CHAPTER ONE

Three days earlier

Tony knocked for the third time, something that was not particularly easy to do while trying to balance two bags of Thai food, a freezer bag with two pints of ice cream, and a six-pack of ready-made mojitos.

"Jess – come on!" he shouted. The dog next door started to bark.

He heard some fumbling behind the door, and then it popped open, a slightly disheveled woman standing behind it. She was in a pair of jeans, a t-shirt that was way too big (and, he suspected, his) and a pair of white crew socks. She looked like she'd been asleep, and he felt instantly contrite.

"I'm sorry, Tony," Jess began, as she took various packages from him. "I got home a little early and sat down to go through the mail. The next thing I know, I'm waking up and trying to figure out what's making that pounding noise." He looked at her with eyebrows raised and a grin, and she quickly ran her hands through her hair and over her face, to try and come off as a bit more alert and a little less dazed. He reached forward and ruffled his hand through her hair, effectively undoing any straightening she'd tried to do. She shook her head and turned to look at the packages on the counter.

"Thai food, strawberry ice cream, and mojitos. Oh, yeah," she said. "I'm going to be sick for a week." She shrugged, popped open a mojito, and drank about half of it down in one gulp.

"Whoa, there, Chiquita," Tony said, taking the bottle from her and putting it on the counter. He looked at her with a more critical eye. "You okay?"

"What?" she said, with a teasing tone, "You feel like playing Andy Garcia to my Meg Ryan?"

"No," Tony said, still surveying her face. "It's just that you normally go for the ice cream first."

"Sorry to break the mold," she said, sitting at the table and stretching. "It's been a long week."

"So you said earlier." Tony put the ice cream in the freezer and served some food onto two plates. He brought the plates to the table with the rest of her drink and one for himself. She reached out for the plate and the bottle.

"I'll be good," she said, as he slowly relinquished his hold on the bottle. She put the bottle on the table and started eating. "Thanks for this," she said between bites of pad thai. "I'd have gone to bed without eating anything otherwise."

Jess Kennedy had just started working in Strategic Operations for the Pentagon (D Ring), a job she'd gotten after Gibbs called in a couple of favors to get her an interview. Tony had known Jess since childhood, when they'd vowed to be best friends for the rest of their lives. Aside from a few bumpy years in college, they'd managed to keep that vow. After living all over the US – and a couple of places overseas – Jess had ended up in Barrow, Alaska working on a cooperative project with the NOAA. An old grudge held by a paroled convict brought her to DC and to Tony's doorstep, and that old grudge soon became a new case for NCIS. Once it was over, and the case was closed, it became Gibbs' personal mission to keep Jess in or near DC if at all possible. Even though Gibbs told himself that he'd done it simply because Tony seemed easier to handle when Jess was around, he also had to admit that for a woman who didn't have red hair, Jess Kennedy was someone he'd like to know better.

As they ate, Tony surveyed the townhouse, noticing opened and unopened boxes throughout the two rooms he could see. Furniture was placed, but bare – no pictures on the mantle, no books on the shelves, boxes of clothes and towels open in the hall. "I really like what you haven't done to the place," he said, with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, I know," Jess said, with a sigh. "I keep meaning to get it all unpacked and put away, but then the phone rings or the pager goes off or the Blackberry beeps, and before you know it, I'm working again. The phrase 'hit the ground running' is an understatement at the Pentagon." She looked up at Tony with an apologetic expression. "I know … I've still got stuff at your place too," she said. "I'm sorry."

He went to the counter to serve second helpings. "Why don't I come over this weekend – we can get you unpacked," he said, handing her another plate of food. "I'll bet I could even talk Gibbs into helping," he added, with an evil grin.

"Y'know," Jess said, with a tired smile, "I know you're doing that to push a button, but I'm way too tired to play 'Jessie's got a boyfriend' right now. If you and Gibbs want to come over and help me turn this from a storage unit into a workable living space, I'm all for it. I'll even cook." She looked at her bare-bones kitchen and then at the unopened boxes marked 'Kitchen' in big block letters. "Well," she amended, "at the very least, I'll place the pizza order."

Tony smiled, and they clinked bottles, both of them finishing their drinks. "It's a date," Tony said. "Or," he continued, impishly, "for two of you, it will be, anyway."

Friday afternoon, Tony reminded Gibbs (for the third time) about "Saturday at Jess' Place", and e-mailed him (for the fourth time) detailed directions to her townhouse. He'd asked McGee, Abby and Ziva if they were available to help as well, but it looked like it would be the moving team of DiNozzo & Gibbs the next day. McGee had family coming into town, Abby was with Habitat for Humanity, and Ziva was "busy."

"Busy, Ziva?" Tony asked, curiosity fairly seeping from his every pore. "Just … 'busy'?"

She ignored him.

"Does 'busy' have a name, or are you involved in some covert operation?" Tony circled her desk like a vulture.

"Oh for heaven's sake, Tony," Ziva said with an exasperated sigh. "If you must know, I have a date. I'm going on a picnic and to see an outdoor concert with one of the men I met at the American embassy when I was asking about my visa."

"A date with a diplomat," Tony said, trying to imagine what that would look like. "I'd almost cancel on Jess to be a fly on the wall there."

Ziva looked at him, ready for whatever he was going to dish out.

Tony seemed to be concentrating – trying to figure something out. "If you kill a diplomat, do you have immunity, or is that only if the diplomat kills you?"

Ziva opened her mouth to say something when Gibbs walked in.

"If you two don't get back to work," he said gruffly, "I'll kill you both, and it won't matter, now, will it?"

"No boss," Tony responded as he quickly sat and got back to work. "It won't."

Friday night found Tony at Jess' place, with the first load of stuff that they were transferring from his apartment to hers. When she first moved back from Alaska, Jess had spent three weeks living at Tony's until one of Abby's bowling buddies – who also happened to be a savvy DC real estate agent – helped her find a great two-bedroom townhouse on the outskirts of the city, with a quick and easy route to the Pentagon. Tony figured that they could get a head start on Friday night – then they could get up early on Saturday, finish by dinnertime, and everyone still had Sunday off. That was the plan.

By about 8 o'clock that evening, Tony's and Jess' cars had both been loaded and emptied, and the two were at Jess' place sorting through boxes and books and whatever else they'd managed to stuff into Tony's Mustang and Jess' Saturn. There wasn't much priority to what they were unpacking – a lot of the stuff at Tony's place had been "transition" stuff. The kind of things that you pack when you know you're staying somewhere for a while, but you don't want to get so comfortable that you forget you're really looking for a place of your own. It was mostly books and DVDs, clothes, important papers, extra towels, and the ugly stuffed cat that Tony had brought her in the hospital after the whole incident a few months earlier.

There was an open pizza box on the counter, a couple of open beers on the table, and a plastic container of olives and peppers providing some antipasti as they went through boxes and unpacked. A Sinatra CD was playing on the stereo, a compromise between the show tunes Jess wanted and the Dave Matthews CD Tony was pushing. Every once in a while, one of them would talk, but it was mostly Tony emptying boxes and stacking the contents wherever Jess told him to, and then Jess moving things into their actual homes. Occasionally, Tony would break into song, doing his best Sinatra imitation, and Jess would stop to watch. You wouldn't necessarily guess it to look at him, but Tony DiNozzo had some suave and debonair dance moves when he put his mind to it.

Finally, Tony had emptied the last box, flattened and stacked the boxes for the dumpster, and was just about to plop on the couch to watch Jess finish her part of the process. "The One That Got Away" was playing on the stereo.

"Tony?" Jess said, as she made note of the song, "what ever happened to … what was her name? … Monica? I meant to ask you earlier."

"Monica didn't work out," Tony said, with a straight face and no elaboration.

"Oh," Jess said, looking at him with a look of regret. "That's too bad. I liked Monica."

Tony barely held in a grin and regarded her with an expression of confused amusement. "No you didn't."

She looked at him with a kind of 'I told you so' expression. "No … I didn't," she said, as she went back to her unpacking. Tony laughed and went to toss the boxes in the dumpster.