Tobias Fornell had heard Gibbs’ arguments in quiet silence. Finally he had spoken, wearing a little smile that gave a mischievous look to his thin face: Did you ever think that the problem was not her, Jethro? After all, it was her first marriage, you on the other hand…” Gibbs studied his face carefully, noticing he was relaxed and content, and thought that itwas the closest to a happy face that he had ever seen on his friend . He knows Tobias as an intelligent guy, or at least he thought he was .
They stood close to the elevator doors, cups of coffee in hand, talking. Everybody was going out or coming from lunch and the “conference room” had been occupied … so, they stood there, trying to keep their conversation out of the reach of eager ears. Gibbs was sure that his agents had seen the invitation for the damn wedding on his desk, and probably many of them had met Diane when she had dropped it off. No that any of them had told him anything… and Gibbs preferred to think that they were not avoiding on purpose the issue, but just respecting his privacy.
Gibbs was now looking at Fornell wearing his best smirk. The whole thing had annoyed him at the beginning, not that he still had something for Diane, God … not!! It was…. just a question of principles, he doesn’t want to see his friend doing the same mistake he did. Or, at least that was what his mind consciously tells him: worries about his friend and to hell with Diane! She was an authentic nightmare …
“… Okay, Tobias… wish you won’t come later and tell me that I hadn’t warned you before!!” And he took a big sip of his already cold coffee.
“This is not my intention, Jethro. You have to admit that your marriage with Diane was like a coin: two heads. And you are still focused in one of them: “yours”.
Gibbs shrugged his shoulders, the smirk is frozen on his face now; “Well, Tobias it’s your choice after all, you both are growth kids …besides… I don’t blame you; she owns a good pair of reasons to convince a man with ….”
Fornell smiles, he is not impressed at all and doesn’t look offended.
“Don’t pretend to appear like such a chauvinist Jethro!! It´s not your style. Diane is a very smart and particularly sensitive woman, the fact that she still hates you a lot doesn’t lessen her good qualities; she is a quite intelligent and beautiful woman, and man, she cooks like heaven!! Oh! … Certainly…you couldn’t appreciate that last one! … I’ve been told that you used to arrive in home when the dinner had gone cold hours ago….. “.
If Fornell was trying to get Gibbs upset, he failed. At this time his friend was laughing openly. “Well Tobias… you are from the FBI and you have privileges from which we certainly are short of!!... Crime has not business hours for us… I have not a legion of men in black to boss around and I have to do things by myself …” .
Gibbs was squeezing his brains to find the perfect words to annoy his friend and pay him back for his previous remarks, when the elevator doors had opened and a person strode out. She was evidently distracted looking behind her shoulder as she walked out the elevator , answering sharply to something that DiNozzo had told before. She just had perceived that mischievous look in his eyes that made her turn her head to see further just a second too late, it wasn’t before she had hit her front body on Gibbs and made the remnants of his coffee spilled over the lapel of his coat.
DiNozzo whispered a quick ”Hi, Boss” chuckled to her disapprovingly and disappeared walking the way to his desk as fast as possible , followed by Fornell who wanted him to give back some files about the case that they are running, And besides he had taken the hint to get over this odd conversation with the first husband of his next wife.
Gibbs and Kate remained unaccompanied there. He kept his arms open, looking down the drops of coffee that Kate was trying delicately to brush off his coat with her fingertips. She didn’t dare to look him in the eye and focused her eyes instead on the fabric of his coat. “Bad option” she thought. The weather is getting warm these days and he was not wearing his current white undershirt, having his pale blue shirt unbuttoned an extra inch so she has a very good view of the curled grey hair of his chest. They were enough close for her to feel the heat radiating from him over her face and couldn’t help to blush irremediably.
“I’m…so… sorry… Gibbs… I’ll pay for the laundries… forgive me…was DiNozzo who distracted me…you know….” And she let out her typical low and quick,
- Somewhat nervous- laughing “Sometimes he uses to be so childish…I mean … he was annoying me again and I ….”
“Wasn’t DiNozzo who hit on me, Agent Todd!!” He said in his best gruffly mood. If Kate had been looking at his face she could had perceived the amusement playing into his sparkling eyes in contradiction with his intimidating tone, but she is not, she is not looking at the ice blue pair, she is pretty sure that she’d never recover the ability to do it , not any more, not after the revelations that Diane had dropped into her ears. Revelations that every night appear in her mind more and more coloured and vivid, with the addition of her own fantasy… the fantasy that she has been feeding along the last year. It had emerged subtly and unwillingly from somewhere, some shadowed corner of her mind, God knows why…
As a woman who likes to believe that she always is in perfect dominance of her own desires able to command them keeping her at the right side of life, she had tried to dismiss those initial creepy thoughts around Gibbs, her Boss.
Accordingly to her severe Catholic education, wouldn’t been included in her list of good things to do, have sexual fantasies at all, even worst was having them about a man who is her boss, seventeen years her senior, and that never had behaved in erroneous or incorrect way with her.
After a while she had ended accepting these thoughts, candidly convincing herself that was normal for a young and single woman, to be attracted to the Alfa male of the group, and if Gibbs was the: “Oh! "what- so- perfect” …Alfa male ( it was as undeniable fact as the sun rising from the East everyday is …) she couldn’t blame herself for it . It was included in the normal biological reactions of all female subjects, to be responsive to high levels of testosterone in her surroundings. It never occurred to her that why, being Di Nozzo nicer, younger and clearly enthusiastic about her, she never had thought about him as something different from a team mate, a colleague, her partner in work. Gibbs, on the other hand…seems to be immune to her charm.
Although , amazed her how much protective he had been about her from the very first moment, not that she would think that he thinks that being a woman she is not able to protect herself , no…she knows that if she wasn’t quite good in her job he never had hired her and made part of his team.
Is not about her physical skills or abilities as a well trained agent what she knows he is worried about, but her sensitivity , the way she could react facing some particular nasty aspects of the cases they have, specially the ones that involve children or women makes him to worry about her comfort and wellbeing…
She never missed that he had never asked her how she was doing in front of any other member of the team… No; he always waited for the moment that could find her alone, and this was one more example of how careful he was with her. He never gives her the impression that she received a different treatment because of her genre . Strangely, she never felt dismissed or overprotected as a female by his attitude, on the contrary, it causes a comforting and warm sensation in her insides.
Probably as the fine team leader he is, he uses to do the same with Abby… or McGee, or even DiNozzo. May be he does it in the same privacy that he did with her, and she never knew about how much they need his approval and reinsurance in the same way she does and got. She recognizes and likes this fatherly condition of her boss, although she never watches him like a father, her father.
Until now, Kate had accepted these little fantasies and two or three more than little dreams about him (she had had the first one the night of the day she saw him flirting openly with that suspect, Melissa, and he had asked her if it was so hard to believe that a woman could feel attraction to him… “(Crap!! He almost had caught her out of guard…and she was not sure if he had asked her on purpose to watch how she would react…)
That dream had been actually more detailed and realistic than a little fantasy and fortunately ( or unfortunately) they had been involved in a very hot and exhausting case the morning after, which had distracted her enough from the thrilling sensation that she merely could remember from her dream … how would be to be skin to skin with him.
She had got auto convinced that the entire thing was matter of time, something that she could dominate and evenly forget about. That’s the reason why she keeps dating guys, perhaps among them she could find someone that should make her to forget of these blue eyes and the secret chill that she feels up her spine every time she turns around and see them focused on her.
His closeness is driving her crazy. No way she hides her embarrassment .His expert eyes are searching her face. Would she blame the spilled coffee?? … no, it would be a disproportioned reaction and he surely knew it. Then… she should face the unavoidable. She had being avoiding his direct sight for two days now and Kate knows that he is starting to perceive something weird. Finally she dared to look into his curious eyes, their own shining with the effort she is doing to stand still under his gaze instead of turn around and run away.
She finally collected the strength to speak.
“Gibbs…I told I’m sorry… what else should I do?... Why are you still looking at me as if … I was a suspect or murder or anything….??”
He smirked his damn smirk to her.
“You sure are not guilty of anything, Agent Todd ? … I wonder why you have been avoiding me the last two days and why are you all acting this weird. Tell me, what happened two days ago?”
It was her time to run away… but how would she do that. She is pretty sure he was going to pursuing her like a bloodhound… Oh damn... Di Nozzo… or Mc Gee… why they didn’t come to rescue her?...
“ It’s nothing Gibbs….. I … I’ve been a bit distressed… it’s about the case… that’s all.”
He chuckled in disbelief and leaned over her. And this time she didn’t step back. Some of the old known Kate still remained in her. “Good” Gibbs´ inner smile growth up, his eyes still icy and sharp.
“It has nothing to do with the case Agent Todd … and you know it!!” (His voice was dangerous low and silky). Watching how she fade and then blush in fast sequence Gibbs seemed to show some clemency and nodded in acquiescence, may be this was not the best moment.
“Okay. Go back to work… we’ll talk about this tomorrow , think about it….and then , would be better you tell me the whole true.”
And with it, he turned around and walked away hastily.
Kate remained there, her feet nailed to the pale carpeted floor. May be she could call in sick tomorrow…. No… that would be very wrong, Gibbs could go and knock her door if she wouldn’t come to work in time… Oh… damn!! This was not finished at all …. She had just got a few hours of grace to figure out what is she going to say tomorrow….
Forty minutes later.
Abby’s lab walls are trembling and shaking under the music at full volume. A friend had gave her an old version of the first album of “The cure” … hmmmm … It ´s not the type of music she likes the most, but it was not all bad…. and it matched with her mood for today…
Suddenly the sound abruptly stopped and she stopped the motion of head and waist that had accompanied the tapping of her feet on the floor. Her fingers still flying over the keyboard, not extracting her shining eyes from the screen she greeted cheerfully: -“Hi Gibbs !!”.
For all answer a memory card landed over her keyboard while her nostrils breathed eagerly the exhilarating, omnipresent scent of old fashioned soap and aftershave mixed with fresh coffee that accompanied him. She took a glance at the tiny blue thing and then looked up pleasantly into the quiet blue eyes of the person she admires the most in the world.
“Looks like one of ours, Gibbs!... what do you want me to do with??”
“You very observant or gave credit to scuttlebutt, Abbs?”…
She gave him one of her distinctive “frowning” smiles.
“May be the both… my silver fox…what can I do to humoured you, my wizard ??”
He smirks briefly, and regained a serious continent in seconds.
“It’s from ours surveillance cameras… the one close to my desk. I want you to read lip language of the two female people who appeared on the tape. I’ve been watching by myself and caught a good part… but you are the best at this job…”
“It’s NOT a ‘tape’ not anymore … Gibbs!!” She chirped excited, and no paying attention to his “… whatever it was Abbs…just do it. ” Abby followed: “What I couldn’t see, my baby gets!!” and she had patted sympathetically her processor.
“When do you wanna have it done, Gibbs…tomorrow’s morning … next week ??”
“For yesterday, Abbs .. and just one more thing : keep this strictly between us…
´s clear ??.
The Goth chick nodded slowly: “Crystal Gibbs….. crystal”.
By the second “crystal” he was gone.
With a slight sigh Abby amplified the music volume at top level and went back to work.
a/n: Okay... this is all for this chapter. Please, give me back your comments.... What do you think is going to happen ????? Gibbs will know each word of the conversation that Diane hold with Kate.... how is he going to react ????
Author's Chapter Notes:
He knows that something happened ... Since Diane had visited the office his team is acting weird... and Kate is avoiding him.
Chapter End Notes:
I dedicate this chapter to my friend and co-writer Nova, who is recovering from a nasty "super-flu"... Hope that this little piece of work helps her to smile....!!! And to you, all my corageous readers... hope you enjoy it.