AN1: I had another 2 chapters planned but didn't have them backed up on my computer and the server deletes them if you don't touch them for 60 days. So I'm starting from scratch and haven't written since I posted the last chapter. I also don't really remember where I left off and gave only a cursory glance to my previous chapters. At this point, I'm crossing my fingers that I'm not repeating myself.
AN2: Tuck this one in before Dear John (chapter 14).
AN3: I'm still open to topic suggestions. Depending on what year the old stuff in Baltimore took place, I'm thinking Jenny might have a place somewhere in there.
AN4: Since I haven't written for a while, I'm going to disclaim all that stuff again. I own nothing. Also, this is another late night unbeta'd chapter.
199?
Kate couldn't always complain about protection details. In fact, the very definition of vacation for a Secret Service agent was being part of the advance team for a dignitary visit to another country. It really doesn't take a week to prepare for the Secretary of State to visit Paris. In fact, Kate was enjoying this particular detail. In her free time, she'd visited the Louvre, the Arc de Triumphe, the Bastille, and the Eiffel Tour. At this particular moment, she was sitting in a cafe with a view of the Eiffel Tour sipping what had to be the most bitter coffee she'd ever tasted. It seemed like a good time to test her profiling skills. A blond girl walked by clinging to a skinny male - artists, Kate immediately thought. She heard the girl make a pretentious comment about how "being in the shadow of the Eiffel Tour was like..." Kate stopped paying attention. She would not waste her time focusing on a pair of American tourist-snobs. A man in a dark suit standing tucked away in a corner caught her attention. She studied him for a moment and decided that he was a Parisian businessman taking lunch, perhaps waiting for his mistress.
"Not a mistress. He's definitely waiting for a hooker."
Kate whipped her head around and saw that Jenny had slipped into the seat opposite hers. "What? How?" Kate stuttered.
"You should really pay more attention to your surroundings, Agent Todd. We're staying in the same hotel."
Kate shook her head. How could she have missed that?
"Don't beat yourself up too much," Jenny said, "I'm prepping for an undercover mission and I'm supposed to be laying low. Apparently I'm good at it, if you're the best the Secret Service has got." Jenny paused. "So, Condi's coming for a visit?"
"The best paid vacation there is," Kate beamed. "So are you here alone?" A waitress placed a cup of coffee in front of Jenny.
"Nope. I'm still enjoying the perks of undercover spy sex with my partner."
If the bitterness of the coffee wasn't enough to make Kate spit it out, the blatant comment certainly was. Jenny, however, calmly sat there and downed the coffee in one gulp.
"How can you drink this stuff?" Kate paused for a moment. "Oh, are his coffee drinking habits rubbing off on you now too?"
"Yes, and I'm withholding his coffee at the moment until he does what I ask."
"Do I even want to know what you're asking?"
Jenny shook her head. "It's definitely not what you're thinking. I just asked him to cut his hair. Properly. The marine cut doesn't fly for this mission and right now it's all long and shaggy. In the entire time I've known him, he has never had a decent hair cut. A man who has had two wives should have learned that women care about these things."
"And maybe that's why he has two ex-wives. So this is more about you than the upcoming mission," Kate smiled knowingly. "Is it that serious between you two?"
Jenny ignored the question and continued ranting, "You'd think a man who can do anything he says he can, and mind you, he says he can do a lot, would be able to get a proper hair cut. He claims that he can but I'm still waiting. And while I'm waiting, I've hidden his personal blend of coffee and kept him from ordering any. It's the 'anything you can do, I can do better' principle. I'm waiting for the day when he can't do something that he says he's going to do. And then I shall lord it over him for as long as it serves my purposes." Jenny gave a fake haughty laugh to accompany her last statement.
"He's really that good?"
Jenny grinned smugly, "No, better."
2004
Though she'd only had a couple of months of first hand knowledge, she knew she could say with 100% certainty that Gibbs was not able to find a decent barber. She'd discovered that Jenny was right - Gibbs could do anything else.