The great JE still gets the credit for the cast of characters below.
Jenny (JenRar) you are a wonderful beta, and I am thankful, each and every chapter, to have you working with me.
Chapter 21 – A Gentle Thaw
Ranger was magic. She'd always known it was true, but with her sitting in his lap, he seemed to have the ability to find every sensitive area on her neck and shoulders and understood exactly how much pressure to use to draw out the maximum amount of noise from her in response. If he could reduce her to goo just from necking in his office, then she didn't stand a chance once they got upstairs and he went beyond the easy access areas.
"You like that, don't you, Babe?"
Did he really expect an answer? Was he under the delusion that she could form a complete sentence at the moment? It was almost funny how during the day, he was Mr. Silent and she could talk about anything. But as soon as their hormones kicked in, he became the chatty one and she wasn't capable of speech. Fortunately, he seemed to enjoy the sounds she typically reserved for an unusually good piece of cake, so he got the answer he'd been looking for and sucked softly over her collarbone. That was probably going to leave a mark.
The idea of a guy marking her in some way usually irritated her—she wasn't cattle that needed a rancher's branding. But the thought of Ranger marking her for everyone to see that she was taken made her even hotter. This was why people said revenge wasn't worth it. Sure, they were teaching their friends a valuable lesson, but if they hadn't been stuck down here waiting to see what would happen, then she'd no doubt be on her second orgasm by now.
Ranger chuckled against her, causing Stephanie to try to pull away, but she wasn't completely in control of her movements and it looked more like she was swaying and dizzy. "Somebody's knocking on the door," he explained. "I didn't answer when my phone buzzed, so they're coming in person."
She nodded and attempted to get up, but he tightened his grip on her. "No." He was back to not talking, just when she needed his mouth to keep working. Seeing her confusion, he explained, "Whoever it is needs to get used to you being with me, and if they're going to knock when the door is closed, they can deal with the idea that I was in here with the most beautiful woman while they were out there watching monitors."
Stephanie narrowed her eyes at him. His explanation was sweet, but it didn't ring completely true.
He let out a breath and stopped short of rolling his eyes, but she could have sworn he was about to do it. "Plus, if you get up, it will be hard for me to keep a professional appearance." As he added the last sentence, he lifted his hips, and she immediately got his point.
"Enter," he barked out, waiting as they tried the knob and found it locked.
"Sir?"
"Pick it," he commanded, apparently not willing to get up to help them out.
Almost immediately, the RangeMan came in, showing that everyone in the world could pick a lock but her.
"I'll teach you sometime," Ranger whispered. "Getting you all bound up might be fun anyway, and then I'll show you how to get yourself loose."
A throat clearing brought their attention back to Vince, who was slightly red in the face and looking anywhere but at them.
"Did you have a report?" Ranger prompted when Vince didn't seem to be able to speak.
"Sir." He nodded and then cleared his throat. "There are three women at the front desk, demanding to see you and Ms. Plum right away."
"Stephanie," she corrected him, hating to hear them refer to her so formally.
Vince nodded that he heard her, but didn't say anything to her suggestion of using her first name.
"Who are the women?" Ranger asked, nearly smiling. It was a similar expression to the one he wore when he was about to kick down the door to a skip's house, but the right side of his lips were pressed tighter.
"It's Ms Pl—" Stephanie clearing her throat stopped him before he finished her last name "—ah…Stephanie's friends, sir: Mary Lou, Connie, and Lula. I told them you were off the clock because it was so late, but they insisted you would see them because it was urgent."
"What do you think, Babe?" Ranger asked, letting her make the decision since the plan was hers to begin with.
"It might be fun," she admitted. "Can they come up, or do we need to go down?"
Ranger pointed at the two guest chairs directly in front of his desk. "Take those out," he commanded. "Then bring them up to sit together on the sofa."
It was a standard-size sofa, but between the three of them, they would be tight, which would make them uncomfortable right off the bat. Sometimes, his ability to control any situation amazed Stephanie.
Six minutes later, he was still gripping her hips, refusing to let her get up, when Vince reappeared with the girls, who were strangely silent.
After ushering them to the couch as he'd been instructed, Vince nodded at his boss and then left, pulling the door mostly closed behind him.
"Ladies," Ranger greeted them with the first word, but Stephanie noticed, he didn't ask what they wanted. There were a dozen things they could have done to have made this easier, but he wasn't doing any of them. If anything, he didn't even seem interested in their presence, because after saying the single word, he began to absentmindedly play with some of the curls in her hair.
"We're sorry," Lula blurted out first, with Connie and Mary Lou agreeing on either side of her.
"For what?" Stephanie asked, trying to sound as disinterested as Ranger had, although she didn't succeed as well.
"We shouldn't have lied to you about the kidnapping," Connie began, hitting the nail on the head.
"We wanted you two together," Lula jumped in, "and it seemed like you needed help getting there, but we never meant for you to get hurt. You know that, don't you?"
Stephanie nodded, struggling to keep a smile from her face. "I know you guys wouldn't intentionally hurt me. What I don't know is why you tried to hide what you'd done after I got hurt."
"We were scared you'd get mad," Lula blurted out.
Then a deep voice came through the phone in her hand. "They didn't say anything because I told them not to."
"Tank?" Stephanie couldn't believe they still had the guys on the phone. This had worked out slightly better than she'd thought it would.
"Yeah, it's me," he admitted. "When we found out Connie's cousin had gone off the page and you got hurt, I knew Ranger would go on a rampage for revenge, so we tried to set it up to resolve everything so you guys wouldn't have to hold anybody accountable and you wouldn't find out that it had initially been our idea."
"Did you think a group this big could keep a secret like that?" Stephanie wondered. Knowing how much Connie and Lula liked to gossip, she was surprised they hadn't spilled the beans themselves.
"I was only thinking about the short-term," Tank confessed further.
While she was glad to see that they had realized that lying to them about the kidnapping had been a huge mistake, hearing the strain in Tank's voice was hard.
"What made you come to this realization?" Ranger asked, squeezing her hip in a way that felt like he was comforting her.
"It's freaking cold," Lester's voice came through the phone.
"And Mary Lou told us about Morelli's leg," Bobby said, adding another detail that didn't exactly seem to relate.
Seeing the confusion on Stephanie's face, Mary Lou explained, "I told them about Morelli before he left for the Navy and how he'd embarrassed you over the entire 'Burg. You got your revenge in a way that let him know how it felt, but once he apologized years later, the two of you became…friends. You've never held a grudge, but you hate being lied to or lied about."
"What would you have done differently?" Stephanie asked, remembering how her mother would always ask that question of her when she'd gotten in trouble for doing something wrong as a child.
There was an extended period of silence before Lula spoke first. "When you came in the bonds office to ask about Lisa, I wouldn't have lied about her having a picture of a boyfriend. I would have told you everything I knew then and come clean."
"I wouldn't have trusted Tony with an assignment like that," Connie spoke up next. "He's never been overly dependable, but I thought since he owed me a big favor, he'd do this as a chance to get out of my debt. But even if I had used him, I would have come clean and called Ranger as soon as Tony told me his guy had taken you. I would have told you exactly where she was as soon as I heard how different the reality was from the plan."
"We were just glad to have Beautiful back," Lester jumped in. "But in hindsight, after we found out who took her, I would have laid it all out there at the briefing the next day and not made it seem like there was just a suspect of unknown connection."
"So you still would have interfered in our lives, you just wouldn't have tried to cover it up when Stephanie got hurt?" Ranger asked, his voice hard and cold, which didn't seem to match the way his free hand was rubbing her thigh tenderly.
Mary Lou was the first one to answer. "Probably. You guys were miserable, and we tried to talk to you directly and you wouldn't listen, so we decided to try something different. I think if we'd just left it at that and not tried to force your hand by adding the stress of Steph getting taken, then it would have been okay. After you guys got together, we could have had a big 'I told you so' and laughed about it."
The silence grew…and grew… Stephanie wasn't sure if she should say something, but she felt that Ranger was intentionally holding back. Just when it looked like Lula was about to bust, Ranger took a deep breath and spoke up.
"As long as we're clear that we appreciated you wanting to help us, but the moment you scared Stephanie and the second she got hurt, a line was crossed. We know you didn't mean for it to happen, which was all the more reason to have told us about it sooner. But instead of coming clean, you developed a cover-up to try to deceive us about what happened, which is…insulting."
"We should have known better than to think we could pull one over on you," Bobby spoke up.
"Or Stephanie," Tank added, causing her to smile. "I'll never underestimate her again."
"You'd better not." Ranger was openly smiling now. "She's the one who figured out you guys were covering something up and then put the pieces together to get to the bottom of what really happened."
"So you ain't mad no more?" Lula asked, tentatively.
"Oh we're still mad, but we'll get over it," Ranger answered for her. When he looked at Stephanie, he smiled and added, "As soon as the guys are free and back home."
"Where are we?" Lester asked, not sounding pissed like Stephanie had assumed he'd be.
"You haven't figured it out yet?" Ranger almost seemed to be toying with him.
"I thought you'd shipped me to Siberia," Tank confessed.
"The duffle bag with extra hats gave that away," Ranger taunted.
"But since you managed to knock us out and get us secured wherever we are in under two hours, I'm guessing we're still close by," Tank said, impressing her by piecing together some clues.
"Plus, our pants aren't wet," Lester spoke up.
"Do you usually wet your pants when you travel?" Stephanie didn't understand what that comment had to do with their situation and didn't think through how she'd phrased the question.
Ranger immediately laughed out loud, and she could hear Tank at the very least matching Ranger's amusement. The women were smiling, with Connie trying to cover up her mouth, or maybe she was just covering up that her upper lip needed a fresh bleaching and she didn't want to draw attention to it now that there was a tentative peace.
"You're killing me here," Les answered, not sounding too irritated at her question. "The girls said we were covered in snow, but it's not melting on us, so we figured you'd just staged this somewhere. We're in a deep freezer, aren't we?"
Stephanie leaned back and tilted her head to look at Ranger's face. "What do you think? Have they learned their lesson?"
He nodded once, and an audible breath of relief went out from the women on the couch. "I'll send Hector a message to escort them to pick up the guys."
With that settled, Ranger gently nudged Stephanie to stand up, and he took her hand in his, kissing the knuckles. "If you ladies will excuse us, Hector will help you figure out what to do for the men. Stephanie and I have a prior engagement upstairs."
"Ranger, she was being treated at the hospital twenty-four hours ago," Bobby called out. "You've got to take it easy on her."
Ranger grimaced and then typed out a text on his phone before saying, "Tank and Les can feel free to use the sauna in the gym to warm up."
"What about me?" Bobby asked, sounding a little dejected to be left out.
"Comments like what you made to the group should make you aware of your status," he answered cryptically.
"You are going to let him out of the freezer, aren't you?" Stephanie asked as they began to move from the office.
In the hall, Ranger shrugged, as though he didn't care one way or the other. "I'm not letting him out, but I figure Hector will anyway."
"You're a mean man sometimes," Stephanie teased.
Ranger spun around and pinned her to the wall with his body, leaning in to prevent her from moving in any way. "It's not mean, but I do protect what's mine, and you are the thing I value above all others in caring for. The fact that he just announced to the group that we were going to have sex and that he assumed I wouldn't care for you and would only focus on my own needs... It needed to be called out for the bullshit it was."
She swallowed, not sure how to respond.
"You know I'd never hurt you, right?"
Slowly, her head moved up and down in agreement.
"And that my greatest pleasure is making sure you're satisfied?"
Her cheeks warmed, but she continued to silently agree.
"And that nothing is going to keep me from showing you how much I love you tonight? Whether that's exhausting you first or just watching you sleep, there's no limit to what I'd do for you," he pledged so sincerely, she couldn't disagree.
"But if I don't want to go to sleep yet?" she asked, looking up at him, amazed at the warmth in his eyes as he returned her gaze.
"Then, I'm not tired either, Babe, so let's see what we can do to pass the time until we're ready to rest." He nuzzled against her neck, and in less than a second and a half, her eyes were closed and she was finding it hard to keep weight on her knees.
Stephanie was only vaguely aware of people walking by when she heard Mary Lou's unmistakable voice say, "I knew they belonged together. They just needed a little push to get there."
"I'm glad it worked out for you, but if you guys could quit gawking at the boss and get to where we are before I lose the feeling completely in my ass, then I'd appreciate it," Lester's voice rose from the phone that appeared to still be on.
"We have strange friends," Stephanie whispered.
Ranger nodded. "We should keep them, because I don't think anybody else would have them." He pulled back, allowing Stephanie to take full control of her senses again. "You ready to head upstairs?"
"Yep," she quickly agreed. "We can finish our master plan tomorrow?"
"I thought we were done," he commented, hitting the call button on the elevator.
"You thought I'd forgotten about my mother?" Steph challenged.
"She didn't play a role in hiding details about your kidnapping, so I thought she'd be immune," Ranger confessed.
"Immune from the group treatment, but she still said some horrible things about you, and no matter why she did it, she's going to have to understand I won't take that from her anymore," Stephanie explained, wondering why it seemed so easy to think about standing up to her mother now, when it had felt impossible before.
The doors opened on seven, and Ranger managed to guide Stephanie out while continuing to keep his body close to hers. "You know, hearing you stand up for me is a turn-on."
"Then I'll be sure to do it when you're around."
"Dios," he whispered, almost as though he hadn't intended to make that comment aloud. She knew being involved with Ranger would mean some of his strength would probably rub off on her. What she hadn't expected was for him to pick up her habits as well.