A few seconds before, the comforting sound of chatter from the rest of the house had been drifting into Alex's old bedroom, but following Ashley's announcement, there was only silence, and lots of it.
"Hi, Aunt Alex!" the little girl chirped, walking into the room and holding up her arms expectantly to Alex.
Reminding herself that Ashley had no idea what she had just seen, and therefore she and Bobby had no reason to be embarrassed, Alex reached down to stroke her niece's silky hair. "I'm sorry, honey, I can't pick you up," she told her, doing her best to crouch down to the girl's eye level instead.
"Oh," Ashley said with a slight pout. "Why not?"
To the surprise of everyone in the room, including himself, Bobby reached down and picked the girl up, holding her so her head was level with his and she could see Alex's face once Alex stood up. "Your aunt got hurt. Her arms aren't strong enough to pick up any little girls yet."
Ashley looked thoughtful for a second, then nodded, apparently satisfied with this explanation, and watched Alex slowly rise from her crouch. "I remember now. You went to the hospital."
"That's right, Ash," Alex said. "Now, what are you doing wandering around the house? Where's your mom?"
"She's talking to Aunt Laura about babies," Ashley said, wrinkling her nose. "Again. How come you bit your friend, Aunt Alex?"
She should have known better than to hope the girl would be easily distracted. "I, uh . . ." Think fast, Alex!
She could have kissed her brother when he appeared in the doorway a second later. "Ashley, what did I tell you about -" He broke off when he realized that his daughter wasn't just alone and causing trouble, as he'd expected. "Did I hear her yell something about biting?" he asked Alex suspiciously.
"I didn't yell, Daddy!" Ashley insisted, giving Bobby an absentminded kick in the ribs as she reached for her father. "I just said that she bit him."
Alex covered her face with her hands and tried to decide whether to scream or laugh.
She pressed her face into her palms more firmly when she heard Rob ask, "Who bit who?" He already knew the answer; her brother might be dense when it came to a lot of things, but he had a highly attuned sense of hearing when it came to his kids.
Accepting Ashley's squirming body from Bobby, he balanced her on his hip and regarded the two people standing in front of him as the little girl said, sounding exasperated, "Aunt Alex! She bit that guy on the mouth!" For good measure, she pointed to Bobby as she spoke.
"She did, did she?" Rob asked with a grin, watching as Alex tried to hide behind her partner. "Now, why would you do that, Alex?"
"Go away."
"Daddy," Ashley said, patting his face to get his attention. "Is Mommy done talking about babies yet?"
He blinked. "I don't know, hon. Why don't you go check?" he suggested, setting her on her feet and watching as she ran out of the room, narrowly missing going headfirst into the corner as she tried to make a fast left turn out the door.
"Now," he went on when she was out of earshot, "you guys want to explain what it was that she just saw? Am I going to need to get her therapy?"
"No," Alex shot back, "and no. None of your business."
"You know, I don't usually make a habit of bringing my partners home, taking them into dark rooms, and biting them," he told her casually. "Or kissing them, as the case may be. Is this a new trend I haven't heart about?"
"Good thing you don't make a habit of it, since I hear divorce sucks. Now go away. We were about to go back to join the party anyway."
He raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Uh-huh. Hey, don't let me interrupt whatever it was you were doing to the guy. Far be it from me - ow!" He took a step back from her and rubbed his shoulder. "Aren't you supposed to be limiting your violent movements?"
"I make exceptions when necessary," she retorted, rubbing her fist and hoping she hadn't poked another hole in her lung.
Bobby, who had been watching the exchange nervously, took that moment to step in front of her, blocking her access to Rob, and force her hand down to her side. "He's right, you know. You're going to regret that punch in an hour or two."
"Oh, wonderful," she groaned. "Take his side, why don't you?"
"I'm not taking . . ."
"Relax, brat," Rob told her, interrupting Bobby's weak protestations. "I'll let it go for now, as long as you promise not to traumatize my daughter any more tonight."
She snorted. "Like this family isn't traumatizing enough as it is."
"Ok, you've got a point there," he admitted. "You guys really going to come back out? When I left they were talking about organizing a search party to hunt you down. Interest in your partner here," he added, nodding toward Bobby, "is running high, especially among the women."
When both of them reacted to that statement with groans, he grinned and shrugged. "Hey, it could be worse. Be glad that the only single ones here are all either underage or taken."
That got a laugh out of Alex, who remembered with amusement the numerous times she'd seen Bobby try to handle amorous women who fixed their sights on him. "I don't know . . . that might just keep me entertained enough to not kick your ass."
"Very funny." Rob turned away from her and headed out of the room, checking once to make sure she and Bobby were following. "Brace yourselves," he added just before they entered the living room, where the family had gathered.
Alex responded to that warning with a sigh, causing Bobby to give her an alarmed look. What were they about to walk into?
He found out when they walked into the room a few seconds later: what they had walked into had to be, quite simply, an exercise in oversized telephone booth stuffing. Twenty people and three dogs were crammed into the room, sitting on couches, kitchen chairs, recliners, and the floor. Four children were crawling around the carpet apparently imitating animals, which involved much arm-waving and growling, while two dogs bounced around them, fascinated by this weird human behavior. A third dog was sitting at Sam's feet, fixated on the piece of bread she held and was teasing him with.
The noise level could only be described as cacophonous. As he stood in the doorway next to Alex, Bobby heard, mixed in with the squeaks and growls from the kids and dogs, snatches of conversations that couldn't possibly be related:
- ". . . And so I told her - I told her, 'Jackie, she's only four! You can't give her real gold!'"
- ". . . program hung four times because the doofus here didn't realize he wrote an infinite loop."
- "Timmy, don't you dare - no! Stop that!"
- "So, when are you due?"
- ". . . can't stand when he acts like it's not a big deal to go undercover . . ."
- "You know, that guy she brought, he's -"
Bobby strained his ears to hear the rest of that last statement, but it was drowned out by a general cry of, "Alex!" as the first few people began to spot her.
A tall blonde woman who he would have classified as willowy had she not had an about-to-burst pregnant belly, attempted to jump to her feet, a feat which she achieved only with the help of a judicious push from behind by her husband. "Alex! Get over here!"
Unsure what to do with Bobby, Alex glanced up to check his expression before she decided whether to obey Jen's summons. To her relief, as if on cue, Sean shouted from his perch on the arm of the couch, "Hey, Bobby! You used to be a narc? Get over here!" Waving his arm in an enthusiastic 'come on' gesture, her motioned for Bobby to join the small knot of men surrounding him.
Alex mouthed a thank you to her brother, who contrived to look oblivious that he'd done anything out of the ordinary, and turned back to her sister-in-law. "You look like you're about to pop!" she told Jen with a grin.
"Believe me, I'm starting to wish I would. You'd think that by the third time I'd get used to swollen ankles and having to pee every three minutes, but noooo . . ."
"Oh god, don't remind me. I swear, if I ever do it again, I'm making sure I have a husband who'll cater to my every whim and indulge my every whine."
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Bobby approached Sean and his companions cautiously, not sure how to act without Alex there as a buffer. "Uh, yeah. I spent a couple years in Narcotics."
"See?" Sean said to the dark-haired man sitting next to him, whom Bobby didn't recognize. Turning back to Bobby, he added, "Did you ever do undercover work?"
"That's a crap question," John snorted. "Everyone's done some kind of undercover."
"Well I'm just saying that in Narcotics the guys get to do it more often, and Jo's freaking out on me . . ." Catching Bobby's confused expression, he added, "Oh, sorry. I just made detective and they're assigning me to Narcotics. My girlfriend's worried because she thinks undercover work is impossibly dangerous."
Bobby thought about that. "Well, I suppose it is. It's just . . . you have to have the right personality for it."
"Yeah?" said the unfamiliar man. "What constitutes the right personality? I'm Mark, by the way," he added.
He thought about that for a second. "Acting ability helps. You have to be adaptable, at the very least, and have a good poker face."
"All of which I have," Sean told the rest of the group. "I'm good at it, so I don't get why she's so mad."
"You don't get it?" Jo yelled from across the room, where she'd been engaged in conversation with Samantha but overheard Sean's words. "What's not to get? You're going to get shot, Sean! You!" she said sharply, pointing at Bobby and demanding, "Did you ever get shot while you were undercover?"
He tried not to recoil when he realized that the attention of the entire room was now directed at him. Why had the girl had to speak so damn loud? "Uh, well . . . no, I didn't."
Jo looked mildly disappointed and Sean was beginning to look triumphant when Alex looked up from her examination of Jen's swollen joints and announced, "That's a technicality, Bobby. He didn't get shot, but he got knifed," she told Jo. "He's got a scar on -" Realizing what she'd been about to say, she broke off that sentence before she could incriminate herself any further, instead going on, "Undercover is dangerous, but just try to convince any of the men of that. It's a macho thing."
"Oh, come on!" retorted Rob. "Out of all of us, you're the only one who made a career of parading on street corners hoping to get picked up by criminals. And you're saying our undercover work is dangerous?"
"Yeah, I am. Mine was too. The difference is, I'm willing to admit that it was nerve-wracking and I had some moments that were scary as hell."
"Like whenever you were in those go-go boots you used to wear?" Kate said with a smirk. "Those were dangerous to the eyesight of anyone with good taste."
Alex smirked back. "Those things got me a hell of a lot of customers. Don't knock 'em."
"Go-go boots?" Bobby repeated blankly. "You wore go-go boots?"
"You didn't know?" John asked with a wide grin. "She went all-out. We have pictures somewhere around here . . ."
"No!" Alex said, standing up to slap a hand over her brother's mouth. "No picture showing tonight, thank you very much."
"We could show him your naked baby pictures, instead," Rob said, putting a hand to his mouth thoughtfully.
"No!" Alex shouted, whirling to face the new threat. "Not those either! And stop trying to annoy me when Jo and I are having a serious discussion about how likely it is that Sean will get hurt."
"Uh, Alex?" said Laura tentatively. "Not to sound like I'm on their side or anything, but you're the one who got hurt recently. Maybe we should be more concerned about Sean working major cases, instead of drugs."
As she tried to think of a good retort to that, Alex realized that her heart wasn't beating fast just because she was annoyed - the pain in her side was back and gnawing at her. Letting out a frustrated growl, she put a hand to her ribs and stomped toward the kitchen, leaving her confused family behind her.
"Is she . . .?" Jo began, watching Alex's retreating back with concern.
"She's ok," Bobby said reassuringly, although he was fighting the urge to jump up and go after her to make sure of it. "Her painkiller's wearing off; she's probably taking another dose."
"Yeah, plus punching me can't have been good for her," Rob announced with a grin.
"She hit you?" Adam asked with sudden interest from the corner where he and his sister had been watching the family with angsty teenage expressions. "What'd you do to get her to do that?"
He couldn't answer that in mixed company, Rob decided. His wife would kill him, both for baiting Alex so crudely and for announcing it to the whole family. Besides, half of the duo in question was standing not four feet from him. "We had, uh . . . a small disagreement a little while ago."
"A 'small disagreement'?" echoed Sean, who was eager to grab onto any subject change that came along. "Sounds interesting. Exactly what were you disagreeing about?"
Rob's eyes darted to his wife, who gave him a cool look, to Bobby, who looked like he wanted to sink into the floor, and then back to his brother's face. "Er . . . biting."
"What, did Ashley bite her?" said Beth with a grin. "I swear, if Nate goes through a biting stage, I'm sending him to live with you until he outgrows it."
"Hey!" exclaimed Ashley, pausing in her romp with one of the dogs to look up offendedly. "I didn't bite nobody tonight. Right, Daddy?"
"Uh, right, sweetie," Rob said, wondering if it would be considered abusive to tape his child's mouth shut occasionally. "Ash, why don't you -"
"I didn't bite nobody," the little girl repeated. "Aunt Alex bit her friend, though. Are you gonna give her a time out for it?"
There was silence for a long moment before Sean said carefully, "Your Aunt Alex bit her friend?"
"Yes! On the m-"
"That's quite enough of that," Rob interrupted, leaning over to pick her up and, incidentally, cover her mouth with one hand. "We don't need to tell everyone everything, Ash, remember?" When she nodded yes, he smiled at her and removed his hand. "Good girl. Uh, why don't you . . ." he began, looking up to see who wasn't in the room who he could send her to bother.
"I'll take her," Beth offered after a sympathetic glance at Bobby. "C'mon, Ashley, what do you say we take the dogs for a walk?"
Ashley squealed excitedly at the prospect and grabbed the ear of the nearest dog. George, a slightly disreputable-looking Irish Wolfhound, was a six-year veteran of the Eames family and its children; he yipped in pain and shook his head, but made no move to hurt the squealing thing that was attacking him.
"Note to self," Kate announced, "buy extra dog biscuits."
"And a stun gun," added Sam. "Preferably one calibrated to work on children."
"I think I'll go check on Alex," Bobby announced, trying to sound casual, into the silence that followed that comment. The illusion was ruined by the speed with which he exited the room, though, and he heard a few snorts and giggles behind him as he fled in the direction of the kitchen.