Stargate SG1 Fan Fiction ❯ The Secret Life of a Major General ❯ Chapter 36 ( Chapter 36 )

Chapter 36

O’Neill’s Residence, Alexandria, VA
July 1, 2005
Evening

After parking the car in the driveway of a two story suburban house, Sam urged the three men from the car and up the walkway to the door. Upon reaching the door, she turned the doorknob and entered the house, waving them to follow her.

The three men did so, each curious about the place although only Jacob was unaware that the house was Jack’s new home.

“Emily! Tyler!” Sam called out as they left the entranceway and moved deeper into the house. “There’s some people here I’d like you to meet.”

Suddenly voices rose upstairs and followed by the sound of feet moving rapidly down a staircase in tandem with a female voice cautioning that stairs were for walking down, not running down. Two toddlers hurried into the living room with Cassie on their heels. The young woman sported a slightly harried but mostly amused expression at the twins’ excitement.

“You back!” Tyler exclaimed happily.

“I told you I would be,” Sam said with amusement as she tousled the boy’s hair as he hugged her leg.

“Hug?” Emily approached and held her arms up. Sam obliged, picking the girl up for the first step of the twins greeting ritual. Giving the girl a big hug Sam smiled as Emily then asked, “Kisses?”

Sam kissed the little girl on the mouth and then set Emily down just as Tyler made his own demands, “Hugs? Disses?”

“Of course, you too.” Sam picked the boy up and hugged and kissed him as well before setting Tyler back onto his feet.

Ritual done the twins looked curiously at the three men that were standing behind Sam. All three were amused by the scene. Jacob wondered who the children were and who they belonged to—Pete was divorced but childless—as well as his daughter’s obvious familiarity and rapport with them. Teal’c and Daniel were both wondering at the rapport as well, but mostly they were eager to meet Jack’s children.

“Dad, Daniel, Teal’c,” Sam addressed them as she stood behind the twins. “This is Emily,” she touched the head of the brown eyed girl with her purple shirt and black sweats, “and this is Tyler,” she touched the head of the grey eyed boy wearing a black shirt and khaki pants.

Patiently the three men moved forward to greet the two children, each one taking time to introduce themselves and smile at the children’s attempt to pronounce their names. As the twins expressed their fascination with Teal’c, in particular his gold Jaffa brand, Jacob stood to the side and questioned his daughter.

“Sam, who are they? Not that they’re not adorable—” he hastened to reassure her.

“Dad, back in January of this year, Jack’s sister and brother-in-law were killed in a car accident. The twins,” Sam gestured to the two children, “were adopted by Jack. He’s now their father.”

The information stunned Jacob. “He’s a—I didn’t know he had any family alive.”

Sam smiled wryly and confessed truthfully as she indicated a hand at Daniel, Teal’c, and Cassie, “Neither did we.”

“So, he’s a father again?” Jacob remarked. “That’s great—not that it happened in such away, but that he’s got a family again,” he hastened to reassure Sam.

Sam nodded and smiled, her expression showing that she understood what her father was trying to say.

“So this is Jack’s house?” Jacob inquired, noticing the boxes of toys and other such children things tucked out of the way.

“Yes.” Sam reached out and tugged on Jacob’s sleeve. “He’s out back working the barbecue. Come with me and I’ll show you.”

Jacob nodded in agreement and Sam turned to the redheaded young woman in the room. “Cassie, Dad and I’ll be in the back with Jack if the twins need us.”

Cassie nodded her understanding and she, Daniel, and Teal’c watched Sam and Jacob leave the living room. All three of them wondered how Jacob would react to the coming confrontation and revelation about who the groom was really going to be.

Emerging from the house onto the backyard patio, they found Jack turning cobs of corn on the barbecue with a plate of marinating steaks beside him.

“Jack,” Jacob greeted as he approached.

Jack turned around, giving a wary smile as he set the tongs he was holding down. “Jacob, it’s good to see you too. Glad you could get away.”

Sam slid around her father to stand beside Jack, taking comfort from his presence behind her as she positioned herself between him and her father. “Dad, I have some things I have to tell you.”

Jacob shifted his gaze from Sam to Jack and back again. Not liking the uncertain look on his daughter’s face and the set expression of the other man. “What do you have to tell me?”

“I’m not marrying Pete,” Sam confessed as she fiddled with her engagement ring.

Jacob was taken aback and frowned as he looked at Sam’s fidgeting fingers. Encircling her ring finger was a slender silver band, the light reflecting from the fading light of the sun and house lights catching on the polished metal. He had seen the ring Pete had given her, a rather large solitaire diamond in gold, during his last visit to Earth at the same time the Free Jaffa Nation was establishing their Council on Dakara.

That ring was most certainly not the ring she was now wearing.

“Then,” Jacob gestured to her hands, “what’s the ring for?”

Sam looked down at her hands and flushed pink as she realised she had been worrying her new engagement band. Jack took half a step forward, bringing himself against Sam’s back as his right arm wrapped around her waist and his left hand tangled with her ring hand.

Selmak was the only reason Jacob’s jaw didn’t drop at the sight of Jack cuddling up to his daughter. And by what was revealed on Jack’s hand as it twined with Sam’s—a matching slender silver band.

Fortified by Jack now being literally at her back, Sam forged onwards. “I called off the wedding to Pete three weeks ago. Some things happened and I knew that in the end it wouldn’t work out,” Sam snorted in remembered disgust as her apathy was raised by her memories, “and would have probably ended up divorced in a few years. If not months afterwards. And a little bit later I was in Washington and dropped by Jack’s,” Jack was careful to hide his smirk at that interpretation of events in Sam’s hair, “and we got talking. A few days later we started dating and about a week and half ago I proposed.”

Jacob moved for the first time since he’d seen the matching rings as he blinked. “Wait—you proposed Sammie? Those aren’t wedding rings I am seeing?”

Self-consciously Sam nodded and bit her lower lip as she looked embarrassedly at her father. “Yes, I proposed. That’s why Jack has an engagement ring as well. We bought matching sets of engagement and wedding rings.”

Jacob blinked again. It was one thing to harass a future son-in-law about the quickness of the engagement and wedding—especially when it was preceded by a broken engagement—and another thing entirely when it was one’s daughter that had made the engagement. How was a father supposed to react to that?

‘I believe Jacob,’ Selmak intoned in his head with a great deal of amusement, ‘it is correct to say—congratulations.’