Thirteen's Lucky

by UnStabler

So, who wants to read a fluffy, smutty Babe fic? I knew you would.

My name's Stephanie Plum, and my best talents are scarfing Tastykakes and looking Italian and sexy. Okay, so I don't always do so great with the second, but I'm the best Tastykake eater in the tristate area. And I clean up pretty well, when I shave and do the hair and makeup and little black skirt thing. I can walk three blocks in four and a half inch heels before my ankles give out. In the Burg, the neighborhood I'm from in Jersey, these are considered major life skills.

What isn't high on my list of talents is getting men to do what I want them to. Especially when they've broken their bond with my cousin Vinnie and I show up on their doorstep and ask them to come to court and reschedule. If it's the first time they've made bail, they usually get in my car and don't realize they aren't going to make it home for House until they're sitting in a jail cell with a toilet and Wally the Weirdo.

Unfortunately, most of the Burg has been bailed out a time or two, and knows the drill. They also know that Vinnie has two full-time bounty hunters, me and Ranger. Ranger is Batman, except with way better hair and eyes that could peel paint- or at least panties. Ranger is scary for many reasons, not the least of which is that he wants me in his bed and he wants me there bad. He'd be one of those men I have trouble with. Ranger also doesn't bother with enforcing bonds that are less than ten grand, so they don't have to worry about having to deal with Superman, and well, I'm not very good at enforcing bonds, period. Mostly I have Lula, my friend who does the filing, sit on them while I look in my purse for my pepperspray and handcuffs.

"I am not going after Mooner," I told Connie, Vinnie's office manager. Connie's hair is permanently three inches bigger than her head, and looks like she busted out of a movie about Chicago during the Prohibition.

"He'll be easy. He likes you," she told me, flicking a glob of mascara off her cheek with a blood-red fingernail that could have put her eye out.

"He's my friend!"

"Look, someone has to take him to court to reschedule. Probably he's stoned out of his gourd and has no idea it is now 2007. Take him now and see if you can't speed things along."

I sighed. It was noon, and my Tastykake skills needed polishing. Mooner was a friend of mine, or I guess he was, since I'd saved his life and stuff. There was a real unfortunate incident with a human heart and a pot roast a while back, and he happened to get kidnapped, and I found him. Mooner was a stoner. He was also pretty nice and there weren't many people who were happier to see me than Mooner. I figured one of these days he'd remember I didn't smoke weed and wouldn't ever have a joint for him, but I guess he lived in hope. Ignorance is bliss, right?

"Either you go get him or I'll call Joyce," Vinnie said, stepping out his office and zipping his pants with an audible zzzzzzrt. Me and Connie immediately curled our lips in disgust, not wanting to think about Vinnie with his pants down. Vinnie is a third-rate cousin and a first-rate bondsman. Vinnie knows about the lower brain functions, like dealing drugs and turning tricks and having indecent relations with barnyard animals.

I was about to clock Vinnie for having the balls to threaten me with my arch-nemesis, Joyce Barnhardt, when Ranger walked in. For once, Connie didn't warn me with the gasp of pure, unadulterated lust that usually came from women when Ranger walked into a room.

"Babe," he said by way of greeting, his voice like smooth Caribbean rum. He put his hand on my neck and I could feel my pulse beat against his palm, which felt unnaturally fast and I was pretty sure I might have burst an artery in my brain. I was thankful that I was wearing a tiny black knit shirt and a sexy Victoria's Secret lace thong. Not that Ranger would be seeing my thong, but hey, it gives a woman confidence to be wearing sexy lingerie, right? I conviently forgot that I hadn't shaved my pits in a couple of days, and for a brief terrifying moment I couldn't remember if I'd brushed my teeth that morning. Again, not like he'd know if I had or not, but I couldn't imagine talking to Ranger with Tastykake breath.

"Convince Stephanie to go after Mooner," Vinnie told Ranger. "Or she's fired, I swear to high heaven."

My mouth dropped. Not that I might lose my job, because quite frankly I wouldn't exactly shed a tear for it, but I knew what Ranger considered persuasion. My problem was that he could persuade me into his arms and then throw me off the Brooklyn Bridge before I'd recovered from having his tongue three-quarters in my throat. Recently, Ranger had a problem that made mine, including the one I had with the funeral home burning down and the many cars I've exploded, look petty. Someone kidnapped his daughter and tried to acquire his identity, which meant acquiring me. Not only that, but he also somehow managed to find out his daughter and I were two of the only people Ranger cared about. It all worked out okay, but not before he'd taken four bullets, two that went through his Kevlar vest. I suffered a full-blown post-traumatic panic attack and occassionaly had nightmares that I never remembered and didn't really want to, but he didn't seem to be the worse for wear for it now. I think the pain pills they had him hopped up on helped.

I'd had a minor lapse in judgement and went to cheer him up when he came home from the hospital. It involved me in my black skirt and heels with a cake. The cake ended up being fed to me, and the skirt ended up around my ankles with Ranger's tongue three-quarters in a place other than my throat. That was a few weeks ago, and I'd mostly dealt with the post-traumatic orgasm guilt by avoiding him. Fortunately, this is behavior that Ranger's pretty used to. However, my on-again, off-again boyfriend, Joe Morelli, wouldn't be thrilled to know this. I was pretty sure that Morelli knew that when things went south between us, I tended to end up with Ranger. I was also pretty sure Morelli shot things with his sidearm when that happened.

Ranger raised one eyebrow and looked at me with those dark chocolate eyes, like bittersweet cocoa that you melt for homemade brownies before you mix in the sugar and butter. The very tips of his mouth turned up in what could be loosely interperated as a smile. I knew that it was. I knew this because it was the same smile he had while I had my hands tangled in his hair and moaning his name.

"What's he charged with?" Ranger asked me, apparently oblivious that I was remembering our last exchange. His hand slid under my shirt a half an inch and started fingering my bra strap. Maybe not oblivious. His lips twitched and he took his hand away. I took a deep breath and tried to stop remembering him naked.

"Possession of a controlled substance. Basically, for being Mooner."

"What's the problem?"

"I don't want to bring him in. He's an okay guy. He's my friend."

"You need better friends, babe."

"And I suppose you qualify?" a woman said from the open door. She stepped in and smiled. "Hey, Ranger."

Ranger smiled as wide as I've ever seen him, and the woman dropped a red leather purse and ran the six feet from the door to him then jumped up to hug his neck. He lifted her up a foot off the floor and she picked her feet up as he spun her around. They greeted each other in Spanish and she swatted his shoulder.

"Who the hell said you could get shot?" she demanded, arms crossed and voice deep and slow. "And why in the HELL did I hear about it from Abuelita of all people? You have a phone, you know. And about eight too many expensive cars that can drive to Texas just fine."

I was floored. No one talked to Ranger like that. Not only that, but he looked... sheepish. Or on someone normal it would have passed for sheepish. It was sheepish for Ranger, which meant that neither of his eyebrows were raised and his mouth was still curved upwards in what could more or less still be called a grin.

"Nice to see you too, Risa."

She rolled her eyes. "You have got to learn to smack him around a little. He's getting smug," she said to Connie, sitting on her desk.

"I don't go near men who can wear black that much better than I can," she said. Connie noticied my poleaxed expression and introduced me. "This is one of our bounty hunters, Stephanie Plum."

The woman, Risa, smiled slowly and looked at Ranger. "This is Stephanie? Stephanie, stungunned Hal, got Tank kicked in the junk, blows up cars Stephanie?"

He nodded towards me. "One and only. Though she hasn't blown up a car in a few months. Babe, this is my sister, Risa."

"Older half-sister," she said, extending her hand to me. "Don't worry. Ranger's a genetic anomaly in the family. The rest of us don't have superhuman abilities. Or great hair."

I shook her hand and tried to keep my jaw clamped shut. The closest I'd come to meeting someone of Ranger's family, except when I was kidnapped with his daughter Julie, was his housekeeper, Ella. I knew he had sisters, and apparently an abuelita, but I thought they would all be traditional Hispanic housewives, different from my mother only in skin tone and first language. And they probably couldn't make a pineapple upside-down cake as good. That Ranger had an older sister that could get him to publicly display an actual human emotion like familial affection was astounding. That Ranger HAD actual human emotions was astounding, really. I had sort of concluded that Ranger's emotional range went all the way from amused to lustful to spaced-out Zen zone and back to amused. Usually at something I'd recently blown up.

"Pobrecito, you're so THIN. You've got to stop eating like a rabbit," Risa said mournfully, poking his ribs, her arm still around his shoulders. She was tall. I had to noticiably crane my head back to look Ranger in the eye.

"Quit it. I got shot there, remember?"

"Speaking of which! How is it that I've only known about this for three days?"

Ranger's eyes clouded and he looked down. "It wasn't anything to worry you with."

She rolled her eyes again and apparently decided to ignore this. "I set up shop at your apartment. Me and Ella made enchiladas verdes and chiles con queso. I also borrowed the truck." She picked up her purse and dug around in it for her keys. She took out a black billfold and a .357 Magnum with a short barrel and so shiny the steel shone blue.

"Nice piece, sis," Ranger said, taking the gun out of her hand. "This is yours?"

"Damn straight it is. Marc shoots a Colt." She looked at me and said, "It's such a chick gun. Cute little snub barrel and it's titanium. I could melt it down and have a wedding ring made out of it. There are my keys!"

That was it. Ranger's whole gene pool was full of whacked-out gun toting freaks. They were probably were baptised in a pool of bullets. And I thought Morelli's family was scary.

Ranger nodded to me. "Want a free lunch?"

Hell. Free food beat busting one of my only friends.

!&

I followed Ranger and his sister into the RangeMan apartment. Not the Batcave, but better than mine by a long shot. Ella, Ranger's housekeeper, grinned when she saw me.

"Stephanie! So good to see you," she said, hugging my shoulders. I hugged her back. I liked Ella. Anyone who could keep Ranger's black clothes that clean without going grey at the seams had magical powers as far as I was concerned.

I lagged behind as Ella took my coat and brushed it off. I wandered into the kitchen and sniffed a plate of radioactive green stuff experimentially.

"You'll like it, babe," Ranger told me, noticing that for once in our relationship I wasn't automatically shoving food in my face. "Cheese and chicken wrapped in a corn tortilla and topped with salsa. Carbs, fat, and minimal vegetable involvement."

"It isn't spicy," Risa added, pulling plates out of a cupboard and handing them to Ella, who was already setting the table. "Ranger's lost his taste for food that can burn your sinuses clear out of your head."

Ranger cut his eyes at her and she stuck her tongue out at him. She slid in beside me and grabbed the enchiladas and set them on the table. She whipped a kitchen towel off a dish of cornbread and crumpled up the aluminum foil that covered something else, then came back for some other bowls.

"How long have you been here?" Ranger asked, sitting down. I sat across from him, and he flashed me his not-smile as he brushed my calf with his boot. Bastard. My powers of seduction were nothing compared to his. Mine involved using Victoria's Secret to make my tits look big and lots of black eyeliner. His involved somehow getting liquid fire to spread through his skin to my nipples and straight to my doodah. Probably a Cuban thing.

"About two hours." She smiled and sat down next to him. "I work fast." Ella started to head out the door, and Risa called out to her, "Ella, come join us."

Ella said, "No, I've got things to take care of downstairs. Thank you for keeping me company."

Risa smiled again. She had a nice smile. It went all the way up to the corners of her eyes, giving her wrinkles in a few years. She smiled enough for both her and Ranger. She said something to Ella in Spanish and Ella replied in kind before closing the door.

"I need to learn Spanish," I mumbled and took a piece of cornbread. I figured I was pretty safe with bread. I mean, how dangerous can bread be?

I nibbled on it as Risa loaded her plate with about six square inches of enchilada, stuck three chips in the cheese sauce at once and chowed down. Ranger delicately took one tortilla and scrapped the salsa to the side. I decided to go for a happy medium. I forked off a piece of chicken, got some cheese and a little of the green sauce on it and tasted it.

"It's good!" I picked up a chip and dipped it in the cheese sauce, daring to try something else new. It had green and red stuff in it.

"Babe-" Ranger said warningly, but it was too late. I'd already stuck the chip back in my mouth, and it immediatly took effect. My eyes started to water and my vision was blurry. I grabbed my glass of water and chugged it. Ranger was grinning again and he handed me a rolled tortilla. "Tortillas will get the taste of chiles con queso out of your mouth better than water."

I put my glass down with a gasp and took it from him, taking a chomp. So much for being ethnic. My idea of international food was Taco Bell and Panda Express.

"Sorry," Risa said around a mouthful. "I like my food hot."

"I can see that," I said once my eyes uncrossed. I went back to the cornbread and the chicken thing.

"So, Stephanie," Risa said conversationally after a few moments of silent chewing. "Do you think Ranger's happy?"

I choked on a piece of tortilla and my fork clanged on my plate. "Abba- mab-" I swallowed around the tortilla and tried to talk. "I-"

"The correct answer's, of course he is," Ranger said, sliding a dark to his sister out of the corner of his eye. Risa has a determined look on her face. I was starting to think I was encrouching on something familial and messy. She swatted him in the back of the head and said, "You don't get to answer."

Ranger's palm met his forehead with a slap. "This is why I didn't call you."

"Why? Because your big sisser would come and get all protective over her baby brudder?"

"And talk like that, yes." He looked over at me. "This is ruining my image, isn't it?"

I nodded before I could help myself. "I mean-" I stopped myself. "You never talk about your family."

"Ranger likes to give the impression he was hatched from under a wild bird of prey and raised by mutant panthers," Risa told me, then said thoughtfully, "Which, come to think of it, isn't all that an inaccurate description of our family."

"Risa's the oldest of my three sisters. I'm their half-brother. My mother and grandmother still live in the house we grew up in."

"What he's leaving out is that my dad ran out on us and that my youngest sister is eight years older than him."

"That explains a lot," I said. Ranger looked at me and I continued, "Any man who grew up with that much estrogen would have good taste in clothes and cars."

"We tried," Risa replied, comically sad. "I think black bleaches him out, personally."

"It's a trademark," Ranger said calmly.

"Guns, expensive cars and the long hair are trademarks. Black is morbid."

"Risa, shut up." She swatted him again and he clocked her over the head, but she grabbed his hand and twisted his little finger back.

"I could break your hand if I wanted," Ranger told her, his fork still in his other hand.

"And I could tell Stephanie where your street name comes from," she said wickedly. Ranger sighed and jerked his hand out of her grasp.

"Where?" I asked, not sure if this was a serious threat.

"Tell her and you die," Ranger said, cutting his eyes at her.

She smiled mischeviously. "We called him that when he was little. It followed him all the way through the Army."

Ranger banged his head on the table.

"I like your sister," I told Ranger as he drove me back to Vinnie's. I was currently carless, having sacrificed Big Blue to keep from having to chaffuer my sister and her kids around.

"I do too. Most of the time. Every now and then she decides I had a deprived childhood and she should make up for it. Those are the times I wish I had a sister that moved to Texas and stayed there."

"And this is one of those times?"

"Apparently."

"So, any thing else I should know about? The black clothes about some horrible funeral experience gone wrong? You were Goth in a former life?"

Ranger looked over at me, his eyes dark and smooth, and I shut up. It was one of those looks like he couldn't decide if he should make out with me or throw me in front of traffic. Neither one was without risks.

"Still need persuading to go after Mooner?"

"Not from you."

"Ouch."

Well, that was mildly satisfying. Ha. I wasn't a mindless slut. I could resist. I had willpower!

Ranger crawled his Porsche Turbo to a halt in front of the bonds office. He reached across to unbuckle his seatbelt, and before I knew it, he had my seat reclined back, his hand up my shirt, and he was kissing me for all I was worth. My willpower melted like butter and I slid my hand around his neck, pulling him closer and deepening the kiss. Ranger sank his weight against me and was half-across me in the seat. Willpower's overrated. Ranger kissed well. Ranger kissed a woman so well it left permanent muscle memory in her lips.

When Ranger leaned back and I opened my eyes, and enough blood returned to my head for them to focus, I saw Lula, Connie and Vinnie standing outside, enjoying the show.

Ranger got out of his car, opened my door, gave me a hand standing up, then kissed my cheek, got back in, and drove off.

"Damn," Lula said. "I think I'm having a moment." She fanned herself with her hand and Vinnie was grinning.

"I might be in a state," Connie said as we walked back inside.

"Shut up," I muttered, leaning against the wall.

"You know, that's not the reaction one would expect from someone who just tongue-wrestled with the Wizard."

"You try it sometime. See what it does for your mental health."

Connie thought about this for a moment. "Good point, but I don't think I'd be in any sort of shape to have deep thoughts."

She had a point. I was feeling phantom lips on my skin and my nipples were still hard.

"Mooner?" Dougie asked me, his eyes still halfway closed. "Nah, man. Mooner's gone."

"Gone? What kind of gone?" I asked. I wasn't sure I could take any more persuading from Ranger, and Mooner would probably get community service. Not that he'd remember to do that, either, but it beat someone who didn't care about him bringing him in.

"Gone, like... gone." I sighed. I needed to buy these two a thesaurus. But it would probably just be used for rolling joints.

"Where did he go?"

"I'm pretty sure he's still around. No where bad. He's just... gone. He does that, you know? Just gets the urge to... go."

I sighed. "Well, if you see him, tell him that I need to talk to him, okay? He missed his court date. No big deal. We can get him rebonded the same day."

"Sure thing," Dougie told me. I decided to leave a note taped to the bathroom mirror. Dougie didn't look like he remembered if he'd brushed his teeth either.

I got back into Lula's car and told her about Mooner's disappearance. "Well, shit, girl," Lula told me. "Sometimes you just gotta go."

"Just drive me to parent's house, okay?"

"You know, most people moved out of their parents house to avoid family dinners," she informed me as she zipped down the streets of Trenton in her fire-engine red Trans Am. "You just failed to individuate yourself in your adolesence."

"I WHAT?"

"Individuate. It's this fancy-ass pyschobabble word that means you get your independence and shit like that from your prarents. I read it in one of them Dr. Phil books."

"I haven't been to my parent's house for supper in weeks, for your information. And since when the hell do you read Dr. Phil?" Since when the hell did Lula READ for that matter?

"Since I wanted to get a hold of my own life. You know, fucking take charge of my love life and get what I want." Lula got cut off, so she leaned on her horn and yelled, "WRONG PEDAL ASSHOLE! SKINNY ONE'S THE GAS!" The driver turned around and we both realized at the same instant it was Morelli. I ducked and tried to fit myself under the dashboard.

"What the fuck are you doing, girl?" Lula demanded. "You hiding from a man? From THAT man?"

"I kissed Ranger! I'm probably radiating Ranger...vibes!" I told her, my voice only a tiny bit shrill. I still loved Morelli. I was pretty sure we would get back together, again. I knew my involvement with Ranger made those odds a lot longer. Morelli is a cop, and has issues with some of Ranger's morals. Mostly those that are just left of technically legal, and with all of those that involve messing with me. Morelli is a good guy, and compared to the other Morelli men, he was a saint. He unfortunately held the traditional Italian belief that a woman's place was barefoot and pregnant. This didn't bode well for me. For one thing, I hate being barefoot. My feet get cold. The other is that I can barely take care of my hamster, Rex. Ranger might have a few screws loose, but he also doesn't expect me to be a Burg housewife. The only problem with this situation was that Ranger isn't what you'd call the marrying type. His idea of commitment was multiple orgasms.

Right after the whole thing with the Ranger impersonator went down, I told Morelli I loved him. The impact of that statement might have been reduced a bit since that same day I also never left Ranger's side and wouldn't let go of his hand. Not behavior a man likes to see from his girlfriend.

Lula left off her ranting about my adolescence and we reached my parents house. One of the benefits of the Burg is that you're about ten minutes from everywhere else.

I got out of the car, steeled myself for a night of migraine-inducing bedlam, and headed up the walk.

"Good luck," Lula told me. I waved to her and opened the door.