After leaving Jennie alone with her thoughts, Amanda walked to the room next door, tiptoes into it, found her two infants sounds asleep and then tiptoed back out again, making her way across the living room to another similar hallway housing the boys' rooms and their shared bathroom. She poked her head into Jamie's room first and at seeing him sitting up in bed with a book, said, "It's bedtime, Jamie."
"Mo-om," Jamie protested.
Amanda sat on the side of his bed, gently pulled the book from his hands, set it aside on his nightstand and said, "No arguments. You've need to go to sleep. You've got school in the morning. Now, come on."
"Okay, okay," Jamie said as he took his glasses off set them on the nightstand with his boy and slid down beneath his blanket.
Amanda, out of habit, pulled the covers up over him and when he glared at her, she said, "I know. You think you're too old for me to tuck you in, but you're always be my baby, no matter how old you are."
"Even though you have new babies," Jamie asked in surprise.
"You're all my babies," Amanda said. "Even when you're forty and may have babies of your own, you'll still be my baby. Now, get some sleep."
Amanda placed a kiss to his head, rose and made her way to the door, but was stopped by his voice, saying questioningly, "Mom?"
She turned to look at him and said, "What is it, Sweetheart?"
"Do you think Lee's mom feels the same way even though she's been gone for so long?"
Amanda smiled and said, "Yes, Jamie, I'm sure that she does." Having seen the visible pain on her face in talking about Lee and her dead husband, she had no doubt that Jennie Stetson still thought of her son and her missing daughter as her babies. "Now, go on, go to sleep." She then flipped off the overhead light, closed Jamie's door, stepped into the hall and ran headlong into her husband who had just left Phillip's room. "Oh," she said startled. "I hate it when you do that."
Lee chuckled and said, "Tsk, tsk, tsk, five years at the agency and you still let me sneak up on you."
"You're impossible," Amanda said with a laugh as she slapped at him playfully. "Is Phillip in bed?"
"Yep, all tucked in and on his way to dreamland," Lee said as he took his wife's hand and they headed toward the living room together. They sank down on the couch together and Amanda immediately curled up in his lap, Lee sighed and said, "This has been a hell of a day," as he tugged at his tie.
"Here, let me," Amanda said as she reached for his tie to loosen the knot in it.
"So, you think my mother still thinks of me as her baby, huh?" he said amusement dancing in his eyes.
"You heard that, huh?"
"Mm-hmm," he said. "So?"
"I know she does," Amanda said as she stripped him of his tie, draped it over the arm of the couch then loosened the top two buttons of his shirt to make him more comfortable.
"Oh?" He said curiously, planting a soft kiss to her lips, "And what exactly did my mother say to you to make you so sure of that?"
"It wasn't so much what she said as her reaction to things," Amanda answered evasively, "And some of it was what she didn't say."
"There's that mother's intuition of yours kicking into overdrive again," Lee said as he draped an arm around her and pulled his wife closer. "So, what is it that she didn't say about me that has you thinking that way? It seemed like there was something pretty intense going on in there."
"We just had a nice little chat, one mother to another and that brought up some intense feelings" Amanda said as she linked her hands behind his head, idly toying with his hair before leaning in and nipping at the tender skin at his neck.
"Amanda," Lee said challengingly as he cupped her face firmly to force her to look at him, "just tell me what's going on."
"No," Amanda said as she shook her head, "mm-mm. This is a conversation that you should have with your mother, not me." She then returned to suckling the pulse point on his neck
"You think so, huh?" he said as he slid his hands to her waist.
"I know so," Amanda murmured against his neck.
"Well, just remember that I'm a highly trained agent and I have ways of making people talk," He said as he lightly nuzzled her neck with his lips, then looked her in the eye for a moment and said, "I'm very skilled at interrogation techniques," then lowered his lips back to her neck and increased the pressure on the sensitive pulse point that he knew drove her crazy with need.
"Oh," Amanda gasped at the contact as she moved in to straddle his lap. "Is this a "Class C" interrogation?"
"Mm-hmm," Lee murmured against her skin as he slid her hands up her thighs slipping them under her skirt while he continued the assault on her neck with his lips.
Amanda nipped at his earlobe and whispered huskily, "But didn't you once tell that a "Class C" is a soft interrogation?" She then lowered her lips to his neck as she ground against him and added, "Because some things are not soft at all."
Lee pulled his head back from her neck, grinned devilishly at her and replied, "I definitely know one thing that's not," as he tugged on the back of her head and pulled her down to him to capture her lips in a searing kiss. Amanda opened her mouth to his to deepen the kiss and loosened more buttons on his shirt, sliding her hands inside to caress his bare chest as she rocked against him, further inflaming their mutual desire. ""Manda," he groaned.
They abruptly broke their kiss as they heard footsteps and the sound of a proper British voice saying, "Oh, pardon me." Jennie Stetson at seeing the pair entwined in a passionate embrace and her son's hands hidden beneath his wife's skirl, did a quick about-face.
"No, Jennie, it's okay," Amanda said trying to catch her breath as she attempted to rise from her husband's lap, but Lee having removed his hands from under her skirt grasped her hips and held her in place.
"Don't you dare move," he hissed into her ear low enough for only her to hear. It was one thing for his mother to tease him about their time in the gazebo. It was something else entirely for her to see him with a raging hard-on. He desperately tried to get a grip, at least temporarily, on the desire he had for his wife.
"I...um...I'm terribly sorry to interrupt your...um...private time. I should...I should..." She trailed off and gestured toward her room.
Lee sighed and said, "No, Mom, it's okay. We...uh...we should have kept our...um...-private time...as you put it, confined to our bedroom. It's...it's just that we're not used to having anyone else in the house up and about after the kids go to bed and..."
"I quite understand," Jennie said feeling a little guilty that she'd disturbed them.
Amanda chuckled at Lee's embarrassment while he just scowled at her in response before she turned to Jennie and said, "Did you need something?"
"Oh...yes, I'd just begun unpacking the last box which has my toiletries in it and I was wondering whether it would be all right if I put them in the hallway bathroom. As a guest in your home, I didn't want to overstep my boundaries..."
"You're not, Mom, it's fine," Lee answered not hiding his frustration at being interrupted very well and a little irritated that after their conversation earlier, she still acted as if she were an outsider in his home. More than that, she acted as if she were an outsider in his life. What more did she need to convince her that he was willing to give her a chance? They'd invited her into their home, hadn't they? He and Amanda had both protected her from the attack on her tonight. He bit back all the things he wanted to say and instead kept himself to the topic at hand. "That bathroom is hardly ever used because the boys have one that they share between their rooms and we have our own private one through our bedroom. Feel free to take the whole damn thing over if you want."
Amanda glared at Lee for his tone, then turned back to Jennie and said, "I think what Lee is trying to say is that you're more than just a guest. You're family, so feel free to make yourself at home. We want you to be comfortable here," Amanda then turned her gaze back to her husband and said pointedly, "Don't we, Sweetheart?"
"Yes," Lee said with a smile turning his attention to his mother. "Our home is your home."
Jennie smiled and said, "Thank you," as she exited the room to head to her own.
Amanda smiled at her husband and said, "That was very nice of you."
Lee sighed and said, "She is my mother." He kissed her softly and said, "So, are you going to tell me what that girl talk was about or not?"
"mm-mm," Amanda said with a shake of her head as she slid off his lap to make her way down the hall. She then turned back toward him and said with a seductive grin, "At least not until you keep the promise you made to me in the gazebo."
Lee leapt from his seat on the couch, quickly caught up to his wife, captured her by the waist and said, "Oh, is that what it will take," as he nuzzled her neck
"And you know, I've been off work for a while, so I think you may need to help me brush up on my "Class C" interrogation skills," she purred.
"Oh, I can do that," Lee said as he walked her past his mother's room toward their bedroom at the end of the hall. "You see, it starts with sweet-talking," he whispered in her ear as Amanda pushed open their bedroom door.
Jennie walked down the hall toward the guest bathroom, box of toiletries in hand, just in time to see her son and daughter-in-law enter their bedroom and close the door. As she set the box down on the counter, she heard Amanda emit a loud squeal. She closed the bathroom door so as not to intrude on their privacy. As she unpacked her personal items she reflected back on a time when she and her husband had been that in love. While she was saddened by the bittersweet memories that had been brought to the front of her mind tonight, she couldn't help smiling slightly at the happiness her son had found with his lovely and thoughtful wife. She only hoped that when they found her daughter, they'd find her to be just as happy.