Chapter 28:

Stephanie's POV

There was no getting around it. I was nervous. After drying off, I slipped into the T-shirt and silk boxer shorts that Ranger had left me before making my way into the bedroom that I would be sharing with him. Letting loose with a sigh, I took my time moving through the walk-in closet slash dressing room off of the bathroom and joining Ranger in the bedroom. I was relieved to find him already asleep…or rather, on his side with his eyes closed, giving the appearance of sleeping.

Padding across the plush carpeted floor, I slipped into the king-sized bed behind him. Pulling the covers up to my neck, I turned on my side so I was facing away from him. As I lay there waiting for sleep to claim me, I couldn't help but think of the little girl in the other bedroom. She reminded me so much of myself at that age. Closing my eyes, I tried to block the memories.

The sound of cries woke me, and I looked around the room, noticing from the clock beside the bed that only an hour had passed. Wondering what had made the sound, I slipped from bed and made my way through the apartment to check on Julie. I'd noticed that Ranger wasn't in bed, but didn't have time to wonder where he'd gotten to.

As I moved in the dark toward the room where Julie was sleeping, I noticed the darker shape near her door and stopped a few feet away when I realized it was Ranger standing there. He turned, and the light from the moon filtered through the curtains to allow me a glimpse of the pain on his face. My heart broke for him. Should I move forward and let him know I'd seen his pain, or did I go back to the bedroom and pretend this had never happened? Shaking my head, I moved through into the kitchen, deciding to take the third option: make it look like I was up for a totally different reason.

Ranger joined me several minutes later, sitting down at the table to pick up the cup of coffee I had been drinking from and taking a healthy drink from the mug. Setting the mug back in front of me he said, "You make a great cup of coffee."

I smiled weakly. "Thanks." Hesitating only a moment, I asked, "Everything all right?"

He nodded. "I thought I heard a noise, but it was nothing."

Accepting his take on the situation, I remained quiet.

He motioned to the mug. "Are you going to finish that?"

Sighing, I replied, "I shouldn't. Too much caffeine."

He reached for the mug once again and drained the coffee before getting up and carrying it to the sink. Walking back to where I was seated, he held out his hand to me. Placing my hand in his, I allowed him to pull me up, and we walked back to the master bedroom.

With the emotions running high from earlier coupled with the caffeine from the coffee I'd had, I was partially prepared for the dreams. What I hadn't counted on was the punch they were going to give.

I was lying on my bed when Daddy walked into the room. I'd been lying there letting the tears flow. So much had happened in the past few days: finding out my father wasn't dead, shooting my mother, running from the men trying to kill me, finding out that woman had my grandmother locked in the attic…

Daddy sat down on the bed beside me. "How are you holding up, pumpkin?"

I shrugged. My lip was trembling as I fought to keep from breaking down. I wasn't willing to trust that he wouldn't turn my feelings against me like she had.

His head lowered as his shoulders shook silently.

I had a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach that I wasn't sure what to do about.

His head lifted, and I saw the tears that shimmered on his cheeks. "I'm so sorry, pumpkin. If I'd had any idea what Helen was doing to you, I would never have left you with her."

I launched myself into his arms and clung to him as he held me close. "She told me she'd sell me to bad men and they'd take me far away if I said anything."

The growl coming from my father didn't scare me, and neither did the look on his face when I backed away to look up at him. He arranged me so that I was sitting on his lap and his arms were around me, offering love and protection. "Tell me all of it, Stephanie. If I'm going to help you to get over what that witch did, I need to know all of it."

I didn't know where to start. I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth and bit it a couple times before his thumb came up and rescued the sore skin. "Start wherever feels right, baby. I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."

I didn't know where to start. I had no good memories of her. I decided to just say what I was feeling right now. "What did I do that she couldn't love me?"

He tipped my chin up so I was looking into his face. "You didn't do anything. If anyone's to blame for what you've been through, it's me. She was such a loving mother to Val, though. I had no idea she could be so cruel to her own daughter."

I pressed my lips tight together for a second, hoping to get my emotions under control. When I thought I'd managed it, I said, "She hired men to kill me."

The look on Daddy's face scared me a little until he looked down at me and said, "I'm here now, Stephanie. Those men won't get through me. That's a promise. Now tell me about them so I can take them out."

I didn't totally understand why he'd chosen the words he had, but I did as he asked. "I was in the treehouse in Grandma Bella's backyard when I heard the men talking. I managed to get away, and I started running. I thought they were going to catch me, but Bob showed up and got on top of me so they couldn't see me. Then when they went looking somewhere else, Joe came and brought me here."

"There's something you're not telling me, pumpkin. What is it?"

I looked up into his face, frowning a little. "I think I recognized one of the voices."

He was suddenly more alert. "Can you remember where you heard it?"

I shook my head.

Daddy sighed and hugged me close for a second. "I have a friend I'd like you to talk to. He works for the FBI, and he's a very good agent. He's going to be handling your mo…Helen's case."

I frowned. "Is it wrong for me to be happy that she's in jail and I don't have to live with her anymore?"

"Absolutely not, pumpkin. I think we're all feeling the same way. Well, Val might be missing her mother a bit, and we'll have to be understanding of her missing Helen. She was good to her, at least."

I leaned my head back against my father and closed my eyes.

I wasn't sure when he'd left, or exactly when the dream started. One minute I was safe in his arms, and the next I was back in that house, trapped once more. I lay down on the sleeping bag and burst into tears, not able to hold back my sobs as I cried out, "No! I was free!"

Feeling a hand on my back, I panicked. I fought as hard as I could to get away. I didn't want them to kill me, and I was scared. They were stronger than I was, as they seemed to easily deflect the blows that I was landing on them. I felt a sob welling up from deep inside, and when one of the men covered me with his body, I panicked even more and started clawing at him, as well as trying to use my legs to aide me in doing enough damage so I could get free.

I heard a voice speaking softly, almost in a lullaby, if that was possible. My thoughts were going a mile a minute, and all I could think was, Don't listen to them. You have to fight, or they'll kill you. By now, I was hitting and kicking out, as well as clawing at the men with my nails. I was bent on doing as much damage to them as I could.

At some point, the dream started to fade and little things started to reach my brain, telling me that I was safe.

Warm hands rubbed my back, and I stiffened as consciousness returned with a bang. I now knew it was Ranger I'd thought was the men who'd been after me in my dreams. My eyes blinked open to see him peering down at me with concern. His voice was a low rumble as he said, "You're safe, Babe."

I shuddered at the remembered memories. He was sitting with his back against the headrest of the bed. There were faint red scratches on his forearms. He pulled me into his arms so that I was resting against him.

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

I shook my head emphatically.

He leaned down and kissed my forehead.

We sat there like that for several minutes, Ranger caressing my arm as he held me to him as I clung to him almost hysterically.

When I finally had the monsters back where they belonged, I tilted my head to him and asked, "Why does Julie think you don't love her?"

In the moment before his eyes closed, I saw the pain there, as if he'd taken a direct hit to his heart. He took a deep breath before resting his chin on top of my head. "That's not important right now."

As I snuggled in closer to him, there were so many questions I wanted to ask, anything to avoid the questions I knew would be coming my way.

His hand caressed the side of my face. "Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

Ranger slid down so that we were lying on the bed with my back spooned to his front, one of his arms under my neck, letting me use it as a pillow, as his other hand rested on my hip.

I moved my hand over his forearm before linking my fingers with his.

I gave a shaky chuckle. "Not really." I closed my eyes, feeling shaky as I told him about my dream anyway. "I'd run away from home and was staying in a treehouse. Two men came to get me and kill me."

Ranger rubbed my back, murmuring to me in Spanish, and although I didn't understand the words, his tone was low and comforting.

I broke down in sobs once again.

Ranger rocked me in his arms as he gently crooned to me.

I lay there, looking up at him as my breathing hitched from having cried so much.

He leaned forward and touched his lips to my forehead. "Sleep, now. I'll keep you safe. It was all a dream."

Hesitating for only a moment while I decided whether or not I should tell him these dreams had really happened, I decided to let it go for now, and I let myself relax in the safe warmth of his embrace.

Tina's POV

For the fortieth time—I'd been counting—I paced the small space in front of the cot where I'd been chained several days ago. I was relieved that the torture had stopped…well, their physical torture of me had stopped. Instead, now I had to wonder just who they had on the other side of the wall and what they were doing to them. I mean, I knew what their choices were, but which one they were using to torture whichever woman they were at the moment afflicting it on was always at the forefront of my mind.

I'd made five marks—which was hard to do with my hands behind my back—so I knew it had been five days since I'd been brought in here and they'd started killing other women by torturing them to death. I heard the whimpering, and my fists clenched as I knew I was trapped in here with no way to help them.

When Harper and his two goons had returned from some meeting I'd heard them setting up at the pier, they were furious. He'd dragged a young woman in here with him, and I'd been forced to watch as they did unspeakable things to her. The whole time, he'd been screaming, "See what you've done? See what I'm going to do to your friend when I get you here with me? Then I'm going to do the same to you!"

He'd been like a rabid dog. Swinging the final blow, he'd turned to me and snarled, "Get her out of sight before I accidentally kill her too soon. We can't have that. Agent J needs to suffer by watching me torture the life out of her so she knows what's in store for her."

Shawn and John—his two goons—had come over, and between the two of them, they'd brought me in here, chaining my ankle to the bed. Without the use of my hands, I hadn't figured out a way out…yet.

There was a commotion on the other side of the door, and I shuffled over so I had a better vantage point to hear what was going on.

Stephanie's POV

The man seated on the floor playing with his daughter was a world away from the bastard I'd met in London. This man had a heart—at least he was giving the appearance of having one—and although it was still staunchly guarded, he was making strides to let the child in. For some reason, I was hesitant to believe in the credibleness of this. Maybe because I was finding myself having strong feelings for Ranger and my fear of getting hurt if this was all a put-up job was making me nervous. After all, was it possible for someone to do a one eighty in five days?

The past week had been a bit surreal. I'd had a lot of fun spending time with Julie, and we'd become fast friends, but being in such close proximity to Ranger was playing havoc with my hormones. He seemed determined to put the child at ease with his presence, and I had to admit, he did seem more relaxed with her when I was around.

On the drive here from the pier, I would have put good money on Manoso strangling me with his bare hands for volunteering to watch Julie. He'd been aloof during the drive, but the underlining anger had been visible in the way he'd clenched his jaw to keep from speaking his mind. He'd known on the drive that he was going to insist on my staying in the apartment with Julie and him. Looking back, the one brief glimpse of devilment I'd seen from him during our drive was what had given it away.

After that first night, though, things seemed to fall into a familiar routine. The alarm would go off at four a.m., and while he'd climb out of bed to go work out in the gym located on the second floor, I'd go back to sleep until eight a.m. I'd go out to the kitchen and start coffee and then go and call Julie to get up and get ready for the day. By the time she walked into the kitchen, I'd have managed to put together a semblance of breakfast, even though my cooking skills weren't anything to brag about.

While Julie and I were eating our breakfast, Ranger would return and join us. That first morning when he'd looked at the plates in front of Julie and me, he'd shaken his head before meeting my gaze as he'd said, "That stuff will kill you, Babe."

I'd grinned back at him before saying, "But what a way to go."

He'd moved to the fridge and taken out lox and a bagel. When he'd moved back to the table to sit down with us, I'd had to bite back a smile at the face Julie made on seeing his breakfast choice.

Lifting her fork, she'd taken a healthy bite of the eggs and bread pudding mixture that I'd put together for our breakfast. It was incredibly sweet, but oh, was it good.

As had become our routine, once we'd finished eating and the dishes had been rinsed and placed in the sink, Ranger would head down to his office and Julie and I would make our way to the den where she'd watch TV, read, or play video games, while I worked on the computer I'd been given by Rodriguez. I was frantic to find Tina. My gut was telling me the men in the warehouse had something to do with her, and I couldn't help but wonder what Harper would do to her because of his men's failure to get me at the pier.

At lunchtime, Ranger would once again join us, and as an attempt to enlighten our taste buds, he'd generally arrive early enough to put the meal together himself for the three of us. Although the food was delicious, I had to admit I was starting to get desperate for something totally nutritionless and greasy.

In the afternoons, he'd started taking us to a small park that had been set up in the middle of the ground floor. There were glass walls on all sides of the park, and the only way to access the area was through the building. There was a pond with fish near the far wall, and there was plenty of room to run for Julie. She had a blast each time, and the three of us had had some mighty inventive games of tag. My heart took a direct hit the first time that I'd seen Ranger and Julie lying on the grass, laughing up at the sky as if they hadn't a care in the world.

Equally amusing were the looks Ranger had started receiving from his men, as if they weren't sure how to take this new development.

The only note of discord to date had happened when I'd asked Ranger where Kye was. He'd closed up instantly and metamorphosed into the taciturn ass I'd first met. It seemed almost as if the two of us were being kept apart deliberately. If there was one thing I hated, it was having someone try to control me.

Julie and Ranger had grown closer over the past five days, and the little girl no longer looked at him as if she were afraid he'd hurt her simply for being there. Whatever issues they'd had seemed to be in the past.

Ranger had received a call earlier this evening, and he'd seemed a bit more reserved…almost melancholy. As if something were coming that he wasn't looking forward to. The way he watched Julie had me wondering if the call had been from Ella or Louis to tell him they would be returning home soon.

As anxious as I was to be able to concentrate on finding Tina, I was equally reluctant to end my time with Ranger and his daughter. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was home, and that scared the hell out of me.

Tonight, Ranger had indulged us—at least to his way of thinking—by arranging for us to have a health fanatic's version of pizza. Although I knew it would do nothing for my sweet tooth or my need to sink my teeth into something greasy, the food actually looked pretty good. The pizza dough was whole wheat, and there was about a cup of shredded mozzarella cheese on the dough, with slices of tomato, green pepper, onion, and mushrooms sprinkled over the top.

My eyes widened when Ranger portioned out the pizza so each of us had two slices of the pizza, and then he placed the other two slices in a container in the refrigerator. There were bowls of tossed salad beside each of our plates, complete with the dressing measured out in a little container beside the bowl. When he placed bottles of water at each of our places, I looked at him like he'd grown a second head. What the hell?

Something in my stance must have clued him into the fact I wasn't pleased with his heavy-handed usurping of our right to determine for ourselves how much or how little of the meal we wanted. He met my gaze and had the nerve to wink. "There's a treat for when we finish the pizza and salad. I wouldn't want either of you to miss out."

Frowning, I asked, "What if I'm hungrier than two slices of pizza and a salad?"

He studied me for several seconds before he responded. "There's plenty more salad in the fridge."

I lifted my chin as I stared him down, telling him, "If I want something more to eat, it sure isn't going to be salad."

His eyes widened, but he didn't say anything; he just retraced his steps and retrieved the other two slices of pizza and placed them on the table. He actually bowed to me as he pulled my chair out for me to sit down. Once I was seated, he leaned down till his mouth was beside my ear as he whispered, "By all means, Babe. We want to make sure your energy level is high. And if you find you're still hungry after dinner, I have a few ideas on how we can take care of that."

I shivered uncontrollably. Whether it was from his hot breath as he'd spoken to me or the words he'd spoken, I couldn't say with any certainty. More than likely, it was a combination of the two, along with the fact that he was one hot Latin male. My breath hitched, and to show me he was aware of the response he'd drawn from me, he winked at me before straightening and moving to his own seat.

As usually happens, he'd been right about my only being able to eat the two slices of pizza along with the salad. When he brought the frozen yogurt out, I was happy to have a treat, even if I was disappointed it wasn't real ice cream.

When we finished the meal, Julie ran to the den to pick out a movie while Ranger helped me to clear the dishes from the table. Once we were alone, he wrapped his arms around me from behind and leaned his cheek against mine. "I'm sorry, Babe."

Closing my eyes, I tilted my face up for closer contact with him. I was so mixed up with the feelings that were surfacing when I was around him. There were times when I wanted to strangle him, and then there were times when I wanted him to take me in his arms and show me what all of this was about. I was torn and not sure how I should react.

When his lips pressed against my cheek, I moaned. His tongue snaked out and touched the corner of my mouth, and I felt heat race through me like a lightning bolt straight to my doohdah. My breathing quickened, and as much as a part of me wanted to turn and let things progress to their natural conclusion, I couldn't help but remember the things he'd done since I'd first met him.

He must have sensed the change in my mood, because suddenly, he released me and moved away. The muscle in his jaw was moving in such a way that I knew he was clenching it. His eyes narrowed, but he didn't comment; he just walked out of the room.

A few seconds later, I heard Julie's voice asking a question, and then Ranger's response told me he'd joined her in the den. I finished cleaning up before heading for the den myself. When I joined them, they were playing a game on the floor. I sat on the sofa behind them, drawing my legs up beside me as I studied them more than watched the animated cartoon Julie had chosen for tonight.

When the doorbell chimed slightly before nine p.m., Ranger rose to go answer it. There was a look of regret on his face as he did so. When he rejoined us a few minutes later, Ella and Louis were with him.

Julie shrieked when she saw Ella, and the little girl ran to her and was immediately enfolded into a hug.

In the commotion, the others weren't aware of the look of agony that briefly flitted across Ranger's face before it was masked with his blank look.

Ella smiled at me. "Thank you so much, dear. I am so grateful for you caring for Julie so I could spend this last week with Celia." She turned to Julie. "She's going to be just fine. She made it through the surgery and is well on the way to recovery. The surgeon was able to get all of the tumor, and she's going to be just fine."

Once again, the others missed the look of dawning horror on Ranger's face.