Chapter 14

Response for The Evil Tart's Nothing But Time on My Hand's Challenge.

Still Not mine, just writing for fun

Lester and I spent the rest of the weekend in bed, living off whatever Ella wanted to feed us. We spent some time talking and getting to know little things about each other and the rest of the time was spent making love, we did have three months to make up for.

Now it's Monday morning and back to work, Ranger scheduled a meeting for 9am and I have to get my ass moving so I can get up there on time. When Ranger first told me about the meet I was more than shocked. He walked into Lester's apartment yesterday afternoon to ask if he had seen me.

"Lester, you here?" Ranger called out from somewhere in the apartment.

"Where the hell did he come from?" I looked at Lester horrified.

"We have a connecting door, in here Ric."

"Hey I was wondering if you have seen..." He stopped speaking when he saw me sitting there.

"Are you looking for me?"

"As a matter of fact I was, I wanted to talk to you."

"Me?" He nodded. "What's going on Ranger?"

"I wanted to talk to you about your future with Rangeman."

"Am I being fired?"

Ranger and Lester both started to laugh.

"What?" I demanded.

"Steph, I want you to start taking a more active roll in the day to day stuff and in the planning. The jobs that you planned went off without a hitch. There is more but we can talk about it in the meeting tomorrow, I will let you to get back to whatever...what are you two doing anyway? Did I interrupt anything important?" Ranger said the last part with a knowing smile.

"Yes you did interrupt, no go back to wherever you came from and let us enjoy the rest of the weekend.

I managed to get ready and to the conference room with only a minute to spare, I stood and listened at the doorway before going in. It sounded like the guys were grilling Lester.

"Damn man, we thought you were dead up there." I heard Tank say through laughter.

"Not dead, just...unavoidably detained." I could tell by the way he talked that Lester was smiling as he gave his answer.

"Unavoidably detained, now that's a good one. I'll bet it had something to do with the beautiful woman you left with."

"Where is Steph by the way, did you wear her out?" Jack, I am so going to kick his ass.

I guess it's time to get in there, I opened the door and they all turned to look at me.

"What?" I asked as they all stared.

"Nothing Bombshell, we were just talking to our pal Lester trying to figure out where he disappeared to on Saturday night." Bobby asked trying to keep a straight face. "Would you happen to know anything about it?"

"Why are you asking me?" I asked and looked over at Les as he was just taking it all in and laughing.

"Because your sister tried calling you all day yesterday after she saw you leave with Lester Saturday night. Oh and you might want to avoid your mom for a while as well, it seems she is not to happy with her daughter fighting with Joe is public. Again." Jack always knows how to make my day brighter, damn him.

Great, my phone was still off. I was afraid that when I turned it on it would take me days to go through the messages I had.

"Alright guys, let's leave them alone...for now." Thanks a lot Ranger

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Lester making his way over to me. "Hey Beautiful."

"Hey." I whispered. "How long have they been at it?"

"Since I walked in about 20 minutes ago." Lester replied.

"You both look very happy this morning, please tell me this means you worked out your little problem and Bobby and I don't have to quit to get away from the two of you?" Jack asked us both

"No shit." I heard Ranger, Tank and Bobby.

"Jack, what...were we really that bad?" I asked him not realizing until now how miserable I have been for the last three months.

"The two have you have been miserable for months and it has been driving us all a but crazy." Jack responded.

Lester wrapped his arms around me. "I can promise you no more being miserable." The guys were smiling at us. "Now let's get this meeting underway so little miss curiosity can understand what's going on."

"Why don't we all take a seat, Steph I know you are curious as to what is going on." I nodded and Ranger continued. "When I first talked to the guys about bringing in Ram, I wanted to bring him into the partnership as well, but I had to wait until we found him a suitable partner. Well now we have that partner and we are offering you both a buy in to the partnership."

My jaw hit the floor, they wanted me to become a partner in Rangeman.

"Why me?" I asked, still a bit shocked.

"Honestly?" Ranger asked

"Yes."

"Steph I have never seen anyone catch on as fast as you, especially someone without the military training that most of us had. You have a knack for this job, we would be fools to let you go."

"But why partner?"

"Sometimes we get called away to other offices or on a government job and then there is no one left here to make decisions. We all trust Ram and you, I don't think any of the other guys that we employ would be able to handle it." Ranger explained. "Take some time if you need to and think about it."

Me a partner in Rangeman, is this something I needed to think about...Hell no. I loved my job and I couldn't see myself doing anything else.

"Guys, I don't need to think about it. I'm in."

"You sure Steph?" asked Ranger.

"Hell yeah! I love this job and don't plan on giving it up anytime soon, so what do I need to do?"

"Why don't we have dinner upstairs tonight, Ram do you think you and Val could make it?"

"Probably, I will check with her when we are done in here."

"Well now that's all settled how about we get some work done today." Ranger said to us all.

"Jack, shall we head on over to Vinnie's?" I asked.

"Yeah, let's go."

Lester stopped me and pulled me to his office telling Jack that I would be down in a minute.

"So how long have you known about this?"

"For a while, we have been talking about it for months. Ric is right, never have I seen anyone catch on as quick as you. We talked to the guys about it and no one has a problem with it." Lester said to me. "Now how about a kiss before you go?"

Damn that man can kiss, I didn't want to leave after that but I knew work had to be done.

"Maybe we can have lunch if you are not to busy later?"

"Beautiful, for you I will make sure I am available. Now get out of here before I take you back upstairs."

I ran out of his office laughing and met Jack in the garage, time to get some work done.

TBC