Stargate SG1 Fan Fiction ❯ The Secret Life of a Major General ❯ Chapter 30 ( Chapter 30 )

Chapter 30

Hilda and Robert Shanahan’s Residence, Denver, CO
June 17, 2005
Late Afternoon

The slamming of the front door had Jamie Shanahan craning his head around the back of the sofa he was seated upon to look at who had so angrily entered his parent’s house on this late Friday afternoon. He was the only one staying with his parents at the moment as the house was turned into wedding planner central but even with others expected for tonight’s family dinner they would not enter the house in such a manner. Giving Jamie a pretty good idea about who had just angrily entered. As he expected it was his brother Pete who stormed his way into the kitchen and yanked a bottle of beer from the fridge before stomping into the living room.

“So…” Jamie drawled, “Where’s Sam?”

“Outside,” Pete growled before taking a swig from the bottle as he plopped down onto the lazy-boy chair.

“So I take it she didn’t…?”

“Didn’t what?” Pete snarled.

“React the way you thought she would to the house.” Jamie was impervious to the death glare his older brother shot him.

“No. She didn’t.” Pete said shortly. He took a few more long drags from his beer before saying wildly, “I don’t get it! It’s exactly what she said she wanted!”

“Oh, I think I do.” Jamie shook his head in disgust. “Bro, you don’t buy something like that for a woman like her.”

“Then what do you buy for her?”

“I mean, you don’t buy something like that without consulting a woman like her,” Jamie clarified. “And let’s face it; you certainly don’t buy something like that when you—together—haven’t even decided where you’re going to live. Remember you told me that you guys hadn’t decided that yet?”

Pete sucked on his bottle and looked mulish.

“Or did you think,” Jamie began sarcastically, “that she would see the house, fall in love, and decide to move to Denver?”

“Well, why not?”

“Pete! I hate to break it to you but that woman out there,” Jamie said with exasperation as he rose to his feet and gestured in the direction of the front yard, “while she is a beautiful, brilliant, and frankly amazing person—is also career military.”

“So?” Pete said obstinately.

“So!? So at best, if you want to keep working on the Denver force, you’d be living in Denver and she’d be living wherever the damn army sent her!”

“Air Force,” Pete mumbled from around the mouth of his beer bottle.

“Whatever!” Jamie felt close to tearing his hair out at his brother’s obtuseness. “The point is Pete that a successful woman like Sam who has dedicated her life to the military is not just going to change that dedication because she’s getting married. Just like Susan always complained about being second-fiddle to the force before your divorce, you’re going to be the second husband in the marriage if you marry Sam.”

“That won’t happen!” Pete protested. Certain that after the marriage the situation would change, that Sam’s priority would be him, not the AF.

“Oh yes, you guys will compromised on things, but it will always be the military that has dibs on her. And it’s time you faced that Pete, if you don’t, this marriage will end in divorce like the one with Susan did.” Jamie concluded softly as he began to leave Pete to his sulking. “Samantha Carter is military. She will always be military. And from what little I know of her having only met her last week, she doesn’t want it any other way. And if you can’t see that—then there’s no hope.”

“Mrs Shanahan,” Sam greeted courteously as she finally entered the house after having spent the past hour or so outside thinking over the argument she’d had with Pete while in the house he’d bought. An argument that had not just been about the house but trust and respect.

“Samantha,” Hilda greeted pleasantly from her place behind the island counter with her hands buried in a mound of dough as she prepared for the large crowd she was expecting for tonight’s dinner. “Pete’s a little upset right now—from work I think—I hope he didn’t take it out on you when he picked you up? And I thought we’d already agreed you’d call me Hilda.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that Mrs Shanahan,” Sam said calmly as she looked at Pete levelly as he entered the kitchen. “I know exactly why he’s upset.”

“Can I get you anything, dear?” Hilda dusted flour from her hands and reached for a towel.

“No, I’ll be going shortly.” Sam said steely as she kept her eyes on Pete’s face and reached into her pocket.

“But you just got here! Certainly you and Pete are attending tonight’s family dinner? Everyone is expected.”

“No Mrs Shanahan, I won’t be.” Sam set a jeweller’s box on the island between Pete’s mother and herself, her blue eyes daring Pete to approach. But he just slinked back, keeping the room between them.

Hilda frowned curiously at the box and reached for it, “What’s this my dear?”

Opening it, Hilda’s breath caught in incomprehension when she recognised the princess cut diamond solitary engagement ring that she had last seen adoring the hand of her son’s fiancée. “Samantha, what’s this about?”

“Pete knows,” Sam said as her eyes flicked from Pete to his mother. “I think it would do him some good to practice honesty. So you tell her Pete.”

“Mom,” Pete began, “Sam and I are having some difficulty—”

“Posh,” Hilda waved a floured hand dismissively. “It’s just pre-wedding jitters.”

“No,” Sam cut in, “it’s not. I wouldn’t call finding out that your boyfriend—who’d already been told that my work was classified—ran a background check the morning after having sex together for the first time.”

Hilda was stunned by Sam’s sudden transformation of placid calm to enraged female and even more stunned when she looked questioningly at her son and saw the guilt on his face. “You did what Pete?” she asked faintly.

“Used his contacts with the FBI to run a background check on me. After having sex with me.”

“There must be some mistake,” Hilda turned back to Sam.

“There’s no mistake, the trace was run by Dan Farrity—your best-man isn’t he Pete? Or anyway, an old friend, seeing as there won’t be a wedding.”

“Surely you can talk this through?” Hilda begged weakly.

Sam shook her head resolutely. “As a police officer, Pete should have understood the term classified—especially on a national level. He should have also known how many laws and ethics he was violating by running a professional trace to satisfy his personal curiosity.

“And while I can forgive curiosity, I can not forgive the rest. It is the antithesis of what I have spent my whole life doing—integrity first, service before self,” Sam repeated the first two parts of the USAF Academy’s core values. “I cannot marry a man who has shown he has no trust in me—in what I do, in what I say—and no respect for my opinions. I’m sorry Mrs Shanahan, but the wedding is off.”