A Crack in the Mirror
by Zandergirl

chapter 3 - Her Sessions

Session 1

A buzzer sounded the minute Alexis opened the door letting the secretary know that Dr. Winter’s next appointment had arrived and Connie, her cheerful blond receptionist slid open the window peering into the waiting room.

“May I help you?”

“Um, yes. Alexis Davis. I have an 11:00 appointment with Dr. Winters. I’m a little early."

“Perfect!” she sang. “It helps keep us on schedule for the day. Is there anything new that Dr. Winter’s should be made aware of since your last visit?”

“No,” Alexis said secretly wishing she didn’t even have a medical history with a therapist. “Nothing’s changed.” And everything has.

“Have a seat. Dr. Winters will be right with you.”

“Thank you, “ Alexis smiled glancing down at her watch noting that it was five minutes to eleven. Surveying the array of magazines perfectly fanned out on the glass coffee table in front of her; Alexis picked up the latest issue of Vogue and sat down scanning the headlines on its cover.

“ ‘Keep Your Man Happy and Coming Back for More’,” she read aloud and looked down at her mounding stomach snickering. “How about, ‘He came back for more, got you knocked up and then walked out’?”

“Not fair Alexis!” she scolded herself. “You’ve done your share to precipitate the demise of this relationship!” She needed to be prepared to give one hundred percent in her session with Dr. Winters if she was going to work through what caused her marriage to Ric to self destruct and move on. And that meant being completely honest with herself as well as the doctor. Otherwise, the visit was a moot point.

Even though Alexis recognized that Dr. Winters cautioned her about entertaining expectant outcomes, there was one thing that she wanted more than anything; never to be a part of a failed relationship again! Ned left her disillusioned, Sonny gullible and Ric? Now Ric was breaking her heart. Enough was enough! Even if it meant spending the rest of her life raising her children alone, Alexis vowed that she would never willingly offer herself to be the recipient of such pain again.

She’d been brutally honest with Ric and meant it when she told him that he was ‘it’ for her. If she couldn’t make it work with Ric, she wouldn’t make it work with anyone else.

“Alexis?” she heard Dr. Winter’s voice and looked up to find her standing in the doorway.

“Hello,” Rising, Alexis greeted her while laying a protective right hand on her stomach, which did not escape Louise’s keen eyes.

“How are you and the baby doing?”

“So far, so good!”

“You look wonderful.”

“So I’m told,” Alexis snapped back sarcastically and cringed inside. “I’m sorry. Ric said something to that effect the other day as we were discussing grounds for divorce. It hit me in a particularly cynical place.”

“I can see that,” Dr. Winters noticed and escorted her back to her office. Once inside, Alexis eased herself into an armchair and situated her purse on her lap.

“So!”

“So.” Louise echoed.

“So as I mentioned I’m getting – no – we, Ric and I, are getting a divorce.”

“Yes,” Dr. Winters acknowledged. “You mentioned that on the phone when you scheduled our appointment. I’m sorry to hear that. It is always a difficult decision to end a marriage especially when children are involved. But then again, that’s why you are here, correct?”

“Right!” Alexis agreed much too enthusiastically for Dr. Winter’s satisfaction.

“It is my understanding that you do not want this divorce.” Louise opened the conversation.

“No, I don’t” Alexis said quietly. “I would prefer that we try to work things out, but Ric…he seems determined to go through with it.”

“Do you believe his desire to separate is sincere?”

Alexis raised her eyes to Dr. Winters engaging her beneath long, wispy bangs. “He has already admitted to me that he’s been unfaithful so I think that pretty much answers the question.”

Louise was a bit taken aback by that particular revelation but remained professional and did not reflect surprise in her expression. “That must have been a painful admission for you to hear. Did Ric tell you of his own accord?”

Alexis shook her head. “I suspected it and then confronted him with my suspicion. He finally admitted the truth, but we’ve not discussed it in great detail.”

Louise flipped open her pad to jot down a few notes.

Alexis leaned forward trying to peer down at the notepad. “Um, what is it that you’re writing?”

“Just keeping track of the details of our conversation. Does it bother you?”

“No,” she said. “I do the same thing with my clients. Especially these days, you know hormones! My memory has been failing me and sometimes I forget things if I don’t write them down.”

“Are you usually forgetful?”

“No!” Alexis answered frankly. “I am usually very detail oriented. But so much has happened in the last -” she looked up at he ceiling squinting slightly as she calculated, “nine months, that I’m afraid it’s left me somewhat frazzled.”

They sat there silently until Dr. Winters prodded Alexis to elaborate. “Do you want to start from month one?”

“I could. Am I supposed to lie down?”

“Only if you want to. However, that notion is somewhat stereotypical of my profession.”

“Thank goodness!” Alexis chuckled. “Let’s see…the first month…that would be last fall, September to be exact. That’s when things with Ric advanced, for lack of a better word, and we started dating.”

“When was your first date?”

“That would depend on what constitutes a ‘date’. It is debatable. By the way, the term ‘dating’ sounds so sophomoric. Would you mind if I changed it to ‘seeing one another’ instead’?”

Dr. Winters looked at Alexis amused. “There are no formal transcripts of our sessions Alexis, but if it makes you more comfortable we can refer to your time together as ‘seeing one other’ instead.”

“Thank you,” Alexis mouthed and continued. “So, I was seeing Ric. There were a few dinners at The Cellar and I took him to my nephew’s engagement party. Kristina really seemed to like him and Ric adored her.”

Dr. Winters took a few more notes and looked up. “Okay, you’ve established that Kristina and Ric were beginning to bond, but what was happening in your relationship with Ric? Was it progressing as well?”

Alexis knit her brow as she pondered. “Progressing as in how?”

“Were you becoming closer? Was he becoming a romantic option for you?”

Alexis opened her eyes wide in surprise at the question then knit her brow again as she thought about it. “We were getting acquainted, talking, spending time together. It’s been years since a man ‘came onto’ me so it was flattering.”

“It sounds like he was still the pursuer; this wasn’t an instant attraction for you.” Dr. Winters concluded.

“I am a defense attorney, he was the DA, which blurs certain ethical lines,” Alexis reasoned. “Also, Ric didn’t have the most upstanding reputation in town and there was a suspicious air about him. In fact, the first time we ‘went out’, it was on a dare.”

“A dare?”

“He dared me to have a drink with him.”

“I see,” Dr. Winters nodded. “So your first date was really a battle of wills, so to speak. A competition, a challenge.”

“I thought we weren’t going to call it ‘dating’,” Alexis corrected her.

“Sorry. The first time you saw one another socially.”

“Thank you.”

“So was it?” Dr. Winters continued.

“What?”

“A challenge.”

“Well, you could construe it as one,” Alexis reluctantly conceded. “It wasn’t all about competition. I mean, he was - and still is – good looking and reasonably intelligent, for a Harvard graduate.”

“A Harvard graduate,” Louise noted. “I take it that your alma mater is different?”

“Yale. Summa cum laude,” Alexis stated with a measure of pride in her voice.

“Intelligence is an important variable for you in a relationship?”

Alexis twitched her nose, peering out from over her glasses. “I’ve always been considered intelligent so I suppose I tend to be more attracted to intelligent men.”

“You’re a smart woman,” Dr. Winters stated the obvious.

“Yes!” Alexis exclaimed insecurely pushing her dark tortoise shell frames up to perch securely on the bridge of her nose. “I wasn’t terribly popular in school. I always blew the curve. Is that bad?”

“You tell me.”

“Well, it was very, very good for getting into law school but not so good for other things.”

“What other things?” she encouraged her.

“Boys,” Alexis answered a little uneasily. “Men.”

“So this has been a long term issue for you.”

“I’d hardly call it an issue.”

Dr. Winters leaned forward. “Alexis, how many serious relationships have you had in your life?”

“Specifically what kind of relationships are you referring to?” she asked.

Louise smiled. Both Ric and Alexis seemed fixated on the specific, no doubt because of their shared legal profession.

“I am specifically referring to adult romantic relationships,” she clarified.

“Oh. Okay Thank you. That would be two and a half.”

“A half?” Dr. Winters broke protocol and chuckled. “Now that’s the first time a patient has ever given me an answer like that! Indulge me. How does one have half of a relationship?”

“My first husband, Jasper Jacks,” she began to explain. “Most people just call him Jax.”

“You were married to Jasper Jacks, the owner of the Metro Court Hotel?”

“Several years ago. It was a marriage of convenience to help my best friend – who he was really in love with at the time – save her clothing design firm from her Aunt, who was due to inherit it if Chloe didn’t marry within a month after her uncle’s death -- you know what? It’s all very complicated.”

Louise sat poised to take notes but stopped without putting pen to paper.

“Pardon my asking, but if your friend – Chloe – needed to save her company by getting married to satisfy a clause in a family will, then why didn’t she simply marry Mr. Jacks?”

“Because she married Ned.”

“Ned?”

“My fiancé at the time, Ned Ashton.”

Dr. Winters laid her pen down for a minute to fully concentrate on this debacle. “Let me get this straight, your fiancé married your best friend and you married the man that she was in love with?”

“You got it!” Alexis praised her. “It was kind of a Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice thing run amuck. I told you it was complicated.”

“To say the least, “ Dr. Winters agreed. “But it does beg the question why?”

“Originally Chloe was supposed to marry Ned in Las Vegas but her aunt followed us there and didn’t believe that Ned and Chloe were a ‘real’ romantic couple – which they weren’t - so Jax and I stepped in and got married instead in order to legitimize the trip in Gertrude’s eyes.”

“Gertrude?”

“Chloe’s aunt,” Alexis clarified.

“Oh.” Dr. Winters nodded trying not to be unprofessionally amused by her client. “But you and Jax weren’t a real romantic couple either.”

“Maybe we were more convincing,” Alexis smirked. “Jax and I have been through a lot together. I think we both enjoyed our brief marriage very much.”

Dr. Winters blinked a few times, more confused than ever and decided that it was futile to try and figure out this fiasco in the first session. “Alexis, was your marriage to Jax - not why or how, but just pertaining to the relationship - was it ever consummated?”

“Heavens, no!” she laughed. “We are now amicably divorced and the best of friends.”

“Interesting, “ she resumed her note-taking. “What about your fiancé, Ned? Did the two of you ever marry?”

“Almost,” Alexis said.

“Almost?”

She looked at Dr. Winters meekly, mildly embarrassed. “I almost made it to the altar, but got an incorrigible case of cold feet. I ran back up the isle and out the front doors of the church where I promptly flagged down a passing semi. The driver’s timing was perfect!”

In most instances, the image of Alexis hiking up her wedding gown and fleeing the ceremony would be amusing, but given the outrageous account Dr. Winters heard over the last several minutes, it seemed as though this was just another chapter in the unconventional life of Alexis Davis. Louise was not the least bit surprised and continued their conversation without a hitch. “How long were you and Ned together?”

“Four years, ” Alexis answered.

“That’s a substantial amount of time. Did you love him?”

“Yes, very much,” she recalled wistfully. “Ned could very well have been the love of my life.”

“Yet you couldn’t make a commitment to him. Why not?”

Alexis toyed with her purse strap, taking a minute to think about her answer. “In retrospect, a lot of reasons but primarily because I couldn’t be the person he wanted me to be. My work has always been important to me and, at times, Ned felt like it took precedence over him.”

“Did it?” Dr. Winters questioned.

“I don’t know…maybe.” Alexis shrugged. “But I would never have ‘fit’ into his family. I’m not making excuses. My family, the Cassadines, are completely insane but the Quartermaines run a close second. It would have never worked and Ned deserved more than I could give him.”

Dr. Winters surveyed her notes thus far coming to a somewhat obvious conclusion. “It seems as though you’ve never experienced or been able to commit to a traditional relationship. Do you think when you met Ric that you were looking for something more ‘normal’?”

“Define ‘normal’,” Alexis shot back.

Dr. Winters lowered her head immediately noting the request. It was significant that both Ric and Alexis now challenged her reference to the concept of ‘normal’ by redirecting the question back to her for a more detailed definition of the word.

“A nuclear family,” Louise clarified. “Mother, father, children.”

Alexis didn’t miss a beat with her response. “No. I wasn’t looking for a relationship at all. In fact, when Ric and I married it was for practical reasons; to gain leverage in family court in case we needed it in order to win custody of my daughter.”

“You said ‘we’. It sounds like a mutual goal that the two of you shared. Whose idea was it to get married, yours or Ric’s?”

“Ric’s,” she answered candidly. “He spent countless hours with me at the hospital when Kristina became seriously ill last December. He was strong and unwaveringly supportive; he knew the moment Sonny found out Kristina was his biological child he would seek legal custody. I don’t think I could have made it through that nightmare without Ric.”

Dr. Winters noted the change in Alexis’s tone of voice from flip to almost melancholy. They were finally getting to the heart of her visit.

“Tell me more about your marriage to Ric.” Dr. Winters coaxed her gently.

Alexis gazed out the window across the room. Watching the clouds roll lazily by in contrast to the deep blue sky, she allowed her memory to take her back. “It was after we realized that Sonny needed to be tested as a possible bone marrow donor in order to treat Kristina’s leukemia. I was desperate for a way to legally keep him from taking her away from me once he found out she was his daughter. But you know all about that.”

Louise nodded remembering well the required sessions the court imposed on both Alexis and Sonny during their last custody battle in family court.

“Ric proposed to me standing beside Kristina’s crib. At first I didn’t know what to say. It was a huge gesture on his part and I didn’t want him to throw his life away just to help me so I told him that I would only accept if we made it a marriage of convenience.”

“Like you enjoyed with Jax.”

Alexis nodded silently continuing to gaze out the window. “But he wouldn’t agree to that type of marriage. He told me that his proposal was genuine and that we couldn’t marry unless we tried to base it on something real. We learned a lot about each other that day…” her voice drifted off.

Louise sat silently watching Alexis’s face run through a myriad of emotions culminating in a single tear, which trailed slowly unchecked down her cheek.

“Alexis,” she asked her softly. “What did you and Ric learn about each other that day?”

Alexis began to shake imperceptibly as her mind went back to her conversation with Ric in the hospital about their similar family histories.

“I do know what you mean about people, families, being civil to each other,” Alexis said quietly.“ The Cassadines had beautiful manners. Helena at her most lethal was always polite, which is very confusing when you're a little girl because you don't understand why the words people are saying have no bearing to what they're actually feeling. So you struggle with that, and then, you know, you -- you adapt to it because you have no choice, and then eventually you become proficient at it yourself.

Ric seemed to instantly understand. “Yeah, and you talk around what you feel. You wrap it up in a protective covering of verbal sparring and intellectual posturing.”

“You know me,” she laughed weakly.

“No,” Ric explained, “ I was actually talking about myself…”

“He spoke as if he knew me,” Alexis recalled in a voice just above a whisper. “All of the facades our families so effortlessly displayed when we were children. The mixed messages, the false bravado, the inevitable curse of sooner or later becoming just like them… Ric understood. At first, I thought he was describing me, and then I realized that Ric was me.”

Alexis got up and slowly paced the perimeter of the office idly running her hands over the book case, along the back of the sofa and gliding over the smooth oak desktop.

“We talked about a lifetime of building defense mechanisms. Becoming the brightest, the smartest, the most competent so we could systematically avoid the places where we felt out of control and it would be all right. I told him that I’d managed to lead a successful and fulfilling life that way until things changed.”

“When did your life change? Dr. Winters asked earnestly.

She took a deep breath, “The day I learned I was pregnant with Kristina. There was no hiding from that. I never considered myself maternal, not instinctually or otherwise and my first thought was to examine all of my options to hopefully avoid something incomprehensible happening, yet still remain in control.”

“But when Dr. Meadows introduced the option of terminating the pregnancy I realized that I would be extinguishing an innocent life that never asked to be conceived. My baby had a right to live. Kristina not only had the right to be born but she also had the right to be born into a world where she would be safe and allowed to grow up happy and strong.”

Stopping at the window, Alexis slowly reached up to place her hand against the glass pane, warm from the late morning sunshine. She stared out beyond the hospital grounds to the park across the street where children ran gleefully playing and laughing as their caretakers looked on.

The park, which was renamed in ‘memory’ of Michael Corinthos III now held two distinctive designations for Alexis; one as a place where she used to love taking Kristina to swing: the other, a grim reminder of what fate held in store for any child belonging to Sonny Corinthos. Thank God Michael was now home safe, but he was hardly sound. The little boy was scarred for life. He didn’t deserve to be kidnapped; neither did Morgan or Kristina.

But Michael’s nightmare did not end with the kidnapping. Now, at the tender age of nine he harbored the darkest truth a little boy could hold. He would forever be haunted by the fact that he murdered his own father. He would never get over the horrible tragedy, just as Sonny would never be able to protect his children from that side of himself he refused to acknowledge.

That side was very apparent to Alexis and it used to be equally clear to Ric. How could he simply gloss over it now?

She continued in an almost haunting voice.

“From the moment I knew Kristina was coming, when I could feel her inside of me, not physically, but emotionally, I knew that my life - my whole focus - was changed forever. She was so small and innocent and beautiful… I became completely committed to my daughter.”

“I understand that Ric didn’t fully grasp that concept when he insinuated himself into our lives. He’s obviously come to realize the price is too high. I need to stop living in some idealistic dream world, accept the facts as they are and move on.”

“Insinuated,” Dr. Winters zeroed in on that particular word. “That’s an unusual word choice to describe the beginning of your relationship. It almost implies deception on Ric’s part.”

“He wasn’t the most noble of suitors at first,” Alexis admitted. “He pursued me as part of a plan to get back at his brother. He knew long before he dared me to go out for that first drink that Sonny was Kristina’s biological father and his intent was to build a relationship with me, with us, and eventually step in and raise her as his own.”

Louise couldn’t help but visibly wince at that disclosure. “He finally did come forward and tell you about his plans?”

“No. No, he didn’t.” Alexis said unable to hide the tinge of disappointment in her voice. “I found out months later when I received a visit from an angry lab technician whom Ric paid to obtain Kristina’s paternity test results. He tried to blackmail Ric for more money and Ric threatened him to stay away from our family. It was a bad move on Ric’s part. He gambled on the tech to stay silent and lost.”

Dr. Winters set down her pad and paper. “Alexis, I am concerned with the amount of deceit I’m hearing. Most couples wouldn’t make it beyond lies of this magnitude. You and Ric have obviously been able to overcome them so far but it’s a destructive cycle; one that I’m concerned about for the sake of your future happiness.”

“I know it sounds insane,” Alexis laughed softly. “But our relationship has been a collective struggle to have what others seem to so easily own. Ric and I are so much alike. We think alike, we rationalize alike; we even fight alike. We know each other’s vulnerabilities and how to really hit where it hurts. We’re both aware that we’re not the easiest people to live with, still we’ve always been able to find a way to forgive and to regroup…until this last time. You see, Dr. Winters, I’m culpable too. I’ve done some less than upstanding things that have had an adverse affect on our marriage.”

“Elaborate on that for me.”

Alexis sighed and stated simply. “Ric and I stopped trusting each other. Our priorities became different. In my honest opinion, mine never changed; I needed to protect my daughter from the violence in Sonny’s world. For a long time Ric felt the same and it was so reassuring to be with someone who shared that priority. But after the kidnappings and Michael returned home, Ric changed. He became sympathetic to Sonny to the point of neglecting his own family. I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands for Kristina’s sake.”

Louise was positive she did not like the change of tone in Alexis’s voice. It sounded dubious and steeped in desperation. She asked suspiciously, “Alexis, just what did you do?”

She made no excuses, just answered in quiet monotone. “I took $500,000 of Cassadine money and paid a federal prosecutor to manufacture evidence against Sonny as a means to send him to prison.”

Dr. Winters looked down at he notepad but purposely did not pick it up. She wanted no physical record of this part of their conversation. “I take it Ric found out about this.”

“He was furious,” Alexis nodded. “He had a right to be. I’ve been telling him since he became the DA to ‘do the right thing’ and suddenly I was in breech of every legal ethic I ever believed in.”

“How did he respond?”

Alexis paused a minute, momentarily overcome by the vivid memory of Ric, at the eleventh hour, standing up in court imploring the judge to allow him to make his own closing statement. She could tell by the look on his face as he approached the jury box that he was planning to throw the case. Alexis remembered closing her eyes, silently begging him to reconsider, but as he clenched his jaw and drew a deep breath, the first words out of his mouth gave a clear indication of Ric’s intent.

“He…he threw the case and defended Sonny. In all the years I’ve practiced law, I’ve never seen a District Attorney turn the tables on his own case and defend a known mob boss in open court. It cost Ric everything: my trust, our family and even his job. How could I compete with such blatant loyalty to his brother? I didn’t even want to try because I shouldn’t have to, neither should Kristina.”

“That must have been painful, Alexis. I imagine you also felt betrayed.”

“I felt more abandoned than betrayed.” Alexis said somberly. “After the courtroom emptied I stayed behind. I needed some sort of plausible explanation as to why my husband was willing to throw our family away.”

“Did he give it to you?”

“In spades!” she shook her head, even now in a state of disbelief. “Ric finally told me exactly why he did what he did and I understood. I unequivocally understood. But, if only could have trusted me enough to share it with me early on, everything would have been different.”

“Shared what?” Dr. Winters asked.

Alexis let out a light laugh laced with irony. “I can’t tell you, but it was significant. I will say that it involved the welfare of a child.”

“Kristina?”

“No,” Alexis answered. “Let’s just suffice it to say that Ric had a good reason to do what he did and I get that now. Unfortunately, I ‘got it’ too late and he is unable to forgive me.”

“That’s when he told you the marriage was over.”

“Yes,” Alexis swallowed hard wiping tears from her eyes and then looking up at Dr. Winters angrily. “But what gives him the right? He dictated the type of marriage we would have and then, when it suited him, he dictated when it was over. Do I even have a voice in this marriage? I feel as though my feelings and opinions are insignificant! I love him; we’re going to have a child together, but is it fair for him to say ‘too bad, it’s over’ and force me to accept his decision whether I agree or not? Then he slept with Reese Marshall? My God! She’s been seeing Sonny! Where’s the ‘brotherly love’ and loyalty in that?”

Louise elected not to interrupt Alexis’s tirade, but rather let her release her pent up anger and frustration. Ultimately it would calm her down and be better for her and the baby.

Alexis ran her right hand hopelessly through her hair. “Ric lied to me about his agenda with Sonny and I forgave him! Kristina depended on him. I depended on him. I needed him! I still do.”

Alexis sank back down in her chair defeated, tears rushing down her face. She looked up at Louise like a wounded animal pleading for help.

“Don’t you see that I have to end this love? I have to kill it and that’s killing me. I know what I need to do. I just…I just don’t know how to do it.”

Watching one of the strongest women she’d ever known crumbling before her eyes, Louise reached for a box of tissue and handed it to her.

“I-I’m sorry,” Alexis sniffed, snatching one from the box. “Like I said, it’s hormones!”

“No,” Dr. Winters corrected her. “It’s feelings. They are raw and right on the surface but you are entitled to them, Alexis.” She picked up her notebook and stood, putting a tender but firm hand on her patient’s shoulder. “I’m going to give you a few moments alone to gather yourself and you can slip out the back door when you’re ready. This was a good session. We covered a lot of ground.”

As exhausted as her patient, Louise slowly walked toward the door, but turned back as Alexis hailed her.

“Do you think you can you help me?” she asked.

“We have to take it one step at a time, Alexis.” she answered honestly and left.

***

Ric stepped off the elevator arriving for his appointment with Dr. Winters much earlier than he expected. With all of the new time on his hands he admittedly was at a loss of what to do with himself.

That morning he leisurely read The Port Charles Herald cover to cover over a few unappetizing slices of dry toast and way too many cups of coffee then took a long reflective walk down by the docks. Ending up at Kelly’s, Ric went in and ordered yet another cup of “joe”. Mike Corbin actually threatened to ‘cut him off’ due to how much his hands shook as he raised the cup to his lips. There was at least one advantage to his reconciliation with Sonny; Mike was a lot friendlier to him these days.

Strolling around the corner beyond the fourth floor nurses station, Ric caught sight of Alexis out of the corner of his eye quickly heading for the back stairwell. “She shouldn’t be taking the stairs in her condition,” he thought. “And what is she doing here?”

“Alexis?” he called, jogging down the hall in her direction.

She was visibly startled at the sound of his voice and instantly put her head down.

“Hey,” Ric slowed down as he approached her. “Are you all right? You’re hand isn’t infected or anything, is it?”

“No, it’s fine, thank you.” she mumbled keeping her eyes averted.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked concerned that she would not look at him.

Taking a deep breath Alexis jerked her head up and smiled, her eyes red and puffy.

“You’ve been crying!”

“Yes, well, pregnant women cry at the ‘drop of a hat’, haven’t you heard that before?”

“I thought that was an old wives tale or something,” he countered skeptically.

“No, it’s true,” she sniffed and dabbed her eyes with a tissue and attempted to laugh. “I’m living proof. See?”

Ric reached out, took the tissue from her hand and continued to pat her remaining tears away. “What are you doing here?”

Alexis’s mind raced for an explanation. “Salve!” she blurted. “I wanted to pick up some extra salve for the cut on my hand so I wouldn’t run out. You know how clumsy I am with my right hand. I accidentally squirted way too much out when I was changing the bandage this morning and…such a waste.”

“I see,” he nodded not buying the feeble explanation she was peddling.

“What are you doing here?” Alexis cleverly redirected.

“Me?” he asked desperately searching for a valid explanation. “Lucky! I’m supposed to meet Lucky here to talk about a case he’s working on. Even though I’m no longer the DA, he seems to think I might have insight that could help him. He was questioning a witness on this floor so I told him I’d meet him here.”

Alexis nodded, her sixth sense telling her that Lucky would not have too many open cases since he was just reinstated to the department recently. “Well, I am glad he values your input. I know I do… er…did…well, I still do legally,” she sputtered then paused to clear her throat. “You now Ric, I’ve got to go. Kristina’s at playgroup and Viola had some personal errands to run and can’t pick her up so-”

“I didn’t realize she had playgroup on Tuesdays?”

“It’s new.” she explained nervously. “Kind of an experimental thing.”

“Well, give Kristina a kiss for me.”

“We’ll do!” Alexis nodded abruptly accompanied by a manufactured grin and started for the door.

“Alexis?”

“Hmmm?”

“Why don’t you take the elevator? You don’t want to overdo in your condition. You need to take care of yourself and the baby.”

Realizing that there was no longer a need for a covert escape, Alexis looked down the hall to the elevator bay. “Right! Good idea. See you later!”

She scurried by him and Ric sighed. He couldn’t help but to want to take care of Alexis but he knew it was unfair to act one way and declare he felt another.

“This is a royal mess, Lansing,” he muttered and looked at his watch. Twelve fifteen and his appointment was not until one. Looking up he saw the sign for the cafeteria and sighed. “What’s one more cup of coffee?”

chapter 4