A/N: Thank you all for the reviews ... although I find it odd that my reviews per chapter have gone down by one each time. Care to help me change that pattern?

After the humor of the situation had dissipated, Sammie turned to her co-workers and gave them each a scathing glare, "I know stuff about all of you that I know you don't want anyone else knowing. So shut it."

"Sorry, Sammie," the men said in unison, looking like chastised children.

"It's okay, just don't do it again. Now come on, guys! We've got a bar to run!"

Jacob was lead to a booth with a gin and tonic to wait until the bar closed in three hours. Sammie worked with quick efficiency, telling Bobby and John what drinks were needed and delivering them as quickly. When the bar finally closed down at two in the morning, Jacob helped the five workers clean up. Sammie looked at Bill, silently asking him a question before going into the back room to get something.

When she came back out she made George sit down on one of the newly cleaned bar stools and presented him with a birthday bag.

"This is from all of, George. Happy fifty-third," Sammie said as she stepped back to stand near Bobby, Bill and John to watch their boss open his gift.

George Hammond glared at his four employees, "I told you all specifically not to make a big deal out of this!" the statement was said to the four, but everyone looked at Sammie, who blushed and shrugged.

"I couldn't help myself!" she said, as if it explained everything.

As George opened it, John and Bobby briefly wondered if they should be concerned that she had said it was from all of them – they had not a clue what it was! George pulled out numerous pieces of tissue paper (Sammie had a slight fetish with the stuff) before pulling out a book whose title read: Managing a Bar: Five Hundred Ways to Get Back at Your Employees. When he read the title, George couldn't help but burst out laughing, "It's great, Sammie. You never cease to amaze me with the stuff you find!"

Sammie grinned, pleased with herself at finding the perfect gift for her boss – it had been pretty hard to do! "You're welcome, George. Now remember, you're not to use any of these methods of retaliation upon me or Bill. John and Bobby are free game."

"HEY!" the two men she declared as 'free game' said indignantly. She just smiled sweetly back at them.

"Hey, yourself. I read the book before I gave it to him, you nits! There's nothing really bad in there … until you get up into the four hundreds."

The glares they sent her were enough to make any military man squirm and tremble in their big, bulky military issue boots and socks – but Sammie wasn't a man. That was something John had tried very hard to forget, but somehow just couldn't be able to. It was smiles like the one she wore then that made the task impossible.

"Yep, Sammie, you've still got it," Jacob said as he saw the fight drain out of the eyes of the two men.

"Still got what?" John asked, now curious again.

"Still got the ability to wrap every guy she meets around her little finger," Jacob said, grinning openly at the shock and indignation now emanating from his daughter's colleagues. She just winked at him.

"So, Sammie?" Jacob asked as he drove his daughter back to her house, "What's the deal with you and that bartender, John?"

Sammie glanced at her father before turning back to the pre-dawn city around her, "Funny. I was about to ask you the same thing, Dad."

"What are you talking about?"

She rolled her eyes, "I'm neither blind nor stupid."

"Neither am I. I know there's something going on between you two – what is it?" Jacob pulled the car to a stop at Sammie's apartment complex. He was going to be sleeping on her couch while he was there (helped that she didn't have roommates), leaving Sammie no chance to get out of the conversation.

Sammie sighed in frustration as she got out of the car and opened the door of her ground-floor apartment. "Fine, Dad! You wanna know what's going on between me and John? We've been dating for the past six months. Happy now?"

"Not really," Jacob said, reverting back to over-protective father mode. "He was in black-ops, Sammie. You know what that means – and you know what kind of men come out of black-ops. Are you sure you want to be with a man like that? With that many scars and blacked out pages in his record?"

"Mom did." She said it before she knew what she was saying, and after it was out, there was nothing she could do to take it back. Sammie didn't want to. John O'Neill may have been scarred by his years in black-ops, but that didn't mean he wasn't human. He was scarred by the deaths of his wife and son, but that didn't mean he was ready to quit living. He deserved the second chance that Jacob got to live when he'd met the lovely woman named Hannah who had a son named Mark.

"I know," Jacob said quietly. Hannah had died when Sam was fifteen and Mark and Jacob still blamed her husband for it. Jacob thought it was his fault … if only he hadn't let the meeting go late. But Mark had always resented his stepfather, and his mother's death was just the last straw. "Just, be careful, Sammie. I don't want you getting hurt."

Sammie smiled softly at her father, "Dad. Trust me, I know what I'm doing. He's a good guy. Give him a chance, I think you'd like him."

I do like him, Jacob thought, thinking about the last time he had met the retired Colonel. He still knows the value of human life. "But he's so much older than you!"

Sammie laughed at that, "Is that what you're worried about? His age? Dad, he may be thirty-eight, but I don't think that's any reason to condemn him! George is twenty years older than his wife. And Mom was thirteen years younger than you."

Jacob sat down on the sofa in a huff, "It doesn't mean I have to like that my only daughter's in a relationship like that!"

"No, but it does mean you have to live with it."

A/N: So? Did you like how I explained it? I'm going to a surprise party later today, so the next part should be up on Monday at the latest.