A/N: Short update. Take 'em as you can. Next up, Wilson and Jensen, and depending on chapter breaks, either in that same chapter or in the next, the adults will have dinner together, which will be very interesting. Thanks for the reviews.

(H/C)

"Thank you." Cuddy finally set down the squirming Rachel and fished out a tip for the bellboy who had helped bring up everything that went in their suite, which due to the girls was the majority of it. She closed the door behind him and looked at the pile of luggage briefly, mentally starting an unpacking agenda, but then turned on to face her husband. First things first.

House had more or less collapsed on a couch, and Rachel and Abby, who had woken up in the elevator, ran straight to him once freed and climbed up, though very carefully. "Take med'cine, Daddy," Rachel told him.

"Good idea, Rachel." Cuddy deposited the carry-on that had half a pharmacy in it on the couch beside him and headed toward one of the bedrooms. "I'll run a hot bath, Greg."

He sighed, but he was hurting too much to protest. Dignity had lost to pain several minutes ago. He opened the bag and fished out Flexeril, noting again just how much Cuddy had brought along, a reminder of just how much he could need at times. Still, she and Wilson both put the Boy Scouts to shame on always being prepared. Adding an extra Vicodin from his pocket, he gulped the pills down. Marina started separating the girls' luggage from the other, but she kept giving him worried glances, too. Damn Thornton, showing up in the airport there and catching him off guard. Now he had the nanny wondering who that man was on top of everything else.

That wasn't how the first meeting was supposed to go. He had intended to surprise Thornton with them at the hotel this evening, hopefully after they were asleep, an encounter that House set up and had control of from the beginning. He had wanted to watch the other man's reaction. His first thought at the airport had been that Cuddy had prepared Thornton after all, not just mentioning the girls but specifying the flight and setting up the meeting. That thought had been fleeting, though; his father and Cuddy were obviously both shocked. That couldn't have been scripted. House had been busy fighting down the anger that was his first reaction to Thornton whenever he hadn't had a chance to get a firm grip on himself ahead of time, but within just a second, he had also been analyzing the other man's expression, falling back on part of his original plan. He had wanted to observe Thornton's first unshielded thoughts at the sight of the girls. He had seen them, all right, but those thoughts just left him more confused.

After brief surprise, House had expected swift progression to triumph, satisfaction at having the funeral-arranging scheme work after all, and an immediate attempt by his father to stake his claim and move straight into the family and set up house there. House would have known then that he was right, that Thornton was a sneaky operator who couldn't be trusted and always had ulterior motives to spare, and he would have been justified in totally shutting him out once they were past this trip. The girls were young; whatever Thornton said, which would be as little as House could manage to have them in earshot for, they would forget about it quickly.

Instead, he had seen total shock, followed by wistful sadness, then almost hunger. Even when Marina had walked right up to Thornton before she realized anything was going on and he had had the chance to reach out for Abby, he didn't, only looking with a longing that was painful. And it hadn't just been at the granddaughters, either; House himself had drawn an identical look, even after the girls had been noticed so that Thornton had better things to look at. Was Thornton that good an actor? He had also been the first to restrain his reaction and try to keep up a front for the nanny, doing a much better job on that than either Cuddy or House himself had. There was no expected, "Ha, I knew I'd win on this; gotcha," moment. Yes, he had talked to Rachel later, but only after she initiated it and had not tried to push the limits, even when he could have.

What were his motives here? Was it really what it looked like, no hidden game? Could he actually be trusted, as Jensen said? So much to risk, though. House wasn't staking only himself on the answer but his daughters as well.

Cuddy came back from the bathroom. "Come on, Greg. Play with Marina for a while, okay, girls? We'll just be in the other room."

They shifted off as he started his laborious climb out of the couch. Marina had just picked up the toys suitcase, and Rachel abruptly recognized it as the repository that had swallowed her stuffed horse this morning back in Princeton. "Horsey!" She bounded over, and Marina smiled and stopped to open it en route to the other bedroom, extracting the horse and handing it over. Rachel sent the reunion whinnies ringing through the room.

Abby was a little slower to leave, stopping in front of the couch and looking back at her father. "You okay?" she asked.

"I'm fine, Abby. Go ahead and play." She went on, and he finally made it to his feet. Cuddy had been watching anxiously but at least hadn't reached out to help. He slowly limped into the bedroom and then the bathroom and waited until she had shut the door firmly before turning on her.

"You told him." He knew she hadn't, but he felt like lashing out at something, and she was available and safe.

"I didn't, Greg. I respected your wishes with the girls." She was glad that Thornton didn't have a heart condition, though. "As for the airport, all I said was that we were coming in this afternoon. He must have worked out the flight himself."

"Why would he go to all that trouble if he didn't know about them?"

She shook her head. "He just wanted to see you. Moving it up an hour or two was worth finding out the flight." She reached over and switched off the faucets on the hot tub in the large, luxurious bathroom. "Go ahead and get in, Greg. It will help."

He slowly started to undress. "And to answer the question you don't want to outright ask the poor cripple, yes, I took Flexeril."

She didn't rise to the bait of his annoyance, but she snapped to attention a moment later. "Flexeril. I need to get that meds bag off the couch. Back in a minute." She returned to the large main room and retrieved the carry-on pharmacy. He had rezipped it and snapped the lock back; they had chosen that bag because it had a small padlock on it. Not that the girls showed any tendency to rustle in his meds, and they knew why he took them. Still, it didn't hurt to be careful, especially with the powerful guns in there, including morphine and syringes.

The girls were happily playing with Thornton's toys and exploring the new environment under Marina's watchful eye, and they looked up to notice their mother but without the desperateness of a few days ago. The nanny came over to Cuddy and spoke softly. "That man at the airport bothers him. Is everything all right?"

Cuddy sighed. This secret wasn't going to last any time at all, not with Marina. She couldn't help it, though; she was responding not to Thornton but to House, and House confronted unexpectedly with Thornton reacted like he never had to anything else. Marina, knowing him, had realized this was a whole new level. Even Cuddy and Wilson with their decades of experience had known at once in the courtroom last summer when House first spotted his father from the stand that whatever he was reacting to, it touched him more deeply than anything they had ever seen. "It's okay, Marina. Thomas is an old family friend, like I said, and Greg is just hurting from the flight. Everything will be fine."

Marina gave her a dubious look. Yep, this cat is going to jump out of the bag pretty quick, Cuddy thought.

At that moment, House called her, and she hurried back through the bedroom, putting the meds bag down on the bed, and then into the bathroom. He had gotten in the water but was sitting straight upright and looking as tense as if he suspected there might be hidden sharks swimming in it. "What took you so long?" he snapped.

"I'm sorry." She leaned over to give him a kiss along with the words, then started to undress herself. He was still annoyed, but the fear had started to diminish the instant she walked in the door. What was wrong with him since Friday morning that he was afraid to be left alone? She settled down into the water next to him, and he started to relax. They had had a hot soak Saturday afternoon in their own tub as a family activity, reclaiming it after Blythe's death, and that had seemed to help. Now, she watched the additional pain lines slowly move out of his face, and she didn't speak until he seemed just on edge in general, no longer also fighting the monster biting into his leg. "Greg," she said after a moment. He looked over at her, already retreating. "Are you hearing John's voice again?"

All the walls were being constructed at a rapid rate. "John is dead."

"Yes. And in hell. You beat him." He didn't respond. "I just wondered. If you want to talk, I'm here, okay?"

"Believe it or not, I'd noticed. Kind of hard to miss you, hovering like you have been." He wanted the hovering, though, as much as he didn't want to talk. It worried her.

They sat there in the swirling hot water a long time, letting it wash away the travel aches. Cuddy hadn't realized how much her shoulders were tense until she settled back and surrendered them. "We don't have to do anything else tonight," she offered. "Don't even have to leave the room. We can order room service instead of going down to the dining room later."

He considered, the wheels spinning. She could almost hear him picking his words, weighing each for value as if they were built of Scrabble tiles. "We need to try leaving the girls for a while here, and downstairs is close enough we can come right back if needed. Besides, Wilson would go anyway, and they'd be talking."

She hid her smile. So hard for him to simply admit that he wanted to see his father. "Okay. We can get room service for the girls and Marina, and then we'll go down once they're asleep. We'll be sure to tell them we're going downstairs, though, just in case they wake up later."

"Yeah." He was silent for another few minutes. "Lisa?" he asked suddenly.

"What is it, Greg?"

He leaned over quickly in the water, his leg loosened up enough by now to let him move more easily, and seized her, holding on desperately tightly, no passion at the moment, just unspeakable need. She wrapped her own arms around him just as tightly, holding him. She could feel him trembling now in spite of the hot water, but he did not talk, and still, he didn't cry.