It's hard to believe a year ago I started this little adventure as a one shot, that's right I never intended things to go this far… but I'm glad I did!

In honor of my 27th Birthday, We give you four chapters!

Written in the Stars
By Gilmoregirl1979 (the reigning Quote Queen)

Rating: PG-13

Hi this is your friendly disclaimer: I REJECT ASP's REALITY AND SUBSTITUE MY OWN! Once again, I don't own (DAMN IT! DAMN IT DAMN IT DAMN IT DAMN IT!), No Harm No Sue.

R/R: yes please I love reviews; I wanna marry them (as previously stated, I have strange passions.)

Summary/ The Q: AW If you DON'T KNOW BY NOW! HURUMPH!

LUVZ: Localizy looked at Gilmoregirl1979, "Why so melancholy?"

Gilmoregirl1979 sighed and said, "I was just thinking about LuvzAFunEthing, where she is, who she is with, what is she thinking, is she thinking of me, and if she will ever return one day…"

Thinking of you! Missing you!

FEATURED BETA: Localizy, WONDER TWIN POWERS ACTIVATE

A/N: I have to say it now... I... Am...So ... DAMN... PROUD OF THIS CHAPTER
worth the wait? for QUALITY FAN FICTION? you tell me... R/R

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Chapter 45
Whatever It Takes

Within the hour, word had spread about Lorelai and Luke's engagement. It didn't matter where they went; be it at the video store or grocery store, Klump Street or Peach Street everyone was bursting with warm wishes for the happy couple, hoping the whispered rumors were true.

At the Spring Fling Fair, everyone was a buzz with the rumors. Did Babette really see what she thought she saw? Lorelai and Luke confirmed with an announcement at the gazebo during the festivities. With confirmation of the engagement news, everyone was offering to pitch in where and when they could for the big day. Taylor even offered a further discount on any clearance decorations they wanted, however, the happy couple declined that particular offer.

In the following weeks Lorelai was happily bombarded with questions from the townsfolk. She didn't seem to mind answering them on her way to work, while she was at the diner, or while she was picking up her dry cleaning. She was not even bothered when inquisitive Miss Patty and cunning Taylor Doose ambushed her at Bootsy's newsstand, "So dear," Patty casually started, "have you and Luke settled on a date?" Taylor stood nearby, pretending to be interested in a wrestling magazine.

"Soon," Lorelai sighed as she looked at bridal magazine selection.

"Soon?" Patty seemed to gasp in horror, "That's all you have?"

"Yup," Lorelai nodded.

Patty asked what was on the tips of everyone's tongues since the engagement was announced, hoping Lorelai would level with her, "Are you pregnant?"

"What? No!"

"Then why the rush?" Taylor jumped in the questioning, trying to decide if Lorelai was telling the truth.

"Well, we… we just don't want to have to wait," Lorelai shrugged.

Patty commented dryly, "Lorelai? Do you really think anyone in town believes the two of you waited? I mean you are living with the man…a girl can only take so much temptation," Patty said with years of experience.

"Not that kind of wait!" Lorelai defended.

"Well, then why not set a date already! Believe me, I'm all for a short engagement, but if you are planning a summer wedding people may need to adjust their vacation plans to attend, " Patty pleaded.

"Well, it's not that simple." Lorelai though it was sweet that the townsfolk wanted to be present for the big day that they would adjust their schedules, the question of when the wedding would be was the only question Lorelai hated. "There are certain things that need to fall into place first," Lorelai tried to be vague.

"I beg your pardon, dear, but well, he doesn't exactly have family to wait on, and well yours live right in Hartford." Then Patty had a horrible thought, "You two aren't going to elope are you?"

"Elope!" Taylor was outraged by the suggestion, "You cannot possibly elope. After all you owe it to the town, we've watched your little love story practically from the beginning and I will not have you deprive the town of a major event like this, Lorelai. Oh we could get a famous photographer that would highlight Stars Hollow as a tourist hub, maybe get it put in Yankee magazine…"

"Please," Lorelai tried to settle the gossips protests. "I just won the fight about actually having a public wedding so we are definitely having a real wedding, for us and for the town…"

"Alright, I just hope that it is sooner rather than later because everyone is going to be on pins and needles wanting to know what is going to happen."

You guys are on pins and needles, what about us? "I know. we have a few hoops we need to jump through first, telling my parents first of all." Taylor and Patty groaned in unison, completely understanding the estranged relationship, the finesse the task would require, and almost dreading the delay that would have on the happy event. "Also I have to hire event coordinators to take over the weddings at the Inn, so I can focus on planning my own, so as soon as things are decided you will be the first to know, I promise!"

No, even after that conversation Lorelai didn't mind the questions at all; she was getting married to a wonderful man she was in love with and could start planning her dream wedding, a wedding that represented her.

The truth was Lorelai and Luke's hoops was the planned adoption of Rory and they had not let the town in on that little detail yet. They had only just started to research into the adoption process and had spent a lot of time getting Luke's name on the deed to the house, establishing joint checking accounts, informing everyone in the house where the coupon drawer was, and other legally binding type things.

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Luke admittedly hated lawyers, but if they could some how help him to adopt Rory as his own he would hop on one leg while patting his head and rubbing his stomach if they told him to. Christopher had no parental guardian ship, when he left he also left any claims to custody of Rory. Since Lorelai was sole legal guardian of Rory, our happy couple hoped that would make their adoption process easier.

They were actually a nice set of guys, Nicely and Slaughter, Family Law. Lorelai had picked them out of the phone book because she liked their names. "Is that like good lawyer, bad lawyer? Instead of good cop, bad cop," she had quipped on the first meeting with Michael Nicely and Paul Slaughter.

"Pleasure to meet you Miss Gilmore, Mr. Danes warned us about your quick wit over our phone conversation," Mr. Nicely greeted.

"Aw please I had that one lined up for days," she waved off, but always ready to receive a compliment.

Mr. Slaughter offered both new clients his hand as well, "Mr. Danes explained that he wanted to adopt your daughter."

"Please, call me Luke," he chimed in.

"As long as you call me Mike," Michael nodded.

"Paul," Mr. Slaughter pointed to himself, then turned to Lorelai, "May I assume that we can call you Lorelai?"

"Please call me Queen of the Known Universe." Luke cleared his throat, silently begging his fiancée to take this seriously, "But uh, Lorelai is fine, Miss Gilmore makes me think I'm at my mother's."

"Alright then, so you two are getting married? Congratulations," Paul Slaughter wished, who was a lot nicer than his name.

"Thank you," Lorelai smiled, as she sat down with Luke on the homey couch they had in their office.

Mike dove right in, "Okay, adoption." He started flipping through the notes from his initial phone conversation with Luke. "Well, we understand you were quite young when you had your daughter."

"Umm, yeah 16," Lorelai said a little embarrassed at how that one fact haunted her where ever she went, yet that singular event defined her as a person for the whole of her life.

"Any idea where the father is?" Mike took out a pen to add to his notebook.

Lorelai fielded that one, "Well, almost right after Rory was born, Christopher settled in California."

"So not much involvement, needless to say," Paul also started writing down some notes from his desk.

"Well, no, he was all the way on the other side of the country." Lorelai had to laugh at the obvious, "He never even changed a diaper."

"Leaving you to fend for yourself and Rory, at the age of 16," Mike filled in as he sat on his own desk near the couch.

The phrase offended Lorelai and she wondered if she picked the right men for the job; maybe next time you need a lawyer, go by more than their names. Lorelai gently defended herself, "Look, I don't want to be portrayed as some sort of victim here. I did live with my parents for a year, I could have gone on, just sitting around eating bon-bons and let my parents pay for a nanny or something, but I didn't. I stepped up to really be a parent and Christopher didn't, simple as that. I moved out, I earned all my own money, found my own place, never took a hand out…"

"Even though you are from a wealthy family in Hartford," Mike asked, looking up from his notes from his previous conversation with Luke.

"What does that have to do with it," Lorelai snapped, again her lineage seemed to be the most important thing to people in Hartford; where she came from and not who she was as a person. "I just want Luke to be Rory's father if anything happens to me."

Luke took her hand to rein her in, "Lorelai."

Lorelai couldn't help feeling like she was being interrogated, after all she was in the presence of lawyers and she had watched too many law dramas.

"Lorelai, we perfectly understand," Paul Slaughter said gently, "and we want the same thing. Luke gave us an idea of what a terrific mom you are. We just need to ask these questions to get a basis of your character, the situation, and how Christopher left things. How about we start with Christopher? Just give us a picture of his character back then and what you know now."

Lorelai took a deep breath, knowing she'd have to drudge her past for strangers, a judge, and an entire courtroom like on TV. "Well, he just was sort of …sporadic. He keeps moving around a lot. He kept giving us numbers that would go dead 2 months later. Rory and I tried to stay in touch, tried to visit but it was always us going to some neutral place in Hartford if he was in town ducking his parents. There was one time at a rest stop where he left us waiting for three hours with bikers and truckers hitting on me in front of Rory, who was 5 at the time."

"Any recent contact?"

"Well, last we heard of him was in September, he sent a post card to Rory, making all the same old promises, 'I'm better now, I miss my girl, call me a any time, I promise to stay in touch,' and like always, he never followed through. Rory had one phone conversation with him and he promised to call again, but there was nothing. Rory had wanted to give him another chance mostly because Luke convinced her too…"

"Luke convinced her?" Mike found that detail interesting.

"Yeah," a softer speaking Lorelai looked at Luke, who seemed content to let her do the talking while she spoke of Christopher and that situation back in September. "Luke lost his father years ago so he gave Rory a pep talk and some perspective about… well, Dads and how he wished he could talk to his dad again and that at least Christopher was alive and reaching out…"

"But nothing came of that contact?" Mike figured since they were having this meeting.

"Well, Rory called the number herself, had the one phone conversation, then she left messages, wrote letters, all with no response… we haven't tried the number again." Lorelai reached into her purse and handed the postcard to Mike, since he was closest. "She took it off her bulletin board around Thanksgiving." Mike appraised it for a moment before handing off to Paul for a look. Lorelai nudged Luke and smiled at him, both realizing the truth was the Dark day had united the family together. "And by her birthday in October, Rory said she had given up on Christopher again, and wanted to focus on her relationship with Luke. We wanted to make it up to her so we threw her the best party. Her birthday is around Halloween, so it was a costume party…even Luke dressed up."

Luke explained, "I'm not really one for costumes."

"Okay, so any contact with the grandparents, the uh," Mike looked at his notes again, "Haydens."

"Well, back when I was pregnant, you know at 16, umm well they weren't really interested in Rory."

"Why not?" Mike asked. "She's their first granddaughter. I thought blood was all that mattered to the upper crust."

"Well, they weren't interested," Lorelai repeated.

"Care to elaborate."

Lorelai took a deep breath, "They wanted me to… get rid of her…you know…" she worded delicately; thankful Rory had stayed home from this particular meeting.

"Ah," Mike said, with a clear understanding that the Haydens would pose no opposition, "and you didn't want that."

"Well, no! I wasn't going to let them decide if my baby had a right to be around or not. Just because she somehow inadvertently foiled their plans for Christopher and Princeton doesn't give them the right to chose anything. My parents wanted us to get married but I knew we were too young for that and we wouldn't have made it anyway… Christopher wasn't the love of my life, Luke is."

"And on that note, if you don't mind the segue," Paul smiled. "Lorelai, these questions may seem a little forward, but keep in mind that they are things that could be brought up by Christopher's attorney and remember that we are on your side…"

"Wait, what? Lawyer?" Lorelai sat at attention. "Why would Christopher have a lawyer?"

"Well, if he wants to contest custody," Mike explained.

"You mean you are going to contact him? Just offer him custody? A man who has proven time and again that he doesn't care that family means nothing to him!"

"No, we are going to find him, see if he has any interest, and get him to sign the his rights as a father away…"

"Why? Isn't his lack of involvement enough?"

"Well, it doesn't work that way, but that does help your case. We still have to show the judge that we made every effort to locate Christopher, inform him of the evolving family situation, and let him say that he truly has no interest in being a father. Also, we can see what he's been up to while he's been shirking on his fatherly right."

"Ten years of ignoring us isn't enough?" Lorelai barked. "You want him to say to Rory's face that he doesn't have any interest in her? Good plan!" she said sarcastically.

"But there have been visits and phone calls and post cards; he was expressing some interest," Mike pointed out.

"All that came to nothing! Luke has spent more time with Rory in the last year than Christopher has in her whole life!"

Paul stood up from his desk, "Lorelai please, we just need to have a full picture, the whole story. How about you describe your relationship between you and Luke? How did you two meet?"

Lorelai reluctantly started, but welcomed the happier subject; "Well, I'm a huge coffee fiend and well Luke runs the diner in our town with the absolute best coffee in the world…"

"Ah, the way to the heart is through the stomach," Paul smiled.

Lorelai briefly smiled again, "That's our little joke."

Luke chimed in now since the conversation had turned more to his experience, "Yeah, only in her case it's a cast iron stomach."

Lorelai continued, "Well, umm we knew each other about well a month and we were, you know, friendly and well flirting whenever I came in…"

"You were flirting," Luke corrected.

"You started it," Lorelai argued back

"I told you to sit down and shut up because you were being annoying… you were the one who brought up the dance of the seven veils…"

"That was the second time I came in and you had a very responsive blush to the comments."

"I'm a guy, we don't blush, we… tinge."

"Well, you were tinging 10 shades of red."

Mike and Paul exchanged a look and seemed to understand how their relationship sparked from the simple example of their banter and just why they were getting married.

"Anyway," Lorelai moved on. "We started dating in March," she surmised.

"And how long before…" now Paul seemed to tinge.

"Before …what?" Lorelai asked.

Mike took over, "Before you two became …intimate."

Lorelai had that overwhelmed airing her dirty lingerie feeling again, "Oh well, we waited …a while," Lorelai cleared her throat nervously.

"Lorelai!" Luke whispered.

"Luke," she looked at him sternly.

"Is there a problem?" Mike asked sensing a conflicting story.

"It was our second date," Luke confessed.

"Luke!" Lorelai hissed.

"I invited her over to my place and made her dinner and well things…progressed from there…" Luke glossed over.

Lorelai leaned back on the couch with her arms crossed, shy and slightly humiliated.

"Lorelai, we have to be honest," Luke defended.

"Second date and you spent the night," Mike said. "How did Rory react to that?"

"I didn't spend the night," Lorelai said bitingly. "When we started dating I didn't exactly tell her what was going on."

"You didn't tell her?" Mike found that interesting.

"Well, see Luke didn't know about Rory and Rory didn't know about Luke. I was kind of afraid of how they would, you know, react to each other."

Paul turned to Luke, "You didn't know she had a daughter when you started dating?"

"Well, how often do you ask a woman you're seeing, 'So do you have any kids'?"

"And in the month before you dated… nothing? Not a mention of Rory at all?"

Luke shrugged, "It never came up."

"So when did you find out?" Mike crossed his arms with interest.

Luke told his point of view, "Well, I was going to talk to Lorelai about our next date, I saw her in the square, thought 'hey convenient', and I saw her with this little girl. I thought she was a niece or a cousin. But then Rory called Lorelai mom…"

"And how did you feel?" Paul led on for Luke to explain further.

"Well, of course I was surprised, but after I thought about it everything made sense."

"What made sense?"

"Well, her not being able to spend the night with me, her not telling me where she lived, not coming to the town meetings when she knew I would be looking for her or that I would see her there with Rory. I mean, it's not like I had a big problem with kids, but I guess, I wish she had told me straight out… but if she had… who knows, we might not have gotten together…" In retrospect, who knew what would have happened had Lorelai been honest and forthright about that one little detail; everything might have been different.

Lorelai's protective behavior towards Rory when she started dating Luke had Mike concerned about their case and how Lorelai could come across to the judge once Christopher's possible lawyer heard about it ,so he asked Lorelai, "Have you dated much?"

"What?" Lorelai's head snapped up.

"With Rory? As a single mom…" he alluded.

"No, I didn't date much."

"How many men have you …"

"Mike," Paul Slaughter admonished his law partner for his lack of tact. "Lorelai, just tell us why you want Luke legally named as Rory's guardian?"

"Well, he's Luke. I love him and Rory loves him, together we've made a family. I mean I didn't think it possible because, well, me and Rory have always been together, just the two of us. It's just I didn't think we'd need anyone else, but with Luke…" Lorelai looked at her fiancé like he she would find the answer written on his face. "I don't know they just have this unique bond… I mean, as close as I am with Rory, that is as close as she is with Luke, as if he was her real father, like he was there the whole time. I mean we bond over different things; we have clothes and movies, they have their cooking projects. Luke even taught her how to fish as I am not the outdoorsy type… but no matter what they do she has fun with him. She loves him."

"When would Rory be available to interview?"

"Well, she's in school now."

"Well, education is first, of course. So how about Saturday?"

"Sure, come by the house if you want, you can see our …little family in action if that's what it takes," Luke said.

Before Lorelai and Luke left she turned back to Mike, "Hey, Mike."

"Yes?"

"To answer your question, it's two. I've only been with two men. Christopher and Luke," she shrugged, "See you Saturday."

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Luke came into their bedroom and saw Lorelai sulking on her side of the bed. She was already tucked in under the covers, but her thoughts were a million miles away. He crawled in behind her and huddled up close kissing her neck and shoulders. "I think today went well."

"Mmmm," was all Lorelai offered twirling a strand of hair nervously.

"They are nice guys, least I thought so over the phone."

"Yeah, real nice," she said sardonically.

"What? They liked your good cop, bad cop joke."

"Yeah, how is it that Slaughter was more of a gentleman than Nicely! Luke, why do people always assume single moms are sluts. My mother, these lawyers…"

Luke thought it best not to answer and just let the rant run its natural course.

"Even you were surprised when I told you that I had only been with one other man."

"Lorelai, they were just getting information."

"Yeah, yeah…" she dismissed.

"Come on, is that what's really bothering you?"

"No," she admitted.

"Well what then?"

"It's just… Christopher"

"What?"

"Well, this whole Christopher angle stinks! He seemed gone for good and now they are just inviting him back in. They are talking about PIs tailing him and looking into his credit history like he's a criminal. What if they find him? What if he comes back? What if he wants visitation just because we are trying to make you her father? What if my getting married is the thing that will make him want to finally stake his claim when I'm not even in love with him or want anything to do with him?"

"Lorelai…"

"What if he contests custody and I have to deal with sending my little girl on a plane to see him wherever he is now because it's his right as a father, the state decrees."

"Lorelai, what if Christopher is already married, huh? What if that's the reason he's been out of touch… he doesn't want his wife to know…"

Lorelai almost laughed at the thought, with how quickly Christopher ran from commitment, "But they are talking about background checks and looking into police records. Christopher has never been arrested, well, not that I know of…although there was the time he crashed his Porsche…"

"Lorelai I'm going through the same thing, they are running a background check on me too."

"Yeah because you are such a con artist," she rolled her eyes.

"Lorelai everything will be fine. They will see the three of us together, that I haven't even been out of the state, and all the records of the diner and stuff." Even with his reassurances Lorelai still seemed pouty. "I know what you need," Luke said knowingly, and no, it wasn't anything dirty.

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"That was all God given talent..." why thank you NON POD Luke!
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R/R: PLEASE, I like to better myself. To quote The Princess Bride,
"...Remember this is for posterity, ... so be honest."
Please be specific with R/R; name one (or as many as you can think of or want to mention..…) At least one specific thing you liked

Please! It makes me feel good...inside (Dirty!)

Hence the Rant option below.

Insert Rant here V
A/N: if not completely satisfied with this chapter, please return unused portion for a full refund...