Disclaimer: Characters do not belong to me, but to JE

A/N: Don't kill me for starting a new one, but I really wanted to maybe write another one with a decent plot line like WTS and less fluffy like everything else is currently. I've been toying with my own idea for an Alternative to Explosive Eighteen because, well, I have been. This one will be a Babe, and probably follow along with canon more closely than my other ones. I can't guarantee the chapters will all be as long as this one, but I felt like it was a solid start for you guys.

Chapter One

You know that saying, What happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas? Well, I wish there was a version of that for Hawaii, because I sure wish I didn't have to explain this crap to my family and friends here in Trenton.

To think it all started with a homicidal maniac who enjoyed a good pork chop, too. Dave. His name was Dave, and I'm going to pin this absolute entire mess onto that bastard. It's his fault, after all, right? I wouldn't have been in Hawaii if not for him and his crazy.

A few weeks ago, I had had dealings with crazy Dave, who went on a killing spree in Trenton, New Jersey. He'd left corpses as presents for me at my place of employment, and then he'd ended up as a corpse himself.

Mind you, this was after he offered to take me on a special vacation because what we had was once in a lifetime.

Once in a lifetime crazy, that is.

So I was left with these gift cards to travel the damn world if I wanted to, and instead I opted for an all expenses paid trip to Hawaii. During that trip, crazy shit went down and now I am here, in New Jersey, forced to try to make sense of it all.

But oh, I don't have to make sense of it just to myself. I have to make sense of it to everyone else in my life, too, and none of them are giving me a second to have peace to figure out what the fuck just happened. I have whiplash from the questions being fired at me from all directions, almost.

My name is Stephanie Plum and I am a very lucky, below average bounty hunter. I hate my gun, I love tastycakes, and my life is a mess all the time. All. Of. It. I have shoulder length wavy brown hair, blue eyes, and an okay enough face. Nothing about me except my cars was earth shattering, and even they only achieved that status because they constantly exploded.

I am currently sitting in the bonds office my cousin owns, and that I am employed at. Two of my best friends are firing questions at me, wondering about the tan line around my left hand ring finger, and what exactly I did in Hawaii. I didn't really have any good answers for them, mostly because I was a little confused what had happened and I was pretty sure I wasn't supposed to talk about.

Connie is the office manager, and she has big black hair, dark eyes, and the body of an Italian mob princess. She's Italian to her core, and if you pissed her off enough she had connections, if you know what I mean. She spent more time painting her nails than she did actually working, and her stress free lifestyle kept her looking closer to my thirty two than her forty.

Lula is the file clerk, or as she prefers to be called, assistant bounty hunter. She rarely files, instead opting to read Cosmo and join me for ride alongs on my day to day. Lula is a size sixteen black woman squeezed into size ten spandex, and it's usually either bright, animal print, or both. Today she had on a yellow and green neon zebra print skirt that barely covered the promise land, and a frighteningly white shirt exposing her acres of cleavage. I loved Lula, but her clothing gave me a headache at least half the time.

I felt the tingle at the back of my neck the same time that Lula and Connie stopped peppering me with questions. That tingle meant one thing.

"Ladies. Babe," he said, entering the office. I looked out the window and saw his newest Porsche 911 convertible sitting outside.

He retreated into the inner sanctum of my cousin Vinnie's office, and I sighed. This was not going to be pleasant.

"Girl, the look he just gave you made me want to run in fear and take my panties off for him the same time!" Lula exclaimed.

Connie just nodded and I shrugged. We stayed silent, trying to hear something from Vinnie's office but fortunately he had picked a sound proof door since he remodeled the office. I say this because Vinnie spends a lot of naked quality time with barnyard animals and STD ridden whores, and it was nice to not have to hear the barking, neighing, quacking, or oinking.

He left the office after a few minutes with a file in his hand, and he stopped in front of where I was sitting on the couch. He bent down and pressed a quick kiss to my lips, before turning to walk out the door.

"Let me know when you're ready to work things out, Mrs. Manoso."

Fuck.

Lula and Connie's eyes went wide and their jaws dropped in shock. Ranger, my dear sweet husband, walked out the door with a laugh and I was left to try to explain what had happened to make us married, and more importantly in their minds, why I wasn't currently naked with the man.

When I had gotten to Hawaii, I had seen one of the skips I knew Ranger had been looking for. I wasn't authorized to apprehend this guy, kindly known as The Rug, because of his crimes and bond level. He was on the FBI most wanted list, too.

Because I wasn't allowed to apprehend him, I just followed him around for awhile until I figured out where he was staying. I then called Ranger with the information and he took the next flight out. Our biggest problem, or Ranger's biggest problem anyway, was that The Rug was staying in a couples only resort and it was Married Couples Week. Ranger had asked me for my help and from my look at him of what the hell am I supposed to do, he decided to devise a plan by himself.

His plan included us getting married, for real, on the beach. In Hawaii.

It sounded like a horrible idea to me, because he always said he didn't love me that way, that marriage wasn't in the cards for him, that his life doesn't lend itself to relatoionships, and then he planned my dream wedding on a beach, complete with the casually sexy dress I would have chosen for myself if given the choice.

Because in the end, I did want to be married to Ranger, even if only for a moment, I went ahead and agreed to the wedding. In my defense, I had also had a few cocktails and I wasn't exactly one hundred percent clear headed. I found myself walking down a sandy aisle with seashells lining the sides to Ranger in a pair of white cotton pants and an unbuttoned white cotton shirt that contrasted beautifully against his eight pack and pecs. Ranger was a sexy, sexy man and for the time we were in Hawaii at least, he was all mine.

My dress was a see through white gauzy confection that trailed behind me in the sand. It had a halter top and the front was a v-neck. The back of the dress was almost backless, with just a single chain going from one shoulder to the other with a diamond that dipped down to just over my bottom. I had on a white one piece underneath it that came with the dress, to keep it demure. the neckline and the back followed the line of the dress perfectly.

Ranger's given name is Ricardo Carlos Manoso and that is who I pledged myself to that day on the beach. I had done so with the full expectation that we would immediately be getting divorced upon catching The Rug and that this was the last thing that Ranger wanted. After all, he wasn't into the traditional life style at all, right.

Boy was I wrong.

We caught The Rug the day after our wedding, and delivered him to Ranger's second hand man, Tank. Tank took The Rug back to Trenton, and Ranger and I stayed out our time at the resort. We did couple activities, including romantic dinners, a dinner game show where we were contestants on The Newlywed Game (which we surprisingly won), and the obvious copious amounts of sex and beach time.

When it was time for us to go back to Trenton, we ran into a little snag. Okay, a couple of snags.

One, The Conversation. I asked Ranger when he'd have the divorce papers ready for me. Ranger was noticeably surprised, which for him is a big deal because he hides his emotions well. He asked me why I thought that we would be divorcing, and I asked why the hell he thought we would stay married.

Revelation number one from The Conversation- Ranger was in fact madly in love with me, just completely unable to verbalize this or show it in the normal manner back home.

Revelation number two from The Conversation- I loved Ranger a similar way, but was gun shy after many many many disasters in my personal life. Those disasters were named in order of Joseph Morelli, Dickie Orr, Joseph Morelli, and Dave the Homicidal Maniac.

Snag number two was one of the disasters from the second revelation. Snag number two went by the name Joseph Morelli, and he had been my boyfriend when I left Trenton. He had shown up to sweet talk me out of my anger that he had missed our vacation. The one I had invited him on, but ended up spending with another man.

Snag number two brought the revelation that Joe and Ranger would probably not work well together in the future, since they had busted each others faces when they realized what was going on. In Ranger's defense, Morelli had practically called me a whore. In Morelli's defense, I left town dating him and I was going back married to someone else.

That brings us to snag number three, where the two of them got themselves arrested for the fight they had which damaged several thousand dollars worth of resort property. I ended up leaving them both there and flying back home alone. I didn't answer their calls, and I didn't bail them out. Neither of them. I refused. I didn't even call their mothers.

Not that I could get in touch with Ranger's mother, since I didn't know her name or where she lived. Because hey, nothing says I love you Stephanie like not even introducing me to his mother before he married me.

When I arrived back in Trenton all by myself, my ride, Lula, had many questions. It was four am and I refused to answer them, until now.

I hadn't seen Morelli since getting back from Hawaii.

I had avoided my mother.

I had avoided my husband.

I wasn't ready for the shit storm heading my way.

After telling this sordid tale to Connie and Lula they both looked at me like I was crazy.

"You mean to tell us you married Batman and ain't had him in your panties since you got home? WAIT WAIT WAIT you mean to tell us that Batman couldn't think of no better solution than marrying yo ass legal like, instead of faking it? Girl I hate to tell you this, but Batman got you well and truly trapped. He wanted yo ass and he ain't gonna be letting you bow out. He ain't even make you sign a prenup?"

He hadn't, which showed he had more faith in me than I would have in the reverse circumstances. I sure wouldn't have let some person marry me without a prenup if I was as loaded as Ranger is.

And then, as I was thinking about that, the devil herself came to call on me in the most frightening of ways.

Joe's Grandma Bella. "I put the eye on you! You break my Joseph's heart! You slut! You tramp!"

Joe was following behind her, and he kept mouthing I'm sorry to me.

"Grandma Bella, let's go home. Let's leave Stephanie to be with her friends, and we'll just go home, okay? My heart is fine. Stephanie is not a slut or a tramp. Come on now."

Joe's Grandma Bella is from sicily, and she likes to put the eye on folks. It's an Italian voodoo thing that is questionably real. It's terrifying, just like she is, and the only person she likes is Joe. She's got like fifteen grandkids and like twenty five great grandkids, and he's the only one she likes.

She kept shaking her bony little finger at me as Joe guided her out the door of the office. I hoped I never had to see that woman again, but I knew that was just wishful thinking. And I knew for a fact, Joe and I were still going to be having a conversation about what had happened.

I had a lot of conversations to have, and I was enjoying my stay in denial land while it lasted.