After dinner, Ranger had some work that he wanted to finish. He was flying out to Boston the next morning and would be home by Tia's bedtime. I planned on taking Tia to my mom's for dinner while he was gone. Ranger still had a hard time being around Val. He remained angry at her, despite basically torpedoing her marriage. He hadn't said anything that wasn't true and he hadn't intended to sink her marriage. However, he wasn't unhappy about the consequences of what he said, and her unhappiness and difficulties, I think, were the only things that allowed him to be civil with her.

I understood his viewpoint. I was still irritated and hurt by everything that Val had said, and seeing her unhappiness – especially after she called me unnatural and a failure as a wife and mother – eased some of that irritation.

However, despite my irritation, I didn't want to cut her out of my life totally. She was family, and I valued family heavily.

So taking the time to visit my family while he was away? It was a great idea. Besides, it would score me a free dinner.

Ranger and two of our top designers were going to a meeting with an exciting client, a client with locations across the US. They were redoing their security in all their offices in their northeastern region and, if the implementation went well, they would do all the systems on the south, midwest, and western regions as well. The potential existed for Rangeman, after the work in the US was complete, to be asked to do similar work in locations throughout the world. If Rangeman was able to pick up all the contract extensions to handle all the company needs, the contract would be worth close to a billion dollars. The systems that were required were complex. The other two designers had already inspected the different locations, and they had been working with Ranger on the designs.

I thought I would take a cinnamon streusel loaf out of the freezer that Ranger had made. He suggested that my mom would like it. Both Ranger and I were more careful not to take advantage of my mom's generosity after seeing how little money my parents had in their checking account a few weeks ago. A con artist had duped my mother out of twelve hundred dollars and she had asked me to look into it. Ranger and I were able to get the money back, but it was an upsetting time for my mother – and it was an upsetting time for me when I realized how close to the line my mother and father and grandmother were living.

Ranger wanted a chance to go over all the designs that evening to finish preparing for his meeting the next day. As he said, if he could pull it off and earn all the contract extensions, it would vault Rangeman into the next stratosphere in security providers. I think he was a little nervous about the meeting. He said he wasn't, but he seemed to be spending an awful lot of time reviewing all the plans and preparing for his face-to-face.

While Ranger worked on his review, I worked on pulling together the report for Morelli. By the time Ranger was finished his overview and felt confident about his upcoming meeting, I had completed and sent off Morelli's report, fed Tia, let her play on her bouncy seat while I did the dishes, bathed Tia and had read her some stories. As Ranger came through, I was in the process of changing her diaper and getting ready to feed her for her last time before sleeping for the evening.

Ranger came up behind me and hugged me from behind. He kissed me on the back of my neck. "Are you about ready for bed?" he said.

"I am. I'm tired. I don't know why. I slept about two hours this afternoon."

"It's okay to be tired, babe. I'm tired as well. How about you get ready for bed while I have a cuddle with Tia? You can feed her in bed while I get ready for sleep and, when she is finished, I'll put her in her crib and you can just relax."

I smiled. "Deal", I said. I finished putting Tia into her sleeper, picked her up and kissed her, then handed her over to Ranger. He took her and sat on the rocker with her, and murmured to her in Spanish. He started to sing a lullaby to her in Spanish, but either the song was terrible or he was as musically-challenged as I was because it didn't have a pretty melody. It melted my heart though, to see the strong, stern commander that Ranger was softly sing a song to her, to do something that obviously wasn't his specialty just because it would make his tiny daughter happy.

I got ready for bed and slipped under the sheets, and Ranger carried Tia through. He placed her beside me on the mattress and I pulled down the neckline of my nightie. Tia soon latched on, and minutes later was asleep. I let her continue to feed in her sleep until, after several minutes, she popped off.

By that time, Ranger was back in the bedroom in his sleep pants and t-shirt, and he picked her up and burped her on the way back to her crib. I could only hope that she slept through the night. I didn't want Ranger to be tired the next day. As it was, with having to be at the airport by seven-thirty and leaving out of Newark, a drive that was an hour away, he would have to skip his morning workout to be able to make it to the airport on time.

By the time Ranger dropped into bed beside me, I was half asleep. And as Ranger dragged me into the middle of the bed in a spoons position and wrapped his arm around me, I tumbled the rest of the way into sleep and didn't wake up until Ranger brought Tia to our bed at five.

"Hey", I said as I woke up fully. Ranger had a five o'clock shadow and was sleep-tousled, and he looked good enough to eat.

Ranger smiled and kissed me as he handed the baby over. "Good morning", he said. "Did you have a good sleep?"

"I did. Did you?" I looked at the time. Tia had us up half an hour earlier than she usually got up. While I could go back to sleep, Ranger would be tired today.

"It was okay. I was awake part of the night."

"Oh, no! How come? Are you worried about this meeting today?"

"No. The company has already hired us and they are just waiting on their designs. We have delivered them a week before we said that we would, and I think we have delivered a solid system. Yes, it will be better for us if they hire us for the remaining three phases of the design, but if they don't it won't be the end of the world. It's not like our company's future is dependent upon this contract. Far from it. It will just be a feather in our cap."

"I understand that."

"All we can do is do the best we can on the project, and that is something Rangeman excels in. But if they don't hire us for the other three phases? Then I firmly believe that there would have been a reason it didn't work out. And that's okay."

"That's true. So why were you awake?"

"I was trying to figure out if there was anything else that I could have said to make you realize that I thought it was a good idea for you to take pottery classes. If you have time today, I think you should look into them."

"You really think that, don't you?"

"Absolutely. I was also thinking about something Gabriel said to me during my appointment on Wednesday, and I've been pondering it since."

"What's that?"

"He said that you were worried that I would leave you if you got better. He said that you were worried that you didn't think you were enough for me."

I looked in embarrassment down at Tia's head and brushed my hand over her dark brown wispy curls.

"Is that true, babe?"

"I guess…" I said. "I guess Val's comments got to me. We went out together and the weekend, I think, that we moved in together was the weekend we conceived Tia. Five weeks later we discovered our pregnancy. A month after that you proposed. I'm worried that you proposed solely because I was pregnant. As Val said, you proposed to Rachel for the same reason."

"Yes, but when I proposed to Rachel we had the understanding that we'd try it but that we would reassess when Julie was a year old to see if we still wanted to be married. We made that agreement ahead of time. I didn't make that sort of agreement with you because I didn't want to give you that out. I wanted to tie you to me for the rest of my life. That's the first point. The second point is that, by the time you moved in with me, I had already commissioned your ring to be made. I had picked it up from the jeweler before you had discovered your pregnancy. I had been planning on asking you to marry me long before I asked you and the only reason I hadn't was because you were still wearing your ring from Morelli and I thought you weren't ready. When I proposed, it wasn't because I felt like I had to. It was because I couldn't wait any longer to make you my wife."

Tears came to my eyes.

"I could wring Val's neck for putting ideas like that in your mind. She has no clue the depth of my love, partly because I believe that she has never loved like that before. Babe, I want you well because I want you happy. Not because I secretly want to leave you. I love seeing you smile and seeing you happy, because seeing you honestly happy when your eyes are happy too? When I can tell that you aren't faking it? That makes me happy as well. Nothing makes me more joyous than knowing that I am coming home at the end of the day and spending time with you. I love doing things with you, doing things for you. That makes me feel good. Yes, I have outside interests. I have the class I teach. I have my own workouts that I do. I have work. I have my volunteer position on the Board of Directors for Ase. I have more in my life than being a husband and a father. That doesn't mean that I value being a husband and father any less. Those other things make me happy, and they don't detract from my job as a husband and a father. Just like you doing things to make you happy won't detract from your job as a wife and a mother. It's important for your own comfort but it is also important for Tia to see as she gets older. I honestly think that you'll be a better example to Tia if you take steps to achieve your own happiness, if you take responsibility for it and put the steps in place to become happy. I think that's important."

"Won't Tia think that she's not enough though?"

"I think you are saying that because your mother didn't take the steps to make herself happy. She put all the responsibility for her happiness on your shoulders and expected you to make her happy. Val is doing the same thing to her kids. The result is that the kids think they have to do astounding things in their lives to make their parents happy. When Val was a kid, she thought she had to be perfect. When you were a kid, you thought you had to be the hardest worker. Now that Val has her own kids, Angie thinks that she has to be perfect. Mary Alice is struggling. She can't be perfect since Angie already has that role, so she decided to become the perfect horse. Now that she has realized that she isn't a horse, she is floundering and she doesn't know what she can do to make her mother happy. It comes at a particularly difficult time for her, since Val isn't happy about anything. I don't want to see you live for your kids like that. I don't think it is healthy for either you or the kids."

I shuddered in a deep breath.

"Please, don't hold back your recovery because of me. You deserve to be happy."

"Okay."

"Estaría aplastado sin ti. I would be crushed without you. Tu eres mi vida y mi felicidad. You are my life and my happiness. Te amo mucho. I love you so much."

I smiled through the tears in my eyes. "Te amo más. I love you more."

"Imposible." He leaned down and kissed me softly, and Tia popped off my breast in her sleep. Ranger picked her up and burped her, and carried her into her bedroom to place in her crib. He came back and gave me another kiss. "I should have my shower", he said. "I'll say goodbye now so that you can go back to sleep, and I'll see you tonight."

"Drive carefully and have a good flight and good luck in the meeting today."

Ranger smiled. "Thanks, babe." He gave me another kiss and disappeared into the bathroom.