The Effect of James Whistler, Chapter Nine
Title: The Effect of James Whistler, Chapter Nine
Author: domfangirl
Starring: Lincoln and Jane, with special appearances by Sara, LJ, Michael, and Sofia.
Category: Multi-Chapter (to start from the beginning, go HERE)
Rating: PG-13 for a little making out
Summary: It was S3 with Jane added to the mix. Now it’s still set in S3, but it takes into account S4 in various ways.
Author’s Notes: This was supposed to be the last chapter, but it got too long, so burntcircles you get an extension! There will really only be one more chapter, though, I swear!
Jane found that once Lincoln got an idea in his head, trying to shake it loose was pretty impossible.
Not that she wanted him to change his mind about getting married, she just wanted more time to prepare for it. So she nixed leaving the next morning idea right away. First he wanted to go without even telling the rest of their housemates. Jane quickly squelched that because after all they'd been through, there was no way they could leave without a word. Everyone would suspect the worst and assume The Company had decided it wasn't through with them.
Additionally, she knew how upset LJ would be if they got married without him.
Michael couldn't go with them, of course, because he was still a wanted fugitive in the U.S., though Sara's father's friend, Bruce Bennett, was still working to get Michael exonerated; it looked promising, it just hadn't happened yet.
In the end, she finally convinced Lincoln that they needed to wait until her period was over, so they could have sex as a newly married couple. This was the only argument she was able to use that he didn't find some way around. Because like it or not, Lincoln would always be a man with a healthy sexual appetite and it ruled his life far more than he wanted to admit. He even seemed to forget that because of her birth control her period only lasted four days, but he gave her until the following Friday before they would travel northward. That was a full seven days for them to get organized.
Jane had private thoughts about that, so private, she didn’t even let him see the triumphant smile that erupted on her face when he finally conceded defeat. He liked to think he ran things, but she knew the truth.
Really, everyone except Lincoln knew the truth, and they all seemed content to let him have his delusion.
At the dinner table a few days later, LJ asked, “So are you gonna be Jane Burrows now?”
Before Jane could respond, Lincoln said, “Of course she is!” When Michael, Sara, Sofia, LJ and Jane all turned their heads to stare at him, he visibly shrank. “I mean, uh…aren’t you?” His gaze skittered from face to face before finally landing on Jane’s as he smiled weakly.
“I actually haven’t thought about it, yet,” Jane said, dragging her eyes from Lincoln’s face to that of his son’s. “Since we only decided we were doing this a few days ago, I haven’t been able to process everything yet.” Not while she was Googling Las Vegas hotels and the least gaudy chapel she could manage to find on the Internet.
She was being diplomatic as well as honest.
“Lots of women don’t take their husband’s name. It doesn’t mean anything,” Sara offered, her tone conversational, her eyes on Michael. When Michael cleared his throat and lifted his brows at her, Jane felt sure this was a silent communication that screamed Lincoln may have a different view of that. But of course he would, because he was Lincoln. That was why she’d fallen in love with him to begin with. His caveman tendencies, while somewhat irritating, were also terribly endearing. But all the same, she didn’t want to have the discussion at the dinner table with four other opinions besides the only two who mattered.
“I think Burrows is a cool name, though,” LJ said, his revelation reminding Jane of his age, and his lack of understanding about the dynamics between men and women. She had witnessed over the passing months, LJ’s dogged devotion to Sofia, and he didn’t seem to be aware that she viewed him as a little brother. In fact, when Lincoln had spoken to him about it (at Jane’s insistence), his only concern had been about their age difference-he was almost 17 now, and Sofia was 23. Lincoln hadn’t discouraged him the way Jane would have liked, but he had given him the reality check that Sofia’s boyfriend had died recently, tragically, and it was unlikely she was looking at anyone romantically, but especially not someone that much younger than her. LJ’s assumption that if she was given enough time to heal, she would come around to his way of thinking didn’t sit well with Jane, but Lincoln was convinced that he would give up eventually, or meet someone else who lit his spark, and he’d told her not to worry about it.
But she couldn’t help it. She was about to officially become LJ’s stepmother in a matter of days, but she’d been in that capacity for nine months already. Some instincts, even those most underused surged to the fore when properly irrigated. In response to the plaintive note in LJ’s voice, she said, “Honey, I have nothing against the name. I just never really thought about getting married and changing my name. Now I need to think about it.”
Her eyes moved back to Lincoln, whose expression was a little less than thunderous, and plainly said What’s to think about? though he remained quiet. She smiled softly at him, trying to take the sting from her words. “I’m not against it, I’m just undecided, okay?” She reached over and wrapped her fingers around Lincoln’s thick wrist, squeezing him gently.
She watched while he and LJ exchanged conspiratorial looks, and she knew they were of the same mind about the subject. Sofia said softly, “You could always hyphenate your name, you know. Be Jane Phillips-Burrows.”
Jane looked over at the young woman and nodded. “That’s a great idea,” Lincoln said enthusiastically, throwing Sofia a huge smile.
“Something else to think about, no doubt,” Jane hedged, still not willing to make the decision at the committee level.
Lincoln’s smile faded when she didn’t readily agree, and Jane hid her own smile by wiping her mouth with her napkin. Considering all he’d been through, she found the fact that such small things could make or break his day charming. Despite her weakness for said charm, she didn’t intend to make the decision within five minutes of the idea being presented to her. “I have time to decide, since we’re not going to Las Vegas until the end of the week,” she said as a reminder.
*
The next day Jane was sipping a green tea and sitting in the chair in front of her bank of surveillance cameras. She’d never seen anything suspicious, not in the nearly five months they’d been living in Mexico, but she still felt the need to observe at least a couple hours each day. Sometimes she went back through the tapes that recorded when she wasn’t watching, but today she watched the live feed contemplatively, weighing the great name debate from the preceding evening.
When they’d gone to bed, Lincoln hadn’t said another word about it, but he really hadn’t said another word period, which was abnormal. Even when they argued, he didn’t give her the silent treatment. He had always been much more likely to shout his grievances than keep them to himself. In the darkness, she had reached out to him, and when he hadn’t moved away from her, she had eased her body up behind his, tucking her face against his back and aligning her legs with his.
His arm had lifted, allowing her to slide hers under his and their hands joined together. She hadn’t said anything, instead she'd tried to let her actions show that she loved him and that was in no way reflected by whether or not she took his name, but she could tell it hurt him anyway. The way he handled this hurt, however, was so un-Lincoln-like it threw her for a loop.
A knock at the door of the den drew her thoughts away from the sad tension they’d fallen asleep with between them. Sara’s head poked through the opened door. “You got a minute?” she asked.
Jane chuckled, motioning towards the docile television monitors in front of her. “I’m swamped, actually. Come back later.”
Sara grinned widely, and entered the room. Shutting the door with a decisive twist of her wrist, she grabbed the other chair that sat behind a desk on the opposite side of the room and wheeled it over to be near Jane. “How are things?” Jane asked.
“I’m doing all right,” Sara said.
“Still having nightmares?”
“Only a couple times a week now, which is much better. Those techniques you gave me help a lot, and of course, Michael’s always up for his own kind of therapy,” she added with a wink.
Jane had just taken a mouthful of tea, and it required a great deal of self-control to swallow it without choking on her laughter. “I’ve always believed they were brothers, but now I know for sure,” she wheezed once she could speak again.
“Yes, they are alike in a few ways,” Sara agreed, her eyes dancing. “Which is what brings me to you today.”
“What’s up?” Jane asked.
“The name thing, of course,” Sara said, looking a bit sheepish.
Jane set her bottle of tea down. “I know, right? I mean, who would think it could cause such a controversy? I really need to thank LJ for that,” she added darkly.
“I just wanted you to know I’m with you. I decided a long time ago, should I ever get married, I would be a hyphenate. I’m the only Tancredi left from my dad’s line, and I’m not willing to give it up entirely. Besides the fact that it’s just a cool name,” she said, the way she dropped her voice slightly a very spot-on imitation of Lincoln’s son.
Jane couldn’t help but laugh. Shaking her head, she confided, “Lincoln was seriously depressed last night. Like seriously. Depressed. He wouldn’t even talk to me, though he did allow me to cuddle with him until I fell asleep. I was just sitting here thinking about it, and it really doesn’t matter to me. I don’t have any particular attachment to my name, and really, if I think of it as an alias, it’s probably a good idea, right? There are probably people looking for Jane Phillips. No one will be looking for Jane Burrows.”
Sara nodded her agreement before she explained further. “Michael and I were discussing it last night, and he is strangely archaic himself. I mean, I expect Lincoln to be a little-primordial? I guess? But Michael? It surprised me. I told him if and when we ever get married, he can only expect me to hyphenate my name, and that was something I’d decided long before I met him. In the end he grumbled something about that being a fair compromise, but he was still pouting about it a little. Of course, I think more than anything, he’s upset that he won’t be there when his brother gets married, so he’s channeling a little of his angst my way. But that’s just my amateur psychoanalysis.”
Jane snorted, adding her own example. “You know the crazy SOB wanted to just get up and drive to Vegas? It took every argument I could pull out to get him to wait a week. I knew everyone would be upset about it anyway, but especially if we just snuck off.”
“Single-mindedness. Another trait they share,” Sara announced.
“While it’s admirable, and useful in some situations, other times it’s…” Jane trailed off, unsure which adjective best described her feelings about it.
“Annoying?” Sara supplied.
“Maddening,” Jane agreed.
“Down right irritating.”
“But oh-so-wonderful, you know. When you need therapy.”
Laughing together, they both looked up guiltily when the door opened suddenly and Lincoln found them. “What’s going on in here?” he asked, making his way over to them.
Jane looked at Sara, and Sara looked at her, and then they just laughed harder. “Nothing, baby,” Jane said, stretching her arm out towards him. He’d been gone from the bed before she awoke that morning, and she had learned from LJ that he had gone for a surfing session. Calming her giggles, she asked, “How were the waves?”
He reached out in return, taking her hand and squeezing it tightly as he came to stand next to her chair. “Not very big. It was sort of depressing,” he murmured, his face reflecting that things all around were just not very good. Jane suppressed another smile, but she couldn’t help the furtive glance she shot at Sara. “And, I swear I just heard Michael on the phone with Sucre, inviting him to our wedding! I’m telling you, we should have just gone without saying anything. Now it’s gonna be wall to wall people.” Jane looked back up at his face in time to see his eyebrows drop down over his eyes as he glared at her, or the world in general.
“Fernando, Maricruz and their little girl are hardly wall to wall people, Lincoln,” Sara said, saving Jane the trouble of pointing out the obvious about their friends that lived a couple hours away from them.
He cut his brother’s girlfriend in on the glare. “Yeah, thanks for the math lesson,” he grumped.
Jane laughed again, and tugged on Lincoln’s arm. “Don’t be mean. She’s just to being reasonable.” Something she wasn’t altogether sure Lincoln could be over this whole wedding topic. As something that had started as what seemed like a spur of the moment thing, she knew now that he’d had some kind of detailed idea in his head about it, but the further they got into it, the more those details were changing, and the more he wasn’t liking it. “Why don’t we go for a walk?” she suggested, rising to her feet slowly. She glanced back at the television monitors.
“You can drag yourself away from this excitement?” Lincoln groused questioningly.
Elbowing him in the stomach, she huffed out an exasperated breath. “Quit being such a big baby. You’re going to end up getting your way anyway, and then you’re going to feel foolish for having pouted so much.”
His eyes lit up at her declaration and he raised his eyebrows excitedly. “I’m going to get my way?” Then his face fell slightly. “Wait. About what exactly?”
That was when Jane knew she had some negotiating to do. It was time to make him sweat just a little bit longer. “Why don’t we go discuss that right now?”
Jane extended her hand towards her fiancé and when he took it and pulled her towards the door, she threw Sara a wink.
“Good luck, Lincoln,” Sara said quietly, as though she didn’t want him to hear, though Jane was certain she did want him to hear it. Particularly when she said, “You’re gonna need it!”
*
“What are we doing?” he asked, a hint of impatience attached to his tone.
“We’re going to enjoy the sunshine,” Jane said, pulling him along behind her. There was a small copse of trees on the same property their house sat on, and she had spent time there, when doing perimeter checks. She’d often thought it would be a good place to hide; the visuals from there to the house were excellent. One could see out quite well, but not see in. It seemed like a good place to have a serious discussion with Lincoln that would not get interrupted by one of their family members.
Once they arrived at the secluded spot, Lincoln looked around suspiciously, as though he expected to be ambushed. Jane rolled her eyes, shoved her hand against his chest and hooked her ankle around the back of his calf, knocking him flat on his back. He landed with a surprised grunt, his eyes widening and a bad word escaping his lips as he looked up at her. “What was that for?” he asked, disturbed.
Jane knelt down next to him, placing her hand against his chest again when he made to sit up. “Lay down,” she murmured. “I want to lay out here, in the sunshine with you.” She lay down next to him, so their shoulders were touching. His head was turned towards her, still eyeing her warily. “Hold my hand,” she commanded, lifting her arm up so that her hand was visible to him.
Lincoln’s thick fingers laced through hers immediately, and Jane sighed contentedly. He wasn’t always this easy to boss around, but she’d caught him off guard and now he was trying to figure out what she was up to. “What the hell’s going on?” he finally huffed, his voice subdued now, like his body.
“I want to talk,” she responded.
“About what?” he asked, his pitch rising just slightly in volume.
“How long have we known each other?” she countered.
There was a pause, and Jane fought against opening her eyes and turning her head to look at him to read his expression. “I don’t know. About 10 months, I guess.”
“Right, so most people would think we’re crazy to be getting married, don’t you think?”
His fingers clenched around hers. “If you don’t want to get married, just say s-“
“I WANT TO GET MARRIED, LINCOLN!” She raised her voice significantly to be heard over the anxiety coloring his speech. “Could you just have a conversation with me, without freaking out right now. Please?” she coaxed, placing her free hand over the top of their joined hands to caress his knuckles.
He grunted, but remained silent.
“Okay. So people would think we’re crazy, right?” she prodded.
“I guess so,” he muttered.
“But I would counter and say that it’s because of what we’ve been through, that we don’t want to waste time. We love each other, we want to be married, right?”
“Yes,” he answered emphatically.
“We haven’t known each other long, but we’ve always been honest with each other, right? Able to say whatever we needed to say, right?”
Another short pause. She could tell he was sensing a trap. “Uh, yeah. I mean, yes. I’ve always been honest with you.”
“Except last night. Last night you didn’t say anything,” she pointed out.
“Oh, Jane,” he sighed, and she felt him heave himself up so he was leaning over her. His empty hand brushed her chin, tipping her head towards him, so she opened her eyes. “I wasn’t not being honest,” he said softly. “You know how I feel about it. I was just trying to not be demanding about it.”
“By not speaking to me?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.
“Fine, it hurt my feelings, is that what you want to hear?” He spat the words quickly, as though admitting to the hurt was harder than actually enduring it.
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?” she replied.
He dropped his eyes away from hers, looking away before falling back over on to his back. “Yes. It hurt my feelings, but I know it shouldn’t, so I’m trying to ‘not be a big baby,’” he said, imitating her in an unflatteringly high-pitched voice that sounded nothing at all like her.
She put him out of his misery, making her announcement quickly. “I’m going to take your name.”
He was in the process of throwing his free arm up over his eyes, but he paused and turned his head to look at her. “You are?” he asked, astonished.
“Yes. I’ve decided that Phillips has no real value to me anyway. I would like to have your name.”
He flipped up on his side again, leaning over, closer than before. Disengaging their laced fingers, he rested on his elbow while his other hand cupped her face gently. “Really?”
“Really,” she confirmed, surprised that his reaction could cause tears to prick her eyes.
His mouth came down on hers, the sweet moment extended through a thoroughly loving kiss that reminded her of what made her fall in love with him in the first place. He might be like a bull in a china shop, but the passion in his kisses made her feel like they were waltzing gracefully to a tune only they could hear.
Her arms surrounded his neck and the kisses grew from a gentle celebration to out and out foreplay. His tongue mimicked his particular style of lovemaking so absolutely that Jane wasn’t even entirely aware when he moved between her thighs until her legs were gripping his hips, fiercely holding him locked against her. His lips broke away from hers to travel down her throat, nipping and sucking her skin erotically until she was trembling from head to toe. “Linc…” she moaned, not even sure if she was trying to call him off or not.
“I know, I know…” he whispered against her skin. Then he mumbled something that sounded like “fuckin’ period,” but Jane wasn’t sure.
He buried his nose against her neck, tucking his face into her hair. He was no longer kissing and caressing her aggressively, but he was holding her closely, and allowing her to do the same for him until his body relaxed somewhat. Jane was the one who had rules about sex during her period; Lincoln had made it abundantly clear on more than one occasion that he thought that was why shower sex had been invented in the first place. Jane momentarily agreed with him. She should have realized giving him the simple gift of taking his name would please him enough to warrant some strong affection.
She stoked her fingers through his hair, following the dark strands that fell onto the back of his neck. His hair, once grown out, was surprisingly wavy, and sexy, though she shouldn’t have been so amazed by it. But like everything else about him, it just turned out to be something she liked very much. To bring the conversation back around, she murmured against his ear, “So you got your way, at least on one thing, huh?”
He shuddered alongside her, the heat of her breath on his earlobe causing a full resurgence from him against the apex of her thighs that she wasn’t expecting. He groaned lowly, and she laughed evocatively, letting her breath waft over his ear again. “You are such a tease,” he grated out, lifting his head, his intent to move away from her obvious.
She tightened her legs around him, holding him to her. “You got your way, you big baby. Aren’t you even going to acknowledge that?”
He examined her face, and his eyes grew serious, though the flush of desire didn’t recede totally. “What if I traded you the name thing for what I really want?” he asked.
“We have to let everyone come to the wedding, baby. It’s mean to tell them they can’t come,” she chided.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t care about that. Well, I care about it, but what can I do? I couldn’t keep Michael out of Fox River, I have a feeling I won’t be able to keep him out of Vegas.”
“Michael can’t come!” Jane blurted out.
“I’m positive that’s what him and Sucre were talking about. Trying to figure out some way they can come, even though they’re both wanted felons.” He rolled his eyes and then shrugged. “He’s going to do whatever he wants. There’s no point in trying to stop him.”
Jane worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “Well,” she said after a moment. “Sucre and his family do have identification-false I.D., but I.D. all the same. I guess they could make it into the country relatively easy, but there’s no way Michael can. Unless he plans on getting a very good tan in just a few days to masquer-“
“Jane,” Lincoln said, interrupting her ponderings.
“What?”
“I’ve got an offer here; you can keep your name if you give me something else.”
“But I don’t want to keep my name,” she said, smiling when he scowled at her.
“You don’t even want to know what I want?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. Do I?” she asked, leaning her face up and peering deeply into his eyes. He blinked first so she stole a quick kiss before she dropped her head back to the soft grass beneath them.
Lincoln took a deep breath, as if steeling himself. Then he said, “I want you to stop taking your birth control pills.”
Jane, having been full of lust for him, and then trading that in for having fun teasing him, was completely unprepared for this request. In fact, her mouth fell open and a no noise came out at all, for at least thirty seconds. Then, the only sound she could come up with was, “Oh.”
Lincoln’s eyebrows went up comically, only to come down darkly and then a shadow passed over his face.
“Oh,” Jane said again. Oh, no.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he muttered, this time fully disengaging himself from her embrace.
Her legs and arms fell open, allowing him to escape, and he sat up, turning from her somewhat so that all that was visible to her was the length of his back and all that was in her reach was the small expanse of skin where his shirt was hiked up slightly and his board shorts-the orange ones he’d gotten at the hotel in Panama-were pulled down slightly.
Unable to help herself, she reached out and put her fingertips against that warm exposed part of his body. She had never been in this position ever; she’d never loved someone so much that hurting them-truly hurting them-hurt her too.
Teasing Lincoln was one thing; and sorting things out so she made a decision for the right reasons was another thing. But this. This.
Having a baby? Her? Seriously?
Before she could say anything, he began to speak. “When you didn’t want to take my name, I wondered how serious this was for you. I mean, was it just some feminist thing, or was it a more serious thing, like really, the idea of ‘til-death-do-you-part with me is just not what you have in mind. But then we started having this conversation, and I started thinking maybe I’d gotten it wrong, but…” When her fingers moved over the sensitive skin on his back as she pushed herself upright, he shivered again. “But maybe I was right all along,” he finished.
Leaning her cheek against his shoulder, she slid her hand further down, into the elastic band of his shorts. The intimate touch seemed like the best balm to the disappointment she could not help him avoid. “You know you’re catching me on all sides this week. Things I’ve never thought about before-getting married, changing my name, having a baby. It’s not some sort of reflection on you, Lincoln, that I don’t know the answers to these questions. It’s a reflection on me.”
His head turned towards her, and she could see him look at her peripherally. “You didn’t hesitate on the getting married part,” he reminded her. “Just on the taking my name part, and the having my baby part.”
“First of all,” she stated sharply. “I get to have my own issues. I didn’t come here baggage free, and I’m not just your perfect little Rambo Barbie that can adjust to your every whim. Secondly,” she lifted her face from his arm when he pulled away from her marginally. “I thought about the name thing, and came to a conclusion. The fact that I didn’t just roll over and let you impregnate me without some thought is a good thing. I mean, how much have you really thought about this? A baby would change everything. And who wants to bring a child into this world? After everything you’ve seen, Lincoln, how can you want to introduce an innocent to it?”
Turning his body around to face her, Jane was surprised to see a smile on his face. “Rambo Barbie?” he questioned.
She waved a hand dismissively. “Nickname from when I first joined the Army.”
He laughed. “Ha. I like it.” He paused, looking down at his hands as they reached for hers. He ran his thumbs over her knuckles softly before pulling them up to his mouth. Kissing her skin softly, he murmured, “Maybe I didn’t think it through very much. Maybe all I thought about was that I love you, and you love me, and a baby would be like our love, walking around on two legs.” He paused again. “Eventually,” he amended, a grin fighting its way on to his face.
Jane hated him in that moment. Hated him almost as much as she loved him. Because he’d convinced her with nothing more than a cliché for an argument.
“Besides,” he continued after a brief second. “Aren’t you the one who told me not to shed tears over what might happen? You taught me to live again, Jane. What’s more alive than a family? What’s more alive than us, making babies?” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Besides-nine months with no periods, who could ask for more?”
She could have come back with a laundry list of the other ailments of pregnancy that one traded in for a season of missed periods, but there was no point. She might as well have already been carrying his child, it was that done of a deal.
“You don’t have to decide right now,” he said, but she thought he only offered that because he could no longer see resistance in her eyes. “You can think about it. And, if you say no, it changes nothing. I still want you, forever, with or without babies.”
This time Jane’s eyes really filled with tears, and since he still had her hands wrapped up in his she couldn’t even wipe them away. “Really?” she asked, aware that they had somehow exchanged positions. When they’d come to the grove of trees, she’d held his dreams in her hands, but now, with his sweet words, and his inconvenient memory, he had given her a vision of what they could be.
It was something she’d never even allowed herself to hope for, but now, it was all in her power to have. “Really,” he answered.
Chapter Ten
Author: domfangirl
Starring: Lincoln and Jane, with special appearances by Sara, LJ, Michael, and Sofia.
Category: Multi-Chapter (to start from the beginning, go HERE)
Rating: PG-13 for a little making out
Summary: It was S3 with Jane added to the mix. Now it’s still set in S3, but it takes into account S4 in various ways.
Author’s Notes: This was supposed to be the last chapter, but it got too long, so burntcircles you get an extension! There will really only be one more chapter, though, I swear!
Jane found that once Lincoln got an idea in his head, trying to shake it loose was pretty impossible.
Not that she wanted him to change his mind about getting married, she just wanted more time to prepare for it. So she nixed leaving the next morning idea right away. First he wanted to go without even telling the rest of their housemates. Jane quickly squelched that because after all they'd been through, there was no way they could leave without a word. Everyone would suspect the worst and assume The Company had decided it wasn't through with them.
Additionally, she knew how upset LJ would be if they got married without him.
Michael couldn't go with them, of course, because he was still a wanted fugitive in the U.S., though Sara's father's friend, Bruce Bennett, was still working to get Michael exonerated; it looked promising, it just hadn't happened yet.
In the end, she finally convinced Lincoln that they needed to wait until her period was over, so they could have sex as a newly married couple. This was the only argument she was able to use that he didn't find some way around. Because like it or not, Lincoln would always be a man with a healthy sexual appetite and it ruled his life far more than he wanted to admit. He even seemed to forget that because of her birth control her period only lasted four days, but he gave her until the following Friday before they would travel northward. That was a full seven days for them to get organized.
Jane had private thoughts about that, so private, she didn’t even let him see the triumphant smile that erupted on her face when he finally conceded defeat. He liked to think he ran things, but she knew the truth.
Really, everyone except Lincoln knew the truth, and they all seemed content to let him have his delusion.
At the dinner table a few days later, LJ asked, “So are you gonna be Jane Burrows now?”
Before Jane could respond, Lincoln said, “Of course she is!” When Michael, Sara, Sofia, LJ and Jane all turned their heads to stare at him, he visibly shrank. “I mean, uh…aren’t you?” His gaze skittered from face to face before finally landing on Jane’s as he smiled weakly.
“I actually haven’t thought about it, yet,” Jane said, dragging her eyes from Lincoln’s face to that of his son’s. “Since we only decided we were doing this a few days ago, I haven’t been able to process everything yet.” Not while she was Googling Las Vegas hotels and the least gaudy chapel she could manage to find on the Internet.
She was being diplomatic as well as honest.
“Lots of women don’t take their husband’s name. It doesn’t mean anything,” Sara offered, her tone conversational, her eyes on Michael. When Michael cleared his throat and lifted his brows at her, Jane felt sure this was a silent communication that screamed Lincoln may have a different view of that. But of course he would, because he was Lincoln. That was why she’d fallen in love with him to begin with. His caveman tendencies, while somewhat irritating, were also terribly endearing. But all the same, she didn’t want to have the discussion at the dinner table with four other opinions besides the only two who mattered.
“I think Burrows is a cool name, though,” LJ said, his revelation reminding Jane of his age, and his lack of understanding about the dynamics between men and women. She had witnessed over the passing months, LJ’s dogged devotion to Sofia, and he didn’t seem to be aware that she viewed him as a little brother. In fact, when Lincoln had spoken to him about it (at Jane’s insistence), his only concern had been about their age difference-he was almost 17 now, and Sofia was 23. Lincoln hadn’t discouraged him the way Jane would have liked, but he had given him the reality check that Sofia’s boyfriend had died recently, tragically, and it was unlikely she was looking at anyone romantically, but especially not someone that much younger than her. LJ’s assumption that if she was given enough time to heal, she would come around to his way of thinking didn’t sit well with Jane, but Lincoln was convinced that he would give up eventually, or meet someone else who lit his spark, and he’d told her not to worry about it.
But she couldn’t help it. She was about to officially become LJ’s stepmother in a matter of days, but she’d been in that capacity for nine months already. Some instincts, even those most underused surged to the fore when properly irrigated. In response to the plaintive note in LJ’s voice, she said, “Honey, I have nothing against the name. I just never really thought about getting married and changing my name. Now I need to think about it.”
Her eyes moved back to Lincoln, whose expression was a little less than thunderous, and plainly said What’s to think about? though he remained quiet. She smiled softly at him, trying to take the sting from her words. “I’m not against it, I’m just undecided, okay?” She reached over and wrapped her fingers around Lincoln’s thick wrist, squeezing him gently.
She watched while he and LJ exchanged conspiratorial looks, and she knew they were of the same mind about the subject. Sofia said softly, “You could always hyphenate your name, you know. Be Jane Phillips-Burrows.”
Jane looked over at the young woman and nodded. “That’s a great idea,” Lincoln said enthusiastically, throwing Sofia a huge smile.
“Something else to think about, no doubt,” Jane hedged, still not willing to make the decision at the committee level.
Lincoln’s smile faded when she didn’t readily agree, and Jane hid her own smile by wiping her mouth with her napkin. Considering all he’d been through, she found the fact that such small things could make or break his day charming. Despite her weakness for said charm, she didn’t intend to make the decision within five minutes of the idea being presented to her. “I have time to decide, since we’re not going to Las Vegas until the end of the week,” she said as a reminder.
*
The next day Jane was sipping a green tea and sitting in the chair in front of her bank of surveillance cameras. She’d never seen anything suspicious, not in the nearly five months they’d been living in Mexico, but she still felt the need to observe at least a couple hours each day. Sometimes she went back through the tapes that recorded when she wasn’t watching, but today she watched the live feed contemplatively, weighing the great name debate from the preceding evening.
When they’d gone to bed, Lincoln hadn’t said another word about it, but he really hadn’t said another word period, which was abnormal. Even when they argued, he didn’t give her the silent treatment. He had always been much more likely to shout his grievances than keep them to himself. In the darkness, she had reached out to him, and when he hadn’t moved away from her, she had eased her body up behind his, tucking her face against his back and aligning her legs with his.
His arm had lifted, allowing her to slide hers under his and their hands joined together. She hadn’t said anything, instead she'd tried to let her actions show that she loved him and that was in no way reflected by whether or not she took his name, but she could tell it hurt him anyway. The way he handled this hurt, however, was so un-Lincoln-like it threw her for a loop.
A knock at the door of the den drew her thoughts away from the sad tension they’d fallen asleep with between them. Sara’s head poked through the opened door. “You got a minute?” she asked.
Jane chuckled, motioning towards the docile television monitors in front of her. “I’m swamped, actually. Come back later.”
Sara grinned widely, and entered the room. Shutting the door with a decisive twist of her wrist, she grabbed the other chair that sat behind a desk on the opposite side of the room and wheeled it over to be near Jane. “How are things?” Jane asked.
“I’m doing all right,” Sara said.
“Still having nightmares?”
“Only a couple times a week now, which is much better. Those techniques you gave me help a lot, and of course, Michael’s always up for his own kind of therapy,” she added with a wink.
Jane had just taken a mouthful of tea, and it required a great deal of self-control to swallow it without choking on her laughter. “I’ve always believed they were brothers, but now I know for sure,” she wheezed once she could speak again.
“Yes, they are alike in a few ways,” Sara agreed, her eyes dancing. “Which is what brings me to you today.”
“What’s up?” Jane asked.
“The name thing, of course,” Sara said, looking a bit sheepish.
Jane set her bottle of tea down. “I know, right? I mean, who would think it could cause such a controversy? I really need to thank LJ for that,” she added darkly.
“I just wanted you to know I’m with you. I decided a long time ago, should I ever get married, I would be a hyphenate. I’m the only Tancredi left from my dad’s line, and I’m not willing to give it up entirely. Besides the fact that it’s just a cool name,” she said, the way she dropped her voice slightly a very spot-on imitation of Lincoln’s son.
Jane couldn’t help but laugh. Shaking her head, she confided, “Lincoln was seriously depressed last night. Like seriously. Depressed. He wouldn’t even talk to me, though he did allow me to cuddle with him until I fell asleep. I was just sitting here thinking about it, and it really doesn’t matter to me. I don’t have any particular attachment to my name, and really, if I think of it as an alias, it’s probably a good idea, right? There are probably people looking for Jane Phillips. No one will be looking for Jane Burrows.”
Sara nodded her agreement before she explained further. “Michael and I were discussing it last night, and he is strangely archaic himself. I mean, I expect Lincoln to be a little-primordial? I guess? But Michael? It surprised me. I told him if and when we ever get married, he can only expect me to hyphenate my name, and that was something I’d decided long before I met him. In the end he grumbled something about that being a fair compromise, but he was still pouting about it a little. Of course, I think more than anything, he’s upset that he won’t be there when his brother gets married, so he’s channeling a little of his angst my way. But that’s just my amateur psychoanalysis.”
Jane snorted, adding her own example. “You know the crazy SOB wanted to just get up and drive to Vegas? It took every argument I could pull out to get him to wait a week. I knew everyone would be upset about it anyway, but especially if we just snuck off.”
“Single-mindedness. Another trait they share,” Sara announced.
“While it’s admirable, and useful in some situations, other times it’s…” Jane trailed off, unsure which adjective best described her feelings about it.
“Annoying?” Sara supplied.
“Maddening,” Jane agreed.
“Down right irritating.”
“But oh-so-wonderful, you know. When you need therapy.”
Laughing together, they both looked up guiltily when the door opened suddenly and Lincoln found them. “What’s going on in here?” he asked, making his way over to them.
Jane looked at Sara, and Sara looked at her, and then they just laughed harder. “Nothing, baby,” Jane said, stretching her arm out towards him. He’d been gone from the bed before she awoke that morning, and she had learned from LJ that he had gone for a surfing session. Calming her giggles, she asked, “How were the waves?”
He reached out in return, taking her hand and squeezing it tightly as he came to stand next to her chair. “Not very big. It was sort of depressing,” he murmured, his face reflecting that things all around were just not very good. Jane suppressed another smile, but she couldn’t help the furtive glance she shot at Sara. “And, I swear I just heard Michael on the phone with Sucre, inviting him to our wedding! I’m telling you, we should have just gone without saying anything. Now it’s gonna be wall to wall people.” Jane looked back up at his face in time to see his eyebrows drop down over his eyes as he glared at her, or the world in general.
“Fernando, Maricruz and their little girl are hardly wall to wall people, Lincoln,” Sara said, saving Jane the trouble of pointing out the obvious about their friends that lived a couple hours away from them.
He cut his brother’s girlfriend in on the glare. “Yeah, thanks for the math lesson,” he grumped.
Jane laughed again, and tugged on Lincoln’s arm. “Don’t be mean. She’s just to being reasonable.” Something she wasn’t altogether sure Lincoln could be over this whole wedding topic. As something that had started as what seemed like a spur of the moment thing, she knew now that he’d had some kind of detailed idea in his head about it, but the further they got into it, the more those details were changing, and the more he wasn’t liking it. “Why don’t we go for a walk?” she suggested, rising to her feet slowly. She glanced back at the television monitors.
“You can drag yourself away from this excitement?” Lincoln groused questioningly.
Elbowing him in the stomach, she huffed out an exasperated breath. “Quit being such a big baby. You’re going to end up getting your way anyway, and then you’re going to feel foolish for having pouted so much.”
His eyes lit up at her declaration and he raised his eyebrows excitedly. “I’m going to get my way?” Then his face fell slightly. “Wait. About what exactly?”
That was when Jane knew she had some negotiating to do. It was time to make him sweat just a little bit longer. “Why don’t we go discuss that right now?”
Jane extended her hand towards her fiancé and when he took it and pulled her towards the door, she threw Sara a wink.
“Good luck, Lincoln,” Sara said quietly, as though she didn’t want him to hear, though Jane was certain she did want him to hear it. Particularly when she said, “You’re gonna need it!”
*
“What are we doing?” he asked, a hint of impatience attached to his tone.
“We’re going to enjoy the sunshine,” Jane said, pulling him along behind her. There was a small copse of trees on the same property their house sat on, and she had spent time there, when doing perimeter checks. She’d often thought it would be a good place to hide; the visuals from there to the house were excellent. One could see out quite well, but not see in. It seemed like a good place to have a serious discussion with Lincoln that would not get interrupted by one of their family members.
Once they arrived at the secluded spot, Lincoln looked around suspiciously, as though he expected to be ambushed. Jane rolled her eyes, shoved her hand against his chest and hooked her ankle around the back of his calf, knocking him flat on his back. He landed with a surprised grunt, his eyes widening and a bad word escaping his lips as he looked up at her. “What was that for?” he asked, disturbed.
Jane knelt down next to him, placing her hand against his chest again when he made to sit up. “Lay down,” she murmured. “I want to lay out here, in the sunshine with you.” She lay down next to him, so their shoulders were touching. His head was turned towards her, still eyeing her warily. “Hold my hand,” she commanded, lifting her arm up so that her hand was visible to him.
Lincoln’s thick fingers laced through hers immediately, and Jane sighed contentedly. He wasn’t always this easy to boss around, but she’d caught him off guard and now he was trying to figure out what she was up to. “What the hell’s going on?” he finally huffed, his voice subdued now, like his body.
“I want to talk,” she responded.
“About what?” he asked, his pitch rising just slightly in volume.
“How long have we known each other?” she countered.
There was a pause, and Jane fought against opening her eyes and turning her head to look at him to read his expression. “I don’t know. About 10 months, I guess.”
“Right, so most people would think we’re crazy to be getting married, don’t you think?”
His fingers clenched around hers. “If you don’t want to get married, just say s-“
“I WANT TO GET MARRIED, LINCOLN!” She raised her voice significantly to be heard over the anxiety coloring his speech. “Could you just have a conversation with me, without freaking out right now. Please?” she coaxed, placing her free hand over the top of their joined hands to caress his knuckles.
He grunted, but remained silent.
“Okay. So people would think we’re crazy, right?” she prodded.
“I guess so,” he muttered.
“But I would counter and say that it’s because of what we’ve been through, that we don’t want to waste time. We love each other, we want to be married, right?”
“Yes,” he answered emphatically.
“We haven’t known each other long, but we’ve always been honest with each other, right? Able to say whatever we needed to say, right?”
Another short pause. She could tell he was sensing a trap. “Uh, yeah. I mean, yes. I’ve always been honest with you.”
“Except last night. Last night you didn’t say anything,” she pointed out.
“Oh, Jane,” he sighed, and she felt him heave himself up so he was leaning over her. His empty hand brushed her chin, tipping her head towards him, so she opened her eyes. “I wasn’t not being honest,” he said softly. “You know how I feel about it. I was just trying to not be demanding about it.”
“By not speaking to me?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.
“Fine, it hurt my feelings, is that what you want to hear?” He spat the words quickly, as though admitting to the hurt was harder than actually enduring it.
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?” she replied.
He dropped his eyes away from hers, looking away before falling back over on to his back. “Yes. It hurt my feelings, but I know it shouldn’t, so I’m trying to ‘not be a big baby,’” he said, imitating her in an unflatteringly high-pitched voice that sounded nothing at all like her.
She put him out of his misery, making her announcement quickly. “I’m going to take your name.”
He was in the process of throwing his free arm up over his eyes, but he paused and turned his head to look at her. “You are?” he asked, astonished.
“Yes. I’ve decided that Phillips has no real value to me anyway. I would like to have your name.”
He flipped up on his side again, leaning over, closer than before. Disengaging their laced fingers, he rested on his elbow while his other hand cupped her face gently. “Really?”
“Really,” she confirmed, surprised that his reaction could cause tears to prick her eyes.
His mouth came down on hers, the sweet moment extended through a thoroughly loving kiss that reminded her of what made her fall in love with him in the first place. He might be like a bull in a china shop, but the passion in his kisses made her feel like they were waltzing gracefully to a tune only they could hear.
Her arms surrounded his neck and the kisses grew from a gentle celebration to out and out foreplay. His tongue mimicked his particular style of lovemaking so absolutely that Jane wasn’t even entirely aware when he moved between her thighs until her legs were gripping his hips, fiercely holding him locked against her. His lips broke away from hers to travel down her throat, nipping and sucking her skin erotically until she was trembling from head to toe. “Linc…” she moaned, not even sure if she was trying to call him off or not.
“I know, I know…” he whispered against her skin. Then he mumbled something that sounded like “fuckin’ period,” but Jane wasn’t sure.
He buried his nose against her neck, tucking his face into her hair. He was no longer kissing and caressing her aggressively, but he was holding her closely, and allowing her to do the same for him until his body relaxed somewhat. Jane was the one who had rules about sex during her period; Lincoln had made it abundantly clear on more than one occasion that he thought that was why shower sex had been invented in the first place. Jane momentarily agreed with him. She should have realized giving him the simple gift of taking his name would please him enough to warrant some strong affection.
She stoked her fingers through his hair, following the dark strands that fell onto the back of his neck. His hair, once grown out, was surprisingly wavy, and sexy, though she shouldn’t have been so amazed by it. But like everything else about him, it just turned out to be something she liked very much. To bring the conversation back around, she murmured against his ear, “So you got your way, at least on one thing, huh?”
He shuddered alongside her, the heat of her breath on his earlobe causing a full resurgence from him against the apex of her thighs that she wasn’t expecting. He groaned lowly, and she laughed evocatively, letting her breath waft over his ear again. “You are such a tease,” he grated out, lifting his head, his intent to move away from her obvious.
She tightened her legs around him, holding him to her. “You got your way, you big baby. Aren’t you even going to acknowledge that?”
He examined her face, and his eyes grew serious, though the flush of desire didn’t recede totally. “What if I traded you the name thing for what I really want?” he asked.
“We have to let everyone come to the wedding, baby. It’s mean to tell them they can’t come,” she chided.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t care about that. Well, I care about it, but what can I do? I couldn’t keep Michael out of Fox River, I have a feeling I won’t be able to keep him out of Vegas.”
“Michael can’t come!” Jane blurted out.
“I’m positive that’s what him and Sucre were talking about. Trying to figure out some way they can come, even though they’re both wanted felons.” He rolled his eyes and then shrugged. “He’s going to do whatever he wants. There’s no point in trying to stop him.”
Jane worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “Well,” she said after a moment. “Sucre and his family do have identification-false I.D., but I.D. all the same. I guess they could make it into the country relatively easy, but there’s no way Michael can. Unless he plans on getting a very good tan in just a few days to masquer-“
“Jane,” Lincoln said, interrupting her ponderings.
“What?”
“I’ve got an offer here; you can keep your name if you give me something else.”
“But I don’t want to keep my name,” she said, smiling when he scowled at her.
“You don’t even want to know what I want?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. Do I?” she asked, leaning her face up and peering deeply into his eyes. He blinked first so she stole a quick kiss before she dropped her head back to the soft grass beneath them.
Lincoln took a deep breath, as if steeling himself. Then he said, “I want you to stop taking your birth control pills.”
Jane, having been full of lust for him, and then trading that in for having fun teasing him, was completely unprepared for this request. In fact, her mouth fell open and a no noise came out at all, for at least thirty seconds. Then, the only sound she could come up with was, “Oh.”
Lincoln’s eyebrows went up comically, only to come down darkly and then a shadow passed over his face.
“Oh,” Jane said again. Oh, no.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he muttered, this time fully disengaging himself from her embrace.
Her legs and arms fell open, allowing him to escape, and he sat up, turning from her somewhat so that all that was visible to her was the length of his back and all that was in her reach was the small expanse of skin where his shirt was hiked up slightly and his board shorts-the orange ones he’d gotten at the hotel in Panama-were pulled down slightly.
Unable to help herself, she reached out and put her fingertips against that warm exposed part of his body. She had never been in this position ever; she’d never loved someone so much that hurting them-truly hurting them-hurt her too.
Teasing Lincoln was one thing; and sorting things out so she made a decision for the right reasons was another thing. But this. This.
Having a baby? Her? Seriously?
Before she could say anything, he began to speak. “When you didn’t want to take my name, I wondered how serious this was for you. I mean, was it just some feminist thing, or was it a more serious thing, like really, the idea of ‘til-death-do-you-part with me is just not what you have in mind. But then we started having this conversation, and I started thinking maybe I’d gotten it wrong, but…” When her fingers moved over the sensitive skin on his back as she pushed herself upright, he shivered again. “But maybe I was right all along,” he finished.
Leaning her cheek against his shoulder, she slid her hand further down, into the elastic band of his shorts. The intimate touch seemed like the best balm to the disappointment she could not help him avoid. “You know you’re catching me on all sides this week. Things I’ve never thought about before-getting married, changing my name, having a baby. It’s not some sort of reflection on you, Lincoln, that I don’t know the answers to these questions. It’s a reflection on me.”
His head turned towards her, and she could see him look at her peripherally. “You didn’t hesitate on the getting married part,” he reminded her. “Just on the taking my name part, and the having my baby part.”
“First of all,” she stated sharply. “I get to have my own issues. I didn’t come here baggage free, and I’m not just your perfect little Rambo Barbie that can adjust to your every whim. Secondly,” she lifted her face from his arm when he pulled away from her marginally. “I thought about the name thing, and came to a conclusion. The fact that I didn’t just roll over and let you impregnate me without some thought is a good thing. I mean, how much have you really thought about this? A baby would change everything. And who wants to bring a child into this world? After everything you’ve seen, Lincoln, how can you want to introduce an innocent to it?”
Turning his body around to face her, Jane was surprised to see a smile on his face. “Rambo Barbie?” he questioned.
She waved a hand dismissively. “Nickname from when I first joined the Army.”
He laughed. “Ha. I like it.” He paused, looking down at his hands as they reached for hers. He ran his thumbs over her knuckles softly before pulling them up to his mouth. Kissing her skin softly, he murmured, “Maybe I didn’t think it through very much. Maybe all I thought about was that I love you, and you love me, and a baby would be like our love, walking around on two legs.” He paused again. “Eventually,” he amended, a grin fighting its way on to his face.
Jane hated him in that moment. Hated him almost as much as she loved him. Because he’d convinced her with nothing more than a cliché for an argument.
“Besides,” he continued after a brief second. “Aren’t you the one who told me not to shed tears over what might happen? You taught me to live again, Jane. What’s more alive than a family? What’s more alive than us, making babies?” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Besides-nine months with no periods, who could ask for more?”
She could have come back with a laundry list of the other ailments of pregnancy that one traded in for a season of missed periods, but there was no point. She might as well have already been carrying his child, it was that done of a deal.
“You don’t have to decide right now,” he said, but she thought he only offered that because he could no longer see resistance in her eyes. “You can think about it. And, if you say no, it changes nothing. I still want you, forever, with or without babies.”
This time Jane’s eyes really filled with tears, and since he still had her hands wrapped up in his she couldn’t even wipe them away. “Really?” she asked, aware that they had somehow exchanged positions. When they’d come to the grove of trees, she’d held his dreams in her hands, but now, with his sweet words, and his inconvenient memory, he had given her a vision of what they could be.
It was something she’d never even allowed herself to hope for, but now, it was all in her power to have. “Really,” he answered.
Chapter Ten