Kevin and Jason were both screaming their heads off when Holly arrived at Blake and Ross's house the next evening with a large mushroom and sausage pizza. Blake, frazzled herself, had Kevin strapped to her chest and Jason in her arms when she opened the door to her mother. Holly immediately put the pizza on the coffee table, took Jason from Blake's arms, and headed to the nursery with him.

"What's all the fuss about, hm?" she asked. She checked his diaper and found that he needed to be changed. "Ah. No wonder you're protesting so loudly." After she had changed him, she carried him to the bathroom, where she gently wiped his red, tear-stained face with a cool washcloth. The two-month-old, exhausted from his outburst, wearily laid his head on her shoulder. She gently rubbed his back. "There, that's better," she said. She returned to the nursery, talking softly to Jason as she walked the floor with him. "Boy, does this bring back memories. I spent so many nights walking the floor with your mommy when she was a baby. I have to say, you're calming down a lot sooner than she did. Must get that from your dad. You certainly didn't get it from me, or from your grandpa. You look a lot like your grandpa, though. Dark hair, brown eyes." Jason gurgled then. "Yeah," she said. "Your grandpa is crazy about you and your brother. He'd be here tonight if he could. The day will come when Grandpa and I will come and see you and Kevin together. At least, I hope it will. There's nothing I want more than to be with your grandpa for the rest of my life. Your mommy doesn't know about this yet, but I know you'll keep my secret, won't you, Jason?" Jason was now asleep on her shoulder. "Yeah, you'll keep my secret," she mused. "I'm not sure if I bored you to sleep or soothed you to sleep. I'm going with soothed you to sleep." She gently kissed his cheek, settled him in his crib, and, snagging the nursery monitor from the top of the dresser by the lamp with the shade made of plastic balloons in green, red, blue, and yellow, returned to the living room, where she found Blake restlessly swaying a still-fussing Kevin.

"Is Jason asleep?" Blake asked.

"Yes," Holly replied.

"You are a miracle worker," Blake replied. She had removed Kevin from the sling she was wearing and was holding him now, swaying him.

"Kevin just doesn't want to sleep, huh?" Holly asked.

Blake sank down on the couch wearily. "He hates sleeping," she said.

"You were the same way," Holly said. She reached over and rubbed Kevin's back, which made him fuss harder. "Okay, Grandma gets the message," she said. "You only want Mommy."

"I grew out of it eventually, right? Now I love sleeping. I just don't get to do it on a regular basis anymore," Blake said. "How long was it before I grew out of hating to sleep?"

"Well..." Holly hedged. "You started sleeping through the night when you were three."

"Three years old?" Blake asked, horrified.

"But you started sleeping for longer stretches by the time you were six months old," Holly added hastily.

Blake looked slightly relieved. "Longer than two hours, you mean?"

"Sometimes as much as five hours," Holly said.

"Five hours," Blake said dreamily. "That's how I know I'm a mom now: it used to be the first thing I'd want to do with five uninterrupted hours was S-E-X. Now the only thing I want to do with five uninterrupted hours is sleep." Kevin fidgeted in Blake's arms. "I don't think he's going to go down for a while. You'd better bring the pizza in here, Mom. Otherwise we'll be eating it cold. And grab me a ginger ale out of the fridge to drink, please."

Holly returned with the pizza, a handful of napkins, Blake's ginger ale, and a bottle of water for herself. She set the pizza box on the coffee table, flipped it open, and since Kevin went into full-throttle screaming when Blake tried to put him in his swing, Blake had to eat one-handed because she had to still hold him.

"So how was the meeting with the divorce lawyer?" Blake asked when Kevin had settled down to minor whimpering once more.

"It went well," Holly replied. "It's not really going to be that complicated, thankfully."

"That's good," Blake said. "You seem happier now than you've been in a long time, Mom, and a lot more hopeful, and it's really good to see."

"I am," Holly assured her daughter. "Happier and more hopeful. That's definitely true."

Kevin really started crying again, and Blake looked like she was about to cry herself. "It's too early for teething, right?" she asked her mother.

"Yes," Holly said. "He's only two months old."

Ross arrived home then from his late meeting. After kissing Blake hello, he took Kevin out of her arms. "Such a fussy boy," he said, gently bouncing Kevin. "Hello, Holly," he said.

"Hello," she said. "Yes, Kevin's very fussy tonight. Jason's asleep, though."

"That's usually how it goes," Ross said. "Kevin's not a big fan of sleeping." Kevin snuggled against Ross's chest, right over his heart, the sound of his father's heartbeat soothing his cries somewhat.

Jason awoke crying then. Blake noticed the time and said, "Oh, he needs to be fed! Excuse me," and hurried off to the nursery to nurse Jason.

Holly started cleaning up the leftovers of dinner, and Kevin finally exhausted himself enough that he fell asleep against Ross's chest. Ross eased himself down on the couch with the sleeping Kevin in his arms. "I hope you're not angry about my representing Fletcher in the divorce," he said softly. "It's just that he showed up at my office at lunch the day you two decided to end the marriage, and asked me to be his lawyer, and you know that he and I go way back, and he was just really pushing, saying he wanted this resolved as soon as possible..." Ross trailed off.

"We both do," Holly said. "No, Ross, I'm not angry with you. We're family. I think it's more important that we're family and you and I are friends than it is that you represent me in this divorce."

"I agree," Ross said. He looked at Holly contemplatively. "You seem lighter than you've seemed in a long time," he said.

"I feel lighter than I have in a long time," Holly agreed.

"You know, the last time I saw you this much at ease, you were with Roger," Ross said.

Holly was careful to keep her voice neutral and her eyes on cleaning the crumbs off the coffee table. "Are you asking me something?" she said. "And if so, are you asking as my friend, or Fletcher's lawyer?"

"I wasn't asking anything, I was just making an observation," Ross replied. "Fletcher isn't planning to respond to your filing for divorce with a charge of adultery."

"There's no reason for him to do that. Adultery is not involved," Holly said.

"Just irreconcilable differences," Ross said.

"Yes," Holly said. She took the trash out to the kitchen, and then returned to the living room.

"So, about that observation I made a few minutes ago," Ross said when she returned.

Holly pushed her hair off her forehead. "If you're asking if Roger and I are back together, the answer is no," she said as she sat down in the chair.

"I figured that. Blake isn't bouncing off the ceiling in jubilation," Ross replied. "But I also know you, Holly. You and Roger are like a magnet and steel. You always have been, and you always will be. And you at least know how to handle Roger...or at least, you know how to handle him better than anyone else."

"Anyone else like, say, Dinah?" Holly inquired evenly, sensing where this was going. Oh, if you only knew that your daughter is not as innocent as you believe, Ross, she thought.

"It's no secret that Dinah and Roger did not marry for love," Ross replied. "Roger has only ever loved you. And you love him." Holly didn't deny these truths. "But in order to truly make another go of it with you, Roger would have to divorce Dinah, and she would be infinitely better off."

I wonder if you'd think that if you knew she's sleeping with Hart, Holly thought. "So you're what, sanctioning my breaking up Roger's marriage to Dinah?" Holly asked.

"Do you want him back?" Ross countered. "Because if he knew you wanted him back, he'd drop Dinah like a hot potato."

"Roger's not a cheater," Holly said.

Ross snorted. "Your memory can't be that short," he said. "Does Acapulco ring any bells?"

"We did not sleep together in Acapulco," Holly said firmly.

"But he was cheating on Alexandra anyway," Ross pointed out. "If Roger were to cheat on Dinah with you, and Dinah found out about it, she'd have grounds for divorce. She's too proud to stay with a man she knows is cheating on her."

But apparently she's not too proud to stay with a man and gaslight him while she's sleeping with his son. Blake was right, Holly realized; Ross was indeed riding for a big fall where Dinah was concerned, and it was going to really hurt him when he learned exactly what she had been up to these past few months. "Ross, I understand how desperate you are to get Dinah away from Roger, but do you really think my being the other woman is the best way to accomplish that?"

Blake returned then. "Jason ate, burped, I changed him, and he went right back to sleep," she reported. When she saw Kevin sleeping against Ross's chest, she sagged against the wall with relief. "Kevin's asleep, too?" she asked. "For how long?"

"About 10 minutes," Holly said.

"Do you think he's asleep enough that you can put him down now and he'll stay asleep for at least a couple of hours?" Blake asked hopefully.

"I can try," Ross said. He carefully got up from the couch and carried Kevin to the nursery to put him in his crib.

Blake sank down wearily on the couch. "You're exhausted. I should go," Holly said.

"I'm not trying to push you out the door, Mom," Blake said apologetically, "but yes, I could really use some sleep."

"Then I'll let you get some," Holly said. She and Blake hugged goodbye. "Don't get up. I can show myself out. Sleep while you can, honey. And tell Ross I said good night."

By the time Ross returned from settling Kevin in his crib, Blake had fallen asleep on the couch, so Ross carried Blake to their bed so she could get some much-needed.

While Holly was with Blake and the boys and Ross, Roger went to Bay City, to Michael's office, having spoken to him on the phone earlier that day. They looked over what Michael had on the Yahoo deal, but Michael could tell that most of Roger's mind was elsewhere, so when they had gone over the preliminaries on that particular project, Michael set everything aside and said, "Okay, Fox Head, let's talk."

"About what?" Roger asked.

Michael just looked at him. "Roger. It's me."

Roger shifted in his chair. "Nothing gets by you, does it," he said rhetorically.

"You look like you have something on your mind. Something unrelated to business," Michael replied.

"Holly," Roger said. "Whenever I'm not thinking about the mess I'm in, I'm thinking about her."

"Spoken like a man in love," Michael said. "Coffee?" he offered.

"Please," Roger said. "Black is fine."

Michael got them both cups of steaming hot coffee before resuming his seat behind his desk. Roger took a sip, then said, "I am in love with Holly. That's not the problem. Trust is the problem."

"You trusting her, or her trusting you?" Michael asked before taking a sip of his own coffee.

"Me trusting her," Roger admitted.

"Her trusting you is not an issue?" Michael asked.

"Not as far as Holly's concerned," Roger replied. "At least she hasn't said anything about not trusting me. Which is kind of ironic, because it was her not trusting me that broke us apart two years ago, although I didn't really give her a good reason to trust me then. I said one thing and did another, and you know what they say about actions speaking louder than words."

Michael winced. "This sounds painfully familiar," he said.

"In what way?" Roger asked, puzzled. He had always thought that Michael was so much more together than he was. He couldn't imagine Michael getting into the kind of mess with Donna that Roger had gotten into with Holly because of his unholy pursuit of Spaulding. He lied to Holly, she jumped to the wrong, but only, conclusion his actions caused her to reach, and in the end, he was left with nothing-no Spaulding, and far worse than that, no Holly.

"You saw how freaked out Donna got when she thought you were there to drag me back into the Agency," Michael began.

"Yeah, but I thought that was because she didn't want you getting shot or worse," Roger said.

"That was part of it, but that wasn't the main reason she got so upset," Michael continued. "When I got dragged back into the Agency for one last mission six years ago-"

"Griffen Saunders?" Roger interrupted.

"Yeah," Michael said. "I didn't tell Donna that's what I was doing."

"Unless they've changed the rules, you couldn't tell her what you were doing," Roger pointed out.

"I'm actually going somewhere with this, if you'll stop interrupting me every ten seconds," Michael said.

"Sorry," Roger said contritely. "Please, continue."

"You know how dangerous Griffen Saunders was," Michael continued. Roger nodded. "Between that and the need for secrecy, I had to come up with some kind of cover story so that Donna would understand why I was moving out on her, and so she'd stay away while I was on this mission. Ariane was the person the Agency sent to recruit me for the mission, before anyone knew that she was actually a double agent. So I lied to Donna that I was having an affair with Ariane."

When Michael went silent for a long moment, Roger said, "Can I talk now?"

"You can."

"I know you needed a cover story, but that was really stupid."

"Yes, it was," Michael agreed firmly. "Because on the occasions I saw Donna in public, or with our daughters, I was purposely mean to her, a real jerk, and that's putting it mildly. She was hurt and confused and didn't understand why I was doing this, but after a couple of months she accepted that I must want this other woman, so then she was hurt and angry. It took almost five months to get Saunders...and Ariane...and I was so relieved when it was over. I was also incredibly naïve, because I thought I could just go home and explain to her what had actually happened, and she'd welcome me back with open arms and we could just put the whole thing behind us and pick up where we left off."

"I'm guessing that's not what happened," Roger said.

"When I showed up at home at 2:00 in the morning after Saunders was in the morgue and Ariane was in police custody and I had been debriefed, Donna was not the least bit happy to see me," Michael said.

"Could you blame her? She thought you'd been stepping out on her and sleeping with Ariane for almost half a year, and you'd been a jerk to her every time you saw her all that time," Roger said.

"I was not aware enough at the time to be anything but hurt that she wasn't letting me come home yet," Michael admitted. He held up a hand to forestall what Roger was about to say next. "I know, I know. It was short-sighted and self-centered of me, and when she opened the front door, I should have crawled in on my hands and knees, begging her forgiveness."

"Yes, you should have," Roger agreed. "So what did happen? I take it this was the cause for one of your divorces?"

"The last one," Michael said with a nod. "Several months later. That's how long it took me to find out that the night I came home and finally told Donna the truth, she had another man upstairs in our bed."

Roger knew that kind of pain firsthand, although Fletcher had never been in his and Holly's bed, to Roger's knowledge. He decided in that moment if Fletcher had been in their bed, he didn't want to know about it.

"We got back together, but things started spiraling out of control. It was only that one night, but the guy was a real snake, and he blackmailed her. Our daughters found out, and then I found out, when Donna confessed to shooting a man because she thought our daughter Marley had done it. The affair came out on the stand at the trial. Then I was the one who was hurt and angry. I filed for divorce while Donna was in jail. She wasn't there long, though, because she didn't shoot the guy, and neither did Marley. Donna only said she did it because she was so certain Marley had done it, and she would rather have gone to jail herself for the rest of her life than let Marley spend one night behind bars for shooting her rapist."

Now Roger winced.

"And yes, I was hurt and I was angry about Donna cheating on me, even though it was just that once," Michael said, "but the person I was angriest at was myself, because I drove her to it. I couldn't tell her the truth about what I was doing. Her life would have been in danger if she had known. I went with the first, most clichéd cover story that came to mind, because she saw me with Ariane around town, so when Donna assumed that Ariane was the other woman, I did nothing to correct that assumption. I was awful to her, even though it was killing me inside, and no one understood why I was doing this-not Donna, not our girls, not my brother. If I had come up with something else, anything but making Donna believe that I was cheating on her, that I cheated first, then maybe she wouldn't have been so hurt and angry, and after all those months so lonely, that she went to bed with another man. The fact that she did is just as much on me as it is on her, because she did it, but she did it because of what I did to her first."

"That sounds painfully familiar," Roger said ruefully. "I was trying to steal Spaulding Enterprises from the Spauldings. Because of that, I had already nearly blown it with Holly more than once in the past few months, but she kept giving me second chances, kept forgiving me, because she wanted us to work. I did too...but I got greedy." He raked a hand through his hair. "I had asked her to marry me, Michael," he admitted painfully. "She wanted to say yes. She told me that she wanted to say yes, but she couldn't yet. The proposal was on the table. I was going out to get a ring to go with it, but I made a detour first...to the Spaulding Mansion."

Michael already knew how this particular story ended-with Holly married to another man that she was now divorcing, and Roger married to the woman who was now sleeping with his son and gaslighting him-but he knew they weren't at that point of the story yet, so he said, "Sounds like you made your own big mistake."

"I did," Roger said sadly. "There's no excuse for it, and the poorest of reasons: my own stupidity and greed. We were so close, Michael. Holly wanted to marry me. She wanted to say yes. She had already hinted that she would say yes if I formally asked again that night with a ring. She was waiting for me to come home so we could have a romantic dinner, just the two of us." He looked angry now, and Michael knew Roger was angry at himself. "But I just had to go over to the Spaulding Mansion. I was trying to suck up to Alexandra Spaulding. She drugged my drink and got me into her bed." Now he looked ashamed. "Holly knew enough to go looking for me there when I didn't come home. She saw me in Alex's bed, and Alex was out to destroy me, destroy what mattered most to me, so she lied to Holly that I'd slept with her. She was devastated, Michael. She was so hurt, and so angry, and so betrayed. She fell right into Fletcher's arms that same night. That's what I drove her to."

"So what happened when you woke up?" Michael asked quietly, feeling badly for his old friend, knowing well the anger and self-loathing and pain that came from having so deeply hurt the only woman you ever loved and driven her into the arms of another man by your own stupid actions.

"I went straight to Holly, of course, but she wouldn't see me," Roger said. "She didn't believe me when I said I hadn't slept with Alex, that she had drugged me and planted me in her bed and lied to Holly that I'd slept with her. I pleaded with her to give me another chance, to let me prove that Alex was lying. I was able to prove that, and she forgave me, but she was still distant from me. She still wouldn't answer my proposal. She got more distant and more secretive. She didn't want me to know what had happened, but I figured it out. And you know what, Michael? I didn't care. I knew it was my fault she did it. I could forgive her for that one slip. But she didn't tell me." Now Roger looked angry. "He did. And he was so smug about it, too. Practically bragging, the bastard."

Michael remembered how he had wanted to tear Jake McKinnon limb from limb when he learned about Donna's night with him, and then that Jake had not only blackmailed Donna over their one night together, but that Jake had raped Marley when she had gone to him to return his engagement ring and break things off with him permanently. "If I'd been there, I would have held his arms for you while you knocked his teeth down his throat," he muttered.

"When she saw Fletcher had me cornered at that damn banquet at the country club, and the look on my face, she knew that I knew," Roger said. "I've been shot more than once, I've been stabbed, beaten, I fell off a cliff in Santo Domingo, but all of those things taken together didn't hurt as much as that moment did. It felt like my heart had been ripped from my chest and trampled by several herds of bulls until there was nothing left." He scrubbed at his jaw with one hand. "I was reeling. I'd had it confirmed, and I needed time to process it. It's not like I took months. But by the time I did, she was dating him. The next thing I know, he's making this big public spectacle, declaring his love for her from a balcony in front of half the town, and she went running into his arms. Then she married him."

"And you and what's her name?" Michael asked.

"Dinah," Roger replied. "She's younger than my daughter. It's...It was a reaction on my part. She needed her trust fund, she wanted to stick it to her parents, who have never been fans of mine, I thought we were friends, so I married her. Then I started siphoning off her trust fund, and I'm guessing she found out and decided to start an affair with my estranged son. Who better to stick it to me with than Hart? And Hart never misses an opportunity to get back at me, so he probably figures stealing my wife is the way to go...except Dinah's not the one I really want. She never was. It's Holly. It's always been Holly, and it will always be Holly...if I can trust her not to leave me again for some other man that's better than me, at least on paper, because this last time...it damn near killed me, Michael. There were moments where I wished it would. But she says there's no one better for her than me, that I'm the only one she loves and the only one she wants to be with."

"She really wants you back," Michael said. "She loves you. Donna and I could see that clearly, and I just met Holly, and Donna just met both of you." Roger had set his now-empty coffee mug on the corner of Michael's desk and was toying with it. "Okay, Fox Head, it's gut check time." Roger looked up and met Michael's gaze. "Trusting Holly is a separate issue, and that one I'm afraid you're going to have to work out between the two of you, my friend. But you have to ask yourself two very important questions on the same subject: number one, you said you can forgive Holly for sleeping with this other guy the night she thought you slept with Alexandra Spaulding, but can you forgive her for marrying this other guy? Don't answer, just think about it."

"What's the second question?" Roger asked.

"Can you forgive yourself for being so monumentally stupid that you drove Holly into this other guy's arms and then everything spiraled out of control and went to hell after that?" Michael asked. "Again, don't answer me, just think about it. And I can tell you from experience, forgiving yourself is a lot harder than forgiving her."

"You forgave yourself?"

"Eventually," Michael said. "Took me a long time to do it, though."

"And you forgave Donna, and you were able to trust her again?" Roger asked.

"Eventually," Michael said again. "I took up with someone I knew she hated after we got divorced, but it didn't last. I knew it wouldn't going in. Then I moved to Hawaii for a few years. We had failed at marriage three times by then, and it really hurt. But I couldn't forget Donna any more than I could when I was in the Marines, or the Agency, or building my business empire. When I came back to Bay City, Donna was engaged to someone else. But we still had our daughters, and by that time two grandsons. We couldn't stay away from each other. The more time we spent together, the more we fell back into being us, even before we were officially us again. I made some more mistakes...more than Donna, at any rate...but I was able to forgive her, and I was able to forgive myself, and finally, one night last November, we were having dinner, and she said, 'This is ridiculous. You love me, Michael Hudson, and I love you. We have loved each other since we were 16 years old, and we will love each other until we die. And we've forgiven each other, and we have two amazing daughters and two wonderful grandsons and another on the way, and it's past time we address the elephant in the room. I don't need another wedding ring. I just need you.'"

"What did you say?" Roger asked, admiring Donna's forthrightness and moxie.

"I told her that I needed her too, that I've loved her from the moment I saw her and always will, and yes, we have forgiven each other, and that all I wanted was to go home with her that night and stay forever," Michael replied. "We've been together ever since. It's not always easy, but we're not gonna screw it up this time. We've been there and done that and burned the t-shirts. I am Donna's, and she is mine, and that's all."

"I hope I can say that about Holly and me someday," Roger said. He glanced at his watch then and said, "I should get going." He stood up, so Michael did too. "Thanks, Michael. For everything. Really."

They shook hands. "Anytime," he said. "I mean that."

"You're one of the very, very few people in my life that I know does," Roger replied honestly. "And that Yahoo deal looks good. I'd like to get in on that."

A grin creased Michael's face. "Great!" he exclaimed. "I was hoping you'd say that, and not just because I know you could use the distraction. We always made a great team, and this Internet thing is going to be huge. We get in on this at the right time, and we'll both be able to send all our grandchildren, including the ones that haven't even been born yet, to Ivy League schools to get their bachelor's, masters, and doctorates all three if they want them. Plus there's the thrill of the deal, the adventure, the excitement."

"It sounds great," Roger replied honestly. "It's been a long time since I've been involved in a business deal with someone that I knew wasn't going to screw me over."

"We'll have to meet again soon to go over more of the details before our first meeting with these guys," Michael said, tapping the folder of papers pertaining to the deal on his desk.

"Will they mind that you want to bring me in on this?" Roger asked. "Because if it's going to cause you problems-"

"They won't mind," Michael assured him. "I'll call you tomorrow afternoon after my conference call with them. Around 4:00?"

"Okay," Roger agreed. "Thanks again. Good night."

"Good night," Michael replied, clapping Roger on the back before Roger took his leave, silently mulling over the matters of forgiving Holly, and forgiving himself.