Hello! Here's the next chapter. Sorry it's so short.

Thanks again for all the feedback.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Dukes, and no infringements intended.

BALANCING THE BOOKS

CHAPTER 19

EXCUSES, EXCUSES

If Bo and his family were hoping for an explanation over their happy meals, they were sorely disappointed. Asking them to wait until after lunch, Jackie invited them back to her apartment. Noticing how nervous the young woman was, the Dukes felt compelled to grant her request. A quiet environment was better suited for the conversation that needed to take place, anyway, and they hoped she might be more at ease.

After letting them into the nice space that she and Bo Jr. called home, the fact that she bolted all the locks on the door did not go unnoticed. Daisy offered to make coffee while Jackie put the little boy down for his nap. Bo asked if he could help, and Jackie told him that he could.

"He'll go to sleep on his own in just a bit," Jackie stated, surprised to find herself swallowed up by two arms she thought she'd never feel again. A moment later, lips crushed hers with a force that she returned.

Bo knew that she had promised to explain everything, but there was one question that he needed an answer to immediately. Words didn't always tell the whole story, and Bo had his own way of interrogating a person. The way Bo saw it, he could read an unexpected kiss better than a polygraph. Releasing her, the most important question had been answered. Bo didn't know why Jackie had ran, but he knew that it wasn't because she didn't love him, and the kiss confirmed that she still did.

"I don't know where to start," she stated, once they were all seated and had a cup in their hands.

"Well, how bout the beginning," Uncle Jesse suggested, still not trusting his other two youngins not to execute her on the spot.

"I'm not even sure where the beginning is anymore," Jackie replied.

"Jackie, what would make you stage your own death?" Luke asked in a strong, but not accusatory tone.

"And hide Bo's own child from him?" Daisy added, her voice not sounding quite as understanding.

"Did it have something to do with me getting shot?" Bo asked, remembering how different she had been following his injury.

Jackie nodded, looking from one Duke to the other, before settling on Bo. "Yeah." Thinking back on that day that changed her life forever, Jackie returned to the present, realizing that everyone was waiting for her to continue. "It wasn't an accident, Bo."

"Sure it was! It was just some careless hunters is all," Bo told her. "Besides, I wasn't really even hurt."

"Bo, it wasn't hunters, and you weren't hurt that time, but who knows what would have happened the next time?"

Seeing his cousin gearing up for an argument, Luke intervened. "You said it wasn't hunters. How do you know that?"

Turning to the brunette, Jackie forced herself to concentrate on the topic rather than on Bo's blue eyes, which she'd dreamt about every night for the three years. "I had my suspicions from the beginning, so I kept going back to see if I could find anything. No offense, but your sheriff had already written the incident off, and even if he hadn't, I wouldn't have trusted him or that deputy to do any real police work."

"Did you find something?" Uncle Jesse asked.

Nodding again, Jackie confirmed that she did. "About two weeks later, I found a casing, in the location of where the shot was fired from. It was aiming toward us, not toward the woods, so they saw what they were shooting at. Anyway, it was a .44, and there's no hunter in the world that would use that kind of a gun for an animal."

"Could have been target practice or something else," Bo reasoned.

"While I was there, I got a visit from Agents Matthews and Connors. Whatever I may have suspected, they confirmed. It wasn't hunters, Bo."

"Jackie…….,"

"Bo, do you remember that trip I took to New York?" Jackie asked, cutting him off, but waiting for him to confirm that he did recall her trip. "Well, when we found enough to put that crime boss away and his cronies, we disrupted the money laundering activities of a very powerful Columbian drug cartel. Even with the evidence, we couldn't do anything to them. They're in a foreign country who's not exactly cooperative with our government, but these drug lords don't take kindly to having their business disrupted. For them, it becomes a matter of revenge; a way of sending a message to others not to mess with them."

"So, the government helped you fake that accident, and relocate with a new identity," Luke stated, rather than asked.

"Yeah."

"That's why your name says Barbara Morris under your picture at the record company," Daisy surmised. Seeing the look of surprise on Bo's face, Daisy explained that she first noticed it when she and Sally Jo had visited Nashville.

Accepting that what the former Special Agent was telling him was the truth, Bo reached for her hand. "You could have told me," he whispered. "You didn't need to make me think you were dead. I love you. I would have helped. We all would have," Bo finished, his family supporting him by agreeing that they would have come to her aide.

"Listen guys, I appreciate that. I really do, but you don't understand. The only way these people quit is if they think you're dead, and they don't much less care who else they hurt in the process. I don't know if they were aiming at me or you that day, but they've been known to take out a person's entire family before they do away with their enemy." Directing the last part to the blonde, Jackie squeezed the hand that was still holding hers. "Bo, seeing you hurt like that, I couldn't take that chance. There was no way I was going to let them hurt you or anyone else in your family cause of me. I love you too much, all of you," she finished.

Taking a few minutes to absorb what they had been told, Bo wasn't able to hide the hurt in his next statement. "You didn't even tell me about the baby."

"Bo, I didn't know about Bo Jr. at the time. When I found out, I wanted to tell you. I was even going to send Bo Jr. to you. At first, I thought he'd be safer with you than with me, but then I realized that if anyone figured out that he was mine, they'd know I was alive and might try to use him to get to me. Believe me, Bo, I wanted to tell you, and I did not want to leave," Jackie cried, as the tears rolling down her cheeks authenticated that she was telling him the truth.

Wrapping her in his arms, Bo let her cry as his own cheeks became damp. "I ain't ever gonna let you go again," Bo whispered in her ear.

"You have to Bo. Nothing's changed," Jackie exclaimed, pulling out of his embrace.

"Everything's changed!" Bo countered in a raised voice. "You're alive. I've got a child. What do you expect me to do? Say, see ya! Have a good life?"

"Bo, now that you know where I am, they'll move me again," Jackie began to explain.

"Not without me!" Bo asserted.

Clearing his voice, Uncle Jesse stood up, halting the argument which was about to take place. The old man knew that this part only Jackie and Bo could decide.

"I think we best leave the two of you to discuss this in private," he announced.

Luke and Daisy rose from the table, following their uncle's lead.

"I'll call you at the hotel," Bo promised, hugging each of his cousins before turning to the man he thought of as a father. "Might not be until tomorrow, though."

"Take your time, son," Jesse Duke told his youngest nephew, as he ushered his other nephew and niece out the door.

Alone, blue eyes met blue eyes. "Bo," Jackie started.

Closing the gap between them, Bo stood before her, placing his hands on her shoulders. "I love you, Jackie. Not one minute has went by these last three years when I haven't thought about you."

"Oh Bo, I love you, too, and I can't tell you how much I've missed you," Jackie cried, "but it still doesn't change anything."

"It's been three years. All this other stuff can wait a few minutes longer," Bo told her. "This can't," he groaned as his arms swallowed her. Besides deciding their future, they had a few other areas to catch up in. Bo wasn't sure how long little boys napped, but he hoped that his son wouldn't wake up for a little while longer as he lifted Jackie into his arms.