TITLE Second Star From The Right

RATING PG-13-R

SUMMERY After the fire at the Independence Inn one of the guests sues Lorelai.

DISCLAIMER I own nothing. I don't even have the cash to buy the DVDs.

DANGEROUS THOUGHTS

The ringing of the phone woke Lorelai from the first sound sleep she had had in weeks. One thing she had to give her mother was that she had exquisite taste in bedding, always making sure that Lorelai's bed was adorned with all things fluffy and warm because she loved feeling like she was sleeping in a nest of Egyptian cotton and grey goose down.

Groaning Lorelai fumbled blindly for her purse. Once she located the new leather purse she tried to get her phone out without opening her eyes. It didn't work and, since she remembered telling Rory to call if she needed anything, Lorelai caved and opened her eyes, wrapping her fingers around her cell phone and hitting TALK as she raised it to her ear. "Hello?"

"Lorelai—"

"No, Luke," Lorelai snapped, sitting up. "I can't… I can't right now."

"I didn't know, Lorelai," Luke said.

Lorelai sighed and dragged her fingers through her hair. "I know that, Luke," she said. And she did. She had known right away that Luke hadn't known about the law suit. "And I'm sorry for saying that you somehow encouraged this. But right now… I just can't talk to you. I'll… I have to go. I'll… see you around," Lorelai said, physically pained, before hanging up. She checked the time and groaned before getting up and heading downstairs, hoping that her father had obtained a lawyer for her, or at least had a good line on one.

She was halfway down the stairs when her phone rang again. "Hello?" she said impatiently.

"Lorelai, you got a second?"

"Who is this?" Lorelai frowned.

"Jess."

"Rory's still at school," Lorelai said.

Jess sighed audibly. "I know. And if I wanted to talk to her I'd be calling her not you. But I'm calling you. Jeeze, try to keep up."

"Look, Jess, I'm having a particularly shitty day today so if you could just get to the point that would be really great," Lorelai said grumpily. She had a headache and was trying to decide if she should go to the bathroom and see if the Aspirin hadn't passed its Best By date before Rory's birth when Jess spoke again.

"Nicole's a bitch," Jess said. Lorelai couldn't help but smile. Blunt as it was, Jess had hit the nail on the head, in her humble opinion. "She thinks you're trying to take Luke away from her. She's only doing this law suit thing to put distance between you and Luke."

Lorelai rolled her eyes."Diabolical." She would have said more but she couldn't help but listen to the nagging voice in the back of her head that was telling her the same thing. And, what made it worse was knowing that, intentional or not, Nicole's plan, that may or may not have even been her plan, was working. The entire length of the Mississippi River could fit in the chasm that had developed between Luke and Loreali.

"Hey, believe me or not, it's up to you, but don't tell me it's not working," Jess said. "Half the town saw your little show earlier at the diner, and the other half heard about it before you got in your car. I think the only person who doesn't know is Rory, and even that's not a safe bet because I saw the crazy dance lady talking on her cell phone about the fight."

It was times like these that Lorelai hated living in a small town.

"It wasn't a fight. I overreacted and freaked out and Luke was the unwitting target of my anger."

"Because he's dating the woman who is suing you."

"Because he's dating the woman who is representing the woman who is suing me," Lorelai corrected.

"Nicole conned that woman into suing you and you know it," Jess said.

"As much as I would love to blame everything on Nicole, and I really would, your conspiracy theories aren't going to help anyone, Jess," Lorelai said.

Lorelai sat down on the carpeted floor and leaned her head against the wainscoted wall. The last time she had sat where she was, at the platform where the stairs hit a switchback, was almost exactly eighteen years before, Christopher by her side, listening to four people more concerned with their public images than the fact that she had a life growing inside her that, whether the DAR and the people at the firm and Ms Manners approved, was coming out in a matter of months. There had been a plant there, once upon a time, and the carpet had been a different colour, different texture. But everything was pretty much the same, otherwise. She was going through something, her parents were conferring in the living room, and she was talking to a boy who was nothing but trouble. Only this time the boy wasn't hers, he was her daughter's, and she had actually asked her parents to stick their noses into her life. And no one was pregnant. Which was the only thing keeping Lorelai sane at that moment.

"You might not need Luke, but he needs you. Not that watching him physically throw annoying tourists out the door wasn't entertaining, but sooner or later he's gonna kick everyone out and lose the diner. And I may not remember Grandpa William, but I do know that that place is Luke's link to his parents."

"And if I don't get past this I'll be responsible for Luke losing his parents all over again, huh? Look, Jess, you haven't met my parents yet, and, trust me, you should be thankful for that, but I'm fairly sure that you've heard enough by now to know that guilt is a favoured tactic of theirs. And I know that you know me well enough to know that guilt for things that are really not my fault is not something that affects what I do. So why play that card?" Lorelai said. She frowned. "He really threw a tourist out of the diner?"

"The guy crossed the curb before he hit the ground," Jess said.

"Ouch," Lorelai cringed.

"Bounced twice, too," Jess said.

Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Now you're just making stuff up."

"Like a human basketball."

"Whatever you say," Lorelai said while visualizing Luke doing what Jess said he had done.

Her stomach clenched as her mind wandered to thoughts of how strong Luke would have to be to throw someone over the curb and how it really was a shame that he wore flannel all the time if he had muscles to show off under all that well-washed cotton. She can't honestly remember the last time she saw him in anything other than cotton—white cotton shirts under his flannels, gently faded-with-time jeans, the blue hat she bought him in thanks for driving her to the hospital even though he hated everything about being there, the grey hat that he wore before she had him trade up to her new and improved blue version that didn't have a weird leather strap and metal buckle leaving a mark on his forehead that she saw on the rare occasions that he would remove the hat from his head—but she's pretty sure it was around Rachel's birthday when Lorelai had gone shopping with the purpose of finding Rachel a thoughtful gift from Luke and had ended up spending more time buying clothes for Luke because she couldn't help herself and couldn't stop herself from buying all the things she just knew he would look good in. Lorelai quickly pushed those thoughts away, though, feeling guilty because, not only was Luke her best friend who also happened to have a girlfriend, but also because she was still in a self-imposed Nun stage in her dating life and thinking thoughts that could easily stray to the dirty about someone—especially Luke who was her stalwart knight who was there for her and Rory no matter what—was not at all appropriate.

"Look, Jess, I've gotta go. I'll see you later," Lorelai said, hanging up before the teen could get another word in. The call had been thoroughly unsettling. Not only was Jess, the reluctant bystander and ward in the Danes 'household' going out of his way to patch things up with his uncle and his girlfriend's mother—who, other than what amounted to about four collective hours of actually liking him, had barely tolerated his presence since he arrived—but Lorelai had also found herself having warm, fuzzy, and potentially dirty feelings for Luke.

Not that such feelings and thoughts were completely out of the ordinary. From day one she'd known that Luke was an attractive man. She wasn't blind, no matter how often she was teased and tortured about her friendship with Luke. But back when they'd met Lorelai had been celebrating the fact that she had finally been given permission to move into her new house and wanted to get a good cup of coffee before picking Rory and Lane up from school. Her plans involved walking Lane home, maybe sticking around for a few minutes to be insulted and damned to Hell by Mrs. Kim, maybe once again come within moments of asking why Mr. Kim was never around and why, in the six years that she had known the Kim's, she had never even seen so much as a picture of the elusive patriarch of the Kim clan, then walking Rory to the house instead of the potting shed. Westins had been closed for the day, Fran having decided that she needed to repaint the place, so Lorelai decided to head to Doose's Market to get one of his lousy cups of coffee with the fake creamer and sugar that looked suspiciously like cocaine and bubbled creepily when it hit liquid. However, as she was headed toward the market she spotted something she hadn't seen before. By the sign for William's Hardware, which she had always assumed was just a vacant shop that had yet to be sold, was a new sign.

A big yellow coffee mug with LUKE'S scrawled across it.

Never one to back away from anywhere that had a giant coffee cup hanging above its door, Lorelai rushed in to the busy diner and searched for someone in a uniform or apron or something to tell her who worked there and who was waiting for a table. Finally she spotted a tall man writing something down on a little order pad with one of those stumpy pencils that she usually associated with mini-golf, and she started begging for coffee. Almost fifteen minutes and some of her best material later, Lorelai handed the man a slightly altered horoscope and walked out with what she was quite sure was the best cup of coffee she had ever had in her life. And that included the coffee that the maid her mother had imported from Brazil whose family owned a coffee plantation had made. Baring the day Rory was born—after the painkillers had kicked in—it had been the best day of her life, and, though she was loathe to admit it, the cute diner guy had had something to do with her joyous mood. However, he had never asked her out, and she hadn't been in a place in her life where she really wanted a relationship, so a friendship was forged and other than their little flirting thing and the occasional fantasy that Lorelai indulged in—usually after her birthday when Luke would leave the house all sweaty and proud of the work he'd done for her—their relationship was purely pure.

After taking a moment to calm herself a little more, Lorelai got up and went down into the living room to find her parents and a good looking older man in a three piece suit that Lorelai was fairly sure cost more than Rory's college tuition would which, as Lorelai was beginning to panic about, was not an inconsiderable sum of money.

"Lorelai, good, I was just about to wake you," Emily said warmly. "You remember Jamison Garvy."

"Of course," Lorelai said though she couldn't have placed the man if her life depended on it. "It's good to see you again, Mr. Garvy," she said, extending her hand to the man who she assumed was her lawyer.

"You too, Lorelai. How is that little girl of yours doing?"

Lorelai smiled softly. "Preparing to start Yale in the fall," she said proudly.

"Good for her," Garvy said, nodding approvingly, as if his thoughts on the matter meant anything to her. "Now, your father has given me a summation but I would like to hear your own account of the events leading up to and following the fire at the Independence Inn."

Nodding, Lorelai sat down across from Garvy and began to tell her story for what felt like the billionth time in the last week.

Two characters are giving me trouble when I write this. Emily, who is so anal and bitchy and yet can be an amazing woman sometimes, and Jess, who is too taciturn and fixed in character for me to really work with, especially compared to the other residents of Stars Hollow. So if their actions/comments/et cetera are out of character, sorry, but I'm doing the best I can with what I've got.

M