The wedding planning was underway.

There were to be bachelor parties, though somewhat subdued. Oksana's would be at Luke's Bar while Jax's went on at his brother Jerry's Restaurant, the Outback.

Oksana was much loved at Deception - she was a co-owner of that company - and so she got plenty of help from there. The wedding was to be in the gardens at Oksana's house, but when it came to make up and clothes, the models and designers and cosmetologists of Deception were happy to help with it all.

The employees were excited. They were invited to the wedding. When they saw the dashing corporate raider in the halls, they would run to tell others he was there.

"It's like our own wedding or a sister's wedding," Laraine Breyer, an accountant at the company, said to Gia Campbell Cassidine, a model and now part time manager at the company, who had just come in to accounting to change her automatic deposit. On the way there, she had seen Jax in the elevator. Naturally, she reported it to the first employee she talked to.

"Yes, I remember my wedding," Gia said. "Oksana let me have time off for it and we did pictures of it."

"I know, I've seen them in the halls. You are beautiful in those pictures. I mean, you always are. But those wedding pictures are so dreamy."

"Thank you," Gia said with a smile. "I have maternity leave now, too, good thing."

"Oh really! Congratulations!"

Gia just beamed. "I'm due a couple of months after my aunt-in-law," she said. "Alexis Davis-Jacks. Jax's sister in law. She's going to be Oksana's maid of honor even though she's out to here." Gia made a motion supposed to cover her estimate of the size of a women in her third trimester.

"The Cassidine family expands," Laraine said.

"Yes, sure does," Gia said. She took the papers she had come for. Laraine handed them to her, and said, "Well, good luck with it all. I'm sure I'll see you at the wedding."

"Thank you, you too," Gia said. "Is your brother's band still playing at London Underground?"

"A lot of the time," Laraine said. "The Dissenters. You know them?"

"They're good," Gia said, "really, pretty good. I like them."

"That's great to hear. I'll pass that on to them."

"Sure," Gia said. "Bye now."

Back at the house, things were busy for Rosa and her two nieces, Lisa and Diana. Rosa was the butler at Oksana's house. Lisa and Diana, her nieces, had jobs working under her supervision.

Lisa was the gardener. The wedding was going to take place outside, so Lisa was working to get the garden to a state of perfection. She kept her eye on the weather reports, and made plans for rain. Her younger sister, Diana, laughed and teased her about how far ahead the weather reports could possibly be accurate. "You're going to monitor the wind patterns in Asia next," she said.

"If that'll help," Lisa said, and she went back to pruning.

When they had first come up from Florida to work for Oksana - it was the second time for Rosa, as she had been Oksana's children's nanny when they were little – only Oksana and her younger son Peter lived in the house. They had come up to live in the same town with Oksana's older son, Aleksandr, or Sander as he had been known, thought he had changed it to Zander in the time since he had run away. He had been missing for years and was quite estranged from his parents.

But in time and with some help from Gail Baldwin, the psychiatrist who had worked with Oksana and Zander, the two of them had moved into an uneasy truce and that worked its way back into a fairly affectionate relationship. During that time, Zander had moved into the gate house, and now Zander was married and lived there with his wife, Quinn, a nurse he had met while a patient at the hospital, who had been involved in getting Zander reunited with his family.

Eventually, with the help of Zander's lawyer and friend Alexis, who in the process became a friend of Oksana's, Oksana had finally gotten her parents' immigration issues straightened out, which added her parents to the household, and then eventually even her brother Mikhail and his eleven year old daughter Irina.

The house was plenty big enough for all of these people. But it was more work for Rosa. She did it gladly, though. They were talking about getting a cook. Oksana's mother, Anna did some cooking, and liked it, and she and Rosa got along fine. Rosa was just so happy for Oksana to have her parents there, and even more so for her boys (as she thought of Zander and Peter) to have their grandparents for real for the first time in their lives, there could hardly be enough work for her to do.

Now they would have Jasper Jax, a whole new addition which would turn an already topsy turvy household upside down.

But this Rosa did not mind, either, and was excited about, in fact. She had never dreamed such a wonderful thing would happen to Oksana - she had just always been so businesslike before, and so about how to spite her ex husband Sergei Kanishchev, that it was wonderful to see the changes in her. Love did wonderful things for a person, Rosa reflected. She was happy about both of her nieces' boyfriends, too. There was Lucky Spencer, a photographer Lisa had been dating for awhile, and Tim Connor, a boy who was just about to graduate from high school, but who was sincere and sweet, and loved Diana, who was 19, like crazy, and was Quinn's younger brother, which was even better.

Then developments indicated that there might be yet another person in the house, for a time, at least.

Joe Quinn was Quinn's godfather and namesake, and a member of the Connor family by sentiment if not by blood. Years ago, he had been married to a Korean woman, Ha Neul Park, who had a son named Jin Ho Nu. Ha Neul had left Joe a long time ago, and he had not seen either she or her son in years. But recently, Jin Ho had found Joe and asked him for help, because his mother Na Neul had Alzheimer's.

Joe and Quinn had driven up to Maine with Jin Ho to see Ha Neul. They needed to find a new place for her to stay. Quinn was going to help Joe with that. In the meantime, Ha Neul had to leave the place she was at, and so they needed a temporary place for her to stay. Joe was going to take her to his house, though she was his ex-wife, and he hadn't seen her in years.

Quinn didn't want him to cope with that alone, though. She thought of her mother-in-law's house, because there were so many people, someone was always there, and there would be plenty of help.

When Quinn brought that up to Zander and Oksana, they were immediately on board with this plan, and Rosa and Lisa and Diana were happy to do it. They loved Joe, too, and the entire Connor family - they had done so much to help Zander and Peter that anything the Connor family needed, the Kanishchev family was ready to do.

So that Ha Neul went from unfortunate to lucky. From having no place to go to being in a place where, though she could not really talk to anyone, there were plenty of people to talk to and take care of her. Oksana's parents, and Jax's parents, who were always around, seemed to take this job under their sway especially. Then there was Joe, and Danny and Kathleen Connor to come over and help, sometimes with their youngest son, Brad, Danny's parents, and Kathleen's mother. There was Tim too, of course, and Lucky Spencer with his sister or mother or grandmother. There was no shortage of hands.

People came over to that house, just because it was a bustling and happy and joyful place to be.