Disclaimer – I do not own the characters, etc. I am only borrowing them from Janet. This is not for profit, just for kicks.

previously:
Nine hours later, Tank's phone buzzed and the text message read: 'home & safe -SP'.

Ranger's Red Glare – Chapter 10
By PinPin

Tank frowned. A text message wasn't what he'd had in mind when he asked for a call. He pressed reply.

Stephanie groaned when she heard the ringtone, but answered right away, sounding far less than pleased, "what do you want now?"

Tank was careful not to let his tone become as challenging as hers. "I asked you to call me."

"And I did."

"A text and a call are not the same thing."

"Okay, so now you're hearing my voice on the line," she rolled her eyes and then nearly growled through clenched teeth, "satisfied?"

There was a significant pause followed by an audible sigh. "Whatever problem we had last night, we need to get past it."

"The problem was that you were acting like a dick," she snapped. "Just avoid that in future and we'll be fine."

Another pause followed. Tank regretted that he was almost entirely to blame for this new hostility between them, and he wanted to fix it. "You've never done that before," he said, "going back into the bar after a distraction."

"So?"

"Obviously, I didn't know how to handle it."

"Yes, obviously!"

"Usually Ranger is in charge and I don't have to worry about that kind of thing."

Stephanie would have laughed if his explanation had been any more inadequate. "So the solution you decided on was to barge in and pull me around and insult me?" she asked.

"I'm trying to apologize here," he shot back, no longer able to hold his cool in the wake of her vocal condemnation.

"Well…" she said, imagining the look on his face, all pinched and frowny and discontent, and just for a second she smiled through a silent giggle before recomposing herself, "you're terrible at it." Her voice might have cracked a tiny bit at the end, but she didn't think he heard it.

"I'm sorry," he apologized, sounding so earnest.

But Stephanie wasn't ready to let it go yet. "For what?" she asked. She didn't get to serve up crow very often and she wanted to hear Tank take a big, old bite out of it.

"For all I know he was a really nice kid."

Pursing her lips with renewed annoyance she replied, "maybe it's me, but that sounds an awful lot like something a dick would say."

Tank tried again. "Most of all I'm sorry that I pulled your arm when I wanted to talk to you. I know how much you hate that but I didn't stop long enough to think about it and I did it anyway. I didn't even try asking first." There was a slight pause before he asked quietly, as if he was afraid of the answer, "did I hurt you?"

The majority of her irritation slipped away at the sound of his voice. For a man his size, he'd actually been very gentle. "No, not physically."

"You should have told me that you were going back inside."

"So this was all my fault?" she huffed.

"No, that's not what…" he trailed off with a huff of his own. Damn, she can be so frustrating, he thought. "In the future," he patiently began again, "you should tell me if you're going to do that. We're all on hyper-defense when we're working and it's not easy to just turn that off. I go into a distraction job with the mindset that I have to protect you from what's waiting inside and at the end of the night leaving you there with someone we didn't know was harder than I expected."

Stephanie considered that for a moment, and decided that maybe it had been a little short-sighted of her to just head back into the bar without letting Tank know where she was going. "I've never been on your side of the microphone," she conciliated.

She liked the way his tone was lighter, and less worried, as he asked, "was that your way of apologizing?"

"No!" she immediately answered. "It's an explanation."

"Well," he said, "explanation accepted."

There was a longer than usual pause and Stephanie wondered for a moment if he had hung up the phone like Ranger would have. But then she heard a breath. "Silence without hanging up would indicate you have something more to say," she meditated aloud.

"No," he said without conviction, "not really."

"I think you do."

"It's nothing."

"Just spit it out, Tank," she insisted with good humor and a smile that could be heard. "It can't be worse than having to apologize to me and besides, if you don't tell me now I'll just get pissed all over again."

"Did you sleep with that guy?" he asked, horrified with himself as the words left his lips. What the hell is wrong with me, he thought. That wasn't what he wanted to say. A moment ago he was thinking about asking her to meet him for lunch to sign some papers she hadn't seen to the previous evening, not whether or not she'd had a spectacular night moaning the name of a man at least ten years younger.

Click.

Tank groaned, "shit." She'd hung up.

Stephanie's stared at the closed phone in her hand and her blood re-boiled. She almost threw it in a fit of pique, but stopped at the last second, knowing that if she needed a new RangeMan compatible phone, she'd have to see Tank to get it. Then she almost threw it a second time when she heard Tank's ringtone begin to chime, furious that he had the nerve to call her again. After a moment of thought she answered, and immediately started talking. "Is this like some kind of guy honor code thing that you need to ensure his woman stays pure in his absence?" she shouted. "Because if that's the case you can forget it, it's none of your damn business! Even if you think it is, it wouldn't matter. I'm not involved with Ranger. I'm not his woman. We are not, and have never been, a couple. He's given me reasons why it would never happen and despite the fact I tried my best not to believe any of them, I can't keep fooling myself. It gets clearer to me all the time. Leaving without telling me was finally enough to convince me that whatever the hell it is he's talking about when he says that his life doesn't lend itself it relationships, he's telling the absolute truth. So I'm not holding my breath! And if he's your best friend or not, I don't deserve to get lectured by you! As if I was doing something wrong, as if there's some great guy out there who is holding his breath for me! Because he's not! So why would I? And why would any of it have a fucking thing to do with you?"

Click.

Tank tried to digest everything he'd just heard. It was a lot to take in. In his mind, Stephanie had always belonged to Ranger, as much as his company or his cars. He'd never questioned it. But he could see that there was more to it than that. There were a lot of questions and some apparently very strong emotions whirling around this subject. What exactly did Stephanie mean by 'involved' and what was she saying about Ranger telling the truth that they'd never be together? Stephanie had been right. Ranger never told him about any of that.

This time when Stephanie answered his returning call, she didn't say a word. She wanted to hear his response. She wanted to know what would possess him to call her a third time.

"You're right," he spit out immediately, afraid she's start shouting again."It is none of my business."

"I did," she impulsively revealed, unsure why she was even doing it. "I slept with him."

Tank's breath left him in a whoosh and he was speechless.

"That club was full of younger, prettier women," she continued, "but he was interested in me. I let it go to my head a little. It was flattering. Even after I turned him down, left with another guy, came back, and explained that I was a bounty hunter…" she hesitated, "he was still interested."

"You don't have to explain," Tank croaked, hoping she'd stop.

Stephanie gave her head a silent shake. She wasn't apologizing or explaining. She had this urge to tell him, not to make him understand what she did, but to somehow help him understand something about her. "I haven't had a decent guy, you know, properly pursue me in any traditional sense since I was in college. He reminded me of that and… well the attention was nice."

"Stephanie – "

"The thing is I'm not twenty anymore," she ignored him and went on, "I forgot how bad college guys are in bed. I'm pretty sure he was looking for some kind of Mrs. Robinson experience where I'd give him some no-strings lessons about pleasuring women. Heaven knows he could have used a few."

At that point Stephanie didn't know what else to say or whether or not to regret what she'd already said. An extended silence followed, which Tank finally broke with the short, faint breath of a chuckle. "I know I asked, but in the future, if I'm ever stupid enough to ask you about your sexual partners again, please do me a solid and just tell me to get bent. I don't know why I asked; I certainly didn't want to know."

Stephanie smiled on her end. "It sounds a little to me like we both just want to forget last night ever happened."

"Yeah," Tank agreed. Then on a cresting wave of laughter he asked, "was he that bad?"

"Yeah, he was that bad," she answered in disbelief that he'd brought it up a second time only moments after they'd agreed to forget it. "I think it might have only been his second or third time having sex," she said. "He wanted to play with my boobs a lot."

His groan was audible. "Please, stop now."

"If you didn't really want to know, then you shouldn't have asked… again." Stephanie chortled, "he only lasted five minutes. Then he actually asked me how many times I came because he said he couldn't tell." She barely heard his reply over her own raucous laughter.

"Okay," Tank declared, his tone indicating he might be in some kind of physical pain. "This call is over."

Tank disconnected and Stephanie rolled with laughter, her disappointing night now transformed from a disheartening, failed tryst which had made her feel old and slightly pathetic, into a little slice of funny self-depreciation and a newly discovered way to tease and torment Tank.

(1,782 words)

A/N: Thank you for reading!