Changed Plans 2

Beth could tell Christina was still suffering from this past weekends activities and rehashing in her mind what had happened to her families lives over the last ten years.  Though Beth had not been directly involved with FES's field operations or with some of the side work which was done through FES which had also been involved in Security Planning as an offshoot of their municipality engineering which her boss had always referred to as social engineering it did not matter as she had kept the books from day one and when she had to send payments to a family for a man who would never make it home, or pay the hospital bills and even write the letters when one of their field engineers sent out to take a look at something did not make it home, the issue with many of those letters was in may cases there was no one to sent them too and if there were they were already happily married or more likely than not just married again to someone who would be there to help when little Johnny or Susie did what they needed to do for school, for sports or whatever else they doing and they were there for their wives whether they were happy or not.  She had been mad when Christina had divorced Mr. C and stole the company out from under him and allowed someone else to come in and take over or rather companies as in order to keep ownership of FES hard to track as its owner was always in the field and usually in some very bad places it was owned by several other companies all of which were owned as LLP's in states where it was difficult to get the records.  She knew how much Chris made and he sent the whole paycheck home which had further infuriated her at the time as even though it was no where near the pay of other owners or CEO's of publicly owned companies their size as in the volume of work not necessarily the size of the administrations as in reality there had been no real administration beyond her and him plus a few other office personnel and the few men and women whose job it was to translate the engineering into drawing which then could be read in the field by the men who like their boss tended to do their own math in their head.  To an outsider it may have seemed backwards but to those men whose job it was to make the calls out in the field well if something went wrong which at times she new did they could not gripe and complain but had to fix it and that was what had really kept them busy as they also fixed other peoples mistakes as they were engineered by men in offices who never actually went out into the field and knew little to nothing on how to build and make work what they were engineering.

Beth had learned early how to read a blue print and learned early what worked and what did not both in operating the business on the day to day level or in the engineering aspects and because she was a woman she also knew she knew what looked aesthetically pleasing unlike many of the men who now had started to look to her as they in the company reborn with her and her husband as essentially the management in theory of all the tendrils of the company much of which she had turned over to the two people who had kept not only Chris alive but had also brought him back from his death bed more than once as the man particularly in the years since his son's birth had unlike other men in the same boat who turned to another woman or the bottle had turned to work and had taken more than his share of side jobs and from some of what she had gleaned from men like John and Ben had meant he had put himself out in front of men and women who thought American's were the reason for the world's problems and their own personal problems and in some cases she knew on a personal level their were both men and women from her country who did not help alleviate those beliefs but overall she knew the truth was the parts of the world where they had been working, for sometimes even those who more or less were sworn enemies of her nation which it turned out was a good way to keep tabs on what your enemy was doing.  That had started to change even before Chris had just showed up one day and pretty much said as he had walked into their old offices which were now housing one of the surgical centers used by his ex wife or rather his un-ex wife.  Beth remembered  it was after Chris had taken off after spending time with Carlos after dropping off his rig in Montana at one of their equipment yards in the growing oil and gas fields of America.

The fact most of the men who had come over from FES before Chris bought it back from his ex wife which she was then had all worked the fields over in the Middle East, South America and even in the arctic had set them up early as one of the contenders and they were not trying to be the biggest as they had no stockholders but they were trying to be the best and that was what paid off for them at first but they had grown with Carlos brokering the deals to develop those first four master planned communities which had never even been marketed accept in very select circles.  She herself had almost started to believe he was dead as she had listened to her best friend and had lost that anger and renewed their friendship.  She had finally bullied Dr. Christianson to move home after her time of being grilled.  She had not known that Chris had encouraged her to branch out from making perfectly good boobs more perfect.  Her first year home had been a time of reflection and Dr. C as some of her patients now called her a time for Dr. C to put behind her her past which she did by burying herself in her job which with her work now with three different groups all trying to help people she had become the girl Beth remembered albeit without the wild streak she had carried into her marriage but she could also tell Christina's travels into some of the same war torn villages and countries which her husband had sometimes been in during those wars had had a profound effect on her, the woman no longer lived in her bubble or that false sense of security that had plagued most of America's citizens who preferred to snooze and ignore that there was really evil in the world and there were people really out to kill them not them as individuals but them as a nation.  She also knew that there were people in this nation out to destroy it.  She had been around long enough to know it was they who had been behind the various attempts on Mr. C.  She guessed he had an inkling to that as she had realized in his own way he had tried to stir the hornet's nest to see what falls out but he had not been the man he had been over the years always knowing the next step to take once he was back out and more than anything that had made it seem like he had checked out and gave up.

She had not been aware of his time spent in an American Prison which was not listed anywhere and was not even in their country and which was used for one thing, to make men America or rather those the men, who were in the position to make such calls, wanted to to disappear.  She had not been privy to every detail but over the last several years she had learned to listen, not to just the news which was constantly on in the operations room of Security Consultations Group but to the looks and hushed whispers of the men who had been over there when he had suddenly appeared in the field yard, in a country where he had not been expected to be in and he apparently had been in bad shape.  Where he had gone after cleaning up no one had known and after three years of his bouncing around showing up at the most unexpected times and the most unexpected places he had come home, checked to let her know he was through and went to see his wife.  That was ten years ago.  Three years ago they had come home and Christina who was trying to become part of his life in baby steps again he had kept at arms distance and farther when he could.  She still remembered that phone call on that dammed ranch in the middle of nowhere, fear something she had never faced before had coursed through her veins.  She knew Steve had fallen in love with that dammed desert just like well all the men, most of whom had experienced way to much cold in their lives not to love the heat of the desert and the dryness as they had all experience way too much rain and snow as well.  She was not surprised how many had moved to the desert and now called it home.

Beth had known right where they had dropped Chris for the most part on his dime and though they had originally wanted to put him at the estate in greener desert as it was more accessible but he had told them they could have it and since he happened to tell his story to the right doctor who told it to the right general who had brought in another general who was more than right because he had also known of Chris as the infamous Mr. C and the fact two men under his command had had to play babysitter to Chris during a recovery period.  Thanks to her contacts and those of key people like John, Ben and a very beautiful and talented lawyer who for all intensive purposes had accept in the physical had become married to Chris.  As she was now the company lawyer, something they had never had it was her job to keep tabs on the man who as more or less a boy had given his life to helping this country,yes he had made a nice profit off of it but that was not the driving factor.  As Beth pulled into the drive of her second mom's house she knew mom was not their and she could have pulled into the back driveway but that was still knew to her.  Christina had looked up and asked who might be home.  Beth had not noticed the second vehicle parked on the other side of Mom Christianson's, she got nervous then particularly after this past weekend which had given her a start and cemented in her mind how much she hated the desert.  She though had seen Chris move and even with a more or less bum leg it was hard to fathom someone who could react so quickly being shot twice and being stabbed.  She knew Christina had been scared as no one had treated her like that in her life.  Heck at the realization of what was going on all the women had been scared except for a select few, herself as she was more or less mad that they had all gone and acted like teeny bopper's in front of and with men who Lord knew the last time they had showered and where they had put their paws and other body parts last.  Thankfully there had been none of that more so because of an ex marine who had made it her mission to keep an eye on Chris and that troop of hired guns which had come with or because of a few of Christina's friends.  She had not seen it but had heard the lesson which he had given the leader of that troop who according to Ms. Jennifer had been in some ways like Chris but it was more like a peacock showing off his feathers where as with Chris when he stood out it was because there was substance there and not feathers.

It was Ms. Jennifer and Miriam who also from the south and an exotic beauty that turned everyone's heads including hers and she knew had done more than turn Christina's head and also Chris's though he had not actually taken what she had been more or less blatantly offered which Beth figured was why she had showed up at Christina's and had instigated their affair which was well hidden from the world but not from those who were apart of her everyday life.  Beth had to admit the night they had the sleepover she had been surprised and stirred by those two women's unabashed if not slightly sloshed bout of love making on the couch next to her during the movie.  Beth had never been a prude and it was not uncommon when she was home to shed her clothes and walk around in her skin but that had been beyond that; it still had intrigued her enough to let Christina in that same half sloshed state kiss her and feel her up that was until she felt it shudder her body which she had most definitely given to Steven and when dawn had come own she had left and woke him up just to prove it.  That had been shortly before she found the stack of letters.  Because Christina had taken liberties she had taken her liberties with those letters and opened them and read them.  She had not talked  with Christina about that night they or rather Christina and Miriam got very happy on Champagne so she brought it up and forced Christina as recompense to read Chris's letters.  That had pretty much cut drinking out of Christina's life, that and the realization Bubba wanted more than to be friends which had kind of came to what would have been a disaster if the night he had decided to show up was the same night Chris had shown up with twins that looked like the could be his, except they were not his technically or legally but she doubted since he was now more or less back on his game in some ways no one was going to say no he could keep them.  Though she wanted to tell him he could not keep the ranch even though she had no say in that as he owned that company which held the properties outright.  She had voted to let the Boy Scouts have it that very night.  His mom on the other hand upon seeing it said it was him to the t.  That woman had a manner about her that would charm a snake out its own skin and it was her arrival that had brought a calm after not only those men bent on doing harm to Julie and the twins but Chris and the boys who had showed up at her request got hauled in as well.

That calm had remained until they showed back up, Christina had seen them laughing about the night and that had made her mad as seeing him hauled off had only scared her again.  As they sat in the car just looking at the house; Miriam stepped out with an infant.  Christina asked Beth if she had noticed Miriam being pregnant; climbing out Beth realized it was a twin which after seeing Chris with them she could not figure out how he had agreed to let Miriam or anyone to take them away.  When Julie stepped out behind her with the second twin was when it dawned on Christina that the twins were here.  She remembered the last thing besides I love you, the man who had once again disrupted her planned out life he was going to see the doctor about his knee.  Memories off all the times over the last ten years she had seen him headed to the hospital with her sure he was going to die flooded her.  She jumped out of the car and Julie seeing the fear in her mom's eyes shielded the baby she was holding as she had learned when mom looked like this there was not telling what she would do.  Ms. Jennifer on the other hand, having declared herself god mother and had even called the young mother to tell her which Julie knew had blown the young woman away so much so they had arranged for her to come with them to prove it as her dad who had finally listened to the doctor albeit this one was an old army doctor and had been backed up by the two marines who she was introduced to.  Dad had raised an eye brow as she gushed over the grandfather of the twins but had kept his mouth shut until after her coffee and breakfast meeting at the diner when he dropped his daughter off.  Dad had asked how her date had gone and she told him it had not been a date and he asked who else had been there.  She told him at their table just the two of them but there had been the ranchers and a few bikers, smiling he asked if that fine fellow had taken her hand.  She had blushed realizing he had and asked how did he know.  Dad stuck in bed had shrugged and told her since he could not take care of the twins she might as well take them to mom and make sure she brings their shots up to date and play a little hard to get.  She had gotten the call on her cell phone and he asked how his angels were doing earlier this morning after getting in and that phone call had lasted more than her ten minute phone calls with her ex.  She had caught herself gushing on the phone and could not help herself.  She had let some of her frustration at her dad go when she had been asked if she would like to do something some time like take the kids horseback riding.

Her dad quizzing her how her phone date had gone had not gotten to her even after he asked what kind of tux he should be looking for.  Julie waited, for her mom to get caught up and when Ms. Jennifer told her to meet the new grandma as she nodded to Julie; she did push back a little as she told Ms. Jennifer she had to see a ring first.  Mom had expertly parted the boy from her and then hounded her on exactly why dad was not with them.  Beth made the call to find out and found out that it might be because against doctors orders he was out feeding the horses and had redesigned his pool area so he could keep the trees as he kind of liked being able to climb them.  When she asked John where he was at that moment, John had told her exactly they were still trying to determine as pretty much as soon as he got off the phone with his baby girl he had disappeared and they knew he had been feeding the horses was they had been fed and they knew he had climbed the tree because now there were foot marks painted on it and they knew he had redesigned the pool because it was staked out and he had a new color picture to put on his refrigerator.  Christina had gotten on the phone and asked if all the women had left.  She was told mom was still there as well as Ms. Miriam, her four daughters.  It took a moment for her to realize he meant Christopher's half sisters and his girlfriend who at the moment he had been taken a break from.  John then said he had been antsy ever since the twins had left.