Chapter 19

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The Westens planned to return to the Outer Banks as soon as they could. Everyone else would be staying an additional day in D.C. for some tourist activities.

Michael and Fiona weren't any better at staying away from their children than Amanda and Sam were. Maybe because the journey from where they'd once been to this new life had taken so long and had been so difficult.

"Grandpa," Noah said. "Will you teach me and Jacob how to play dead?"

"I can tell you how, but you'll end up teaching yourself," Sam said.

"Teach me, too?" Charlie asked.

"Absolutely, you, too," Sam said as he released his hold on Ethan and Abby and stood up. He winced.

"You okay?" Amanda wondered.

"Nothing a cortisone shot in that knee can't fix."

"Have the surgery, Sam. It won't take long, but you'll have to let all of us take care of you, for a change."

He shook his head. "No, another shot will do it."

"Stubborn man," she said.

Michael arrived with Megan sitting on his shoulders. "We made better time getting out of D.C. than I thought."

"Down, Daddy, down" Megan said, patting her hands on top of his head. He lifted her down and let her go. She headed straight for the water, and Sam and Amanda both turned to see which of the dogs noticed first.

It was Tank, who was moving a bit faster than Diesel these days.

Michael and Fiona's five-year old loved the beach, and would rarely leave without one last trip to the water to get knocked down by a wave. But she wasn't wearing a life vest tonight, so Tank wouldn't let her go far.

Sarah, Nate's five year old, and Lizzy ran toward the water, too, followed by Abby and Emily. At that point Diesel got up and headed toward the water. The girls were allowed to get their little feet wet, get splashed, but that was as far as they could go before the dogs ventured into the water and started pushing them back to the shore, by putting their large white furry bodies between children and sea.

The dogs actually preferred kids clad in life vests, because they could clamp on the vest and pull the child away from the water.

When Fiona joined them and stood watching as the boys headed toward the water, Sam chuckled.

"Hey, Fi, you don't ever have to worry about your kids being surfers. The dogs won't let them go that far out."

Michael and Fiona had arrived as the sun began slipping lower against the Sound; it was time to head back to the house. A few moments later, Amanda and Fiona had rounded up their kid collection of towels, shirts, toys and food debris, and were pulling the wheeled basket Amanda used for beach necessities back to the house.

The only kid who stayed to help was Charlie, who was helping his Uncle Mike and Sam move the large umbrella, brush the sand away and secure it so they could carry it to carry it back to the house.

Before they left, Sam and Charlie walked through the sand and dug out two hair bows, a doll and a green army man before they left the beach with Mike on one end of the umbrella, Sam on the other and Charlie in the middle.

After they stored the umbrella in the rack near the parking area under the house, Sam opened the small fridge under the stairs they used for bait and fish. A rack of fishing rods fit against the back wall. He took a bottle of water and offered one to Mike.

"So, got a plaque to hang on your wall?" he asked.

"Yeah, but—that won't happen. Brought one back for you, too."

"Yeah, but—that won't happen."

Michael laughed then. "I'm glad that's over."

"It'll never be over."

"No, but someone else can worry about that now," he said. "On the way back here, we decided we're going to take Amanda's offer on Shel's house."

Sam smiled. "Fi likes the view, and all that glass is bulletproof."

"That's what Raines said. He agreed with the equipment purchase, by the way. We'll need to make some changes."

"Makes it easier. We enjoyed staying there while our house was being remodeled. It might take you and Fi some time to get used to all that glass, though."

Raines had tried his best to put Michael Westen back to work as an operative, but as Raines' wife predicted, he failed. Before they were married, Michael had promised Fiona he wouldn't do anything to endanger their children when they had children, and he'd kept his promise.

He had an attractive offer from SecuriCorp, and since Dani Porter had turned her position with the CIA Miami office into a desk job, the CIA used the link to SecuriCorp's facilities and Michael and Jesse's clearance levels to morph into special project consulting. That would continue.

When Sam dropped the reins as an intel specialist; Michael picked them up. The SecuriCorp plan to open an office outside Raleigh-Durham as a logical opportunity in the research triangle area was almost tailor made for both the Porter and Westen families.

It seemed as if they were all ready to take the first step into another stage of their lives. It had been a gradually changing process.

Two years earlier, Maddie had married Doug, the retired chef she'd met while in the CIA's protective custody. She put her Miami house up for rent, and moved to Doug's home area near New Bern. Nate and Ruth's troubled marriage was on an upswing; they'd recently reconciled after a separation and had surprised everyone by relocating near Maddie and Doug.

The nursery operation where Maddie and Nate worked years earlier was up for sale and they were debating investing in it.

"Are Charlie and Sarah going home with you and Fi . . . or . . ." Sam wondered.

He knew Mike worried about his brother and his wife, but worried more about their children.

"Yeah, we're taking them."

"Sarah seems okay, but Charlie . . ."

"I know," Michael said. "He's such a good kid. He just wants his parents to get along."

On the floor above, they could hear the exterior door open and shut, and little footsteps on the decking and then the stairs. Ethan hurried around the corner first, missed a step, but got snatched up by Michael before he could fall.

Sam's eyes grew wide, but Mike grinned and handed the boy to Sam.

"Thanks, Unca Mike. Mommy says come to dinner, Daddy. We're 'posed to tell you now."

"Mommy says you need to stop talking," Megan told her father as she grabbed his hand and started tugging him toward the stairs. Her brother was a smaller version of her father, but Meg was the image of her mother with long silky auburn hair and green eyes and freckles.

Michael scooped his daughter into his arms and kissed her nose. "Okay, no more talking."

He followed Sam and Ethan up the steps.

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Amanda came back through the French doors on the north-facing deck and dimmed the lights so they wouldn't interfere with star gazing.

Sam was conducting one of his lessons within a lesson for the kids. If you were going to teach them something, make it fun, that was his theory. His natural affinity for fatherhood continued to amaze her, as it had from the first moments she was aware of him following surgery after Emily and Ethan were born.

The touch that soothed their children while they were in her womb, continued to have the same calming effect.

At the moment, he had ten children, lying back on the low lounge chairs, with him and Michael, looking to the sky, trying to locate the Big Dipper and then the Little Dipper.

He was pointing out the differences between a star pattern and a constellation and was moving on to Polaris next and why it's important to know where the North Star is.

The first time she'd heard him explain that to Ethan and Emily, she found tears on her cheeks.

"You need the North Star to find your way home," he said. "And when we're back at our house, we can go outside and look up and there it is—right above our house. It likes to hang around your mom."

It would be Michael's turn to entertain children when they were finished with star watching.

Michael—the story teller, the master of voices and accents and languages. He'd always assign the role of the ogre to Sam, and Sam would always argue about it.

"I don't want to be the ogre, Mikey. I'm a good guy."

"But you can sound like an ogre. We need an ogre, Sam. Pretend. You can do that." And then the kids would laugh.

Amanda turned to see Fiona put the last load of shirts and shorts into the dryer and turn it on.

"They're still counting stars," she said.

"How long are you and Sam staying?"

Amanda glanced at Fiona. "Until Sunday. Ethan has an appointment Monday morning, and we don't miss those. You?"

"I was hoping to convince Michael to stay longer," she said, glancing away.

If Amanda had read the worry on her face correctly and her gestures and fatigue . . . then Fiona was probably hoping for a few more private, peaceful hours with her husband.

"I don't think you'll have a problem with that. Do you want us to take Gabe and Megan with us?"

Fiona reached to give her friend a hug. "Yes, please. And Charlie and Sarah, too."

"Are you feeling okay?" Amanda met Fi's momentarily shy green gaze. "Or maybe I should ask how far you are along."

Fiona smiled. "We've done this before, haven't we?"

"I think so," Amanda smiled.

Fiona sighed. "Three and a half or four months." With that she laughed. "I really thought we were done, and I wasn't paying attention—but you already know what I'm feeling, don't you?"

"It is a little confusing. It might not be what you'd planned, but at least your children will be closer in age than ours," Amanda laughed.

"I'm not sure I'll be as good at this as you seem to be." Fiona stopped and looked out the door. Night had fallen. It was dark and perfect. "I must be crazy."

"But happy." It wasn't a question.

Fiona smiled. "Yes. Very happy."

"I was, too. You are going to be fine."

"I hope so."

"Come on. Let's see what they're doing now."

"I already told Michael no more Irish fairy tales. No banshees. No witches, no murderers. What the Irish consider children's stories," she shuddered. "The wretched things can give the kids nightmares for weeks."

"Finn MacCool and the Children of Lir weren't so bad," Amanda said.

"Except for the 900 years the swans had to wait to hear a bell. Meggie cried and cried about that one."

Fiona dimmed the interior light and stepped onto the deck. Amanda followed.

Ten pajama-clad kids were clustered around Sam and Michael, and separated by gender. All the girls were sitting on Sam's lap or in his chair, and the boys were clustered around Michael.

Fiona and Amanda took the empty deck chairs just as Sam was making the kids an offer.

"Does anyone want to get up with me tomorrow and see two really cool planets? They look like really bright stars, but Venus and Jupiter are planets. Anyone?"

"Will you wake me up, Daddy?" Ethan asked.

His question was followed by a chorus of kid requests to be early risers to see the planets.

"OK, here's the deal. I'll try to wake each of you, but if you don't get up, I'm letting you sleep."

"Story time now, Dad?" Gabe asked his father.

"Are we ready?" Michael asked. "Sam? You're the ogre."

"I'm always the ogre, Mikey. I don't want to be the ogre. Ogres are mean."

Ten kids giggled.

"But you're such a good ogre, Daddy," Emmy said. "Really."

"Well, okay," Sam chuckled.

Tonight, Michael's story was about a boy and a girl who got lost in the deep, dark forest and had to find their way home, and the only way they could remember where they had been was to leave a trail of breadcrumbs that the hungry birds and bunnies ate.

Along their way home, they met a Russian and an Irishman and an Arab and a lost traveler from Japan and escaped the clutches of at least three ogres until they could find their way back to their mommy and their daddy.

Sam had been a grumpy ogre, a confused ogre and a mean ogre with a sore toe, using voice skills that made everyone laugh before Amanda and Fiona had declared the day's fun had come to an end and it was time for bed.

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Amanda and Sam retired soon after they got all their kids settled in for the night, and Michael and Fiona followed suit.

The bedroom they called theirs was on the lower level, near where Gabe and Charlie shared a room across from Megan, Lizzy and Sarah.

Michael had opened the window to let in the sounds of ocean and wind. It was a restful sound, so different here than in Miami. He needed the sound of peace. He'd been unsettled. Trips back to Langley always did that, but there was something about this place that always sent worries away.

He could easily understand why Sam needed to come here. When Amanda and Zoe gave him and Jesse their own keys to the beach house, they came without strings attached. "It's a family house. You're Sam's family. There's room for all of us here."

As soon as they moved from Miami, he suspected they would use the house more often than they did now.

When the wind picked up, the windows rattled and Fiona got up to close it a bit more, but left it open a bit. They both enjoyed listening to storms outside, but Michael knew there was a small squall between them, one they had yet to talk about.

Fiona turned to Michael. "I liked your story. Thank you for the Hansel and Gretel variation."

"Not too scary?"

"Not too scary."

He turned to slide his palm across her abdomen and let it rest there. "And this? Scary?"

Fiona closed her eyes. "I should have known. You knew the last time, too."

"Have you been to the doctor?"

"Yes."

"Fi—I can't . . . I don't think—" He pulled her fully into his arms and buried his face in the small space by her neck and felt his worries tremble his limbs.

If Amanda's emergency C-section had frightened Sam to the extent that the rest of his hair had turned white, then Megan's breech birth and Fiona's long recovery from complications following that had unhinged Michael equally. The possibility of losing Fiona to childbirth had been much, much too close. It had taken him months to be able to let her out of his sight, and he'd worked from home for most of that time.

When they moved to live in Sheldon Dunham's former residence, he'd be working from home all the time. The idea was appealing.

"I'm going to take very good care of myself, and when we get back to Miami, it'll be time for the sonogram. Michael, at our ages, we could have twins like Sam and Amanda."

"You're worrying."

"It's logical."

"Fi, are you happy about this?"

"Yes."

"Happy, but worried."

"Yes. Make me stop worrying, Michael."

He rose up on an arm and looked into her face as the wind beyond the house turned into a storm before lowering his lips to hers and erasing her worry.

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Amanda saw the flash of lightning and got out of bed to close the window across the room. She came back and lowered the window near their bed, but left it open a couple of inches so they could hear the storm.

Sam's knee was bothering him, so he'd taken the prescription he'd been given but he was still restless. She glanced at the clock and realized it was after midnight now which made it official. She got back into bed, reached under her pillow and retrieved her gift and sat up, cross-legged and watched her husband.

He turned and looked at her. "Hmmm?"

"Promise me you'll see the doctor about your knee when we get back."

He sighed. "Okay."

"That means you're really hurting. I'm going to make sure you go."

"Yes, ma'am."

She laughed softly. "Here." She pressed a key into his hand. "Happy Anniversary, Sam."

"It's not our anniversary until tomorrow."

"It's tomorrow already."

"Oh." He sat up and looked at what was in his hand. "What's the key for?"

"A pool."

"Manda, that's . . . that's . . . not right."

"I used your money, if that makes a difference. This way you can teach Em and Ethan to swim in flat water, and—"

He reached for her, and pulled her close as they slid down into their bed, face to face. "Thank you." He kissed her then, the sweetest of sweet things, and pulled back to look into her eyes in the storm-lit room. "But I'm waiting until tomorrow to give you your gift."

"You've already given me gifts, so many times," she said. "So many times."

Their debate was old, and it continued. Gently. Sam declined to partake in using any of the resources from CrossAxe that Amanda had developed, earned or saved.

Finding someone who could turn that stray apple orchard into productive operation was a project he'd worked on for several years. But he'd wait until morning to tell her.

His retirement check, now that it no longer was up against bar tabs, generously covered most things he needed—gas, clothing, some cash in his pockets, gifts. He'd taken a more active role in CrossAxe, Inc. to help and relieve Amanda, but she was decision maker, the CEO. He'd sign things David, Dee or Alex needed signed, and if she asked his opinion on something, he'd give it careful thought and let her know.

But, he wasn't about to interfere with the way Amanda conducted business. CrossAxe wasn't broken, and it didn't need him to fix it.

His cake baker had more or less retired from baking cakes unless it was a family birthday, but periodically she and Zoe would help or bake or decorate cakes for the women they'd sold The Cakery to. Amanda and Zoe's children kept them too busy now to run the business they'd founded. He knew she missed it sometimes, but he also knew she was glad it was in good hands.

The key she'd given him fit the door to a 1950s era community pool that had been drained and left empty in a building for too many decades.

It was in the same area as Sam's warehouse, and they had both grasped the potential it had when David made them aware the property was for sale.

It was Amanda who had listened to that conversation and decided it was the perfect project for her husband and son. Following Sheldon's death, she realized the dynamic between them had shifted.

She would never understand what went on between Sam and Sam; she was simply glad they had each other now. The pool project would allow each of them to use their unique skills to make it work, so thinking about every aspect of that meant an outright CrossAxe purchase.

Five years ago, this man she loved so dearly, had stood on her porch, asking for a divorce. Her dog had tried to frighten him away, and their son had knocked him to the floor within seconds of meeting him.

A year later, she'd been sitting in a doctor's office with him, waiting for the specialist who would interpret the latest x-rays of their youngest son's foot. She looked at him then, smiled and wished him a happy anniversary.

At first he'd frowned, but then he'd smiled when he realized what she was talking about. "It's been a year, hasn't it?"

"It's our déjà vu anniversary."

"We never celebrated the first one."

"I couldn't find you."

"I was on a tarmac in Israel, en route to . . . something."

"You're still en route to something."

"I am." He leaned over to kiss her, and that kiss lingered long enough that the babies in their arms fussed.

The doctor entered the room. He smiled.

"It's our anniversary, doc," Sam explained.

"Congratulations. How many years?"

"About two that count," Sam said.

"They all count," Amanda had said quietly.

"I just wasn't very good at counting, but I am now."

—Fini—

For Erin, a lovely Irish lass, and her Neanderthal dog, Diesel