“Wow, CJ Cregg lost for words,” he joked. “I don’t know what I have to offer, how much I can give you but. . .I’d like to find out.” His fingers caressed her cheek. “Okay, you can say your piece now.”

~*~*~*

CJ opened her mouth to speak just as there was a knock at the door and Toby shuffled in. He took one look at the two people curled up on the bed and lowered his gaze to the floor. “Um, Sorry.”

“Hey, Pokey.“ CJ slipped away from Jed’s embrace and climbed off the bed, putting as much distance between them as possible.

Sticking one hand into his pocket and rubbing his right temple furiously with the other, Toby mumbled something incoherent.

“Toby?” Jed asked, a little thrown by the sudden visitor.

“We got to talking in the bar. CJ spends so much time taking care of you we sorta thought she should have a night off. So I volunteered to sit with you.”

Jed glanced at CJ and raised an eyebrow.

She gave him a look that rivalled her death glare and picked up her purse. “Thanks, Toby. Now, play nicely, boys.” Gently, CJ leaned down and kissed Jed on the forehead. “I’ll talk to you in the morning,” she whispered, her tone leaving little room for protest.

Toby watched her go before shuffling over to the newly vacated seat and dropping down. “I didn’t bring anything to read.”

“You really don’t have to stay.”

“Neither does she,” Toby growled, his dark eyes finally meeting Jed’s steely blue ones. “But yet she does.”

It, Jed concluded, was going to be one of those nights. The sort of night that sent his blood pressure through the roof and caused him to lose his cool. Not exactly what he needed twenty-four hours after surgery, but something told him they were going to be having the conversation. “CJ does what CJ wants to do.”

“Sometimes she needs a little help,” Toby said, scratching the back of his head. If CJ, or Margaret, hell if Donna found out he was having this conversation, he was going to find himself skewered. “There have been some great job offers, offers that would make sure she was financially secure for life.”

Jed kept his mouth shut. Toby was quietly brooding, his eyes betraying how close he was to releasing some of his frustration. Telling him that, whatever CJ’s decision, she’d be financially secure didn’t seem like such a great idea.

“We all understood after the funeral. . .When you sat in your study and told us that CJ was going to be staying awhile, we were behind that decision. You’d lost Abbey, you were grieving,” Toby continued.

“Toby!” It was a gentle warning.

“But, hell, Sir. It’s been nearly two years.”

Jed clenched his fists. There was something about Toby that took him from calm to exploding in a matter of minutes. “What are you trying to say?”

Toby took a breath and ran his hand over the front of his sweater. “I don’t pretend to know what’s going on between you, I don’t want to know. But I think you’re being unfair to her.”

“Really?”

“If this was me, and Zoey or Liz were the woman, you’d be screaming the walls down. You love Abbey. Her death hasn’t changed that. I’m sure you thought inviting CJ to stay was helping you deal with things, working through your grief and making some progress towards the future, but what did CJ get out of it?”

“Has it occurred to you that she might be happy, Toby?” Jed snapped, grimacing as he tried to sit up straighter.

“She had a chance at being happy. Stanley asked her to move to San Francisco, to live with him. There was even a job offer on the table. One minute she’s gushing, yes gushing, about her new start. The next thing Abbey’s dead and she’s moving in here. I don’t know what you think is going to happen. Maybe it’s at the back of your mind that you’ll fall in love with her. One more year and you’ll be over Abbey. Or maybe you just want someone to be at your beck and call. . .”

“How dare you?” Jed’s blue eyes turned an even more piercing blue.

“Well no one else is gonna step up to the plate. Josh is too busy trying to figure out him and Donna. Sam is trying to keep his family together and Leo, well Leo doesn’t like to interfere in your private life.”

“It doesn’t seem to bother you.”

“I could care less about your indignation. I care about CJ. I brought her to the campaign because I thought she’d be a great Press Secretary. That working for you would be the platform for her to meet her potential. I still do. It suits your purposes to have her here,” Toby growled, suddenly rising to his feet and pacing the hospital room.

“You’re accusing me of something, Toby, and although I’m not sure what it is, I resent the implication,” Jed snapped, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.

Toby stuck his hands deep into his pockets. “I’m sure you shouldn’t be doing that.”

“Seems to me, you don’t like much of anything I do.”

“To hell with sugar coating it,” Toby grumbled. “You’re using her, stringing her along, ruining her life.” He focused on a well worn stain on the linoleum floor. “With all due respect, and my respect for you hasn’t dwindled. . .” He shook his head as he remembered a card game many years before. Three words beginning with dw, it had taken a while, and a little prompting before they’d come up with the right answer. “. . .Asking CJ to stay, to take care of you, is asking too much. You aren’t her responsibility and quite frankly, you’re praying on her affection and respect for you.”

“You are so far off the mark.”

“Really? Then let her go. Tell her to leave. She deserves to be with someone who will love her, cherish her and give her everything, a woman like that deserves. If you can do that, fine. If not. . .”

“Toby!”

He waved his hand in dismissal. “It’s okay. You need to sleep. I’ll leave.” He took three steps towards the door before it opened and a nurse entered pushing a machine. Glancing back over his shoulder, Toby growled. “Think about it.” With that, he left.

Jed held out his arm for the nurse to wrap in the all too familiar cuff and sank back against the pillows. He wasn’t taking advantage of her, he couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that.

*~*~*~*

The figure in the bed was curled up on his side, the blankets hanging on the floor. The visitor’s chair was ominously empty.

She shook her head and moved stealthily across the room towards the window.

“I thought it was you,” Jed mumbled, rubbing sleep from his eyes a few moments later.

“Hey. Where’s Toby?”

“He left.”

“Oh.” It hadn’t been so much a discussion, as Toby volunteering to sit with Jed, CJ had discovered upon her return to the hotel. The fact that Margaret had invited her up to her suite and plied her with camomile tea for over an hour should have set the warning bells off. “When?”

“I was still conscious. And my blood pressure was 220 over 120,” he offered with a hint of a grin.

She inwardly groaned and pledged to talk to her less than favorite friend later. “Did you sleep well?” CJ asked, changing the subject and lifting the blinds.

Sunlight streamed through the window causing Jed to roll over and cover his eyes with his hands. “CJ! What happened to rest and recuperation?”

“You’re awake and I don’t like talking to the invisible man,” she retorted, placing a hospital coffee cup on the bedside table and taking a seat. “So. . .”

Jed braced himself on his hands and moved up in the bed. “I think I may have given you the wrong impression last night, CJ.”

“Jed?”

“I think it’s time you left the farm.”

Her eyes widened and she stared at him. “You’re telling me to leave?”

“Yeah.” It was for the best. She had a life to live, which, he had decided in one of his many moments of consciousness, she wasn’t going to do at the farm. “It’s time.”

CJ stared at him, too stunned to speak.

The End