BONUS Archer & Annabelle Follow-up Short Story

Part 2: Archer

I hate breaking a promise, especially one that involves sex with Annabelle, but we both oversleep the next morning, and when we wake up, we barely have time to grab a cup of coffee before we're expected over at her parents' house for lunch.

The upside is that we're reunited with Natasha, who is the world's most perfect six-month-old. She has her mother's sweet nature and, I suspect, her brains: she's a prodigy at getting me to do whatever she wants. It's been less than 24 hours since we dropped her off with Nick and Moira, but it's still a relief to have her back.

Moira warns us that she was fussy last night and may be getting a tooth but for now Nat's content and curious. She explores the oriental rug in the living room as Nick and I sit on the floor with her, admiring and praising her every move. Brianna sits on the couch, amused at the sight of two grown men crawling on the floor.

When Natasha falls asleep on the drive home, I entertain a fantasy of what Annabelle and I might get up to at home while she naps. My hopes for some adult playtime are dashed, though, when the baby wakes up screaming as soon as the car stops and remains fussy and sleepless for the rest of the day.

That evening isn't much better. I feed Nat dinner while Annabelle writes some emails and runs a few errands in preparation for her trip, but the baby never really settles down. In the end, the only thing that will keep her content is nursing, so she winds up in our bed for the night.

Another opportunity lost.

Monday starts early. I barely see Annabelle before she has to leave for her office. Mercedes, our wonderful nanny whom Moira and Nick hired as a present to us after Nat was born, arrives just before Annabelle walks out the door and I have to settle for a quick peck on my wife's lips rather than the sultry kiss I'd like to give her. I grab some coffee and a power bar, ignore Mercedes's disapproving frown at my nutritional habits, and dash off to a meeting with the studio's PR people about promoting Northanger.

Two and a half hours later, the meeting wraps up, and I decide to surprise Annabelle at her office and take her out for lunch. USC, where Annabelle has a post-doc position, is about a 30-minute drive, and I get there a few minutes past noon.

She has a little office tucked away on the third floor of the physics department. I peek my head around the door, ready to say "Surprise!" but stop when I realize she's with someone else.

A man.

He's pulled up a chair next to her desk and the two of them are huddled over her computer, muttering something about wave propagation and neural action potentials.

I knock on the door frame to get their attention.

Annabelle looks up, and I'm charmed by the expression of delight that comes over her sweet little face. I'm less charmed by the look of annoyance that comes across the man's.

"Can I help you?" he barks in a posh British accent.

Annabelle stands up quickly, her cheeks turning pink. "Logan, this is my husband, Archer. Logan's from the Psychology Department. We're thinking about working on a paper together about impaired cognitive perception of sound and ways that it can be mitigated with telecoils," she explains as she comes around the desk and stands up on tiptoe to give me a quick kiss on the cheek.

I pretend to understand what she's talking about and reach over to shake Logan's hand. "Pleasure to meet you."

He stands up. "Sorry if I was a bit gruff. We've had a number of interruptions this morning, and we still have some things to put together before we fly out tomorrow."

Despite the apology, I'm still not warming up to him. He's tall, a little taller than I am, actually, which means he towers over Annabelle, and I dislike the way he seems to be treating her office as his territory.