JE created the characters below. I'm just having a little fun with them.
Jenny (JenRar) I can't thank you enough for the hard work you've done filling in as the beta on this story. Thank you!
Chapter 8 – To the Victor Goes the Spoils
Stephanie's POV
"She's mine, and I am hers. It's a lot more than just friends, and benefits have nothing to do with it," Ranger explained to Lula, while looking at me with such intensity that I could not turn away. I'd never seen that expression on him before. Actually, I'd never seen it on anyone before – at least not directed at me.
His explanation fit us perfectly. I didn't know if Lula would understand it, but it was all that we could say. We belonged to each other, and after fighting it for so long, giving in to a relationship with Ranger was freeing. I didn't understand how talking about seeing Joe exclusively used to make me feel like I was being caged, and yet with Ranger, it made me feel…what? I felt treasured and adored when he called me his. And when he turned it around and said that he was mine, as well, I felt protective and proud…and strangely turned on. Oh man, a woman could get lost in eyes as dark as his. Looking at him, I could almost feel the forces of gravity shift from a push to keep me planted on earth, to a linear pull to make me move closer to him in the hope that he would lean down and kiss me.
Thinking about kissing him caused my tongue to dart out to moisten my lips and my eyes to drop to his mouth. He must have felt the same pull, because no sooner had I wet my lips, then his mouth was on mine – not forcefully, but with enough intensity that I felt his kiss came with a promise that we would do this again, and soon.
Before my brain became too foggy, I heard Lula speaking to Connie. "You think if we're quiet, they'll do it right here in front of us?"
Ranger started to chuckle and pulled back just as Vinnie's door opened. "I've got popcorn if they take it any further."
I guess Ranger didn't approve of the idea of being live theatre porn for Vinnie, because his head jerked up and he growled an aggressive sound from deep in his chest that caused Vinnie to back up and shut his door, retreating to the safety of his sleazy back room office.
Lula took the interruption as her chance to jump in once more. "So you ain't sending her back to super cop?"
"No," he answered with enough force that anyone listening would believe him.
"Good thing, too," Lula assured him, "'cause she wouldn't go this time."
I didn't want her to go any further with that train of thought. There were some things I wasn't ready to discuss with Ranger, and the ending of my relationship with Joe was one of them. "This is really new, and we're still figuring it out together," I assured her.
Her eyes narrowed, and I was suddenly worried about what was about to come out of her mouth.
Before she spoke, Connie picked up a folder and said, "There's only one file for RangeMan."
Ranger stood up to take it, and then held out his hand for me, indicating it was time to leave. We approached the door slowly, and as we stepped outside, Ranger stiffened his arm so that I had to walk behind him until we got to the car. He opened the door quickly and spun me into the opening so fast it almost made me dizzy. I could see his eyes scanning over my head, and I knew he was full alert mode.
"Do you want me to jump in, or are we still trying to get noticed?" I asked, unsure of which set of signals to follow. I knew the original plan had been to attract attention, but his body language right now was all about getting me hidden.
He looked down and softly replied, "Get in the car. Something isn't right."
I didn't need to be told twice; I jumped in, knowing that Ranger had taken my hinky feeling seriously on the roof last night, and I needed to do the same thing now.
He jogged around the car and climbed in, before turning to me and saying, "I'm so sorry for bringing you into this."
I wasn't sure exactly what he was apologizing for, so I asked, "Brining me into what? The danger of another stalker, or a relationship with you?"
"Aren't they the same thing?" he asked, as the engine roared to life and he shifted into reverse.
"No, they are totally different. Stalkers come and go, and if we weren't being threatened by this one, I would have picked up my own soon enough. It has been a couple of months; I was probably due. A relationship with you is what makes enduring the stress of another stalker bearable. It gives me something to think about, instead of dwelling on the fact that someone is gunning for us," I said in explanation of how denial worked.
At the stop light, he asked, "So have you been thinking about me?"
Damn that man for being so endearing and sexy all at once. I snorted as an undignified response, and then tried to use my words instead of unladylike sounds to reply, "I've always thought about you, but since last night, it seems like my mind can't stop dwelling on you."
He smiled at that and pushed for me to share a little more, "What kind of thoughts are you having, Babe?"
I could feel my face turning pink and remembered how much easier it was to talk to him last night on the roof when he couldn't see me that well. I decided to try evading the question, "You already have enough reasons to think I'm crazy without me adding to it by telling you how my mind works. All you need to know is that you're constantly on my mind."
He pulled into the space that was always open for his Turbo, and then responded, "And you need to know that you are constantly on mine, as well. I haven't been able to concentrate all morning, thinking about leaving you sleeping in my bed. You've always been the one temptation that I was powerless to resist. I figured if we established the fact that we were together, it would make it easier to cope, but I grossly miscalculated how addictive you are. It seems the more of you that is open to me, the more I want."
I had no idea how to respond. My body seemed to think an impression of a fish was an appropriate comeback, but I felt the need to add to it. I lifted my hand slowly, trying to see if he would give me any indication that my advance was unwelcome. When I rested it against his jaw so that my thumb could stroke his bottom lip, it was like a low level of electrical current was running through us, focused on that small area of contact.
A knock on my window snapped me back to the present, and I jumped before turning and seeing Scar standing at my door. I opened it and allowed Scar and Ranger to shuffle me into the elevator. When the door closed, I turned to Ranger and asked, "Didn't you promise me sixty doughnuts?"
I caught a glimpse of a smile, before he slammed down his blank face to reply, "Cal was stopping to pick them up. You can wait by the elevator if you want to take them off his hands when he arrives, but from the moment you get them, you have only ten minutes to make them disappear."
I remembered our bet in the car and smiled, knowing there was no way I was going to lose this one. He seemed confident, as though he knew some sort of secret that had not been shared with me, but I wasn't worried. I had a weapon of my own that Ranger hadn't factored in, either.
I stood beside the door to the elevator and couldn't help but notice that Scar shadowed me. I wasn't sure what he was expected to do during the day if Ranger and I weren't on the move. Apparently, he had appointed himself my bodyguard. He had a quiet strength that I instinctually trusted, so I didn't mind it; besides, him being so close would only help my plan.
The elevator softly dinged, and Cal stepped out with five flat boxes that I knew contained a dozen doughnuts each. I took them from his hands and said in a really loud voice, "Hey, guys, I've got sixty doughnuts that need to be gone in ten minutes. Ranger bought them and said you can all enjoy them. If you'll agree to help me eat them, I'll be sure you don't have any creamy filling on your face when you're done."
I caught a glimpse of Ranger smirking at my announcement and glancing at his watch, before the guys gathered around me and the boxes were yanked from my hands.
Lester was the first to finish his Boston Cream, and he purposefully smeared a little filling on the corner of his mouth. "Hey, Beautiful, do I get to pick how you clean my face?"
I put my hands on my hips and tried to swing them a little more than usual for the five steps it took to reach him. I pressed my body against his, put my index finger in my mouth, and sucked on it as sensually as possible. Then I used the moistened finger to wipe away the filling, before putting it back into my mouth to lick it off. When I finished, it was deathly silent in the office, and I briefly worried that I had crossed the line, but then Lester's face erupted in his trademark grin.
He said, "That is so worth getting called to the mats for. Give me another doughnut."
As he stepped away for another one, I had a steady string of guys waiting to have their faces cleaned. I had to work a little faster, but the organized line that formed helped speed things along, and seven and a half minutes after the elevator doors opened, sixty doughnuts were gone. All the guys were grinning like school boys, I'd gotten enough of the filling to have made up a couple of doughnuts alone, and Ranger was still standing in his office doorway, shaking his head from side to side.
I moved over to join him and asked, "What's the matter, big guy? You didn't specify any rules about how I was to motivate the guys to eat the doughnuts, so I believe tonight you owe me a massage."
I didn't wait for him to respond, figuring it was so rare to get the upper hand with Ranger that I didn't want to have the moment ruined by letting him get in a word. I hid in my cubicle and let out a breath of relief when Ranger's door closed and I knew I'd won.
Scar pulled up a chair on wheels, and I asked, "Did you like your first Boston Cream?" I didn't remember cleaning his face, so I hoped he got one before the guys ate them all.
His whole face shifted and broke out into a big grin. When he smiled like that, his eyes lit up and the scar that marred his face seemed to diminish.
"You don't talk much, do you?" I asked, realizing he'd probably only spoken a half a dozen words since I'd met him.
"Not much," he admitted, and the smile faded, leaving the evidence at the forefront of his face once more that he had endured something terrible in his life.
"That's okay," I assured him, turning back to my computer to try and get some work done. "I tend to talk enough for both of us."
I picked up the list Lester had given Ranger of individuals and companies that had locations that could allow for a view of activity on the RangeMan roof. I smiled a little at the thought that he'd asked them to act on my concern that I'd felt like we were being watched. He didn't pick on me for not being able to be specific or try and shrug it off as a passing plane or my overactive imagination. I'd contributed something, and he'd taken my concern as a possible lead. I felt myself sitting up a little straighter at the thought that Ranger was the one man in my life that treated me like an equal.
I decided to tackle the three individuals on the list first, assuming they would be more cut and dry than the two businesses. Before we'd left for the bonds office, I'd run the check on Thomas Masters. He owned a condo on the top floor of the building to the east of RangeMan. It had printed out, and while reviewing it, I saw that he traveled a good bit between Trenton and England, where he had an art import business.
Hector had taught me to log into several of the major airline's systems to check passenger manifests, and sure enough, last night, Mr. Thomas was in England, so I could mark him off as a possibility. I skimmed over the rest of the information that I'd printed out, but didn't see any kind of warning flag that he might be a risk, so I felt good about marking him off the list.
The next name of Alan Burrows only brought up a shell of information. I could get a social security number and lease agreement for the top floor apartment of the building to our west, but I couldn't get any credit cards, and the bank information only pulled one account with activity equal to the rent payment on the property near RangeMan. It appeared he had rented the apartment for the last eighteen months and was a good tenet, but a call to the landlord quickly shot down my hopes of getting any information when he said that he'd never met his renter and had never seen anyone come or go from the apartment in all the time he'd been there. Clearly, this was a front for something or someone, but the lack of information made it impossible to get any further.
I decided to pull together the lack of information as evidence that something was off, and when I stood up to grab the reports from the printer, I realized Scar was still sitting beside me, but he was holding what I'd printed.
I looked at him and waited while he scanned it, and when he met my eyes, he said simply, "That's trouble."
"Exactly," I agreed, before sitting down and jumping into the next option – Emma Barnhart.
As soon as I read the name, I rolled my eyes and wondered if she could be any relation to Joyce. I had to hold my mind back from jumping to any conclusions when a surface check showed me they were cousins. The picture on her license bore an eerie resemblance to my arch nemesis, and I was convinced that if I put enough time into this lead, I'd find a connection to pin her down as the stalker. I was already convinced that the stalker was a woman, even if Ranger wasn't ready to concede that point.
I was looking over her credit card history and found a rather substantial bar tab that was put through after Ranger and I came back downstairs. It would be unlikely that she could be watching us on the roof and getting wasted at a bar at the same time, but anyone could have made the charges if they had her card. There were several other conflicts with the time line of the package in my apartment and a plane ticket that would have put her in the air at that time. Knowing that I was getting obsessed with trying to make the stalker MO fit Emma, I hit the desk in frustration that it obviously wasn't her.
I jumped when a hand softly touched my shoulder, and I spun around to see an uncertain looking Scar holding out a bottle of water and a sandwich. I had skipped lunch, and as soon as my eyes saw the food, I realized I was hungry. Maybe food would help me to rebuild a proper perspective. I was willing to condemn this woman simply because of who she was related to. I was related to Vinnie and certainly wouldn't appreciate anyone assuming that because he was a pervert, they needed to lock up their pets and small animals if I walked by.
"She's clean?" Scar asked after I'd calmed myself down and consumed half the sandwich.
"It looks that way, but she's related to someone that has a beef with me, and I was convinced that connection would have been enough to substantiate a motive for threatening Ranger," I confessed, wondering if he'd think I was an idiot for jumping to a conclusion like that.
He flipped through the reports I'd printed and pointed at some of her credit card receipts, before he said, "Alcoholic. She could still be trouble."
I glanced at the pattern every other night like clock work of a bar tab of over fifty dollars. If she was only paying for her drinks, she was consuming at least five to six mixed drinks a night – even more if she was sticking to cheaper beers and shots. Either she was trying to get the attention of someone at Eddie's Bar, or she had a drinking problem. That made it less likely that she was organized enough to stalk Ranger without being discovered, but a check in at the bar to confirm she was the one building up the bar bills would be worth it before marking her off as a possibility.
He put the reports for Emma and Alan in separate folders and took them to Tank's office. I figured that was odd, since it was Ranger's stalker, but I didn't question him, because I knew Tank would pass it along.
I jumped into the businesses and spent the next four hours looking at employee listings and trying to find anything that might spell out a connection between a staff person and RangeMan. One business was a home health nursing agency that had been renting space in the building to the north of Haywood for the last two months; it appeared to only be open from nine to five. Since we were out there much later than that, I doubted this company was the threat to Ranger.
That only left Thomas Manufacturing to the south of RangeMan. They had fifteen employees – eight of which had criminal records; two were skips through Vinnie's. I let out a long breath and realized this was going to take a while to get through.
The voice I now knew belonged to Scar said, "Give me one, you do one, and they'll be done twice as fast."
"Did you used to be a guardian angel in a past life?" I asked, trying to thank him for sitting with me all afternoon. Strangely enough, his quiet presence was companionable, and I wasn't as bored going through the reports, because I knew someone was looking over it with me.
His eyes dropped to his laptop, and he shook his head no. "Nothing angelic about me."
I turned so that I wasn't facing him, before disagreeing. "Say what you want; I'm certain you are an angel with the patience of a saint, and you're not going to convince me otherwise."
I was lost in arrest reports for Marcus Smart, when Lester walked by and whistled. "Beautiful, you've been here all afternoon, and you aren't asleep yet. What are you into, because I know it's not the stimulating conversation from this guy that's keeping you awake."
I saw that it was almost seven, so I stood up, ready to call it a day, and replied, "Some people have more to offer than empty words." With that greeting card sentiment, I kissed the buzz cut on the top of Scar's head and said, "Are you interested in more of this excitement tomorrow?"
He nodded with another of his stunning smiles, and I excused myself to see if Ranger had a plan for the evening. We'd only put in one public appearance today, and I knew the plan was two, but I was exhausted from sitting at a desk all afternoon, and I wasn't really in the mood to go out.
The door to his office was open, so I walked in, figuring he had super Batman skills and would already be aware of my approaching presence. I cleared my throat when I walked in, and Ranger looked up, as though he hadn't realized I was there.
"Did I just sneak up on you?" I asked, wondering if it were even possible.
I got a half smile as an answer, and then Ranger stood up and started shutting off his computer and closing his files. "You don't have to stop just because I'm here," I assured him.
"I was only planning on working as long as you were," he replied, not looking up. "It seemed like you and Scar made a good team," he added when he stepped out from behind the desk.
I agreed. "It's strange, but I enjoyed having the company. Has he always been this friendly?" I asked.
Ranger laughed out loud. "No, I don't think I've ever heard Scar described as friendly. If anything, I get regular complaints that he's anti-social and refuses to work with a partner. If he's talking to you other than to demand you get out of his way, then you can count yourself as lucky."
"Why is he here, if he's so difficult to work with?" I blurted out, figuring there had to be more to it than what Ranger had said.
I got a head tilt to the side, as though that were a response. I put my hands on my hips, ready to go toe to toe with Ranger to get more information, but he wisely backed down and told me, "I brought him here from Boston because he's damn good at spotting a threat, and he's one of the few people that have gone up against odds worse than I have and lived to tell about it."
I dropped my hands from my hips immediately, being faced with the harsh reality of what Scar must have gone through. When I turned to look back across the cubicles in the direction of where I'd spent my afternoon, Ranger came up behind me and put his hands on my hips, leaning in to whisper in my ear.
"I brought him here because he's the best and because this threat now involves you. I can't rest at night unless I know I'm doing everything possible to keep you safe."
I leaned into the solid body behind me and drew in a deep breath, savoring the scent that was unique to Ranger. It was his body wash and manly strength all rolled into one, and it was quickly shifting my hormones into overdrive.
I felt my hair being pulled away from the side of my neck and Ranger's warm mouth slowly moved from my ear to my shoulder. Before my knees began to buckle and I lost the ability to speak, I said, "Don't you owe me a massage?"
He responded without pulling his lips away from my skin. "Are there any trouble spots in particular that need attention?"
Shit, this man was pure sex. What in the hell was I was thinking last night when I suggested we keep the physical part off the table until after the stalker had been captured? I could be upstairs having Ranger induced orgasms right now if I hadn't opened up my big mouth and stuck my foot so far in it that I couldn't beg for what I wanted. I was on edge enough right now that I knew it wouldn't take much to send me over. Maybe I could get him to straddle my hips and work on my lower back. Between the pressure and the movement, I might be able to get a little release without him knowing it. I could be quiet enough to keep it hidden from Ranger, right?
