Robin spotted Lucky almost immediately from the top step of the stairs. He was speaking quietly with Cruz. To whatever questions he was asking, Cruz answered each one with a smirk, a serious frown, or a lift of his eyebrows. She could hear Luke and Uncle Mac talking in the kitchen. Laura and Elizabeth were around here somewhere. Maxie was talking on her cell phone, probably spilling to Georgie or having a secret conversation with Ric. Her mother had dropped in literally for about an hour and had climbed out the bedroom window. Thank God her family wasn't ever going to be normal. She didn't know if she would fit in with them if they were. Maxie was talking on her cell phone, probably spilling to Georgie or having a secret conversation with Ric. She wondered if she could get down the stairs without too many people noticing.

She made her way toward Lucky, somehow blending in with the crowd, and interrupted Cruz mid-frown. "Lucky can I talk to you a second? It's about Elizabeth." If there was ever a surefire way to get Lucky to come with her, it was mentioning Elizabeth's name.

Shooting Robin a concerned look, Lucky nodded quickly. "Sure. I'll find you after okay?" He asked Cruz.

"Yeah, sure. Go on." Cruz went in search of his lovely wife and daughter.

"Alright what's going on?" Lucky asked, maneuvering them towards a corner.

"Lucky..." Robin paused. "It's about Max."

"What about that bastard?"

Robin subtly caught Dillon's gaze from across the room. He was half-listening to Lucas and Bobbie as they made plans for Lance to spend some time with his grandma. According to Dillon, Bobbie had become a little clingy since Lance was diagnosed, not that anyone could blame her for her reaction. Robin, Laura, and Alexis had been the same way when they got their children back. "I think I knew a little before she told anyone that Max was abusive, but I didn't say anything. I've been feeling guilty about it. Maybe if I had confronted her earlier, Diane Miller wouldn't have been able to use it in court." Pinching the inside of her left palm with her right thumb and forefinger, she felt tears immediately spring to her eyes.

"Robin..." Lucky sighed. "What do you know?"

"I can't tell you here." Robin gazed longingly toward the stairs.

"Fine. Where? When?"

"Now. Upstairs. We can talk in the nursery." Robin suggested.

Glancing quickly around the room, he spotted Elizabeth cornering Patrick, more than likely giving his cousin nine kinds of hell for allowing Mac to continue yelling for as long as he did. She would bed distracted for a few minutes at least. "Five minutes?"

"That's all I need." Robin promised. "Shall we?"

"Go on up. I'll meet you."

*****

"Oh come on you have to do this for me Patrick." Elizabeth caught Lucas's slight nod out of the corner of her eye. Apparently Robin's part of the plan had worked and now everything was up to her since there was a less than zero chance Cruz would turn down Laura. "What reason could you possibly have for turning me down?"

"I guess I do kind of owe you for the Mac thing." Patrick squirmed. Things had certainly changed since October when they had gone shopping for Robin's birthday present. Now to be shopping for Lucky's was a little less awkward. He had leaned on Elizabeth in Robin's absence making them friends, or at least sociable with each other. He couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else going on. Why wouldn't Elizabeth go to Robin for this sort of thing?

"Perfect!" Elizabeth jumped up and clapped her hands. "Now we just have to talk strategy."

"There's a strategy?" Patrick squeaked out.

"Of course there is a strategy. For this to work we need everything to go perfectly, like clockwork. There must be a schedule."

"A schedule?" Patrick rolled his eyes. "Liz, maybe this isn't such a good idea."

"No. It's the perfect idea and you are the only person I trust to get this done correctly. But we can't talk here. Details would get back to Lucky and that would be bad. We need to talk somewhere else."

"Where?" Patrick didn't like where this was going.

Elizabeth chewed on her bottom lip, pretending to consider her options. "The nursery. Meet me in five minutes. I just have to make a quick excuse to Robin and I'll see you up there."

"Why do you have to make an excuse?" Patrick asked, but she was already moving away from him. "Great. Just great." He muttered. Had he always been this easy to manipulate? He watched Robin's dark head disappear upstairs and realized that, yes, it had always been easy.

*****

Majandra lay draped across Cruz's left shoulder as he and Laura headed for the nursery, her just a few steps behind him. He hadn't seen the room so he trusted her when she said there was a crib up there that his sweet little daughter could rest in. Like most family gatherings, this one had tuckered her out. If his wife weren't insisting they stay longer, he could have used his daughter's sudden exhaustion as the perfect reason to leave. "Are you sure there's a crib?"

"Positive. It's the one thing Robin swore to me she had already taken care of." Laura promised easily.

Majandra waited until they were almost in front of the nursery to open her heavy eyes and open her mouth to cry. As he went to soothe her, Laura lifted her easily out of his arms. "Laura..." But she was already a step ahead of him. She slipped into the nursery before he could catch up with her and he followed. When he reached the room, neither Laura nor Majandra were anywhere to be found. He headed for the crib in the middle of the room, the only indication that a baby would be sleeping in this room soon enough, and that was about the time he realized he wasn't alone in the room. "Did either of you see Laura?" He noticed a second door to his right, one that must have joined the master bedroom, and heard the click-click of a lock being engaged. Spinning around, he watched Elizabeth and Robin pull the main door closed and heard it being locked as well. He turned toward Lucky and Patrick. "What is going on?"

"I have no idea." Lucky looked between them both confused. "All I know is Robin came over and told me we had to talk privately and then this happened."

Patrick nodded in agreement. "They pulled the wool over our eyes." It was something his mother had always used in reference to her two sneaky boys.

"What is this, some kind of soap opera?" Cruz tried one door and then the other, but it was no use. "This is ridiculous. Laura! Open this door!"

"You're wasting your breath." Lucky sighed as he leaned against the wall. "If Robin and Elizabeth had something planned I will bet my last paycheck Mom was in on it."

"Do either of you want to tell me why we're being locked up against our will?" He looked from one friend to the other. "Well?"

"Well what? We were tricked into coming just as you were." Patrick fired back.

"I have a guess." Lucky offered.

"Spit it out." Cruz demanded.

"When Robin got home, she came over to visit and one of the things she was dying to know was why we weren't talking."

"When was this?" Patrick asked.

"The night Steven had his accident."

Patrick hadn't even realized she had left the apartment. He was going to have to put bells on that woman. "Did you tell her?"

"She figured it out on her own. Especially after you told her. I think she was just testing to see if I would tell her the truth." Lucky blinked as he looked around. It was weird to be here with them. When did it become weird? From the beginning it had never been weird.

"So this is all your fault?" Cruz glared at Patrick. "I should have known."

"It's not just my fault." Patrick defended hotly. "This isn't a one-sided argument."

"It's not, but you are on the wrong side of it." Lucky shot back.

"I can't help it if you're both acting like a couple of spoiled brats. I disagree with you so you've got to give me the silent treatment." Patrick accused.

"Oh cause talking about it always helps with you?" Lucky shot right back. "We don't agree with you and you kick us out in two seconds."

"It was obvious you weren't hearing me. You're still not."

"You're still not making a bit of sense." Cruz pointed out. "Say something rational and then we'll talk."

"Or at least listen to what we have to say instead of jumping down our throats." Lucky crossed his arms over his chest and fixed a straight stare at his cousin. "If I know Robin and Elizabeth at all, we are stuck here for a while so we might as well do something."

"Why can't you two trust that maybe I know what I'm doing?" Patrick inquired tiredly.

"Because the last time you asked us to trust you on this particular subject we were the ones watching your ass get peeled from the pavement and head to the hospital." Lucky responded calmly.

"I learned my lesson." Patrick insisted.

"Obviously not if you're doing it again." Cruz retorted.

"And especially not if you are doing this now." Lucky pointed out.

"I just need a change, even if it's only temporary."

"There. That. You don't even really believe it's only a one-time thing." Cruz jumped in.

"This is possibly the last chance I'm going to have to do this." Patrick said. "After Robin has the baby, I lose this."

"Why do you have to think of it that way? There are other jobs you could do that keep you near the racetrack instead of on it." Cruz snapped.

"You are not doing this because of some last fling of being single." Lucky shook his head. "You'd hate to be a cliché like that."

"Well, tell me why you think I'm doing it you're so smart." Patrick challenged folding his arms.

"Because you have this insane idea you need to prove to yourself that everything is the same, even though it's not."

"Maybe it's not even that." Cruz looked thoughtful. "Maybe this is your way of showing Robin you can face death and not let it overtake you. You're always saying that she's going on and on about how she's going to die before you and how you better be expecting it. You've never been able to face that."

"What do you know about it?" Patrick barked.

"Oh you're right. We're totally ignorant of the fact that someone can die before they should." Lucky retorted. "You are the only person in this room who's ever had to face that."

"Lucky..." Patrick gulped. He hadn't meant to strike the bitter cord in his cousin. Jess's life had been snuffed out because of some irresponsible driver and, though he had never loved her, Lucky had to look at his son who resembled her in so many ways. God, was that going to be him?

Lucky held up his hand to cut Patrick off. "I'm not trying to compare Jess to Robin. But none of us here like to think of Robin dying Patrick. You aren't the only one who has to deal with this."

"I need this." Patrick admitted. "I don't know why, but I do."

"Is it worth the risk though? You've been blessed with a woman who loves you and two children. Have you really thought this through?" Cruz wondered.

"And given how Robin seems to feel about it, do you really think she's just going to give in on this?" Lucky added.

"She's just hurt I made the decision without her. She'll come around or she won't."

"And if she doesn't?" Lucky asked quietly. "Are you willing to risk losing her over this?"

Patrick was silent for a long time. He didn't want to be forced to choose, that much he had told Robin. Why couldn't he have them both? "No. I'm not willing to lose her." He said at last. "But this is still my life and I should have some say in how it's run."

"Hate to tell you this but once you actually have a relationship that pretty much goes out the window." Lucky laughed.

"So glad I can still amuse you." Patrick chimed in dryly.

"You'll always amuse us. You have a face only a mother could love." Cruz assured him.

Previews:

In all of their planning, none of them had figured out how to decipher if Patrick, Cruz, and Lucky had made up. They would most definitely lie if asked directly, so the only option was to leave them where they were for now until they started begging for bathroom breaks. Or until Lucky picked the lock.