Puzzles

These entertaining characters do not belong to me. They belong to the USA network, the genius of Matt Nix, his writers and the talented actors who give us human faces to see them more clearly. With thanks for letting me borrow them for a while.

He was watching her sleep, using only his eyes to touch her.

A fleeting fear had stabbed him awake, but this time the instinct to reach for the gun under his pillow never surfaced.

He'd controlled twitchy nerves and muscles instead of slipping into the fight or flight state he'd found himself in once too often lately.

A flick of a glance told him he had not disturbed her, and he was grateful. If there was one thing Michael really, really was not ready for, it was another round of Fiona's loving sympathies which seemed to be part of her plan to put him and his loft in order.

Before she moved in, she would have sprinkled spicy Irish temper on her sympathy. Now, she tugged him close, kissed him, watched him and held her silence. Mostly. He expected her temper. He missed it.

He wanted his life back, too, and now that he'd gotten it, he still wasn't sure what he had.

Except now he knew the sweet-smelling woman who slept so peacefully next to him loved him enough to die with him.

Her loving generosity had stolen his breath and humbled him before, but when she flew through that lashing storm of gunfire with a life or death promise, he found he still could not take in the magnitude of that single action.

He thought her love was conditional, but now, he realized he didn't understand what her conditions were. All he knew was he wanted everything she could give him. Everything.

Michael was troubled by his inability to balance Fi's loyalty with his fear that she would eventually tire of his determination to find all the answers to all the puzzles that had tangled them together the past four years.

He had so many questions. There were so many inconsistencies in what he'd learned in his short time back with the CIA. He was good at puzzles. Finding pieces, putting them in order. Eventually, they had told him job well done, job finished, thanks and we'll get back to you.

But there were too many puzzle pieces left; he knew it wasn't finished.

Michael had not figured out what to do with his new cease-fire existence because something was off. Not quite right. And the more he asserted that all was not right in the world of secrets revealed, the more he found himself turning away from her. Fi asked him to stop, just stop, and shred all that was his past.

He knew she was right. He wanted to, but . . . he couldn't.

He saw the disappointment in her eyes last night when she found him scouring his files for an answer to a question he couldn't yet formulate.

It's a new day, she argued softly. "Let's move on. Please."

Here, watching her sleep, he kept stumbling over the unpleasant idea that if he couldn't put the past behind him, then maybe she would. She could walk away again. Only this time maybe another O'Neill would be there to harm her, and he wouldn't be there to protect her.

Or maybe, she would do what he had done to her, and simply disappear. She could use her exceptional skills to re-invent herself and then . . .

And then, she'd put him in a memory box and bury it.

The thought was so distressing he shivered in the sultry air.

They were equals in so many ways, the yin and the yang, the warp and weft, polar opposites, light and dark, the He and the She. Different, and always equals.

He swallowed a sigh as Fiona shifted in her sleep, and moved slightly toward him stretching her arms above her head. The movement brushed away the sheet that had half covered her, completely exposing her to him.

Ambient light from a mercury vapor lamp at the edge of the warehouse property provided illumination through heavy double paned windows. It was enough to see the gentle rise and fall of her chest, to trace the long, silken tangle of hair that slid against her cheek and neck, hugged her collarbone and caressed the edge of her breast.

Some things are so beautiful, they bring pain to vision.

He realized the first time he had memorized her like this, was the first time he'd left her. In Ireland.

There had been a fierce north wind blowing that night. It shuttled through the creaking farmhouse they used as a safe house, conveniently aiding and abetting the sound of his departure. He left the warm nest of their bed and dressed quickly, then stood there aching to touch her one last time. If she would have awakened, he wasn't sure he would have been able to leave.

Because it was then, in that very instant, Michael recognized he had just found the other half of his soul. Until that moment, there was nothing in his life experience to make him believe such a thing existed.

From that moment forward, everything changed. He'd broken his life into compartments-before Fiona, and after Fiona.

He tried to keep track of where she was from afar, but it was extremely difficult to do without telegraphing a personal interest, which would have endangered her as much as himself. Twelve months and seventeen days later, he found her again after quietly maneuvering as many things as he could to make sure he would be near her in the same area of the same country.

When she saw him, she reacted quickly and he found himself flat on his back with the business end of her 9mm jabbed under his chin. He could have dislodged her at any time, but didn't because she deserved her revenge and anger. His apology had been honest and utterly unacceptable. He could tell by what he saw in her eyes she had missed him as much as he missed her.

Long minutes later, Fiona decided she couldn't put him and his government-sponsored lies out of her misery with a Walther. She fell on him with a passionate hunger that he returned in equal measure. Remembering that long night was what he reached for every time he needed healing.

Their relationship was different after she learned the truth of his identity. She was more guarded, more careful when she revealed her feelings. Their next decade crossed time zones and nations. It had been filled with tumultuous reunions, explosive couplings and afflictive departures. It wasn't until he nearly lost her here in Miami for the second time that tenderness and peace permanently entered their equation.

An hours' old memory of a sweet and slow kiss compelled him to shift to his side to study her lithe form. He knew every intimate inch of her body, the tiny, pale leaf-shaped freckles on her cheek, every faded scar that bit into her arms and her legs. Two inches below her last rib on the left in one tiny spot, airbrushed kisses could prove she was ticklish. There and there only.

Michael could see the clock on the table next to the bed. It was blinking 1200, indicating a power outage had occurred sometime after they'd gone to bed. Sometime after the thunderstorm outside, and sometime after the one they shared inside.

The dark blue of night was fading into pale grey light as he watched Fi's ribs move with a slow, peaceful cadence. The gentle dip of her bare stomach revealed a soft swell. His gaze narrowed as he sharpened his focus to see what was right there before him, now so beautifully apparent in the dim morning light.

That precious, rounded bump was not his imagination.

Instinctively, he gently laid his hand across her abdomen. Something close to joy gripped his heart and held tight.

His movement prompted Fi to turn toward him.

She brushed a kiss across his chest, moved her leg over his and wrapped her arm around his waist, compelling him to move his hand away from what he knew with a certainty like no other, was his child.

His arm curved up and around her; he pulled her close. She snuggled closer.

"Mmmm, I'm really getting used to this bed, Michael, with you in it." She slid up his body to rest her cheek on his chest.

A few minutes later she pushed herself up abruptly, and met his steady grey blue gaze with one of her own. "Your heart rate's up. Did you have another bad dream?"

"No." He smiled.

"So . . ."

He just kept smiling.

"You look . . ." Fi's eyebrows drew together at Michael's grin.

"Happy, Fi. I'm happy." He wrapped his arms around her and gently pulled her into a tender kiss.

She returned the sweet gift, then rested her cheek on his chest. "Me, too."

A sharp, loud bang against the heavy metal door that barred the outside world from theirs punctured the early morning stillness. They were upright and arming themselves within seconds.

Since they'd moved in together, Sam and Jesse had started calling before they came over. Madeline called, too, but generally with an invitation for them to join her at her home. She wasn't fond of the loft. Max would have called, too. Which meant whoever was on the other side of the door at this hour probably wasn't a friendly.

Michael pulled on the jeans he'd dropped at the side of the bed the night before, while Fi grabbed a fluffy white robe. She moved to his right, aimed at the door while he unlocked the door, swung it open. His .45 was pointed at the couple on the top step.

There stood the last people on earth Michael would have expected.

And one of them had a very unpleasant expression on her face. He swung the door wider so they could come in then flicked the safety on and tucked the gun in the back waistband of his jeans.

Mum!" Fi shrieked. "Mum! What are you doing here?

Michael glanced at Fi's brother Sean who was standing behind the older, louder and smaller red-headed version of Fi and knew things were going to get a lot more complicated.

Ena Glenanne had never been a member of his fan club, but he did owe her for one of the scars on his clavicle after she stitched up a shoulder wound and allowed him to hide in her home for six hours a lifetime ago.

She didn't like him then, and judging by the fierce expression on her face, it looked like she hadn't changed her opinion.