Moscow, Moscow
A/N: So here it is guys, my new story. I had this one in mind for quite some time now and while I initially just mused about one scene I had in mind, I slowly realized that this couldn't be a one-shot. There's too much to explain.
That said, I started to think up a background story, something that would lead without a doubt to my key scene of this piece which you will read in chapter five (the last one).
The chapter titles are lines of a semi-popular German drinking song and NO offense to Russians. The idea came to a few of my friends and me at the birthday party of a good fried of mine, alcohol (Russian wodka [I know that English people and probably American too write it vodka but as the writing on our bottle said wodka I decided to adopt that]) might have been involved. So anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this.
Chapter one: Moskau, Moskau
Moscow, December 2001
He sat at his desk, staring at the orange walls of the bull pen over the screen of his computer, silently wondering why NCIS painted all the squad rooms of all field offices around the world in this ugly shade of orange. As he had gotten the news he would work for the Moscow Field Office for the next year or two he had thought it was his ticket to get away from this but here he was, staring at the very same shade, musing about the very same problems as he always had.
He looked at his wrist watch, it was half past eight. He was avoiding home, he knew it, his wife knew it, his co-workers knew it. The honeymoon phase of his marriage, if there had ever been one, was long over, the feelings as cold as the Russian winter around them. She was a rebound, a desperate act to fill the hole she had left and yet his wife had no idea who exactly she was a rebound for. Since she had found out about them, she suspected it to be Shannon and Kelly though.
His head hurt, because of the paint or his thoughts, he couldn't say. He found himself wishing for another woman when he came home, for another laughter when he attempted humor, for another face to wake up to when he opened his eyes in the morning. Hell, he wished for another city and another year.
Stephanie hated the cold, hated the language she didn't understand, hated the job that tore her marriage apart, hated whole fucking Russia in fact.
Gibbs loved the cold, loved the language he had learnt with another red-head at his side, loved the job that gave him an excuse to procrastinate going home, loved Russia that saved him from Washington head quarters where he'd had to look at her desk all the time.
Stephanie had been hinting she wanted a new coat for the cold evenings all the time before her birthday last month but he couldn't bring himself to buy one for someone other than her. He had given her jewelry instead, something that didn't have a meaning to him and didn't have to her. She had smiled when he had given her the posh gift box, her usually friendly smile, but in her eyes had glistened the disappointment. He had felt like a jerk, using her to try to move on and failing her and himself every day. He wished she would just act out for once, insulting him, giving him a piece of her mind, but instead all he got was her ever friendly smile and her pity. He couldn't bear it any longer.
He cradled his head in his hands, massaging his temples, as the harsh sound of a phone ringing cut the heavy silence. He needed a few seconds to understand it was his, another two to look at the caller ID and then about seven more to contemplate if he should answer.
"Gibbs."
"You're coming home anytime soon?"
"Yeah. Just closed my case. See you."
He hung up. Time to go home.
The smell of freshly brewed coffee washed over his senses, reminding Gibbs it was time to get up. Stephanie had gotten up about five minutes before with the first ringing of his alarm clock. He grabbed a shirt and put it on, then he patted down the stairs to the kitchen. They lived in a rather luxurious two-floor apartment in Moscow downtown, in a high-end neighborhood with many international tenants, her only friends in town. At the beginning she had tried to learn Russian, a language her husband claimed was easy to learn, but had soon given up, frustrated, and talked only to neighbors that were able to speak and understand English.
He glanced into the living room, noticed the three glasses on the table had she had company the night before? as he headed down the hallway to the kitchen. Stephanie sat at the table, her hands in her hair as she tried to solve a crossword riddle.
"Morning." Gibbs mumbled as he pressed a kiss to her temple. "You good?"
She looked up surprised. Mornings when he spoke to her before he had his fix of coffee were rare, mornings when he was actually interested in her well-being even rarer.
"Lucy was over yesterday evening. She brought Agathe along, she is new in the neighborhood. She is French, but her English is quite good, and even when she had troubles finding the right words and spoke French, it wasn't too bad. I haven't spoken it in ages, but I can still understand it au moins un peu. Anyway, our evening was quite nice till we decided to celebrate her arrival with a bottle of Merlot and then a second and a third and now I am slightly hung-over."
She rambled. He grunted. Obviously he wasn't as much in a talking mode as she had initially thought. Stephanie observed him attentively as he proceed his daily morning routine.
"How was your day honey? I'm sorry we didn't get to talking last night." Honey. He hated clichés. Nevertheless Gibbs decided to answer. He didn't have to royally piss off his wife at half past six in the morning.
"Good. Closed the case late afternoon. Did paperwork till I came home. Morrow called, announced I'd get to meet my new partner today. Scared the other guy off." Monosyllabic like always. She nodded. "I'll meet Agathe again around noon, if you need anything call my cell."
He just nodded, didn't acknowledge in any other way he'd heard her, let alone would actually call her.
Not that that was something new, but meanwhile it started to get to her.
When she arrived in Russia the previous week she had wanted to catch the first flight back to Rota, Spain. What had she done to deserve to be send to Russia in WINTER? She had caught a bloody cold before she had even arrived at her apartment and was sick of her new place five minutes after as she discovered exactly how furnished her furnished accommodation was. She had never seen anything with less furniture in it than her new apartment. She called her Senior Field Agent back in Rota, a middle-aged man called Henry Miller, who she had become great friends with. He hadn't envied her her position as team leader and she had respected his opinions. He had had more experience than she even if she had had more seniority and at that time she had needed every piece of advice she could get.
Today was the day she would start working at NCIS field office in Moscow as the partner of some guy who she supposedly knew, at least that was what the director had told her. She had actually smirked at this.
"Tom," she had said, laughter in her voice, "I think you know I know a lot of guys."
He hadn't mind her using his first name, he and Jennifer Shepard went way back, he had been a good friend of her mother's and had known her since kindergarten.
"I am well aware, although I think I know only half of the guys you know."
"That may be, but I am very interested in knowing who I will be working with for the following six month."
"Have a little patience. I think you'll like him." He grinned as he cut the transmission, having no idea exactly how much his protegé had liked her future partner in the past.
Gibbs got the call that would change his life once again mid-morning. Callie, the ever cherish assistant of the Assistant Director, the head of the Moscow Field Office, announced that he could meet his new partner in the office of her boss now. And that pissed him off. Couldn't this new partner just present himself to him without the help of the man in the monkey suit sitting in the corner office? He didn't like McAllister one bit, thought he was a bastard in fact, at least that was how he treated his subordinates.
Gibbs walked up the stairs, taking his time, just to piss him off, and then instead of letting Callie announce him, burst straight into the posh office, slamming the door against the wall.
He stopped dead in his tracks. The red-head in front of McAllister's desk wore a facial expression similar to his own, uncertainty, anguish, bewilderment, and maybe the barest hint of long lost emotions.
The woman he had loved. The woman who had left. Ironically he found himself angry at McAllister for staring at her like she was some piece of meat.
"Gibbs, this is Jennifer Shepard, your new partner. I believe the two of you have already met before." McAllister did the introductions, his gaze never straying from Jenny.
"Jethro." Her voice had an edge in it he couldn't explain. It was almost shaky, something he had never heard before. It made him angry. So she was uncertain, afraid, didn't know what to do? She felt the same way he had as he had found the letter in the pocket of her coat? It made him want to enjoy her distress, her obvious hurting, but again he was surprised by himself as he discovered he couldn't. He couldn't enjoy her pain, just as he hadn't been able to hate her when he had come back to Washington without her. He didn't want her to hurt like he had hurt himself.
Instead he felt for her.
He had ignored her mercilessly ever since they had left McAllister's office. He hadn't returned her greeting, hadn't said anything to her in fact and although Jenny hated to admit it, it started to get to her. She knew it wasn't her place to break the silence as he was just as uncomfortable and miserable as she was, but it wasn't his fault, it was hers, and if he needed time to wrap his head around the fact that they would have to work together once again, who was she to deny him that?
Gibbs pointed gruffly at the desk opposite to his own, the other ones were obviously unoccupied. They were a two-men-team then.
It remembered Jenny of her early days in Washington DC, back at the Navy Yard, where she had sat opposite two him. Burley and Pacci hadn't been on their team back then, and she had enjoyed this time alone, when it had been just them, her and her partner. There hadn't been the usual boundaries between Junior and Senior Agent, they had been who they were, the way they were; always laughing, always toeing the border to outright flirting.
She sat down at her new desk and arranged her things, then re-arranged them, just to keep her hands occupied.
"Jenny" So it was Jenny then, not as bad as Shepard but not Jen either.
"Yeah?"
"We have to talk." That was sooner than she had thought and she wasn't prepared for this,not yet at least. She could feel herself paling.
"Okay."
"Coffee?" Gibbs asked, it was somewhere between a question and a statement, but either way Jenny didn't feel like she had a choice. She nodded and took her coat. Not her coat, but something similar he noticed, dark brown Italian leather, and he wondered if she missed her coat. He still had it, couldn't get rid of it, he had taken it with him to Moscow in fact. The reminder of the life, the love, he couldn't have.
Gibbs went to the elevator, in a stoic silence again, and Jenny followed, just as quietly as him.
She didn't think she could bear this any longer.
"So how have you been?" Jenny asked. They sat in a crowded little coffee shop near the office where he claimed you could get Moscow's best coffee. He had chosen the seat near the door from where he could observe the people coming into the shop.
Gibbs looked at her. She had a genuinely curious glint in her eyes that meant she didn't know the answer. Jenny didn't know he was married. He contemplated shortly if he should just throw caution in the wind, not tell her about his marriage and look what would happen. He dismissed it, it was a cruel to Stephanie as well as to her.
"Have married again." He told her gruffly, unprepared for the hurt expression in her eyes.
"Oh. Congratulations." She gripped her coffee cup a little tighter. "When?"
"About a year and a half ago." He answered and now he was almost shocked at the wounded look in the depths of her emerald-green orbs.
Just about half a year after Paris she thought. "Maybe I can meet her someday" she said instead.
"I think she would like that" he replied. He couldn't even imagine that. His current wife meeting the former lover she was a rebound for while said lover probably hated the woman he had married just seven months after they had broken up - after they had been together for almost three years.
"What is her name? What does she look like?" Jenny asked in an attempt to break the awkward silence that had settled upon them. That it was, awkward and bitter, because he pretended to have moved on while she hadn't.
"Stephanie." It didn't feel right to talk about her, he didn't want her there where it could have been just him and Jenny and their own past, where they maybe could have learnt how to be friends again. "Redhead too." He didn't say anything else and she didn't push him. She didn't want further information on his wife, fate was cruel enough how it was, she didn't have to burden herself with his marriage too.
"What about you?" He asked, it was his turn now, as if they were playing twenty questions.
"Still not married if that is what you want to know." She answered and Gibbs had to admire her nerve to put humour into this at best unpleasant conversation. "I was stationed in Florence for the first few months," the after Paris unspoken in the air between them "then I spent about one and a half-year in Rota, Spain."
He looked at her thoughtfully, and for a first didn't know what to say or do.
"I think we should go, coffee's getting cold." He said eventually and Jenny nodded, agreeing.
She just wanted to run. Again.
He felt numb for the rest of the day, he felt numb as he came home to the wife in whose sheets he'd made his bed. His mind was clouded with the image of her red her, with the smell of her Parisian perfume, with the hurt look in her big green eyes. It haunted him, the expression in them, it was just something he couldn't explain. He had never seen Jenny looking so wounded, so fragile and vulnerable. There had been pain in them, pain and anguish, and she had seemed as if she had been beating up herself over something, over them, for a long time now.
Gibbs stumbled through the hallway of his apartment, trying his best to ignore the laughter he heard from the living room. There were different voices, one of them with a french accent which he suspected belonged to Stephanie's new friend whose name he couldn't remember. He creeped along the wall, slowly inching towards the staircase which would bring him to the sanctuary of his bedroom as-
"Leroy? That's you?" Stephanie called. "He can be a bit anti-social at times" she added in a conspiratorical whisper to her friends. Collective giggling followed her statement and he wished himself back to Washington for the first time in a very long time. At least there he'd had a basement and a boat to retreat to whenever one of his former wives had had company.
"Evening." He grumbled in their general direction, already about to turn around again-
"Leroy honey, that's Agathe, she's new in the neighborhood. Remember, I told you about her this morning." -just to be dragged into the room by a chattering Stephanie. "Leroy spend a few months in France. Where have you been again?"
"Marseille. Paris. Spent some time in Rennes too." Gibbs called her gruffly. Whose evil plan was it to keep Jenny at the forefront of his mind? He came home to forget her for a few hours, provided that was even possible, not to think of her all the time.
"Parlez-vous français?" A tall blonde woman asked, Agathe he presumed.
"Had my partner for that. She's pretty good at languages."
"She? You've never told me your partner was a woman Leroy? How come I never met her?" Shit.
"She's been stationed somewhere in Europe since our op in Paris ended." He said with an air of finality, daring his wife to ask something else.
"How romantic. Two partners in the city of love. I've been to Paris so many times, I just love it." And then and there Gibbs decided he couldn't stand that Agathe-gal already.
"So who's your new partner Leroy? He's nice?" Stephanie spoke up again as she rested her hand on his forearm.
He nodded curtly. "Has been stationed in Spain before Morrow partnered us up." Gibbs looked her in the eyes, his stare hard, and hoped she wouldn't catch up on him avoiding the topic of his partners gender.
"Lucky guy. I bet it has been quite the change for him. The cold winter here and all." She shrugged her shoulders as to put the topic off.
"Yeah. I'm going upstairs, catching a few Zs. Have to go to work again later." He spun around and stormed off, not caring what they thought about him.
Stephanie turned back to her friends and Gibbs wondered how long it would take her to find out about Jenny.
And how long it would take her to find out about Jenny and him.
Jenny had spent the last few hours at her desk pretending to do some paperwork while she was trying to figure out how she would handle being Gibbs' partner again. She heard the tell-tale bing of the elevator announcing a second presence in the bull-pen and she buried herself in files, hoping she would look busy enough for whoever it was to let her alone.
"What are you doing here Jenny?" His gruff baritone right next to her ear made her jump. She didn't hear him coming.
"I swear Jethro, one of those days you'll give me a heart attack. Quit sneaking up on me!" She laughed nervously to cover up her shock. He grinned at her, his typical half smirk and she couldn't help but think how sexy that looked.
"Well that would be a pity, wouldn't it Jen?" Jen. The relief she felt because of him using his nickname for her again was almost ridiculous. It was affectionate, and if she was honest, she hadn't had affectionate since she left him. One night-stands yes, one or two short flings too, but nothing like the affair, the relationship, they had had. It hadn't been real with the men after him, she hadn't felt anything at all for them.
She lifted an eyebrow at him, shot him a smirk of her own. "The new guy would be your eighth partner in what, three months? Want to give Morrow and McAllister a coronary too?" She laughed at his dumbfounded expression.
"Didn't think Tom would tell me, did you? I called him about an hour ago and he didn't quit complaining about you getting rid of your partners for almost fifteen minutes. What did you do to them?" She explained, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
"Expected too much." He said, his serious tone sobering her instantly. "They weren't you." He added so softly, she almost thought she imagined it.
"Jethro..." She trailed off not knowing what to say.
"Now's as good a time as ever to read the files for our new op, don't you think?" Gibbs went on, brushing his comment off roughly, leaving Jenny wondering if he meant what he'd said. She just nodded and motioned for him to go on.
"So what's the situation?" She asked, propping her legs up on her desk. His gaze drifted to her legs and from there to her breasts for a brief moment before it settled on her eyes again.
"We will infiltrate the Russian High Society. We got intel a few weeks ago that a few rich young guys earn their money with human trafficking, a few of them also deal with drugs. NCIS got involved when the dependants of a Marine stationed in Poland were abducted, they were found again in a brothel in Siberia. The wife said one of their captors told her at one point he worked for a business man in Moscow."
He shot her a sideways glance, noticing how she played with a few strands of curly red hair that kept falling into her face. It was the very same movement she had done in Paris when she had been listening to somebody, a sure sign she was highly focused.
"Do we know who it is? Did she got a name out of him?" She asked, her eyes boring into his.
He held the intense eye contact for a few seconds before he looked at the file in front of him again.
"We had a team investigating a few months ago, they came up with three names; Iwan Pawlow, Alexej Popow, and Dmitrij Sokolow."
Jenny nodded. "What's our job?"
"They make their deals at political functions and parties for the rich and popular. They will send us in undercover, I'm posing as a potential buyer." Gibbs said.
"What about me?" She asked fearing his answer as an amused smirk appeared on his face. "You know what, I don't want to know anymore." She said hastily.
"You sure Jen? Wouldn't want you to go in there unprepared."
"Just get it over and done with already." She sighed exasperated.
"Like I said, I'm a potential buyer and you will be my trophy girlfriend." His grin sent her flying over the edge.
"No!" She shouted, not sure if she should laugh or cry. "Jethro!"
"Jen?" He gave right back, still grinning like a Cheshire cat.
"At least I'm not your wife this time around." Jenny mumbled, burying her head in her hands.
"Our day may come..." Gibbs said, now laughing. She hit him playfully, secretly enjoying their banter.
"So, what about our personas?"
"We were both born in the US, we met at a party in New York one year ago. Your name is Grace Morgan Masson, your mother was Irish, that's where your middle name comes from, your father a Frenchman. They died in a car crash eight years ago, when you were twenty. Your mother was a doctor, your father a politician."
"And what about my handsome boyfriend?" She blushed as soon as the words left her mouth. The playful atmosphere had made her forget that they weren't lovers anymore, that this wasn't Paris.
Thankfully he played along, leaving the awkwardness without a chance. "Who's the trophy now, you or me?"
She just laughed in lieu of saying something, she didn't really know what to say anyways.
"I'm John Walters, an Ex-Marine. My family has a long military history, we are well-known and respected. My mother died when I was young, I was eight when she passed away because of cancer. My father died in combat a few years ago, we both are only childs so there aren't any relatives they could look into."
"Minimizes the risk. What's our task?" Jenny nodded, more to herself than to him. She didn't know if she was comfortable with playing his lover so soon again, when the hurting outcome of the last time was still so fresh in her mind.
"We just get the intel, in and out. We try to keep our personas intact, Morrow isn't sure if we will need them again some day. We will have a back up team to make the arrests, maybe we will be arrested to at some point to maintain our credibility."
"There won't be anybody to bail you out this time around when we are locked away together." She said, remembering the last time he had been in jail clearly.
He just shrugged, then smirked. "Maybe Ducky will return the favour and commandeer a boat to save us."
She laughed. "Not sure if he has the same knowledge about boats as me. You taught me quite a lot about them."
Gibbs grinned, remembering vividly what those lessons contained. "You after a repeat performance?"
"You have a basement with a boat in it in Moscow? And here I thought it was a special thing, uniquely DC." She mocked him.
"I wish, Stephanie would have long gotten a coronary if I had." He could have hit himself for the last comment. Why had he invited his wife into this conversation? He could practically feel the atmosphere shifting.
"I should probably go, catch up on a bit of sleep." Jenny said, obviously uncomfortable. "You should too, your wife will worry." She smiled sadly as she went past him, stopping just for a millisecond, unsure what to do.
He reached out with his hand, but stopped halfway, as uncertain as she was.
"Good night Jethro" she murmured softly, touching his hand briefly.
"Night Jen" he whispered as his gaze lingered on her retreating form till the doors of the elevator closed.
Stephanie Gibbs wasn't ignorant and sure as hell she wasn't stupid. She had picked up on her husband's unusual gruff demeanor, even by his standards, the day before and on how touchy he had been when asked about his partner. Maybe he was rubbing of on her, but her gut told her that there was more to the story, that there was more about them, and she was determined to find out what it was.
Her friends had arranged to meet for an early lunch today in a little bistro in the heart of Moscow where the Russian high society frequented usually. She didn't know what had gotten her into her, but the she felt just a little bit anxious to meet some of them. She had never had any qualms about meeting any American celebrities, after all she came from a rich and well-known family, and had been used to be around them since she was a small child. But Agathe's childhood friends from the years she had spent in Russia were a different matter entirely, they were more powerful and had greater influence than her family had ever had.
She hummed quietly along some random melody playing on the radio to calm herself down a bit as she heard her husband coming down the stairs. Stephanie turned around to greet him but as usual he went straight to the coffee maker. Asking about her well-being two days in a row was obviously too much for him.
"Good morning Leroy" she said pointedly as she continued to lay the table. Gibbs grumbled something incomprehensible, it was way too early to even think about having a normal conversation with his wife, never mind one bordering on a passive-aggressive discussion.
"I hope you had a good evening after you left yesterday. Yeah, well in fact mine was just fine, we had lots of fun, thanks for asking." She spat not really knowing what came over her and by the look on his face he didn't either.
"You okay?" He asked looking her in the eyes for the first time that morning. She just shrugged, she couldn't even explain herself.
"Just tired I suppose. Yesterday was exhausting." She mumbled, turning away from him. "Scratch that, this whole week was exhausting. It's just..." Stephanie trailed off, obviously trying hard to order her thoughts.
"This is Russia, Leroy. This is the Russian winter. I miss home, I miss DC, I miss people speaking my mother tongue all around me. And you aren't helping matters at all. You are just at work, and when you aren't over at NCIS, you are kinda mentally absent." She looked lost, having shot her bolt. Gibbs found it hard to believe that just two days ago he had wished for her to finally act out and now he found himself hoping she wouldn't ever do so again.
He sighed; absentminded, that he was, just that recently the reason of it had come a hell of a lot closer to him. He put his hand on her shoulder.
"I'll try." He promised her gruffly and already knew at the moment he said it that it was futile.
As Gibbs came into work that morning, he saw his redheaded partner already sitting at her desk. Her eyes were halfway closed, she was leaning back against the backrest of her chair. She looked relaxed, almost as if she was sleeping, but he knew better than that. She was probably listening in to one of the conversations going on around her without wanting to be spotted.
Well either way, the fun was over now. At least for her.
"Shepard!" He barked, making her shriek in surprise.
"Jesus Gibbs, I didn't think you were serious about giving me a heart attack." She said, still a little jumpy. He could hear the snickering around him and fixed the agents surrounding them with a good glare.
"You tired Jen?" He asked softly, letting their heads shot up again. Jethro Gibbs wasn't known for caring about his probies' conditions.
"It's too cold here. I was freezing my ass off sleeping so I got up at four in the morning, way too early. I was in at six." She grumbled, her eyes being almost closed once again.
"Fancy going out for coffee? It's on me?"
"You know a shop around that makes a semi-decent cup of Jamaican blend?" Jenny asked eagerly, and he had to bit back a smirk at her expression. She looked like a child at Christmas morning, with him being Santa who stayed behind by some accident.
"Sure do. Come on." He nudged her up and helped her with her coat before leading her to the elevator, quite a few pairs of eyes following them.
It was about ten in the morning as Agathe Ganiole entered her usual coffee shop. She had done most of her Christmas shopping for the last two hours, now she just had to attend an appointment with her hair stylist before she would meet up with her friends at the restaurant around the corner.
It was a cozy little place, not too crowded usually, and the coffee was excellent. It remembered her of her homeland. Even if she had spent a fair amount of her childhood in Russia, France was where she felt at home. She paid for her café au lait and took a sip of the scolding hot liquid, letting it warm her. She turned around and was about to exit the shop when she saw a head of silvery hair just a few feet away from her. And a particular handsome one at that. She had a nagging voice in her head, telling her that she knew him, but she couldn't quite pinpoint who he was just now.
He sat with his back to her, his shoulders stiff, a cup of coffee in front of him, a young redhead across from him. They seemed to be familiar with one another, there was something about the way they were talking with each other, about the way he touched her hands on the table when she lent her head back laughing.
It was a strange scene to look at, she was all relaxed, enjoying herself and his company, and while she could tell he was enjoying being there with her too, there was an edge about him, he was too tense.
He turned his head, trailing his eyes all over the room, and the moment Agathe saw his cobalt blue eyes, she just knew who he was, without a doubt. And she knew the redhead opposite to him wasn't Stephanie.
A small smile grazed her features. She didn't know what to make out of the discovery just yet, but she was certain she would find out. She would let them squirm, both of them, just for a little while.
It had been a good morning for Stephanie Gibbs, at least it had been after her husband had left their apartment. He had been tense, and while she had tried to calm herself down, he had been just poison for her nerves.
She opened the heavy oak door of the restaurant, it was a classy one, with a red curtain just behind the entrance to keep the cold Russian winter air from coming in. She gave her coat to one of the waiters and looked around the room, trying to find her friend. She spotted the large table in the rear part of the room a few seconds after and strode confidently toward it. More confidently than she felt.
"Agathe." She greeted, giving her new friends the typical french bises on each cheek.
"Stephanie. It's so nice you could make it. Those are Anastasia, Irina and Julia." She said, pointing at the three already seated women.
Stephanie nodded. "Pleasure to meet you." She said as she extended her hand for them to shake.
"It's a pleasure to meet you" a petite blonde, Julia, said as she took her hand. "Agathe's told us so much about you."
Stephanie blushed and giggled a little nervously. "Only the best I hope?"
"No reason to be nervous" Anastasia piped up, brushing a few strands of brunette hair out of her face. Her accent was much heavier as Julia's, but her eyes were kind and Stephanie took an instinctive liking to her.
"So, tell me my friend, what brings you to Moscow?" Julia asked, making the third woman, Irina, look at her curiously.
"My husband was offered a promotion over here. He works for the government." She explained, not sure how much she was allowed to tell them about Leroy's job.
"Mine is a politician too. Maybe we'll see each other at one of those boring functions one day, making it a little less boring, what do you think?" Julia laughed and sent her a mischievous grin.
"I think I'd like that." Stephanie gave back, glad that those 'celebrities' how Agathe had announced them, were a good bit more normal than she'd originally thought. The conversation carried on nicely over their meal, and she found herself enjoying her lunch. She had fun, was laughing a lot, and so did the others beside Agathe who seemed to be deep in thought.
"Are you alright?" She asked when she embraced the other woman lightly as she said good-bye.
Agathe looked at her and nodded. "Yes, I'm alright, I've just seen something odd at the coffee shop." She said, brushing off the question and giving Stephanie the first smile for that day.
It didn't reach her eyes.
So, that's as good a point as ever to stop and before this is getting to long, I'll end the chapter here. I hope you enjoyed reading. Please leave a review, I'd love to know what you think!
Updates may take a while, I have a lot going on lately.