You like them, you really, really like them! Yay! I'm glad I'm not the only one that missed these crazy kids.

I thought about giving out teases for reviews, but I seem to keep just writing and writing. They're so easy to write. If I ever get ahead, I'll do it, but I hope you'll just take my quick updates as thanks for the love! Keep leaving me me a few words, and I'll do my best to leave you a few thousand.

Also, I did a stat check on my blog, and yesterday was the busiest day I've had since starting it, so thanks for that! Almost all the hits were on The Expert, so I guess you guys are catching up! In case you're still looking for that story, it's at seastarr08 dot wordpress dot com.

Eric

Sookie didn't get home until just before seven, which was probably for the best, since it gave me time to get the kids really ready for bed, despite Ceci's minor diva attack when she found a mushroom in her spaghetti.

She looked beat when she got in the door, yet really did her mom thing, hugging the kids, and listening to them tell her about their few days apart. She gave me a kiss as they ran up the stairs for story time.

"Rough day, Lover?"

She nodded, wrapping her arms around me. "We'll talk about it when they're in bed. I don't want them to think anything is wrong."

Lots was potentially wrong. Sookie had been having a shit time at work, and then there was my little problem, which wasn't going away as I'd hoped. I was glad I'd told her last night though, because I knew from past experiences that she didn't like being kept in the dark on things, even if it was for her own good, or so I thought.

I hated seeing her cry though, even though I knew it was for the best long term. I suppose I could have started looking for another job, but I'd never make chair in ten years at another school. I'd laid my cards down at NYU, and it had really worked for me.

She came down about an hour later, and without a word, curled up in my lap on the couch. I wrapped my arms around her, and we just didn't say anything for a while. I knew she was crying, from her sniffling, so I just held her, figuring she'd talk when she was ready.

Eventually when she did, and it kind of broke my heart.

She turned around so I could see her, and I wiped her tears out of her eyes with my thumbs. "They want to fire Sam, and give me his job. Niall took me out for drinks at King Cole to tell me."

That sucked. I knew her and Sam were close. He was one of the first people there that had really went to bat for her, and really, was probably the reason she'd gotten as far as she had. "Why do they want to fire Sam?"

"Niall doesn't think he's pulling his weight. He thinks he's the weakest link, and that we're all working harder than we have to to make up for his shortcomings."

Niall had quite the reputation for being cut-throat, so I wasn't surprised. "Do you think that's true?"

She pouted for a minute, before continuing. She was so cute when she was pouty. It was probably why I had a hard time resisting Ceci. She pouted a lot like Sookie. "I didn't, at first, but then I started thinking about it, and now I'm not really sure. Even after two days, I realized that he's not doing that much. I was doing a lot of the things that Niall thought he was doing, and I don't know if that's the same for sales and marketing."

"They can't fire him when he's just had a heart attack. He'd have grounds to sue."

She nodded. "Niall came by today and said they'd buy him out on early retirement or bring him back for two weeks and let him go."

I furrowed my brow, wondering if I could get early retirement. "He's not even fifty."

She sniffed a bit more. "Niall tried to sugar coat it by saying that he had lots of time to do something new, something he was better suited for."

Yea, that was a nice way of saying someone sucked at their job. "So what are you thinking? Do you want his job?"

She shrugged. "I was pretty opposed to the idea at first, but I don't know. It might not be so bad, since I seemed to be doing parts of it anyway."

"I know you can do it. It's more of a matter of if you want to or not."

"I think I could be really good at it, you know? It's a hard opportunity to turn down. I would have been home at five today if I didn't get a stack of resumes that I wanted to look at for my current job."

I had a somewhat disheartening thought. "Have you already accepted Sam's job?"

She shook her head. "Of course not. We'd need to talk about that. Niall just had some applicants from his old press in the UK that he wanted me to check out."

I should have known she wouldn't take it. She'd mentioned specifically discussing it with me. "So he's had this plan in motion for a while then."

She nodded. "I would say so. He called the timing of Sam's heart attack most inopportune."

Asshole. "So are you leaning towards taking the job?"

She nodded. "Honestly, yes, but I wanted your opinion."

I kissed her forehead. "Would I have to get another editor?"

She shook her head, a little smile on her face. "I'd write it into my contract."

"I'm going to be finished on time, you know."

She rolled her eyes a little. "Well you kind of have to be, since you're probably leaving."

She knew me so well. "I would have maybe been two weeks late. That's all. I really buckled down over the last week or so."

She wrapped her arms around me, hiding her face in my neck. This was going to be a hard three weeks, if she kept crying. I hated when she cried, more than anything. "I don't want you to go," she whispered.

"Lover, I don't want to go either. You have no idea how much I don't want to go." I sighed. "But I'll go, and then I'll come back, and then we'll have all the time in the world. I'll make sure I can get home for a week somewhere in the middle. We'll talk every day, not on the phone, but on Skype. I'll read to the kids on Skype and give you a night off now and then." I'd thought about this a lot, being forced to consider how we would make this work. "We'll email, and text, and sext, and you'll be so tired of hearing from me that you'll shut your phone off."

She brought her face out of hiding and pouted at me some more. "I'd never do that."

I tilted her chin towards me and kissed her softly. "Don't make that a challenge."

She sniffed a bit more. "When would you come home?"

I hadn't thought that far ahead. I guess I had to though. "Somewhere in the middle. Maybe for Thanksgiving?"

"I wish I could come to Paris. I don't know if I'll be able to though. Not for long enough to get the kids acclimated. Unless you want to take one with you? Maybe the small squirrely one?" She smiled.

We both knew that she'd never let me take one. And I'd never do that to her, to any of them. "They're kind of a matched set though. Ying and Yang. And you know Max would never tolerate me reading him bedtime stories unless absolutely necessary." It was too far to fly them for any less than a couple of weeks, and with this work thing, it wasn't a good time. If she really wanted to go, we'd go another time when the timing was better. "And I know I'd have a hard time getting you to go to Paris, after what Bill did to you there."

She sat back and crossed her arms. "What he did to me? Come on. There were two of us doing the doing."

"Oh, that's some good English usage there, Lover. Doing the doing."

"Shush." Her eyes sparkled, despite the tears rimming the edges. "You're such a jerk."

I kissed her again, pulling her back into my embrace. "But I'm your jerk."

My meeting with Appius around lunch time, so Pam showed up at about eleven to watch the kids. "So you're really going?" I'd explained the details the night I told Sookie, so she'd watch the kids without laying a guilt trip on me and try to get me to take Gaby for like six days as payback.

I shushed her. "We haven't told the kids yet. Don't say anything. We want to tell them when we know all the details."

She shrugged. "I won't say anything. I'm sure everything will be fine. Remember when Dad used to go? We were fine."

Both of us had a shit relationship with Dad because he was gone so much. "I'm only going once. Not monthly."

"Four months is a long time in the eyes of a kid."

I rolled my eyes at her. "Thanks, Pam, you're making me feel much better about this. It's four months, and then I'm working white collar hours for three years. The kids will wish I wasn't around so much."

Pam smiled. "Maybe I'll come and see you. We can tear shit up like we used to. Remember London?"

God, that sounded terrible. I wished I could forget London ten years ago. "Maybe."

She looked up, thinking about the time I was there. I knew she was trying to make an excuse to go to Paris to make me feel better, so I wouldn't think she was just coming for me. Pam wasn't terribly sentimental, so it was nice that she wanted to come. She'd never let on that she was just coming for me. "You'll be there for Spring Fashion Week. I'll absolutely come and see you."

"I'd like that."

"I guess neither of us are in much of a position to be doing body shots off models anymore, huh?" She smiled.

I shook my head. "Nope, I don't think we are."

She sighed. "When did that happen?"

"When we got married and had kids."

"Right." She sighed again.

"Maybe you can pick up a model with Alcide. I'll watch Gab."

She titled her head, looking at me with love. "You'd do that?"

I shrugged. "Sure. I'll be dying for some Dora the Explorer by then."

Pam and Sookie had gotten very drunk one night, about a year ago, and Pam had spilled all the sordid details of her sex life with Alcide to an intrigued Sookie, who had of course told me all about it. She was intrigued, but not enough to want to give it a college try.

I was quite relieved about that. It was not somewhere I wanted to go. I liked her and I. No complications. Just great vanilla sex, and lots of it. Maybe more than vanilla. Maybe French vanilla. With some sprinkles from time to time. Maybe some butterscotch topping. Definitely whipped cream too.

Anyway, after years of somewhat twisted curiosity, I knew more than I wanted to about my sister's married sexual habits. Not that I was judgey, but she was my little sister. Of course, I knew more than enough about her sexual habits from when she lived with me sometimes to last a lifetime.

I made it to NYU about twenty minutes before my meeting but made a point of not being early. I certainly didn't want to seem overeager for this. When I knocked on his door at noon on the dot, he answered immediately.

He was so slimy, with his cheap suit and slicked back hair. I hated that he had me by the balls. "Eric, so nice to see you. I trust you're having a pleasant summer?"

I internally rolled my eyes. "Yea, it's been good. It's gone by too quickly though."

He smiled, in a way that made me want to punch the smug impression off his stupid face. "So, you're thinking the Sorbonne in September? I've done some shuffling, and we can fill your courses with grad students while you're gone."

"Wow, that sounds great." I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Appius fucked grad students, always of the youngish male persuasion, despite the fact that he was married to a total beard from old money.

"Your wife has a problem with you having a little fun?" He said, almost in a taunting way.

I shrugged, pissed that he would even mention Sookie. She hated him possibly more than I did, and was pretty convinced that he wanted to fuck me. "I don't really want to leave my kids, but I don't want to have shit classes for the next ten years, or until I'm forced to apply for a job elsewhere."

He smiled. "Smart man. So I've made all the arrangements. You start teaching on the fifth, three courses. My contact there will be in touch with further details. He did some shuffling to give you classes that apply to your research area, so you owe him a thank you when you get there. Victor is a lovely man. I'm sure you'll get along well. He's doing a wonderful study on psychological manipulation right now, which is really cutting edge.

How the hell did one do ethically a study on that? Maybe the rules were different in France. "Cool. Well, if we're done here, I have four months of time to spend with my kids in three weeks."

He shook his head at me. "Don't take this so personally. They're children. They'll hardly notice you're gone."

I fought the urge to choke him. "I'm a very hands on dad, and you should know better than anyone, as a doctor of psychology, that these things do have long term affects if not properly dealt with."

And then he got lippy. "Don't quote research to me. Just go, and do your job."

And with that, I'd had enough. "Have a wonderful day."

It was that very afternoon that I decided that if I was going to stay at NYU, Appius Occella was going to have to go. I'd have four months to calculate my revenge.

When I got home, Pam was out the door in a flash to deal with Gaby teething and nearly giving Alcide a nervous breakdown, and I was left with Max and Ceci. I think the worst part of this was, no matter how silly it might have been, I felt like I was really letting them down. Sookie could understand of course, that I wasn't abandoning her, no matter how mad she was at me, or upset she was.

Max could probably kind of understand. He was a smart kid, and he and I were much the same in many ways, very practical. He knew that work was serious, and if work said I had to do something, I didn't have much choice.

It was Ceci that I was worried about. I had awful visions of her having man issues from the four months that she thought I was abandoned her. I'd have to really think about ways to make her remember me and know that I'd left, but I hadn't left them. Maybe I'd take pictures of things she'd like, or mail postcards, or something. I'd buy her the moon if she could just really understand.

Sookie made it home by six on the dot, practically racing the clock to get in the door. It was cute, because I knew she really wanted me to know that we came first, no matter how crazy her day was. I knew we did. I liked that she was independent. I never would have wanted her any other way.

I smiled as she breezed in the door. "I made stir fry."

She sniffed the air. "Smells good. Sam's not taking the package. Niall wants me to talk to him, off the record." She shook her head, and muttered "Fuck," under her breath.

"When?"

She popped in and said hi to the kids, who were enthralled with something on TV, scooped out some rice and veggies, and sat down at the kitchen table. "He wants to give him a week to sit on it. I hate this."

"I hope you're getting a bigger raise."

She nodded. "And I negotiated six weeks of vacation. Not that I'll be able to take any of it until next spring. I think I'll dick off for most of the summer."

"That sounds good already. Something to look forward to."

She nodded. "We need that. How was your meeting?"

"Wonderful." I shook my head. "He's such an ass."

She rolled her eyes. "No kidding. Did he offer to let you off the hook if you blew him? Because honestly, I'd probably say to go for it if it meant you didn't have to go."

"The offer wasn't put on the table, I assure you." I raised an eyebrow. "And from what I hear about where that's been, you wouldn't want that. Even if it meant I got to be a house husband for life because we'd never be able to F U C K again. Not the way you like anyway."

Sookie snorted. "Max can spell. Hopefully not that I guess."

I picked a piece of baby corn out of her bowl. She didn't like the baby corn. The water chestnuts on the other hand, were off limits. "Hopefully not."

Because I'd turned into a huge suck, I stood in the doorway while she read to the kids, listening to her lovely melodic tone, which was kind ironic because she had a terrible singing voice. I wanted to remember this, every minute of it, when I was spending my nights alone, without the warmth that my family had brought to my life.

It was going to be a long four months.

I went downstairs as she finished tucking them in and poured us each a glass of Baileys. It was a Baileys kind of night.

She joined me a few minutes later, and the glimmer in her eye told me that I'd captured the evening's mood exactly. "Thanks. I didn't think we had any or I probably would have finished the whole bottle on Monday night."

"It's on a high shelf. I can see Ce thinking that it was chocolate milk or something. Or worse, feeding it to Lil."

She took a sip, took my hand and led me to the couch, pushed me down and sat on my knee. "I promise I'll keep a running diary of all the ridiculous things she does for you."

I rested my head against hers. "I expect a daily report."

She nodded. "We need to improve our phone sex skills."

I shifted her so she was leaning against the arm of the couch, her legs over my lap."I guess we'll have lots of time to practice. Practice makes perfect."

More pout. "I don't want to be perfect at phone sex. I'd rather be perfect at real sex."

I laughed. "If we were perfect at real sex, what would we laugh about?" We laughed a lot about sex. Sometimes about silly things, and sometimes we'd compete with each other for first orgasm. I loved every minute of it.

"Fair enough." Her eyes got wet again. "I'll miss everything about you, even the parts that drive me crazy."

"In both good ways and bad ways?" I raised an eyebrow.

She nodded. "Yes, exactly."

"We're both good at masturbating. We'll be okay."

"It's more fun as foreplay though."

"I won't argue with you there. I'll bring you back some French lingerie. The stuff that you can't wear under ever day clothes. Crotchless panties, that kind of thing." That stuff was so silly.

She held up a finger. "Wait a minute. Is that a present for me, or for you?"

"Everyone. We all win with crotchless panties."

She smiled. "Take me to bed?"

I set her glass down and pulled her to her feet. "We have three weeks to have four months worth of sex. We'll have to fuck like five times tonight, and every night until I leave."

She leaned back against me. "I won't be able to walk."

I smiled, pushing her ahead of me into our room. "That's okay. You have a desk job. No walking necessary."