, I hope you don't mind, but Mitchum and I have sort of run with your little plan. We've made sure that the deliveries to your mother continue, but everything else has been cancelled. Including his car service, actually. There will be a car sent to pick him up and bring him here as soon as he attempts to use it."

I nod. "That seems fair."

She grins. "Oh but dear, it's not. We've cleaned out the house of alcohol, and most of the boys' favorite activities here…we've taken the liberty of arranging it so they're more than a little inaccessible for the weekend."

I shake my head. "Mean." I smile. "But under the circumstances, I get it."

She nods. "There's a problem though. Mitchum and I are notoriously bad at saying no to Logan. Currently, he doesn't know about our involvement."

"This is about the luggage in the hall, isn't it?"

She nods. "We're going to Thailand for the weekend. Each of the televisions has been encoded for satellite access, and we've taken precautions to prevent the boys from filling any of the pools, but then it occurred to us that that wasn't very fair to you."

I shrug. "I have studying to do anyways."

"Well, the password for the televisions is 'lorelai', all lower case; just in case. And we've made arrangements with the pool company that if you want to use any of the facilities, just call them and they'll take care of it – you'll have to identify yourself as Lorelai Leigh Gilmore though, or they won't come out."

I nod. "Okay. Sounds good."

She walks towards a stairwell, and I follow her to a large set of double doors, which she opens. "You can stay here for the weekend."

I glance around the room. It's large, and comfortable, in navy and a café-au-lait color. "Nice." I glance at her and notice a glint in her eyes.

"Yes, its one of the nicer rooms in the house." She tilts her head, and I follow her across the hall to where she opens another set of doors to reveal a very, very, pink room. "This is the pink room."

I nod slowly, taking it in. Pink lace comforter, pink satin sheets, pink carpet, pink velvet curtains. "It certainly is." I acknowledge.

She laughs. "It really is hideous, isn't it? I've been meaning to re-do it for years, but could never bring myself to spend enough time in here to take any measurements, and neither have any of my designers. Mitchum had it done just before Logan was born. He was convinced we were having a girl."

I nod slowly. "Okay." I accept. What are we doing in here then?

"Let Logan know that we had to do some renovations on his room. He'll be staying in here." Shira explains.

I can't help it. I start laughing. "Seriously?" I choke out.

Her own giggles help to calm me. "Absolutely. Mitchum was not impressed by his little stunt."

I slowly stop laughing. "I'd be happy to let him know."

"Well, we really do need to be going, or we'll miss our flight." She offers, and I follow her back downstairs where we meet up with Mitchum.

"Hi." I smile at him.

"You still can't bring yourself to call me Mitchum, can you?" he asks bluntly.

I shrug. "It was all I could do not to call you 'sir'." I admit.

"It'll come in time."

"I don't know about that. Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm sort of hoping this will bring Logan up short so he stops harassing me, and realizes that its not safe to mess with a Gilmore."

Mitchum nods slowly. "I know, but that doesn't mean you won't be around a fair bit."

I stare at him as they step out of the house behind the porter who has grabbed their luggage. What the hell is that supposed to mean? He'd better not have been talking about me to them.

"What the hell took you so long? I was expecting you hours ago." I grin at him, closing my book as he flings open the door.

"Were you?" he asks, crossing his arms and staring at me.

Of course I was. Your mother arranged it so your car service could only come here you egomaniac. Wow, his eyes just got really, really yummy looking. "Yeah. Considering the trouble I went to in arranging your little surprise, I figured you'd have gotten here to freak out at your parents relatively quickly." Focus Rory. FOCUS.

"It was supposed to be Finn's weekend to pay." He clips.

Ooh. So it wasn't him that found out first. Neat. I lean back into the pillows. "That was a stroke of genius on my part, I have to admit."

He moves closer, sitting next to me on the bed. He still smells like coffee! Damnit! "How did you get my parents involved? For that matter, how did you get their parents involved?"

I shrug. "I called your mother, introduced myself. I'll admit it was a lot easier than I expected it to be, even with how pissed your dad was when he realized you were behind the great coffee disappearing act of Connecticut." Come to think of it, it was pretty easy to get her to go along.

"It's possible I've mentioned you to them a few times." He says slowly.

I smile, but feel my mind race. Just how many times, exactly, that she went along before I even met her face to face? "That was awfully helpful of you."

"You had them cancel my car service?" he asks softly.

I laugh. "Logan, I had them cancel everything except your tuition, dorm rent, and deliveries to my mother. Did you even try to watch TV today?"

"Satellite service?"

I nod. "And land line, and bank accounts, and lines of credit. You name it, its gone." I stop myself suddenly, and lock my stare on him. "Wait a second. What are you doing in this room?"

"This is my room." He says slowly.

Oh now that's just mean. I mean, come on. Renovations were one thing, but this? "Wow. I didn't think they'd go this far, though the comment before they headed to the airport makes a whole lot more sense now."

I feel his gaze intensify. "What comment?"

"That they had the maid get the 'pink room' ready for you because your room was unavailable. They actually told me there were renovations happening in it." I admit carefully.

"They gave you my room." He states plainly.

I nod. "And I saw the pink room. You can forget switching out with me because I'll tell your father and he'll keep the freeze on through next weekend." I would have nightmares in that monstrosity of a room.

"You manipulative little witch!" he hisses suddenly, standing up.

I purse my lips a bit. Hey! "That's not very nice." I remind him.

He tosses his hands in the air. "YOU HAD MY PARENTS FREEZE MY FINANCES!" He shouts incredulously, and then freezes. "And told me you had a writing retreat this weekend." He accuses me.

I climb out of the bed carefully. "And you Logan, made the coffee disappear. This is nothing. Trust me." I move closer to him and lock my eyes with his. "Suck it up princess. Live without the silver spoon for a weekend."

"In this house?"

I hear a banging on the door. Ha. Take that. I win. "Surprise." I whisper, crossing to the door and pulling it open. "Hello boys." I smile at the two as they walk into the room to talk to him.

I feel a surge of happiness as they freeze. "Mate, what is she doing here?" Finn asks Logan slowly.

He crosses his arms. "Making my life a living hell." he clips. Damn right.

Colin sighs. "And ours apparently. The bar is empty. Every bar is empty – we checked. The movies are gone. The pool is drained, and the chlorine tank is empty so we can't even fill it. The tennis courts are locked, the satellite service is coded off, and get this – none of the phones work." He deadpans, staring at me.

Oh hell, I'm such a suck. I shrug at them. "I suppose that if the two of you are really nice to me I'll help you out in your pain a bit and share the TV codes – maybe even tell you where the spare chlorine tank for the hot tubs is, but not if you plan on including Logan in your fun."

They glance at each other, and then at Logan, who stares at them in return. "You guys can't seriously be considering going along with her."

They nod, and turn back to me. "What do you want?" Finn asks.

I grin. Now I've really won. "Coffee would be an excellent place to start." I suggest, and they hurry away.

"I can't believe you've resorted to corrupting my friends." He shakes his head at me.

I turn away from him to grab my satin robe, pulling it on, and then glance back. "You started this Logan, not me." I remind him as calmly as I can.

I watch as he runs his fingers through his hair, shaking his head. "And now I'm finishing it." He mutters darkly, moving quickly to stand in front of me.

I'm about to reply when his lips cover mine. As he pushes into my mouth, I nearly collapse. God, he even tastes like coffee. I could get used to this. I use my fingers to trace the muscles in his back even as he slowly pulls back. "What just happened?" I whisper.

I feel his fingers massaging my scalp lightly as his eyes meet mine. "You won. I admit it. Can we go back to making out now?" he whispers hoarsely.

I nod, and fuse my lips to his as he kicks the door closed. As he continues to explore my mouth, I realize that I feel like I've come home.