Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.
Promises to Keep
They were having an argument, as seemed to happen so often lately. They'd been out to lunch, discussing the future, and they somehow got on the topic of how children should be raised. They disagreed, vehemently.
Amanda said children didn't mind being tickled if it came from a person they loved and trusted. He said that tickling someone overstepped the boundaries of personal agency. So, right there in the diner, she started tickling him, and she didn't stop until they got into the Q Bureau and he tickled her back. Then she had the audacity to slap his hands.
The worst bit was that he was pretty sure Francine had heard them, and he knew Francine well enough to expect her to corner him and demand an explanation. After all, Lee Stetson did not tend to tickle or be tickled, and the idea that he and Amanda were on a firm enough footing that she knew his ticklish spots was bound to raise some eyebrows.
The fact was that she was intensely investigative, and extremely thorough. The topic had never come up before, but she had found out all there was to know by the end of their lunch. He was positive they would never be able to go back to that diner. Which was a shame, because their turkey on rye was very good.
He was intensely worried. T.P. Aquinas came directly under Amanda on his very short list of people he loved and trusted, and he'd told her as much. The fact that they were helping him take on a major drug syndicate with only the sketchiest approval of the agency was nerve wracking at best.
He understood precisely why T.P. was doing it, though. He could not begin to imagine the sorrow and heartbreak of his wife's and child's lives being snuffed out in front of him, and being powerless to stop it. If someone shot Amanda, especially for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he would hunt that man down and kill him with nothing more than his bare hands. He would find that man and bring him down if it took the rest of his life.
These less-than-pleasant thoughts were interrupted by Francine. He'd known it was coming ever since she'd tried to warn Amanda about his ways in the Q Bureau.
"Hold it right there, Lee Stetson," she ordered, putting both hands on his shoulders and physically restraining him from entering the elevator.
"Uh, I'm in kind of a hurry, Francine," he protested, hitting the button.
"Oh, this won't take too long. Come here," she replied, her voice still pleasant, as she grasped his arms firmly and marched him right across the hall. "I have just one word to say to you —" and here her voice took on an intensity matched only by her blazing eyes — "stop. it."
He tried so hard to keep the conversation light. "That's two words, but why quibble?"
It was one of her favorite expressions — "why quibble?" Apparently it was the wrong time to use it.
"You know what I'm talking about," she persisted, again blocking him from leaving. "Amanda!"
"What?" he asked, a little nettled now. As if Francine was the poster child for healthy relationships.
"She is just a housewife from Arlington," she said, and he sighed.
Would she never understand that Amanda was so much more than that?
"She had never experienced your … your scorched earth policy in relationships."
What was this? Genuine concern? He never thought he'd live to see the day.
"What?" His question came out in a startled chuckle of surprise.
"Now, this…this…this…"
"…Affair?" he supplied, wondering if he'd ever heard Francine splutter before.
"Casual flirtation to you," she said, quietly but venomously. "It could devastate her."
This was intensely uncomfortable. He took refuge in a sardonic expression while he searched for words to say.
"I tried to tell her about it, but she just doesn't know you like I do."
This irritated him. He and Francine hadn't been partnered regularly for years. They had — what was the phrase she'd used? — "played backgammon" once, many years before Amanda. He was not the same man he had been then.
"Oh?" he asked, growing serious.
"No."
"Well, don't bet on it," he said. "There's a lot you can learn about a person, after a long weekend at Pine Top."
This let her know in one sentence that not only did they do things together outside of work, but that things were serious. It also told her that he had told Amanda about himself, and that it had been expressly for the purpose of getting to know Amanda better and letting her get to know him better.
He took a step forward, and this time she let him pass.
He turned at the elevator door, and added the coup de grâce, Francine-style: give a nosey person too much information too fast and they'll never ask again.
"Especially if the skiing is lousy," he said with a wink.
He could speak her language well after knowing her for seven years. So he had, gambling that while she wouldn't repeat this conversation to a single soul, she would do a little digging on his reservation at Pine Top. It might do a little well-timed damage to his playboy reputation that they had had a set of separate bedrooms. It wouldn't hurt Amanda's reputation at all, though Francine would still put pressure on her to break the relationship off before it went any farther.
He felt a little bad for playing her like a fiddle, but it did pay to have a solid understanding of Francine Desmond.
