Disclaimer: "Scarecrow and Mrs. King" is copyrighted to Warner Brothers and Shoot the Moon Productions. The plot is mine, but not the characters. This story is meant for enjoyment purposes only. No infringement is intended.

AN: This is a continuation of the "King" stories I began last Christmas and directly follows "Fit For a King," so if you haven't read it or the prior story, "King's Ransom," I'd recommend them first or this story will make little sense to you.

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January 1, 1985. 12:00PM

"Joe, come on," Amanda called toward the living room in a pleading tone. "Aren't you packed yet? We need to go soon!"

"My plane doesn't leave until 3. Are you in that big a hurry to get rid of me?" her ex-husband's tone was half-teasing, half-serious. After their conversation of the previous night and her almost confessing that she had feelings for her co-worker, he wondered if she really was eager to get him out of the house.

Amanda sighed at feeling once again that he just wasn't listening to her just like when they'd been married. "No, Joe, but I told you this morning I have things I need to do today before I drop you off at the airport."

"Amanda, it's a holiday. Can't you just for once relax and take it easy for a minute?"

"No, Joe, I can't. I told you what happened last night with Lee having had a few too many, so I need to go by his place to pick him up so he can get his car from the Soviet Embassy since he was in no condition to drive it home last night."

"Lee again," he grumbled.

"No, not again," she corrected. "Still. I told you last night that I drove him home. Now, because we met there and I'm the one who took him home, we were forced to leave his car there and I would hate for them to have it towed for being there too long and then having to deal with getting it out of an impound lot somewhere, which because it IS a holiday is going to be impossible to do. Weren't you listening to anything I said at all?" Before he could speak, she continued by answering her own question, "No, of course you weren't listening. You never did listen to anything I had to say unless it was important to you, but let me tell you something this is important to me because he is important to me."

"I'm getting that," he replied sarcastically, irritated that she wasn't willing to admit that she had deeper feelings for this other man than she let on. "But doesn't he have any friends who could give him a ride?"

"I'm his friend and as his friend, I made a promise to him and I'm not going to let you stop me from keeping that promise, so unless you get the lead out and get packed, you're going to have to take a cab to the airport."

"But you'd promise you'd drive me," he protested.

"Yes, but you promised you'd be ready to go when I was," she countered.

"Oh, I see how it is," he sniped. "You're more worried about keeping your promise to him than you are the one you made to the father of your children."

Amanda rolled her eyes at his last comment. Every time they had a fight, even after their divorce that was his fallback tactic, reminding her that she was the mother of his children, just as he'd done last night when she got home so late. "Joe, stop it. Stop acting like you have any right to be jealous. You know very well that you don't. The fact that I'm the mother of your children has no bearing on that. We're not a couple anymore and my life is my own and part of that life is taking care of the people I care about. One of those people I care about is Lee, so I'm going to take care of this situation, especially since I'm part of the reason he couldn't drive himself last night since he thought he was defending my honor. When was the last time you did something like that for me?"

"Amanda, I-"

She held up a finger to shut him up and stated adamantly, "Just be ready to go in half an hour or take a cab. Your choice."

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"I thought you said you were just going to make sure you helped him retrieve his car," Joe complained as they stood outside Lee's apartment with a nod to the takeout bag she'd insisted on picking up on their way across town. While he was grateful to Lee for getting him out of hot water in Malta, he felt Amanda was going a bit above and beyond for a guy she insisted wasn't her boyfriend. "And why did I have to come up here with you?"

"Maybe so you could hold this stuff for me, while I knock," she suggested with an evasive smile. She wasn't about to tell her ex-husband that she wasn't quite sure how comfortable she felt being alone with Lee in his apartment after their encounter last night when he'd asked her to stay with him and his actions had made it all too clear that he didn't mean just to keep him company. While she'd left him with hints that she might be interested under different circumstances, she now wondered if she'd made a mistake in doing so. What would Lee think of her now? Would he want to take her up on that now that he was sober or would it just cause him to backpedal again? Or was he too drunk to even remember it at all? a worried voice in her head sounded.

Amanda frowned when there was no answer after her first knock. Surely he had to be up by now since it was early afternoon. Undeterred, she tried again, knocking more firmly the second time.

"Maybe he found another 'friend' to help him get his car and he's just not home," Joe suggested hopefully. After he'd let slip to Amanda the prior evening about Lee bailing him out when his last job had gotten too hot to handle, he wasn't exactly anxious to see the man again, especially when he suspected the mother of his children had deeper feelings for the guy than she was willing to admit. It's none of your business, he tried to remind himself.

"No, I'm sure that's not true," Amanda argued. "I told him very specifically to call me so we could go get his car."

"Funny, I don't remember the phone ringing at the house at all this morning," Joe commented dryly.

"Okay, so maybe he didn't call," she scoffed, ignoring Joe's sarcastic tone as she began to root through her purse. "But it doesn't change the fact that he would be expecting me to do help him out."

"What are you looking for?" he asked curiously, wondering what she was up to now.

"Well, it's obvious he just isn't up yet. After all, we did have a late night last night," she reasoned.

"So, I noticed," he grumbled irritably, "But that still doesn't tell me-"

His words were cut off as she finally found what she was looking for and crowed triumphantly, "AHA!" as she produced a key ring and reached to unlock Lee's front door.

"Do I even want to know why you have a key to his place?" he questioned, but then off her annoyed look, quickly added, "Not that it's really any of my business."

Amanda opened the door, dropped the key back into her purse and reached for the takeout bag Joe still held. "Come on," she urged.

"Uh…maybe I should just stay out here…or better yet, go back to the car and wait. I mean, he's your friend, not mine."

"Don't be silly. You can be friendly enough just to say hello, can't you? I mean, you have already met him, right? Besides, I'm just dying to know what really happened in Malta." She shot him a pointed look.

"I should never have said anything," he sighed, kicking himself once again for letting jealousy allow him to put his foot in his mouth.

"Well, it's a little too late for that now, isn't it? Now, come on."

"Great," Joe muttered under his breath, thinking he might have been better off just taking a cab after all.

"Hello-oo! Lee, are you up?"

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"UGH!" Lee groaned when he awoke with a splitting headache. "God, how much did I drink last night?" He closed his eyes against the pain in an attempt to will it to go away. As he lay there, an unbidden image of Amanda in her party dress appeared in the front of his mind; or more accurately, partially out of her party dress. He blinked as if trying to blink it away, but every time he closed his eyes, like a slow, pulsing strobe light, it was there again flashing slowly in and out in perfect rhythm with the pounding in his head; the recurring image of him pushing aside the lapels of her coat and reaching for the straps of her dress as if to undress her.

Again, he tried to blink away that memory and he was successful the second time, only to have it be replaced by an even more disturbing image of her undressing him. It was so vivid, he could almost still feel her nimble fingers lightly grazing the skin under his shirt as she did so sending a slight shudder of anticipation through his body.

He opened his eyes and sat up as he recalled the words they'd spoken to each other. "Stay." "I want to..." And that was after the heated kisses they'd shared. "God, did I really ask her to stay?" he mused aloud. And did she really say she wanted to, a hopeful voice in his head sounded.

He shook his head in an attempt to shake off those memories, but that had been the wrong thing to do as it only made his head hurt more. He let out a sigh, muttered, "Aspirin," crawled out of bed and stumbled toward the bathroom, the pounding in his head getting worse once he was on his feet.

He fumbled through the medicine cabinet for the bottle of aspirin he knew he kept there and fiddled with the cap, swearing when he was unable to open it, "Damn childproof cap!" He gripped the edge of the sink with one hand to stabilize himself and rapped the bottle against the counter with the other. As he did so, he heard another rapping sound and that was when he realized the pounding wasn't only in his head. Someone was knocking on his door.

"Great," he sighed. He debated on answering it, but then decided it was better to just let them knock until they gave up and went away. He was in no mood for company in his present condition. He meandered back to his bedroom with the bottle and sat down, hoping to clear his spinning head enough to get the stupid bottle open. He let out a sigh of relief when it the knocking stopped and it was blissfully silent. "Good. They're gone."

His relief only lasted a moment though when he heard a way-too-chipper voice calling, "Hello-oo! Lee, are you up?"

Resigned to his fate, he rose from the bed and went to greet his annoyingly cheery morning-person partner. "Amanda, what the hell are you doing in here?"

She gulped as she saw he was pretty much in the same state she'd left him in, shirtless, barefoot, but still wearing his tuxedo pants from the party. Her mind couldn't help drifting back to the way he'd touched her in his inebriated state. This is going to be more difficult than I thought, she worriedly concluded in her mind.