Alexis and Lesley Lu walked into Luke's and Alexis' eyes immediately flew to her 11 year old daughter, who was standing behind the bar apparently serving drinks.
"Luke!" She yelled and an instant later he appeared from the back room.
"Natasha, you're back. Hello princess," he greeted his daughter with a hug. "So how was your tour of the peanut factory?"
"It's called Harvard, and why is my daughter acting as your bartender?" Alexis demanded.
At this point Luke and Kristina began to laugh.
"Relax Natasha, we saw you coming and were having a little fun with you."
"Hi Mom," Kristina greeted Alexis coming out from behind the bar. "I knew you'd freak."
"I did not freak," Alexis insisted. "So did Luke behave himself while we were away?" She asked her daughter.
"For the most part." She replied with a shrug. "He did let me play poker in the back r..." The rest of Kristina's words were cut off by a hand over her mouth.
"Your mother doesn't need to hear about that, why don't you go get yourself a drink." He suggested giving her a small shove towards the bar.
"Luke!"
"I meant a soda." He replied innocently. "Here have a seat and I'll get you a drink." He told Alexis pulling out a chair for her and then one for Lesley Lu. A few minutes later Lesley Lu was excitedly filling in her father and Kristina on her tour of Harvard.
"The library is amazing Dad, and Alexis and I had lunch with a bunch of her old professors. It was so cool to listen to them debating these cases, you should have heard Alexis argue."
"I've heard her, she argues with me almost every day." He told them giving Alexis a grin.
"You love it." She countered with a smirk.
"I don't see what's wrong with PCU." Luke commented moodily.
"Harvard has one of the best law programs in the world." Leslie Lu stated.
"So?"
"Daddy I want to be a lawyer."
"Six words I never thought I would hear my daughter say," Luke mused. "This is all your doing," he told Alexis. "First it was Zander and Emily, then Georgie Jones and now my own daughter. No one wanted to be a lawyer ten years ago, now the town is crawling with them. It has to be you."
"There is nothing wrong with the law Daddy, you should try following it sometime." Lesley Lu suggested seriously.
"My own daughter." He sighed.
"Don't worry Luke, I'm not going to be a lawyer when I grow up," Kristina assured him causing her mother to look up from her drink.
"Really, and what do you intend to become?"
"I'm going to take over Daddys casinos. She told them. "It's legit." She added seeing the look on her mothers face.
"I know, I've seen the books." Alexis told her daughter. She had reluctantly become Sonny's lawyer again several years ago, mostly because she didn't want her daughters father to be in prison.
"Hey how come you'll do Sonny's books but you won't even look at mine?" Luke complained. "It's the dimples, isn't it?"
"More like the daughter."
"I've got a daughter." He reminded her.
"Luke I'm not going to do them, give it up."
"Never."
Lesley Lu listened to them bicker and smiled. Even now after all their years of friendship, neither would willingly admit how much the other meant to them. Still, to her at least, it was obvious. She looked over at her father, the man who had been her only parent since she was a young child. For more than ten years he had devoted his life to her, and she was sometimes afraid that once she left he would not know what to do. Thankfully he would still have Alexis and Kristina, Lucky had long ago hit the road, spending his days travelling from place to place as he had in his childhood. She looked at Alexis, the woman whom she considered more a mother than the beautiful woman in the photos her father showed her, though she would never tell. It was important to her father that she remain connected to her mother. And through the stories he and Alexis told her she felt as though she did know her, even though she could barely remember her. For as long as she could remember and as far as she could imagine this was her family, Dad, Alexis and Kristina. They were bound by promises made long ago, and by the circumstances life had thrown at them, but most of all they were bond by love.