Francine stared at Amanda blankly, then stared at the rings Amanda held in her hand trying to reconcile what she was seeing and hearing with what she believed to be true about Lee Stetson. "Ok, one more time."

"Francine, I've said it like six times now. What part of this is so hard for you to understand? Lee and I are married. He's my husband, I'm his wife. That's why we were fighting. He was tired of us being married, yet living apart. He wanted to come clean about the whole thing and I was still too afraid. To be honest, even though he instigated the fight, it was really my fault because I refused to even talk to him about revealing our secret."

"Four months ago?"

"Yes," Amanda said getting impatient with Francine. She put the chain back around her neck and tucked the rings into her hospital gown.

"I'm sorry, Amanda, I'm just having trouble thinking of Lee Stetson as married man. I just can't believe it."

"Believe it, Francine. It's true."

"I think maybe your doctor needs to come back in here and check on you. I don't think you're quite recovered yet."

"Look, Francine, I know this is shock, but you told me I could trust you and I believed you. Now, I need you to trust me. Do you honestly think I would make up something like this? Think about what Lee said to you out there in the hall, that he wanted to spend his life with me and that it tears him apart when we're not together. It tears me apart too. Think about the fight yesterday, all the things we said to each other when we were arguing."

"Ok, yes, some of the pieces of your fight make more sense in that context, but still...Are you you're not just telling me what you want to be true? That this isn't some fantasy of yours, I mean, it's not that unreasonable, now that you're carrying his child."

"It's not a fantasy, Francine. It's a fact. Trust me, or better yet, look it up. You're going to be in Marion tomorrow for this case. Stop at the courthouse. Our marriage license is a matter of public record. February 13th."

"In Marion?"

"Yes, we were married by the Justice of the Peace there. We wanted to get married somewhere close enough that was within decent driving distance, but still far enough away that there wouldn't be an announcement in the local paper when we applied for our license."

"Ok, so say this is all true. Why are you telling me?"

"Part of it if because I really need someone to talk to. Since I started working at The Agency, a lot of my old friendships have gone by the wayside. Even if I still had those old friends, it's not likely that any of them would understand."

"Are you trying to say that you consider me a friend?"

"I don't know that I'd go that far just yet. We'll see how this goes first.?"

"I can accept that," Francine said. "I mean it's not like I've been openly friendly toward you when it comes to the subject of your romance with Lee."

"That's the other reason I'm telling you. I'm tired of the way you treat me like I'm just some dupe that Lee is using."

"I never thought of you as a dupe, just a woman in love seeing through rose-colored glasses."

"That's just as bad, Francine. You still treated me like I wasn't smart enough to see things for how they are. When you first realized that Lee and I were together back in January, I let you go on and on about Lee and his history with relationships because I knew that what you were saying about his wasn't true anymore, He and I were already engaged then. I knew that he was a different person than he used to be. Then when he told me that'd you'd accosted him and told him to leave me alone, that's when I devised the plan to let you believe that I'd broken up with him so you'd leave both of us alone. And we started being more cautious at the office so you wouldn't catch us in a clinch again. That eventually made things harder on us though because that was even less time that we were able to be openly affectionate with each other."

"Wow"

"That crack you made out in the hall about Lee marrying me and moving to Arlington. It really bugged me to hear you say that because that's exactly what Lee told me he wants to do. He wants to move in with me and the boys and be a full-time husband and father."

"Does your family know?"

"Not yet. Lee and I have been trying to figure out the best way to break the news to them or even if we should."

"Does Billy know?"Francine asked. That would make sense since he was so supportive of them being a couple.

"No. The only people who know are Joe, Colonel Clayton and Lee's friend Barney. but he's out in California and he doesn't know anyone we know. And now you."

"California? Your shooting!"Francine said. "That vacation that Lee was so anxious to get to after wrapping the Nick Grant case. That was your honeymoon, wasn't it?" That made a whole lot more sense. She'd seen them leave together, but then when Lee had called them the next day, he'd said that Amanda's mom had called him to tell him about the shooting.

"Well, it would have been if I hadn't been shot. We weren't even married a full day when the shooting happened. I feel like ever since our honeymoon was cut short, Lee and I have been doing nothing but trying to make up for lost time."

"Ok, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but with your history combined with Lee's, how did you know you could trust him enough to marry him?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, your ex pretty much bailed on you leaving you two kids to raise by yourself and Lee's history with lasting relationships has been pretty much non-existent. So how did you know? How are you so confident even now that he won't break your heart? I mean, your first marriage ended in divorce. What makes you think this one won't too?"

" Well, you never know one hundred percent, but I guess I just have faith. And I have faith because unlike everyone else in Lee's life, I saw what those shallow relationships he used to have were really all about."

"Oh, this I've got to hear," Francine said.

"I'm amazed that you can't see it, Francine, You've known him longer than me. Think about all the loss he's suffered in his life. Losing his parents when he was just a little boy, being shuffled all over the place by an uncle who treated him more like a duty than family, never being able to form lasting friendships because he always had to move wherever his uncle was stationed., Losing the first woman he ever really opened his heart to in Dorothy, Being betrayed by the second in Ava, Is it any wonder that he closed his heart off for so long? Every person he's ever cared for has left him or he's had to leave. He was terrified to trust in love again, so he threw himself into one hollow relationship after another with the wrong kind of women. He knew that the women he dated weren't they type looking for commitment so he wouldn't have to open his heart.

"Then he met you and everything changed. I noticed subtle changes in him from the first time he worked with you, but I still never thought he'd be the type to settle down."

"Francine, I think deep down that's what he really wanted all along, but having his heart broken so many times kept him from pursuing it. I realized right away that the macho facade was just to cover up his pain. It took so long to get him to figure that out. I knew that Lee was in love with me long before he even realized it."

"When was that?"Francine asked, her curiosity piqued.

"The first time I really saw it was about a month and a half after we met."

"You knew that early on?"

"Obviously, I didn't know that we'd eventually get married and be having a baby, but I knew that there was something there."

"How? What gave you that knowledge?"

"Why do you care so much?"

"Billy's always talking about how intuitive you are. I just wanted to know how to come to the conclusions you do."

"The James Delano case," Amanda explained. "When he told me not to get involved with Delano, the way he acted when he did it is what gave me the biggest clue. He wasn't acting like an agent looking out for his partner, he acted like a jealous lover protecting his territory. I called him out on it too."

"You didn't?"

"Yes, I did," she said with a laugh. "It was a big mistake though because he wasn't ready to confront his feelings. After that, he became a little more reclusive around me, so I backed off a little to make him come to me again."

"So, all this time everyone thought you were just this wholesome housewife, You were really just like any other woman, playing hard to get to lure him in."

Amanda laughed. "It wasn't really either of those things. I wasn't intentionally playing hard to get and I wasn't trying to lure him, more like gently coax him out of his shell. I just knew that there had to be a reason that we felt as strongly about each other as we did so early. I knew that I wanted a chance to see if it would work between us, but Lee was too fragile to be pushed, He had to be gently pulled instead." Francine laughed. "What's so funny?"

"Just hearing Lee described as fragile. It's funny to me. In thinking about Lee Stetson, the last word I would use to describe him is fragile."

"I mean emotionally fragile, Francine. If I'd have pushed him too hard, he'd have been shattered and I'd never have been able to pick up the pieces. He really is a good man, Francine, and I have no doubt that he will be a good father. He already adores the boys and they're not even his. I can only imagine how he'll be with his own child."

"Are you going to tell him that you told me?"

"I have to, Francine. He's my husband. A husband and wife can't keep secrets from each other."

"I'm glad to hear you say that," Lee said from the doorway with a grin.

"How long have you been standing there?"Amanda said.

"Long enough," Lee said as he entered the room. "Fragile? Really?"

"You know what I mean," Amanda said.

"Yeah, I get it," he said. "What I don't get is that you were all set to keep everyone in the dark forever, yet you told Francine of all people."

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"Francine said feeling a little offended. "You know, I do work for a covert government agency which means I know how to keep a secret."

"You'd better."

"Listen, I should go and let you two talk. I'll see you guys tomorrow." She rose to leave, then paused for a moment. "I know it's four months too late, but congratulations," She said as she playfully slugged Lee in the shoulder before exiting.

"Lucy, you got some 'splaining to do," he teased as he sat down on the edge of her bed.

"OK, I know, I probably shouldn't have told her, but I've needed someone to talk to about this for a long time," Amanda explained.

"You could have talked to me," Lee said trying to keep his cool. "In fact, I recall begging you to talk to me about it or have you already forgotten us giving half The Agency a good show yesterday?"

"No, I haven't forgotten, but I needed someone to talk to who was outside of our situation and could look at it more objectively."

"Francine's not been known to be the most objective when it comes to me," he said concentrating very hard on keeping his temper in check

"Look, I know you're angry with me."

"Nope, not angry." he said to which she gave him her who-do-you=think=you're-talking-to look. "Ok, I'm a little angry. Why Francine?"

"Think of it as a test run. If Francine with the way she's thought of you can accept it, that's a good sign that everyone else around us can too. Besides, like I said, I needed someone else to talk to. You have your uncle and Barney, but on my side of things, there's just Joe and he's not been all that supportive."

"I think he's coming around. He and I had a talk before I left last night. Things are looking up there. Ok, so I get needing someone to talk to, but why not your mom?"

"Because she'd be too hurt that I kept this from her to be objective. That and she doesn't know about The Agency so she wouldn't really understand why we kept the secrets we did."

"Maybe we should tell her that too," Lee suggested. "Maybe that would help lessen the hurt if she understood that we had a real reason for keeping things quiet."

"I don't know that I'm ready to go that far. That lets her in on a secret that she may not want let in on and it could also put her in danger just by knowing, but I do want to tell her the rest. I just have to come up with a different reason for the secrecy. Something that she can understand."

"More lies?"Lee said shaking his head.

"Lee, don't," Amanda said as she reached for his hand. "I want her to know that you're my husband and that we haven't just been shacking up, especially now that we're having a baby. I don't want her thinking this is just history repeating itself."

"I'm glad you want to come clean with her. You don't know how close I came to just spilling my guts to her last night, but I didn't think I should without you, especially with how opposed you've been to this. I swear your mother could have a career teaching interrogation techniques at The Agency. She'd sure as hell give Beaman a run for his money in the training department." Amanda laughed at imagining her mother at The Agency.

"Amanda, Darling," Dotty said as she entered the room approaching her daughter's empty side and leaning in to kiss her before sitting in the chair Francine had just vacated. "How are you feeling, Sweetheart?"

"I feel fine, Mother. Great, actually. Ready to go home."

"And the baby? What did the doctor say about the baby?" Amanda's eyes widened as she glared at her husband who just shrugged with a don't-look-at-me expression on his face. Dotty took in the unspoken communication between them and said, "Now, don't you go blaming Lee. He didn't say a word. I figured out that that was what was going on with you before he ever brought you here. With as fatigued as you've been lately, I had my suspicions a couple of weeks ago."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"What would your reaction have been? You'd have just gotten defensive like you always do and would have changed the subject or you would have denied entirely that it was even a possibility. I don't understand you, Amanda, why you work so hard to keep so much of your life from me. Here, you have a wonderful man in your life you loves you with all his heart, who adores your children and wants to spend his life with you, yet you feel the need to keep it so secretive."

"I'm not being secretive. You know that I love Lee and that we've been in a serious relationship for a while now."

"Not being secretive, huh? Then why did I just find out this morning at breakfast that he'd asked you to marry him, but that you were dragging your feet?"

Amanda glanced at Lee with a questioning look. "Amanda, don't give me that look," Lee said. "I had to say something. Phillip was giving me the third degree this morning about when and if I was going to marry you."

"Does he know about the baby?"

"No, all I told him is that you and I are trying to work out where our future is headed, which is the truth. I just didn't give him all the details."

"Why do I get the sense that there's more going on here between you two than you're letting on?"Dotty said.

Amanda looked at him with an arched eyebrow and a slight nod of her head toward her mother."Your mother, you call," Lee said. "You already know my opinion."

Amanda took her mother's hands in hers and said, "You're right, Mother, there are things that Lee and I haven't told you, starting with how long we've been together. We started dating about a year before you ever met Lee."

"Longer than that," Lee said. "Remember the opera at the Kennedy? That was a month or so earlier."

"That doesn't count," Amanda said. "We were both still seeing other people then."

"It was a date, it counts," he said. "I asked you out, I picked you up, I paid for dinner, we had a good time, it was a real date. Besides, it wasn't even a month later that I stopped seeing anyone but you."

"Ok, you make a good point," she said with a smile. She turned back to her mother and continued her tale. "Anyway, that's part of the reason I haven't been completely truthful. You had just met him and the boys hadn't met him yet. I wanted to ease you into my relationship with Lee slowly. By the time you met Lee, we were already pretty serious about each other. I wasn't quite ready to let you know how serious until you and the boys had gotten to know him a little." Amanda was lying. There was some truth in her statements. It just wasn't the whole truth.

"I see," Dotty said. "How serious are we talking about here?"

Lee and Amanda glanced at each other exchanging ideas wordlessly. Amanda nodded to Lee who reached for the chain around her neck and she lowered her head so he could remove it. He quickly extracted that diamond ring and palmed the wedding band for a moment hoping that he'd been stealthy enough to keep Dotty from seeing it just yet. He glanced over at her and realized that she hadn't as her eyes were glued to the diamond in his other hand. "We were serious enough that by the time I came to the house that day and introduced myself to you, I'd already bought her this ring." he said sliding the ring on his wife's finger. "It was only a couple of days later that I gave it to her." Amanda smiled as she glanced down at the ring then back up at her husband.

"I don't understand, Dotty said in bewilderment. "So, are you telling me that you've been engaged all this time? The whole time that I've known Lee?"

"No, Mother, not the whole time," Amana said.

"Let me guess. You told him not at first or that you needed time or whatever other excuse you could come up with to keep yourself at a distance?"

"No, Dotty, she didn't She said yes about three seconds after I asked her to marry me," Lee said with a smile.

"Ok, I don't get it," Dotty said. "This doesn't make any sense. You say you asked her to marry you months ago and she said yes right away, but yet Amanda says that you haven't been engaged this whole time."

"There's more, Mother," Amanda said with a nod to her husband's closed hand.

"It was only about three and half months after I put that ring on her finger," he relaxed the hand that held her wedding band, "that I put this one there to join it," Lee said as he slid the second ring on her finger.

Dotty stared at her daughter's left hand mutely. Lee and Amanda cast worried looks at each other as they tried to gauge her reaction. Dorothy West being silent was never a good sign. Dotty picked up her daughter's hand gazing at it for a long moment before saying, "That's a beautiful diamond, Lee," she said without looking up. "You have good taste, but the order of the rings should be reversed. Once you're married, traditionally the wedding band should be on the inside, closer to the heart," she said softly.

Amanda looked apprehensively at her husband, then at her mother. Her mother was eerily calm, too calm. "Mother, let me expl-"

Dotty violently released her daughter's hand and shoved her chair back as she flung herself out of it just before she exploded. "How dare you?! How dare you keep something this...this... this important from me!" She glanced wildly from Lee to Amanda. "Both of you! What the hell were you thinking!"

Amanda knew it was trouble hearing the word 'hell' come out of her mother's mouth. She very rarely swore. "Mother..." she began.

"No, Don't you say a word! Not one word, Young Lady! I mean it! How could you? I knew you'd been keeping secrets from me, but this...I...I...I...'She sputtered pure fury taking her over. "I can't...I can't even look at the two of you right now!" She said finally as she tore from the room.