This chapter is dedicated to my niece, who wanted to be in my story. She is "Lizzie" right down to the glasses.

Chapter 10

Warrick could hear loud girlish giggles before he got the front door open. He frowned, it was only eight in the morning and Jessica seemed to be going strong already. As he got into the house, he was nearly run over by not one, but two small bodies.

"Daddy!" Jessica launched herself at him, catching him around one thigh.

"Uncle Warrick!" Kelly Holcomb-soon-to-be-Stokes caught him around the other thigh.

"Girls, let him get in the door first." Gemma admonished gently as she came into the room. She leaned over the giggling girls to give her tired husband a sweet kiss on the mouth.

"Hey Babe." Warrick relished the kiss and stole one of his own, taking a little more time to enjoy the taste of her mouth.

"EWWW!" The girls piped up, still clinging to him. Finally, Warrick ended the kiss, bending down and scooping both girls ups into his arms.

"You just keep thinking eww," He advised. "for the next thirty or forty years!"

"Dream on." Gemma clucked, heading back into the kitchen. Warrick followed, carrying his cargo with him. "Little early in the day for partying isn't it?"

"Lucy was called in to work. Nick was out cold, so I told her to bring them here. Don't worry, as soon as you've eaten, we'll take off to the zoo. That way, you can get some sleep in the quiet."

"Don't they have school?"

"It's Saturday, Darling." Gemma gave him another peck on the cheek. "Here in America, we don't send kids to school on Saturdays. Besides, school doesn't start up for another two weeks."

"It's Saturday already?" Warrick looked from one little girl to the other, they giggled in response. Giving them a quick, noisy kiss on their noses, he put them down. They quickly disappeared.

"So? Where are Lizzie, Suzie and Grams?"

"I sent Grams home." Gemma was busy mixing some sort of batter, most likely pancakes. "Lizzie is sitting with Suzie while she naps."

"Let me guess, Lizzie is reading a book?"

"Yes." Gemma nodded. Lizzie rarely did anything that didn't require a book in her hands. The girl was known for walking into walls as she tried to read and walk at the same time. "Nick got her the new Harry Potter on the way home from work. She's nearly halfway into it already." Seeing how tired her husband looked, she came over to wrap her arms around him. He returned the hug, leaning into her with a sigh. "Rough night?"

"Yeah." Warrick wasn't willing to share the details of this particular case with her. "Nick convinced me to have my DNA tested against Sean Arthur's."

"Where did you get his blood?" Gemma questioned into his chest. She looked up into his green eyes and saw the emotions swirling there. She hugged him tighter, tiptoeing up to place kisses along his jaw.

"Nick got it from him while we were at the hospital." Warrick admitted with a grunt. "Before I sent him packing."

"And, you found out the results?" Gemma questioned gently, pulling back to look into his eyes.

"We matched. He was right. We are brothers." Warrick snorted. "At least, It's highly likely that we are brothers.

"How do you feel about that?"

"Like an ass, just like everyone said I was." Warrick laughed wryly. "I handled it all pretty badly."

"I think Nick was the only one that said that." Gemma corrected smartly. "Others probably thought it though."

"Did you?" Warrick studied his wife, wondering again, why he had once thought she was plain looking. He ran a finger along her face, ending at her mouth. She was perfect, his perfect woman. Her luminous blue eyes studied him, so full of love and concern.

"No. I understood. If you remember, I wasn't very kind to Gil when he admitted that he was my father." Gemma reminded him, looking slightly melancholic.

"You slapped him silly, Girl!" Warrick crowed, remembering the moment clearly. "You also called him some things you must have learned from sailors."

"Yes, thank you for reminding me." Gemma sighed. "I'm just saying. I understood your initial reaction. I didn't get a choice in whether to find out or not. He just blurted it out to me."

"Gil didn't handle it very well." Warrick agreed. "He's never been very good at the personal contact type of stuff. He's the first to say that he's not a people person. If I'd known that was how he was going to handle it, I would have done it myself instead of letting him do it. I just thought it was his to tell."

"He was nervous, and he felt pressured by our impending marriage. He didn't want you going into marriage with a secret forced on you by him." Gemma defended her father. "He's trying. He's getting better at being around people."

"That's because you and Jess won't let him slither off and hide from his feelings. You're teaching how be human." Warrick kissed the top of her head. "Thank you. You've made me feel better about this."

"I'm making waffles. Are you hungry?" Gemma pulled away, going back to her batter.

"What I'm hungry for, I can't have." Warrick waggled his eyebrows at her, causing his wife to blush. Grinning, he headed out of the kitchen, pausing at the door, he added, "I'm going up to look at our baby and then take a shower. You don't have to hurry off with the girls; I doubt I'll be sleeping anytime soon. There's too much on my mind."

"I'll come up and tuck you in after the girls eat." Gemma assured him, her smile promising something more. Warrick responded with a dirty grin. He was really feeling better as he headed up to the nursery.

As expected, Lizzie sat in Gemma's rocker, deeply engrossed in a thick book. She didn't look up as Warrick entered and crossed over to the bassinet. He leaned over the infant and smiled outrageously.

Tiny Suzie lay on her side, her fists pulled up close to her face. One rested on her cheek, the other on the bed in front of her small mouth. Her dark brown hair had started to curl, seeming to spring up everywhere from her head. Warrick had the urge to reach down and smooth it down. He held back, not wanting to wake the baby.

He decided that after a day like today, he needed the softness of his newborn baby. He bent down and gently lifted her. "Com'ere Angel." He crooned as he brought her up against his chest.

"Huh? What? Huh?" Lizzie looked up from her book, startled that someone was in the room. "Oh! Hi, Uncle Rick."

"Hey Liz." Warrick greeted her, but had only eyes for his daughter. She felt good in his arms. He inhaled her baby scent, a mixture of baby powder and milk. "How are you doing?"

"I'm reading a book." Lizzie answered; Warrick looked over at the girl, finding her answer odd. She had her nose back to the book. He shook his head in disbelief, wondering if Sara had been like this as a child. He bet she had.

"Okay." Warrick agreed, carrying the baby over to the changing table to get a receiving blanket.

"Huh?" Lizzie was looking at him, shamefaced. "I gave you a stupid answer again, didn't I? You didn't ask me what I was doing."

"Well, it wasn't a stupid answer….not really." Warrick draped the blanket over the infant. "Not to someone who knows you."

"Huh?" She looked at him blankly. The conversation was making her head spin.

"I asked how you were, and you answered that you were reading a book." Warrick began, seeing her face turn red as she took it in. "To anyone else, it's a dumb answer, but not to me. I know that if you're reading a book, you're happy. So, by telling me that you were reading a book, you told me that you were doing well."

Lizzie smiled brightly, despite her embarrassment. Warrick had succeeded in making her smile, which was a hard feat. He didn't know how she had been before her ordeal, but ever since, she had been a serious and often gloomy child. He didn't blame her, it must be hard to know that your own mother had planned your death.

Lizzie pushed her purple-rimmed glasses up off the end of her nose and studied him. "You look like you've had a bad day."

"Yeah. I've had a few bad days, today just tipped it all off." Warrick agreed, turning his attention back to the baby who was now starting to awaken. Warrick wanted to see her open her eyes and look at him. She had his green eyes, but he could see Gemma in them.

"Is there ever a good day with your job Uncle Rick?"

"Not really a good day. We deal with the aftermath of the most evil parts of human nature." Warrick admitted. "But some are not as bad as others. Sometimes we can call it a good day if it was not a murder, but a death by natural causes. Sometime we consider it a good day if we catch the killer, stopping him or her from committing another crime."

"Is that what makes you stay there? Getting the bad guys put away?" Hazel eyes searched his face, waiting and looking for a truthful answer.

"Yeah." Warrick nodded. "It used to be the challenge of solving the case. It was a rush. Now, having a family, I don't think like that anymore. I just want to put them all away so they don't hurt someone's family."

"Thank you for being truthful. Not very many people will tell me the truth. I can tell that you just did." Lizzie nodded. "Did I ever thank you for saving me and Kelly?" She asked, growing ever serious. "I mean, you were hurt because of me. Aunt Gemma was hurt too. Nick told me about the other baby that she lost because she got hurt."

Warrick inhaled deeply. The senselessness of all of that still hurt . The girls' mother had simply gotten tired of having the responsibility of having children. Being a politician, she decided to get rid of them, get public sympathy and possible votes at the same time. She had hired thugs to kidnap and kill her young daughters. He couldn't imagine why the woman would want to do that to these two sweet children, or any child for that matter.

Warrick could see the pain simmering just below the surface of Lizzie. At fourteen, the teenager was too old to be a child and too young to be an adult. Her way of coping was to regress into herself. Warrick knew how that was. He'd been a sullen teen at times, acting out because he'd had no other way to express his unhappiness.

"I don't believe in lying to people. You're old enough to understand what our job is. Dealing with death and destruction is a way of life for us. You've experienced it first hand. You've seen the evilness of the world, but I think you've seen the good in it too."

"Yeah. Nick and Lucy are the good." Lizzie smiled, thinking of her soon to be parents. "So are you, and Aunt Gemma. All of you guys are. You gotta keep thinking that there are more good people than bad in the world. Right?"

"Exactly." Warrick smiled back. "That's why I come home to kiss my wife, and hug my daughters. They show me in every one of their smiles."

"Suzie doesn't' smile or hug yet." she reminded him.

"No, but she is innocence in its true form. She hasn't seen anything bad. She hasn't heard a harsh word. Hasn't learned to lie or believe one." Warrick explained, watching as the tiny eyes opened with a yawn. "I hold her and imagine what she's going to be like. Will she be full of smiles like Kelly? Will she have a speech impediment like Jessica? Will she have a sense of humor like you?"

"You think I'm funny?"

"Yeah, you've got a good mind. Quick wit." Warrick watched the baby drift back to sleep and put her back into the basinet. Turning to the young teen, he added. "When you focus, you're really bright. You'll go far."

"Lucy is a nurse and Nick is a CSI. Do you think they'll be disappointed if I don't go into some field involving Science?" Lizzie looked to him as if this had been bothering her for a long time.

"No, they won't be disappointed. They love you. They just want you to grow up and be happy. They'll support you in whatever you chose to do." Warrick answered without missing a beat. "Don't keep things like this to yourself. They'd love you to come to them with something like this. Chances are, Lucy already knows what you want to do and is just waiting for you to come to her."

"Thanks, Uncle Rick. You're a really cool uncle." Lizzie smiled, looking relieved. Warrick felt even better as he headed for the shower. Having a family to come home to did have it's bonuses.