Chapter 2
I was having a shitty day. A skip had gotten the better of me and Lula, big surprise, and had managed to beat the crap out of me before Lula could get her stun gun out and zap the psychotic dude before he could kill me.
I heard a knock on my door and I decided I was too damn sore to move. A second later, my cell phone started ringing. Les.
"Hey," I said into the phone.
"Hey, Beautiful. Where are you?" he asked.
"Home."
"I just knocked and you didn't answer."
"Hurts too much to move. Let yourself in," I told him with a tired sigh.
I could hear muted cursing as I hung up the phone. Les was in my bedroom a few seconds later. "What happened?"
"I suck at being a bounty hunter," I told him.
"What happened?" he repeated.
"Benny Salazar skipped, but he didn't want to be brought in. He managed to beat the crap out of me before Lula could pull him off," I said as I lay spread eagle on my bed.
Les sat down beside me and brushed back some of my hair out of my eyes. "You need a doctor? Or me to call Bobby?" he offered.
"Nah. Just bruises. I already took some ibuprofen but it hasn't kicked in yet," I told him.
"What's the damage?" he asked.
"Bruised ribs and muscles from getting kicked," I said and Les looked like he was about to kill someone.
"Son of a bitch kicked you?" he demanded.
I was too sore to move and I'd just told him that, so I kept quiet and just closed my eyes.
"Front or back?" he asked after a minute.
"Mostly back," I whispered. "I tackled him, but I got tangled up with him as we went down. He managed to get up faster than me and I wasn't able to get up once he started kicking me. Took Lula a minute to catch up to us and stun him."
I felt gentle hands under my shoulders as I was lifted up and flipped. I felt like a pancake. You know, I could go for some pancakes.
"I'll take you to IHOP once I check you out," Les said with a slight smile in his voice. Crap, I said that out loud again. Guess I was too tired to filter things.
I felt my shirt being lifted and then Les sucked in a breath. "Holy shit, Steph!"
I winced. "That bad, huh?"
"Yeah. You sure none of your ribs are broken?" he asked.
"Doesn't feel like it. Just feels like bruises soreness rather than broken ribs soreness. Plus it's not like they'll do much other than tell me to be careful and I can do that without getting a huge ER bill."
I felt him get up and then I could hear him poking around in my bathroom. He was back in a couple of minutes and started rubbing stuff on my back. I jumped at the coldness.
"Arnica gel," he told me. "Then we'll do some muscle pain rub."
"You don't have to do this," I told him as he rubbed the salve onto my bruises.
No answer.
"Thanks," I said. And I was thankful. His magic hands were hurting so good as he gave me what could have been the best but most painful massage of my life, but I knew it was better for me to get the lactic acid out of my muscles in the long run.
"You're welcome, Beautiful."
I was almost ready to fall asleep when he pulled my shirt back down. "Anything else hurt?"
"Just my pride," I reassured him.
"I can help with that, too, Beautiful," he said softly. "Let me teach you some self-defense moves, ways to get yourself up and out of danger if something like this ever happens again."
I thought about it for a minute. Joe would have been yelling about how I was incompetent and should quit my job before I got myself killed. Ranger would probably just show up and drag me out jogging the next day even if I was still sore. And I would be.
Les was asking. That was a vast improvement.
He upped the ante. "Please? I can't stand seeing you hurt like this."
"Fine," I sighed. "When I'm less sore."
"When you're less sore," he agreed. "We'll give it a day or two."
Personally, I thought it would take a week or two at minimum. It really hurt.
I was too sore to handle getting up and heading out to IHOP, so Les ordered Chinese food for us instead. Once it arrived, he helped me hobble into the living room to collapse on the couch. I might be a slob, but even I didn't want to have to sleep in a bed full of rice, so I'd rather eat in the living room than in the bedroom.
Les stayed the night on my lumpy old couch just in case I needed anything. Now that's devotion. He made me take another handful of ibuprofen, but he predicted, correctly as it turned out, that my muscles would lock up during the night.
I couldn't even get myself out of bed the next morning. I felt like a turtle that some evil kid had flipped over on its back. I don't know what I would have done if Les hadn't been there. Wallow in my own misery for days until someone thought to look for me, probably.
He helped me up and into the shower. He sat on the toilet and told me stories about him and the other Merry Men getting the hell beat out of them in various situations. I knew he was trying to make me feel better, but it worked. If Les could end up stuck in bed because he couldn't move, then maybe I wasn't such a terrible loser that it happened to me.
He helped me into the living room and we watched TV until Bobby arrived with breakfast. Bobby checked me over, gave me some prescription painkillers and muscle relaxants and told me to take it easy and use heating pads for twenty minutes every hour or two to help with the worst areas of pain. He warned me that the heating pad would make the awful bruises look even worse but that my muscles would thank me.
I gratefully attacked the McDonalds and Tasty Pastry that Bobby brought for me. When I tried to thank him, he nodded at Les. "Thank him. He's the one who told me what to get for you."
I turned to Les. He was ever so slightly pink cheeked but his green eyes were twinkling. I looked at him and grinned. "You're my favorite."
He laughed. "I'm your favorite?" he asked.
I nodded, and then groaned when even that much movement made my muscles hurt.
Bobby was laughing too. "And where do I rank, Bomber?" he asked.
"Second favorite. But it's close. Real close. Almost a tie. But he got me food so that edges you out slightly. Sorry."
They just laughed. Bobby reached out and ruffled my curls before standing up in a fluid movement that I could never, ever replicate.
"I can live with that," he told me. "Call me if it gets worse or you need anything." Then he was gone and it was just me, Les and lots of unhealthy food.
Les reached over to snag a sausage biscuit and I grabbed his hand. "What? I told Bobby to get enough for two," he said as he turned to look at me.
"Thanks," I said softly. "You take such good care of me. I don't deserve to have a friend like you, but I'm glad I do."
He squeezed my hand. "You're welcome. I'm just returning the favor, Beautiful," he told me.
I hung my head. "I don't do anything for you guys," I argued. "Just get you guys hurt helping me."
He tipped my chin up so I had to look at him. "How can you say that? For most of this town, hell, to most of our families even, we're just hired thugs. People cross the street to get away from us, freak out when we just walk by or sit down at a restaurant. You don't do that. You just treat us like people, and like people you like. And that means a lot to all of us."
I tried to shrug but it hurt, so I stopped. "Unless you're telling me you're a terminator robot or something, you are just people. And I do like you all."
"And that's special. So that's why we all love you, Steph."
I smiled at him. "You're a sweetie."
He looked completely disgusted at the comment so I just laughed and handed him his breakfast sandwich.
We spent the day watching movies and just hanging out. I learned a lot more about the green-eyed man in black. It was fascinating.
He told me about his family. He's the baby of the family, and he has a brother and three sisters who tormented him as a child. He speculated that he became a joker and a muscle bound beefcake to protect himself from his overbearing older siblings. He kept them laughing as kids so they didn't pick on him much, and then he went into the Army and turned into Mr. Muscles so he wouldn't be in a position to be teased as easily ever again.
He caught my look of shock and grinned at me. "I majored in psychology. Mostly criminal and abnormal psych, but they make you take all the regular psychology stuff before you take the stuff on the truly screwed up."
"When did you get a degree?" I asked. "And how did I not know about this?"
He shrugged. "I was stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina for several years when I first joined the Army. There was a local university that worked with the soldiers as much as possible if we had to miss classes due to deployments or training and I was able to get most of the degree done before I joined the Rangers. I finished up the rest mostly through online classes when I had free time. Took me more than the usual four years, but I managed to eventually get it done before I left the Army."
"Wow, that's amazing!"
He shrugged self-consciously. "I figured it would help to understand the mind of the bad guys I was sent after, so it was a good fit. Plus it's just interesting."
"Do all of you guys have degrees?"
"Not all. Bobby does, obviously, to be a PA. Tank and Ranger both did some college but didn't end up finishing. Cal has a computer science certificate of some sort. Hal was a military history major. Can't remember off the top of my head about everyone else," he told me.
"That's amazing. I can't believe you were able to do a degree while being in the Army. Your time management skills must be off the charts!"
I got a cheesy grin. "Those aren't my only skills that are off the charts, Beautiful," he promised in a husky voice.
I froze for a second and then rolled my eyes. "And what would Freud say about you deflecting a compliment with innuendo?"
He looked at me in surprise and I grinned. "I had to take psych 101 too," I told him. "I might not have majored in it, but I do remember the class. Plus I've picked up a lot of deviant psych experience as a bounty hunter, and you're definitely a deviant!"
He busted out laughing. "If you think I'm a deviant, you ain't seen nothing yet," he assured me. "But if you're interested in psychology, I have a bunch of my old books if you ever want to borrow any of them."
I nodded slowly. "Might be helpful sometime, if you really don't mind," I said.
I got a megawatt smile in return. "Nope. I'll bring you a couple of the more interesting books next time," he promised. He seemed incredibly happy that I was interested in his academic field. He looked like his Christmas had come early. Guess he really wanted someone to talk about psychology with.
By early evening, the happy drugs from Bobby were wearing off and I was starting to ache pretty badly again. Les, of course, noticed and called me on it.
"How bad?" he asked as he paused the movie.
"What?"
"How bad is the pain?" he asked again. "And don't try to minimize it."
I sighed. "Probably a six or so. Not terrible but not fun either."
He helped me to my feet and then helped me to stretch. Okay, so he forced me to stretch. But when he got that puppy dog look on his face and begged me to trust him, that I would feel better if I just did it, I folded like a house of cards in gale-force winds. Why can one look from him make me give in? So annoying.
I must admit that I felt better once Les helped me stretch out the sore muscles of my chest and back. And when he dug his long fingers into my shoulders, I started moaning in sheer joy.
Then he gave me more of the happy pills and a left over donut. Once I was happy again, he went in search of my lone heating pad. I hadn't used it in a while, not since I'd gone on the birth control shot to help me deal with my hideous cramps during that time of the month, and I wasn't entirely sure that it still worked. It did.
He found an extension cord and plugged it in before sitting back down, plopping one of the dollar store throw pillows on his lap and pulling my head down to rest in his lap. He wedged the heating pad between my bludgeoned spine and the back of the couch, and rested one hand on my hip.
I was feeling nice and relaxed an hour later. Les had been stoking my hip as the drugs and the heat soothed my battered muscles.
I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up to Les gently shaking me and calling my name.
"Huh?" I asked.
I rolled over to look up at him and he had a very sweet expression on his face. "Wake up, Sleeping Beautiful," he told me. "Your stomach has been getting progressively louder for the last twenty minutes, and I'm afraid it's going to start eating your internal organs if we don't feed you soon."
I blushed and struggled to sit up. He helped me and then pulled me against his nice, warm side once I was vertical again.
He ordered Pino's and we sat around and ate pizza while we shot the shit and watched a game over the next few hours. Then I took another pain pill and crashed into oblivion.
Les had to work the next morning, but he made sure I was able to get up and get to the bathroom before he left. He called me several times during the day and showed up after his shift ended with several bowls of food courtesy of my favorite domestic goddess, Ella.
He took good care of me over those few days when I was moving even more slowly than my Grandma Mazur. I vowed to return the favor if it was ever needed, but I fervently hoped that Les was never injured enough to need that kind of help.
Author's note: Thanks for the great response thus far- it's only been a few hours! As a reward, here's chapter two!
And let's remember my deal: more reviews = more chapters. They're pretty much already written, I just need to edit them.
I freely admit I'm a total review slut. They make me smile.
And I also freely admit that I love Lester. Who wouldn't?
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