Author's Note: This story was written in one day, while fending off children and husband, burning dinner, and generally ignoring my rather long to-do list. I'm not sure what inspired this story, it just seemed to pop up out of nowhere. I hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: Don't own, won't make money... why do I do this?

Sam stared up the stairs and took a deep breath. He rolled his neck, pinched the bridge of his nose, and then gave his hair an irritated rub. There were a thousand criminals that he'd rather go toe to toe with right now than walk up the stairs.

With a deep sigh, he began trudging up the stairs. Parenthood, he decided, should have come with a handbook. A no-nonsense, reality-checking, not-for-the-faint-of-heart, this-is-what-your-life-will-be-like handbook. When he retired, maybe he'd write that book for future generations. He'd call it...

The sound of sobbing broke into his thoughts and he winced. He reached the top of the stairs and took another lung-filling breath before taking the final two steps to his sixteen year old daughter's bedroom door. He did another neck roll before knocking softly.

"Go away!" came the sob from the other side.

Sam opened the door anyway and stepped inside. "Sorry, but I need to talk to you."

"I don't want to talk," his daughter hiccuped, rolling over on her bed to face the wall.

Sam paused for a moment, uncertain. Then he shook his head and went to sit on her bed, his back against the headboard. He started poking her until she moved over enough for him to swing his legs up next to her. Then he waited. He knew his daughter and knew that it wouldn't take too long.

Sure enough, three minutes later two dark brown, red rimmed eyes were turned to him and his beautiful girl asked in a voice that broke his heart, "What's wrong with me, Daddy? Why doesn't Josh love me anymore?"

He gathered her up in his arms and held her close to his heart and said, in his fiercest voice, "Because he's an idiot, sweetheart."

The strangled chuckle he heard muffled against his chest brought a smile to his lips.

After a long while of just holding her and listening to her sniffles settle into the occasional deep sigh, Sam asked, "Are you feeling better?"

"Sort of." The answer was muffled by his shirt.

"Okay, then I have a story I want to tell you. But I want you to listen to it without interrupting me. Promise?"

"Okay," came the whispered reply.

Sam ran his hand down his daughter's dark brown almost black curly hair, taking a moment to enjoy how the unruly curls sprang back into their own arrangement. She was beautiful... not just pretty, and not in a made-up way. She was a natural beauty, who never wore make-up but out shone all the girls that did. Her thirteen year old sister was also a stunning beauty, although still in that awkward not-quite-a-woman-yet kind of way.

"I was undercover about twenty six years ago, trying to take down a drug dealer named Anton Hill..."

"Dad, I know.."

"Ah!" Sam interrupted her. "No interruptions."

"But, you've told us..."

"Ah!" Sam repeated, "You promised."

"Fine," came the less than gracious reply into his chest. "Go ahead."

"Thank you." Sam tightened his hold around her, gave the top of her head a kiss, and then continued. "Eight months I worked getting information on this guy. I was working a lead when I was busted by this over-eager rookie from my own division. Took me down herself," he said, a note of pride in his voice. "I was ready to throw her to the dogs, but she stood up to me, despite my being an ... less than kind to her. She solved the case they'd been on simply because she wouldn't take my... crap."

"Dad," she interrupted again, "I know this. She became your partner and then..."

"You don't know anything," he said, firmly. "I've never told you the whole story." That got her attention. She sat up and looked at him with her eyebrows raised. "Now, do you want to know the whole story, or are you going to keep interrupting me?"

He watched her mind working behind those dark eyes with the incredibly long lashes. When she nodded, he smiled and continued. "Her name, as you know, was Andy McNally, and she became my rookie. I was her training officer." He paused and looked down at his hands, turning the wedding ring on his left hand. Looking back at his daughter, he gave a self-mocking wince. "I fell in love with her within a couple of days." At the look of surprise on her face, he shrugged, "I know. How's that for pathetic? I didn't want to, and there were rules against it for very good reasons, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. And let me tell you, I'd never fallen in love before. It was a whole new experience for me, and I really wasn't very happy about it, especially when she turned down my charms for another copper." Even now it was hard to talk about, but he took a deep breath and plowed ahead. "Andy went for the tall, blonde, blue-eyed detective in homicide. Luke, his name was. I'd never had much respect for him before, but now I couldn't stand the sight of him. It made me nauseous whenever I saw them together. All I could do was watch from the distance and hope that she'd wise up soon and dump him."

"Why didn't you..."

"Ah!"

"Right, sorry," was followed by an eye roll.

Sam grinned and ruffled his daughter's hair. "So Andy, like I've told you before, was a real trouble magnet, and it didn't take her long to get herself into all sorts of trouble. I did the best I could to be with her and keep her safe. Though the first time she had to shoot someone dead, I wasn't even with her to help." He paused again. "Killing someone is bad enough, but for someone like Andy who sees the good in everyone, it was particularly devastating. She needed to talk to someone, and Luke was at the crime scene, so she came over to my place."

"Did you talk?"

"Ah, no," he said, a slight flush rising in his cheeks as he remembered exactly what they did do.

"Dad!" she said with a surprised laugh, dimples making their appearance. "Did you guys make-out?"

"Yeah," he answered, glad his daughter had supplied him a relatively innocent version of that night. "Now, be quiet. She left soon, and I couldn't sleep for the rest of the night, certain that I'd finally gotten through to her and that she was going to dump Luke on his... butt."

"She didn't?"

"Not exactly," he answered, wryly. "And shut up, would you? I'm telling the story." Another eye roll.

"When I got to work the morning Andy was due back, I was ready to hear the break-up story. Instead Luke asked me if Andy could leave early so they could head up to his fishing cabin. I think I actually felt my heart break. At that point, I came to the realization that I needed to be a grownup. If Andy didn't want to be with me, then I should be happy that she was happy. So, I resolved to let her be happy, even if that meant she was with Homicide Luke instead of me." He rubbed his hand along his jeans. "That was the hardest decision I ever made, and probably the hardest to stick with. But I did it."

"Dad, I can't be happy for..."

"Ah! This is my story, not your story, and I'm not done my story!" He paused until he was sure he had her attention again, and then carried on. "I tried to be her friend. I tried to give unbiased advice when she talked about Luke, but it ate me up inside."

"She was cut loose and became my partner. I couldn't have been prouder of her. Then I found out that she was moving in with Luke, as in living with him. I hated him. I started drinking more than I should have, and my work relationship with Andy became strained. I thought about going undercover with Guns n Gangs because I wanted out, but the thought of being away from her was too painful... that and I still had hope she'd dump him." He noticed the look of sympathy in his daughter's eyes and gave a small smile. "I know, pathetic, but what can you do? We Swareks are stubborn people." He rubbed his hand over his face before continuing. "Then came the horrible day she was shot for the first time. The bullet went into her vest, so she was okay, but I swear, I had never felt such fear as when I watched her fall to the ground, thinking she'd died. I almost told her I loved her that day, but we were interrupted and I never got my chance." He gave a sheepish grin. "Truth be told, I chickened out after that. Then, when I didn't think it could get any worse, she got engaged to the guy."

"Really? Oh, Dad!"

"Yeah, it was bad. I shook her hand with this really fake smile on my face, and said something about congratulations, and then ran off. I'd been chasing after the love of my life for a year, and now there was no hope left at all. I mean none. I did some things I'm not proud of, and basically wallowed in grief and self-pity for a long time."

"But she didn't marry him, did she?"

"No, she didn't," he answered, this time rolling his eyes at her. "Who's telling the story here?"

"Sorry."

"So, as you noted when you jumped ahead in the story, she didn't marry the guy. She found out that he cheated on her with a former girlfriend and she dropped him cold."

"Yeah! See ya Luke! Did you guys get together right away?"

"Honey," he said, wincing at her enthusiasm, "do I need to put duct tape on your mouth?" She grinned but made the universally recognized sign of the zipper over the mouth and then threw the key over her shoulder. He looked at her skeptically for a minute but she motioned for him to continue with her hand.

"No, we didn't get together right away."

"Why not?"

"Seriously? You just zippered your mouth two seconds ago!"

"Dad," she whined, "you know I can't keep quiet. I'll try, I promise, but you gotta get on with the story!"

He shook his head with a chuckle and pulled her in for a hug. "You are such a nutbar, you know that?"

"Yeah, you tell me all the time." She pulled back and motioned again with her hands. "What happened next?"

Sam sighed and then twisted his mouth into a wry smile. "Andy didn't break it off with Luke because she didn't love him, she did it because he cheated on her. If I'd jumped in there with my charm guns blazing, she would have shot me down. So, I sat back and played it cool."

"You played it cool?" A doubtful look played across her face. "Do you know how to do that?"

"Alright," he muttered, pretending to get off the bed, "where's that duct tape?"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry!" she laughed, grabbing at his legs. "Come back here. I'll behave. I promise."

"I'll believe it when I see it," he muttered, not able to keep the grin off his face. "Where was I? Oh, yeah, playing it cool." He raised an eyebrow when his daughter started to roll her eyes, but she caught herself and gave him an impish smile. "Anyways, I waited and waited, watching her slowly come to terms with her grief and anger. It was painful to watch, but I'd suddenly found a huge amount of patience that I never knew I had. I was determined to wait for her to come to me."

"And did she?"

He paused, thinking about the emotions that had rocketed around inside him when Candace approached JD in the bar with her proposition. Overwhelming love and lust shot through him, and he could hardly think straight. It was only the knowledge of his boss sitting behind him that kept him from grabbing her then and there. He could still remember the rush of adrenaline roaring in his ears.

"Dad?"

"Yeah," he answered, "she came to me."

"How?"

Oh, boy. Think quick, Swarek, he thought in slight panic. He gave himself a mental shake and tried to figure out how he was going to explain what happened next to his sixteen year old daughter. Nights of sex and hours of torture somehow didn't fit with the audience of this story, and yet he wanted to be as truthful as he could.

"I was undercover at the time, and we ran into each other. I could tell right away that something had changed in her, by the way she looked at me, the hesitancy in her voice. But there was nothing I could do, I was undercover. To make a long story short, she came back that night and we... made out again." He peeked over to see if his daughter was buying his story, but she didn't even blink an eye, so breathing a sigh of relief he carried on. "We were stupid. We put our lives and the undercover op in jeopardy, but we were so in love that we just wanted to be with each other." He rubbed his hair and decided to skip the torture and Andy saving his life part. "When the op ended, our bosses found out what we did and we got into trouble. We were both suspended. Which is a punishment, and a bit embarrassing for a cop like me, but we got to spend the next weeks together, and it was heaven. We were never allowed to be partnered together again, which really made sense, because when it came to Andy, I couldn't think straight."

"What happened next?"

"We dated," he said, wondering if that was a lie. He didn't actually remember a lot of nights out with Andy. They were more the stay at home type, when they weren't at the Penny. "And after three months, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wanted to wake up next to her for the rest of my life, so I went ring shopping. I searched every ring store within a hundred miles for the right ring. It had to say, Andy will love me! And I finally found it. I was hesitant to buy it, because it was a sapphire and diamond setting, and I know women generally just want a diamond for an engagement ring, but I had to buy it because it was so Andy." He glanced down at his own wedding ring as he thought about that ring. "So, I did the whole romantic restaurant, get down on one knee thing, and she cried and said yes. I knew I was the happiest man alive." He paused as raw emotions suddenly raced through him. He tried in vain to control them. What happened was twenty-four years ago, why did it still overwhelm him?

His daughter put her hand on his arm and when he looked at her he could see tears in her eyes. He cleared his throat and blinked back his own tears. "A couple of months later came the day that I've told you about before."

"August 18," she answered, a wealth of understanding in her voice.

"Yeah," he mumbled, trying to hold back the emotions that threatened to suffocate him. His tears blurred his vision, but he felt his daughter's arms wrap around his chest and her head bury itself in his neck.

"Andy approached a car during a routine traffic stop," she said for him, a catch in her voice, suddenly sounding years older than her sixteen years, "when the driver pulled a gun and shot her in the head. She died instantly." He felt her arms tighten around him. "Oh, Dad, how did you do it? How did you feel?"

He cleared his throat, paused, cleared it again, and then choked out, "My world came to an end that day. I was a mess. I wanted to die." He held on tight to the warm body in his arms, trying to push the emotion back into the corner of his heart where he'd locked it a long time ago. He wiped his eyes and then carried on. "Only your Uncle Ollie kept me from killing myself. He forced me to face life and carry on. For four years I walked around hating the world. I was so angry and so hurt. Nothing made sense."

He felt a gentle pull on his arms and he allowed her to sit up so that she could look at him. They stared at each other for a while, each battling their own pain. "But the story didn't end there, right?"

He smiled, his old emotions settling and another, warm emotion taking it's place. "No, it didn't. Your Uncle Ollie, he's a conniving son-of-a-bi... gun. He and Aunt Zoe decided I needed a kick in the pants, so they invited me over for dinner, not telling me that they had also invited a certain strawberry blonde haired legal secretary that they knew. I was angry at first, and treated her pretty crummy, but she wouldn't be intimidated and gave me back exactly what I gave her."

"Go, Mom."

He chuckled. "Before the evening was up, she'd turned angry me into interested me."

"And then you got married?"

He shook his head. "We had a lot of ups and downs before we decided to get married, mostly because of all the baggage I carried about Andy, but your Mom is the most amazing woman. She wasn't going to stand for being second best or second choice. No, it was all or nothing with her. We'd been seeing each other for six months when she sat me down one day and told me something I'd never considered before. She said, 'Sam, love isn't something that you're given an amount of when your born. Love is more like a bottomless well that keeps giving. Love is also a choice. You can choose to love, and you can choose not to. I don't want you to stop loving Andy, but I want you to choose to love me.' It took me a long time to come to understand that. I wasn't cheating on Andy by loving your Mom. I simply came to understand that love can happen twice in a lifetime, and that we need to grab it when we can."

He could see the wheels in his daughter's head turning again. Wondering where she was going to go with what he'd told her, he sat back and patiently waited for her.

"Do you love Mom as much as you loved Andy?"

"Definitely. Differently, but definitely as much."

She nodded and twisted a curl of hair around her finger. "So, why did you tell me this? I mean, Andy loved you. Josh, he dumped me."

Sam took her face in his hands and looked her intently in the eye. "I think that Josh is a complete moron for dumping you, and that if he can't see what he's missing out on, then good riddance! The point of my story is that there is always the chance for love. Even when you are at your lowest and the world feels like it will never be the same again, you need to know that love will find you again, whether you're looking for it or not. If you need to cry some more, that's okay. But understand that there is always the hope for love." He pulled her forward and kissed her cheek . "If I'd turned your mom away because of my love for Andy, then I wouldn't have had you two girls, and what would my life have been like then?"

"Quieter," she answered, dryly.

Sam burst into laughter and gave her another hug. "You got that right."

"Thanks, Dad. Josh is a moron, isn't he? I feel better now."

"Good, then my work here is done." He got up and walked towards the door.

"Hey, Dad?"

"Yeah, Andy?"

"Thanks for telling me the whole story. I know it was hard."

He smiled, nodded, and walked out the door.

A/N - Now, before you start harassing me about killing Andy off, I actually started out trying to write this story as a McSwarek, but for some reason it flowed much better this way. Sorry. I'm not anti-McSwarek...really!

Please review! A little helpful criticism goes a long way to making a better writer... and I want to be one!