-Out of the Frying Pan

They had talked a lot, and by that he meant a lot.

After that kiss she smiled, one of the most beautiful smiles he had ever seen and then he included Ziva, Jeanne and all of the other beautiful woman in his life.

Then without saying anything at all she had walked towards the elevator and left, leaving him standing there.

She had asked him to take it slow, and for once he was perfectly fine with it – if he had wanted a quickie just to show off that he could have anyone he wanted then he would've gone to a bar.

He was perfectly happy with her decision, he had been thinking along the same lines.

And really when were they to spend much time together? Between her moving here, finding a place, making sure everything was ready for when her team moved here, keeping Vance updated and all the other basic stuff a human needs like rest he really couldn't picture himself interfering in that time table – so he kept distance.

Until two days after their kiss, she had called him and given him a rant of how he couldn't just dump her like that – like some highschool girl.

And then she had been totally blown away by his voice telling her "I just wanted to give you some time", she had told him that she had had her time now.

So since then they had talked over the phone nearly every day, or at least once in two days.

Of course little miss David had noticed how he had acted, Mcgee had joked that in a real sensitive manner that he probably was undercover again and Gibbs… Gibbs just raised his eyebrow once and left it at that.

And he was fine with it.

Because he was still in the doubting phase – he wasn't sure she was something for him and if he wanted it to be something more than a fling.

Hell, right now he would doubt the fact that they had a 'fling'.

Before this he never had to think this hard about the simple fact that he had kissed with somebody he really liked – except Jeanne of course – and he never had to think about what would come next, normally he would decide that even with Jeanne he had held the power and now it was in between.

His head hurt, he really should stop thinking about this.

EJ, Erica Jane, Barrett.

It wasn't a name you'd hear a lot, but then again he never heard of 'Ziva' either before said lady joined the team.

This morning he had nearly blew his 'I just met EJ Barrett and don't know anything about her act' although he was fairly sure he had blown it before but this morning even he had caught his slip.

Ziva's not so subtle questions and Mcgee's raised eyebrows and sarcastic glance were enough conformation, the only thing that could make it worse was if…

One Abby Scuito would choose sides – after that the battle had been fought.

He would like to know where he stood with EJ, how she saw him, what she thought they had, hell any information would be great right now.

"Tony?" he turned and saw standing behind him the one and only Miss David, raising her beautifully arched eyebrows.

"Yeah?" he replied, his eyes glancing towards the letter she was holding – he couldn't make out the handwriting.

"Nothing you just seemed… out of it." She gave him a nervous smile – which was rare considering Ziva David didn't get nervous very often – and walked a little closer.

He looked at the letter again and saw that the handwriting belonged to mysterious Mr. Miami – also known as Ray.

He swallowed back his honest reply about how he had been thinking about EJ and was wondering if she knew something and instead gave her some good ol' Bullshit "Just imaging that I'm on the Bahama's with a few of my lovely lady friends" he wiggled his eyebrows at her, instantly her serious façade fell and she rolled her eyes.

The fact that he could fool her so easily stung a little but 'Ray' also stung a little so he guessed it didn't really matter all that much.

Now he could resume to his endless thinking about one EJ Barrett and question what he should do with her…

Dump her?

Continue with her?

Drop by her?

There were so many options, so many answers, so many wrongs, so many rights that right now he decided that his best option was to wait it out – and not jump right in the middle like he normally did.

Also judging from all the paperwork that had to be done since Metro wanted everything refilled from the Peyton case he probably would be too wrapped up into it to really think about anything else.

Yeah, he just had to turn down the 'think' button in his head.

Easier said than done.