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G. Callen is invited to an event he never thought would happen, the marriage ceremony of Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. When he found out who the bride was, he couldn't believe it. Could he find out what was really going on before Tony sings the 'Wedding Bell Blues'?
Disclaimer: The characters and sets of NCIS: LA are all owned by CBS, Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan. I only own a copy of the DVDs from season 1-5 (but I do have season 6 on order). I do get to play with everyone, but they all have to be home by curfew.
A/N: Thanks S. and G. for working with me on parts of this chapter. It sure helps to be able to bounce these ideas off someone else and see things in there that your bunnies have placed there but forgot to tell you about.
Whose Wife is She Anyway
Chapter 1
. . . . .
NCIS Mission Headquarters, Office of Special Projects, Los Angeles
Callen arrived at the Mission early one Monday morning and found an ivory envelope propped up in the center of his desk where he couldn't miss seeing it. He picked it up and noticed that it was sealed, the only thing marring the pristine spotlessness was his name printed on the front, in beautiful calligraphy.
He picked it up and kept turning it over and over in his hands, wondering what it could be and from whom he had received it. He saw that Hetty was in her office and walked over there, still carrying the envelope.
"What's this?" the Agent asked his boss. Hetty always knew everything, so she should know what it was and why it was on Callen's desk.
"I have no idea, Mr. Callen. It arrived this weekend with a bunch of dispatches from Washington. It was addressed to you, so I placed it on your desk."
"From Washington?"
"I don't even know that. It arrived with dispatches from Washington. Whether or not this envelope originated there, I have no idea."
"I don't know of anything going on back there. If something big would be up, Gibbs would have told me. This," he continued as he kept turning the envelope in his hands, over and over and over, "this is a mystery."
"Well, I know one way you can find the answer to your mystery, Mr. Callen," Hetty said with a smile.
"And that is...?" Callen queried.
"Why don't you just open it and find out?" the tiny woman advised him.
. . . . .
His mind flashing through so many different scenarios, he only half-heard what she said. All of a sudden he looked up at her from the envelope and asked, "I'm sorry, Hetty. What did you say?"
"If you want to find out what is inside the envelope, I suggest that you go back to your desk and open it up. Unless, of course, you want me to use my letter-opener on it?"
"No, Hetty, I'll take care of it," he said to her as he started walking back to his desk.
He sat down and stared at it for at least ten more minutes. There was something about it that made him apprehensive of opening it up. Call it a gut feeling, or whatever else you wanted. He just knew that once he opened it, this apprehension that he was now feeling would evolve into a full-blown case of foreboding for him.
But there was no other way around it. He took the knife that he carried in his boot, and, holding the envelope as far from him as possible, slit the top open, making sure that it was aimed away from his face.
He was a little disappointed that nothing happened. It didn't blow up. Nothing came flying out of the envelope to attack him. It just was an envelope, with two cards inside. As Callen looked inside, he saw another stamped envelope, and two cards, all of them covered with the same type of calligraphy on the outside envelope that announced it was a message for him.
Pulling out the larger card, he read:
YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO CELEBRATE THE WEDDING CEREMONY OF
ZOE KEATES
AND
ANTHONY DiNOZZO, Jr.
SATURDAY, THE TWENTY-FIFTH OF JULY, 2015
BEGINNING AT FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
BANQUET AND DANCING TO FOLLOW
HOTEL PALOMAR
WASHINGTON, DC
There was also a small, handwritten note on another card.
Hey, Callen, if you have found a girl you want to bring along with you, you're more than welcome to have her come. If you need an escort, let me know, and I will get you hooked up with someone here.
Tony
Accompanying them were two RSVP cards that also indicated their choices for the entree at the banquet and a stamped return envelope addressed to Tony.
My God, he thought, somebody finally nailed Tony down hard enough to make him pop the question.
He checked his watch and wondered when it would be a good time to put in a call to Gibbs and find out about this mystery woman. He saw Hetty was covertly looking at him over the rim of her teacup, and decided that he would not place a personal call at work, because she might want him to justify it on his next expense voucher.
As surprised as he was when he found out the contents of the envelope, that underlying apprehension still did not go away. Could it be that another confirmed bachelor was going to bite the dust, and he felt the target on his back just get a little bigger? Or was there something else, more sinister, involved? He would know more after he talked with Gibbs.
. . . . .
Throughout the day, all sorts of conflicting thoughts started going through his head. Yes, he was very surprised that Tony would finally want to settle down. He had long been as confirmed a bachelor as Callen was, eager to play the field, but very reluctant to share his life, especially his innermost feelings, with anyone. Callen doubted if Gibbs even knew how Tony felt about a lot of things. For all his fooling around, the man was very private. He used his humor to deflect any attempt to break through the armor plating surrounding his true emotions. In some ways, Callen had to admit that Tony was more like Deeks than he was to him. The two men were cut from the same cloth, but it was surprising that Tony had caved before Deeks had. This Zoe Keates must be quite a woman if she could get Tony to settle down before Kensi Blye got Deeks to put a ring on her finger.
Then he started to think of his own situation. Like Tony, he was no getting any younger. He enjoyed the relationship that he was starting to develop with Nell Jones. Somehow she had worked her way into his life so that he felt some part of his life was missing when she was not there. It was not just a sexual involvement, although the sex with her was fantastic. It went much deeper than that, down to his very core of being. He needed her to feel complete. Her voice over the com settled him down before the deadliest parts of the missions. She worried enough about him for the both of them, and could usually find some way to work around all the problems and smooth the way for him and the rest of the team. No, this little pixie had become a necessary part of his life. Maybe it was time that he settled down. It certainly was an interesting concept.
. . . . .
Later that night || Callen's home
Callen waited until he got home to put in a call to Gibbs. The Special Agent in Charge of the Major Case Response Team in Washington, DC picked up his phone on the second ring.
"Gibbs," he answered.
"You keeping everything in Washington in line, Gibbs?"
"About as well as you are doing out there in LA. What can I do for you, Callen?"
"Ahh... I got this invite from Tony. Is it for real? Has some girl actually found the way to put a ring on his finger?"
"It's for real. I've met her. She seems to be a good girl for Tony. Tony even invited Senior to meet her and he gave his blessing to their relationship."
"I never thought that I would see the day when he would fall so hard that he would actually propose."
"Well, you know, stranger things have happened."
"Yeah..."
"What's that supposed to mean...wait, does that mean that you're going down too?"
"Ahhh... It hasn't gotten to that level yet, but yeah, I think I have found someone that I could settle down with."
"Well, knowing your rule about women with their own handcuffs, I would presume that she is someone from the outside. I would really like to meet the one that has your heart in her hands."
"Actually, I think you have already met her. Her name is Nell Jones and she is the Intelligence Analyst here at OSP. She usually has a tablet or laptop in her hands, but she does have her own handcuffs when she goes out in the field."
"Short, little red-headed pixie? Smart, but looking like she just stepped off a college campus?"
"Her hair's longer now, but that's the one."
"Geez, Callen, you love to rob the cradle? She must be twenty years younger than you."
"Actually, it's only fifteen, but it doesn't seem to matter to her, and it certainly does not matter to me."
"You are bringing her? I have so many stories that I'm sure she would love to hear about our time in Russia together."
"I'll have to keep a close rein on her if she decides to come. Anyway, what else can you tell me about the future Mrs. DiNozzo?"
"She and Tony met while working a case. She's ATF. Don't know if she's going to stay there or try to transfer over to NCIS. Seems to be intelligent, of course, who's to say, look at who she's marrying." Both men chuckled at the comment.
"Don't know too much more about her, only that she seems to make Tony happy. Why don't you call him and find out if you have any more questions?"
"I think I'll just leave it at that. I guess that I see you then."
"Take care, Callen."
"You too, Gibbs."
. . . . .
His next call was to Nell. Their relationship had started to blossom. Callen was certain that Hetty knew that they were beginning to be a couple, but so far, none of the other team members seemed to know it. The hardest one to keep in the dark was Sam. He and Michelle were so disappointed when their matchmaking efforts with Joelle didn't work out. They still were looking for a girl for their best friend, but they were quickly running out of options. Little did they know that Callen had already found her, and she had been working side by side with him all this time.
"Hey, Nell."
"Hi, Callen. I was wondering if you were going to call. You seemed pretty preoccupied all day long."
"That's a little bit about what I want to talk to you about. I found a wedding invitation sitting on my desk this morning. Tony DiNozzo, Special Agent at MCST in Washington, is getting married on the twenty-fifth of the month, and he has invited me to attend. He also put in a personal note that if I had found a girl by then and wanted to bring her along, I could. Otherwise, he could find an escort for me."
"Sooo," she teased, "You want to know if I am good with you going to this wedding and him providing you with an escort for the whole weekend?"
"What!...NO!...Of course not!" he exclaimed. "I was wondering if our relationship has gotten to the point where we could go together to something like this, and I could introduce you to everyone as my girlfriend."
"Well...I am a girl...and I think I am your friend...so if you told that to people, you would not be lying."
"You know what I mean. This "thing" that we have, that we are not afraid to call a relationship, unlike Deeks and Kensi."
"KAAA-LUUUNK" was the sound that Callen heard in his ear.
"Nell, is anything wrong? What was that awful sound that I just heard?"
"That, my dear Callen, was the sound of one of the huge blocks in your wall to keep emotions and relations away from your life falling to the ground. Now maybe others can begin to see the man that I love, the sensitive, kind, loving person behind the wall."
"Well, that has only come about because a certain pixie has wormed her way into my heart and showed me what love really is."
"Awww. You're so sweet."
"So, do you want to go to the wedding?"
"Do you know if anyone else from the team is gonna be there?"
"Don't think so. Nobody else has asked me about going and I didn't see any of Tony's invitations on any other desks."
"That's good. I still don't know how I want to break it to the team, especially Eric, just yet."
"That's fine. The only one who would have to know about it would be Hetty."
"Well, I'm sure that she already knows. Nothing gets past the little ninja."
"So, is that a yes, you want to come with me, or a no, and I get to meet some girl that will fill in for you that weekend?"
"If I hear that you are trying to replace me with some other fee-male, I will personally make sure that you and all your aliases will never, ever, see the light of day again," she said, with acid dripping from each and every word she spoke.
"You know what? I completely believe that you would do that. So I take it you are coming with me?"
"Someone has to keep an eye on you," she said with a twinkle in her voice.
"Do you want to make arrangements with Hetty, or should I?"
"I think that both of us should ask for the time separately. This way, if she doesn't know yet, like that really could be true, we won't give her any ideas."
Callen just laughed at that comment. "Okay. I'm going to ask for the time tomorrow. I'll leave you to make your own arrangements with her."
"Okay. I'll try to take care of it tomorrow too. I'll talk to you after I get it done."
"I will talk to you tomorrow then."
"Night, Callen."
"Sweet dreams, Nell."
. . . . .
The following day || OSP Mission
Both Callen and Nell cleared that weekend with Hetty and looked to spend it with each other in Washington, DC. Callen was still wondering who this girl was that Tony was going to settle down with, so he tried to find out any information that he could on Zoe Keates in the federal databases. He found only one picture, and it was hard to make out any features from it. Her file said that she started with ATF toward the end of 2010 and was in on several important cases. He sorta forgot about it, when a new case came in that afternoon. He did ask Nell to see if the couple was registered anywhere that they could bring an appropriate gift.