Monday, 1808, Chalmers Hotel

Jeanne was conscious of a pleasant flutter in her midsection and an increase of her heart rate as she took Tony's proffered arm. It was a supremely romantic gesture, and his compliment was still making her feel slightly flushed. She tried to remind herself that Tony was a polite guy, and none of this meant anything for certain, but her back brain was unconvinced. It knew what it wanted.

Tony walked her to the elevator, and thence to the restaurant. The maître d' bowed them to their table without any ado, and they settled into their seats. They spoke of nothing much, that is to say, they spoke of her work in Africa and Tony's work in DC, movies they'd seen recently. Nothing that touched on current events. Nothing that touched on the ending of their relationship. Nothing that touched on the future. She let Tony guide the conversation, and as always, he was a fluent talker. He had a real gift for small talk, and something she'd heard called piffle. Light banter flowed back and forth between them, covering and protecting the deeper feelings that they weren't addressing at the moment.

Over dessert, Tony gave her a quizzical look. "So, your mother likes secret agents, huh?"

Jeanne sighed in exasperation. "I think I gave you the wrong impression. See, my mother knows everything." Tony's eyes widened, and she hastened to explain. "Not everything everything, but she knows how the relationship ended, she knows what you were doing, she knows what I did, and she thought mine was the greater betrayal."

"What?" Tony exclaimed. "That's crazy!"

"You were doing your job," Jeanne said. She shrugged her shoulders uncomfortably. "I was seeking vengeance."

Tony blinked at her. "Vengeance is such a . . . biblical term."

"Well, revenge, anyway, I . . ." Jeanne bit her lip. "When the guy told me that they knew it was you who'd killed my father, I wanted to believe it, not because it made sense, but because it gave me license to be a bitch."

"Wait," Tony said. "Back up. Who told you they knew it was me who killed your father?" The waiter had come up at that moment to check on them, and he froze in uncertainty, staring at Tony. "I didn't," he said, looking alarmed. "Kill her father, I mean. It was a . . . misunderstanding." The waiter nodded uneasily and walked away. Tony watched him go, grimacing. "Great, now that guy is going to go tell his manager that they have an incident waiting to happen at this table."

"Don't be silly, Tony," Jeanne said, leaning forward and taking his hand. "I'll tell you the whole story when we go upstairs." Tony still looked anxious, so Jeanne grabbed the little notebook she always kept handy, ripped out a sheet of paper and wrote their room number on it. Leaving it on the table, she rose, taking Tony's hand again. "Come on, let's go."

"Don't you have to sign something?" Tony asked.

"I'll make it right later," Jeanne said. "Come on."

They left the restaurant holding hands because Tony didn't try to extricate his from hers. Jeanne was pleased by that. Taking his arm might be romantic, but it was also formal and could be impersonal. Holding hands was anything but impersonal. She glanced up at Tony's face while they waited for the elevator and realized that he was looking more than a little off balance. She decided that hand-holding wasn't enough to offset his emotional state, and that in this mood he was unlikely to make any moves himself, so when they got on the elevator, she stepped closer and put her arm around his waist. Tony's body tensed briefly, but then he relaxed and pulled her close into a hug. "I don't blame you," he said softly. "I did at the time, believe me, but I realize now that it was my fault. I screwed up in more ways than one on that assignment, and –"

She reached up and touched his lips to silence him. "It wasn't your fault," she said. "No matter what you did, it can't justify what I did."

"Not justify, but you would never –"

The doors opened and a woman of about her mother's age entered the elevator. She wasn't large, but her presence made the space seem very crowded all of a sudden. Tony broke off and Jeanne caught the hand that was on her shoulder and squeezed it. They remained silent till floor seventeen, when the older lady got off, then Jeanne said, "We can talk in the room." Tony nodded without speaking, and Jeanne hoped this would be easily resolved. She sensed confusion and anxiety from his direction, and she wanted to alleviate it without upsetting him.

He released her to dig in her bag for the room key, and she found hers and the one she'd had them make for him. She hadn't yet had the right opportunity to give it to him, but she pulled them both out and handed him his. He took it without a word and opened the door, holding it for her with a vestige of his usual gallantry. She put her bag aside and took his hand, leading him to the sofa. At her silent urging, he sat down, and she sat next to him, leaning against him and snuggling. Not only did he not object, he put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. "What did you mean?" he asked after a moment.

Jeanne took a deep breath. "I got a call on my satellite phone from someone who said he was FBI Agent Norman Meyer to tell me that my father's body had been found." She could feel the movement of Tony's nodding against her hair, but he didn't speak. "He told me that they were sure you had killed him, but they didn't have sufficient proof to convict, and . . ." She paused and leaned sideways so she could look into his face. "I was angry, but that's no excuse. I told him that I knew you'd done it, too." Tony shook his head and started to say something, but she forged ahead. "He sort of led me through a plausible story of how I could know, asking a lot of leading questions that I answered . . . falsely. I'm sorry, it was a terrible thing to do, but between impulse and temper, I made an incredibly bad mistake."

"Leading questions?" Tony asked neutrally.

"'Did you see it happen?'" she quoted. "'You were no doubt afraid to accuse him because he's a federal agent, is that why you went to Africa?'" She ached for the lost expression in his eyes. "I should never have done it, and I knew that on some level, but once it was started I didn't know . . . I wasn't sure I wanted to stop it. I believed him, and that was wrong, too. The minute I let my brain get involved instead of sticking with emotions, I knew you would never have done such a thing."

"But . . . the FBI moved on that, based on that interview?"

She shook her head. "I don't know what they got," she said. "About three days later, I got another call from someone asking me to come to DC for an interview. I told them the story Meyer had pulled out of me, and they wrote it all down, recorded it, you know how that works better than I do. I signed a document, perjuring myself. I still don't know why they didn't prosecute on that."

"Jen asked them not to," Tony said. "Because I asked her to ask them not to."

Jeanne blinked at him. "Oh," she said blankly. "Anyway, later on, after I saw you, I asked to see Norman Meyer, to find out why he'd been so certain, and they all looked blank. I said he was the person I'd talked to first, and they told me they had been tipped off by a source in the CIA that I'd confided in who thought I might be persuaded to lay evidence against you if they asked the right questions, and gave them the right questions. There is no Agent Norman Meyer, and . . ."

"You were set up," Tony finished for her.

"I helped," she replied. "And all I can say is I'm sorry, there's no excuse for what I did. And . . ." She shook her head, puzzled. "Why would you do that, ask them not to prosecute, after what I did to you?"

Tony shrugged. "Your father had just died, you were miserable, it was my fault anyway, and it wasn't like you were going to pop up and do it again."

Jeanne cupped his chin gently, and realized suddenly that he'd covered the bruises on his chin with some kind of make-up. She didn't comment on it, though. She didn't think he'd want to talk about it. "What makes you think any of this is your fault?" she asked.

"I screwed up," Tony said. "I wasn't supposed to let things . . . I'm not sure what I could have done differently, really, but I wasn't supposed to let this go as far as they did."

"I don't understand," Jeanne said. "The whole point was to get close to me, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but I could have . . . I don't know . . . kept things frozen at a slightly less intimate level." He sighed and looked away. "When I knew I was in love, I should have gone to Jenny and told her I'd gotten too close or something, but I didn't want to give you up. I kept fantasizing about possible futures that I knew could not be realistically possible. I . . ." He snorted. "All my previous relationships were either less than a month long or I sabotaged them in one way or another. I've never . . . this sounds lame, but I've never felt this way about anyone before. I shouldn't have let you believe so completely that it was forever, but I wanted it to be forever, and I let that overflow into . . ." He shook his head. "Have you ever seen The Music Man?"

Jeanne raised her eyebrows. "You got your foot caught in the door?"

Reference caught and tossed back without a hitch. No one got his movie references, no matter how obvious, and that one wasn't obvious. "I love you, Jeanne!" he exclaimed without considering the statement in the least.

Her eyes glowed with pleasure, and she dropped her hand from his chin to his shoulder. "I don't believe in the 'think method,' Tony," she said.

Tony smiled at her and tilted his head. "I'm not sure what that means in this context."

She laughed. "I'm not sure, either," she replied.

His laughter died away and he took her hand. "So, this may be a dangerous question, but where do we go from here?"

Her eyes widened, and her hand tightened on his. "I don't know. That . . . depends." Tony didn't know what that meant either. She leaned closer. "It depends on what you . . . what you feel ready for. I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

Tony blinked at her. "You don't," he said. "But . . . do you forgive me for what I did to you?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but then she stopped. "Telling you there's nothing to forgive isn't going to work, is it?" she asked. He just shook his head. "Tony, I know you never meant to hurt me that way, and you were doing a necessary job."

Tony didn't know how to react. He couldn't tell her how much he'd come to doubt the real necessity of the job. If he'd known that La Grenouille had been working with the CIA . . . he would have asked Jenny different questions at the very least.

Jeanne cupped his cheek. "You believed you were doing a necessary job," she said. "Didn't you?"

He nodded. That one he could answer. "Of course, I'm just not suited to that kind of job."

"Deep cover?"

"That wasn't deep cover," Tony replied. "I was still doing my regular job all along." He shook his head. "No, it was the . . . it's one thing to go into a situation where you're surrounded by mobsters or drug runners or whatever, and deceive them completely. It's entirely different when it's . . ." He shrugged. "When it's someone like you. Yes, I believed it was necessary, or I'd never have done it. But the fact is, there are people who can engage in the kind of relationship I developed with you without getting truly involved. I don't think I could have done that, even if I hadn't fallen in love. Casual sex is one thing, deliberately setting out to have a long term 'romantic' relationship with a stranger without meaning any of it is beyond me. I'd hoped to accomplish everything I needed to before going that far with you."

"Is that why it took a month?" Jeanne asked.

"I hated the idea of lying that way," he said. "I . . . I know people who've done it before, to get information, but I never realized how impossible I'd find it to use sex that way. Given my history, one might be excused for thinking that sex means nothing to me, but I find that's not the case."

"Does that excuse Director Shepard?" Jeanne asked, her eyes unreadable. The question strayed a little too close to things he wasn't ready to talk about yet. Tony looked away. Jeanne squeezed his hand. "I meant her using you like that. I'm not trying to put you on the spot about my father. I won't. I just . . . did she not know that she was asking you to do something you weren't up to?"

Tony snorted. "She didn't know . . . she barely knew me when the op started, and I think she wanted to believe I was a younger version of Gibbs that she could mold rather than that I was an independent human being with a unique background and personality." He grimaced. "I probably shouldn't tell you this, not because it's secret but because it's personal to them, but they have a history that I'm not altogether clear on. I know he trained her, I know they had some kind of a relationship, and I know she finds commanding him challenging at the best of times."

"He is a little autocratic," Jeanne said hesitantly.

"That's like saying water's a little wet," Tony said wryly. "Anyway, a few months before I engineered our first meeting, Gibbs quit the agency. He moved to Mexico and dropped out of contact with all of us. I can't really go into detail on the background behind it, but he'd had enough and he just left. Jenny – Director Shepard – didn't want to replace him on the team because she didn't want to believe that he wasn't coming back, and she started treating me like a substitute Gibbs. It was really flattering till I realized that it wasn't me she saw when she looked at me, she saw mini-Gibbs."

"I'm sure –"

"Jeanne," he said gently, and she closed her mouth on the empty reassurance. "I've been enough people's substitute something that I recognize it. I'm also good at willful blindness sometimes. She's an attractive, intelligent woman, and she treated me like an attractive, intelligent man that she relied on. It just so happened that the man in question wasn't actually me. I didn't see it because I didn't want to. And because it would genuinely never occur to me to be seen as a substitute Gibbs." And she'd used his reaction to put him into a situation that was more than a little questionable. He still didn't really know what to do with the fact that he didn't altogether trust his director's judgment.

"I see Tony DiNozzo," Jeanne said, reaching up to touch his nose in an exploratory way, her eyes warm now, boring into his. "I see a man with a depth I only glimpsed in snatches when I spent time with him before, and one I want to know a great deal better."

Tony blinked at her. "Which brings us back to the question of where we go from here."

Jeanne leaned against the sofa, snuggling in against his shoulder. This put her closer physically, but made it impossible for him to see her face. "Well, I don't want to start over," she said, and a sick pit developed in his stomach. If she didn't want . . . then what was this all about? Before his emotions and insecurities could develop on this theme, she spoke again. "Starting over implies wiping out everything that came before, and that's not what I want at all. If you're up for it, I'd like to start again."

His arm tightened around her shoulder, and he felt something that really could not be tears prickling in his eyes. That was exactly what he wanted. To take up where they'd left off, acknowledging all the pain that had passed between them, striving to regain the joys they had shared. He found his voice after a long moment of breathless wonder that she could trust him enough for this. "I'm up for it," he said. It sounded like a paltry response in his ears, but she cuddled even closer and let out a happy sigh. He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against her head.

A moment later an enormous yawn overtook him. Jeanne drew away slightly and looked up at him with a fond smile. "Maybe not tonight," she said.

"I'm not ready to go to bed," he replied pathetically.

She studied his expression and apparently decided against challenging his stubbornness. "I've got movies," she said, and he perked up a little. Rising, she went across to the drawer beneath the television in the armoire. Opening it, she ran her eyes over them. "What do we have . . . oh, perfect!" Not letting him see the box, she pulled out a silvery disk and plopped it into a DVD player that he really should have noticed since it wasn't part of the room's original furnishings.

"When did you have them do that?" he asked.

"While we were at dinner. I called while you were in the shower." She grabbed the remotes and looked back at him. "You want anything to drink? There's some pretzels, too."

He smiled at her. "I'm good."

Nodding, she curled up against his side and resisted his attempt to take the remotes. When the picture of Robert Preston and Shirley Jones came up on the screen, he let out an amused snort. "You couldn't have planned that."

"Happy accident," she said, and raising the remote, she clicked play.