He had absolutely, positively decided that he was just going to go it alone. He knew his family; if he showed up with Kate, his mother and aunts would almost immediately ask when the wedding would be, and they would practically be picking flowers and booking the church by the time dessert was served. After all, when he’d brought Annette to Thanksgiving dinner three months after they’d started dating, his Aunt Lina had demanded to know why he hadn’t proposed to her yet. Annette had laughed it off, of course; that was just the way she was...

No, DiNozzo. Stop thinking about her. That’s an order.

He got home, packed his suitcase, stared longingly at his leather couch for a moment, then put his jacket back on. He dug into his pockets for his keys, and that was when his fingers encountered the fortune from the restaurant. He hadn’t even read it there, had just automatically put it in his pocket, but now he took it out. It read, “God gives us relatives; thank God we can choose our friends.” He smirked. How appropriate. He tacked the fortune up with the rest of the collection on his bulletin board, picked up his suitcase, and left his apartment.

He blamed the fortune for the way his car had driven him to Kate’s building, and the way his feet had moved up the stairs to her apartment, and the way his hand had knocked at her door. And it was completely the fortune’s fault that he had asked her to come with him. But as they got onto the highway and drove into the night, he did thank God he could choose his friends, because with Kate in the passenger’s seat beside him, he felt like he just might be able to get through this weekend.

They’d stopped for gas before hitting the highway, and Kate opened the bottle of ginger ale she’d bought. She took a swig, capped it, set it in the cup holder, then leaned back in the seat. Tony glanced over at her a couple of times. Finally, she said, “Spit it out, DiNozzo.”

“It’s just I can’t figure out why you would have been a decoy girlfriend before,” he said. “Any guy would be crazy not to date you for real.”

“Even you?” she asked with a grin.

“That’s different,” he said dismissively. “We’re coworkers. Partners. Brothers under the uniform. And Gibbs would kill me if we did.”

“Aren’t you exaggerating? He told me he’d fire me if I broke that rule. Nothing about death.”

“Fire, kill, it’s all the same to Gibbs, you know.”

“He’d better not find out about this weekend, then, even if we can justify it as work-related.”

“It’ll be our dirty little secret. So you’re avoiding my question.”

“You asked a question?”

“Come on, Kate.”

She sighed. “A friend of mine, a good friend, back in high school, wasn’t real eager to come out to his parents. So he let them assume I was his girlfriend.”

“And you went along with that?”

“For a while. I was... a little lonely growing up. It meant I got to hang out with him a lot. And it wasn’t like we went out of our way to make them believe we were dating. We just didn’t tell them otherwise.”

“Sounds... unfulfilling.”

She chuckled. “Yeah, it was. But he told them once he got into college. Which was good, because by then I was pretty close to kicking his ass about it.” She looked over at him, and he glanced at her. As they passed under a streetlight, her face was thrown into relief, and he saw the gleam in her eyes. “I’d grown a bit more backbone.”

“I think I would have felt sorry for him,” Tony said, turning back to the road.

“Don’t. He was a bloody procrastinator. He needed some ass-kicking.”

Tony was surprised at the undertones of annoyance, caring, and hurt in her voice. He just about asked for more information, but he knew this woman, so he dropped the topic. She kept her personal life fairly private. He wasn’t sure if she had allowed him far enough behind her defenses yet to ask those sorts of questions. Instead, he said, “From personal experience, it would have been very motivating.”

“Thank you, Tony.” There was a brief moment of silence. “Are we driving all the way there tonight?”

“No, I usually stop at a motel after a few hours.”

“So I don’t need to sleep. Good.” She leaned down to dig through her purse. “All right,” she said, “let’s make up some back-story.” She sat up with her PDA in her hand.

“Now?”

“Got any other plans?”

“Well...”

“There you go. Okay. How long have we been dating?”

“Long enough that I’m taking you home to meet the family,” he said.

“A few months, then? More than two?” She paused thoughtfully. “We should keep this as close to real events as possible, so it’s less of a lie. How about we got together shortly after Gitmo?” He looked over at her, and she was grinning wickedly at him. “Once I saw you in your full splendour, I decided you might be worth... looking into.”

He laughed. Good God, it felt nice to really laugh. “Perfect. It started out as just sex–“

“But grew into something a lot deeper.”

“I realized it when you were taken hostage.”

“Wait, wait, I have to write this down.” She quickly jotted some notes into her PDA. “All right, let’s get a little more specific. How did you ask me out the first time?”

“I didn’t. You asked me.”

“Oh, right. Umm...” In his peripheral, he saw her tapping the stylus against her chin. “I asked you out for Chinese,” she said thoughtfully. “Just like tonight. And then I bribed you to come back to my place with promises of... What kind of nightcap would tempt you?”

“Taylor Twenty,” Tony said immediately.

“Wow, high-brow tastes. I never would have guessed.”

“There’s a lot about me you’d never guess, Kate, dear.” He grinned at her.

“I’m beginning to see. All right, I bribed you with a fresh bottle of Taylor Twenty that I’d got as a birthday present. One thing led to another. Do you think that would work?”

Tony nodded. “Sounds plausible.”

It was almost fun, creating the fictitious romance. By the time Tony pulled into a motel close to midnight, they’d come up with a good series of easily remembered details. He rented a room, and they stumbled inside. They argued briefly over who got which bed, but they were both too tired to really make much of an effort. Tony let Kate have the bathroom first, and by the time he’d finished with it, she was curled up under the sheets.

“All right,” she said with a yawn as he climbed into the other bed, “so give me a sit-rep. What are we going into?”

“Dinner,” he said, lying on his back and looking at the cracked ceiling. “Just dinner.”

“Yeah, I believe you. That’s why you’ve been acting like a martyr for the last two days. Look, just give me the major players. Start with the matrons.”

He thought about it for a moment. “All right. There’ll be two there this weekend: my mother and my aunt Lina. Lina is married to my father’s brother. It’s only the two of them, so it won’t be too bad.” He grimaced. All seven of his aunts had been at Christmas the third year he and Annette had been together. They’d been on the rocks by that time, and the constant female pressure hadn’t helped any. “Mama and Lina are pretty direct, and they respond to the same kind of directness. They also have this weird sixth sense about lying, so we’ll have to watch it. Lina’s been really after me about settling down.” He frowned. “Maybe it’s because she’s Uncle Leo’s wife, and they only had daughters. She’s all about carrying on the family name.”

“Okay. Mom, Lina, and Leo. Got it.” She yawned again. “Who else will be there?”

“This can wait until morning, Kate.”

“We’ll go over it in the morning. Run me through it now.”

He sighed. She was so single-minded, and he was too focused on the weekend for a snappy comeback. “All right.” He went on to describe all the relations he knew were coming to his parents’ house. It was a long list. He paused, though, before he said, “And then there’s Julio and Annette.”

Kate was silent. “Do you think you should tell me a little more about her?” she said finally.

“Like what?”

“Like what you’d tell a real girlfriend before she met this other woman.”

Tony tried to fluff up the motel pillow, studiously avoiding the gaze he knew she’d turned on him. “I don’t think I’d tell you much more than you already know,” he said. “We were together almost three years, the last one was bad, the break-up was worse. We haven’t spoken since. She invited me to the wedding, but I didn’t go. She knows how to push all my buttons, and Julio and I don’t really get along. If I get through the weekend without getting in a screaming match with her or a fight with him, I’ll be lucky.”

“That’s where I come in,” Kate said. “Don’t worry, we’ll manufacture some luck.”

“Thanks, Kate.”

“That it, then?”

“Yup.”

“Good, ‘cause I’m tired.” She reached out and turned off the lamp between them, plunging the room into darkness. “Good night, Tony.”

Tony continued to lie there, staring upwards. There was something else he had to say, and he was loath to bring it up. “Kate?”

“Hmm?”

“My family’s very... They’re Italian. They’ll...” Lord, this was hard. “They’ll expect to see some... demonstrations of affection.”

She was silent. Then she said, “It’s all part of the op, Tony. If anyone asks, you can say I’m not much on public displays. That’s the truth, anyway. You just take the lead and let me know what we need to do to make this convincing.”

“All right,” he said, relieved at her professionalism. “Good night, Kate.” He rolled onto his side.

“Tony?”

He opened his eyes and stared at the patch of light reflected through the bathroom window. “Yeah?”

“Take advantage of this, and I’ll make you regret it.”

He grinned. “Yes, mother.”

He listened to her breathing slow as she fell asleep. She really was something, giving up her weekend to run interference for him with his family. Not many other people would have done that. He wasn’t sure he would have done it, if the situations had been reversed. No, he was lucky, he thought as he too sank down towards unconscious darkness, very lucky to have a friend like Kate Todd.