A Kind of Magic

I don't own anything, except the characters you don't recognize.

Chapter 1 – New Beginnings

Eight Months 15 Days After The Slayer Debacle

3am

Sighing Stephanie rolled over again, sleepless nights were annoyingly frequent since her kidnap & subsequent rescue. But things were finally beginning to settle down, well as settled as running down FTAs ever are, but Stephanie didn't feel settled, she felt anxious as if she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Maybe it was because her last dose of sex was just a faint memory and her long showers just weren't cutting it any more.

"Chocolate is a substitute for sex" so maybe she should get up and scrounge up some ice cream, just as she was trying to decide if she should get up & raid the fridge or not, her bedroom door silently opened. In stepped the dark knight, he sat on the bed next to her.

"Hi." She murmured.

He didn't answer but she saw the flash of his teeth in the darkness.

"How are you? I thought I'd ask you before you ask me because if one more person asks me how I am I'm gonna bust my gun outta the cookie jar and go on a spree."

He laughed sending electrical charges dancing over her nerve endings.

"Babe, are you going to load it first?"

"Very funny mister."

"Why aren't you sleeping?"

"Why aren't you?" she snapped back.

Stephanie couldn't see it but she could tell he arched a dark brow at her.

Sighing she replied, "I don't know, I don't feel… I can't… I just…"

Unable to explain how she felt was frustrating, she sat up and switched on the lamp.

Ranger tugged her into his arms for a hug, "I know."

Pulling back she looked up at him, "You do?"

"I think you should go away for awhile."

"What? Like a vacation?"

He nodded, "To relax."

Resting her head back on his chest, Stephanie mulled it over, a vacation sounded pretty good.

"You have someplace in mind?"

"I have a house in Montana."

"This isn't some ploy to ship me off to a safe house is it?" she peered up at him suspiciously.

"Why any new psychos?"

"Not that I know of, when can we go?"

"We? What about Morelli?"

"Why you wanna go with him instead?" she cut back.

"Babe."

The Bombshell Bounty hunter pulled back to glare at Batman, "You listen to me Mr. Manoso, I am finito with Joe, see I even said it in Spanish, so you know I mean it. And if you ask me again about Joe or send me back to Joe I will shoot you."

He looked at her for a moment his expression inscrutable, hers pissed, "I thought you were scared of me?"

"After my recent near death experience I find it difficult to be scared of you."

He smiled at her again, brushing a kiss across her forehead, "You better get some sleep, if we're going running in the morning."

"Ranger it's already morning & I'm not going running. The whole problem with running is; you run, you get someplace & then you have to run back. That makes no sense to me, I'd probably get more out of it if I was running from someone instead of to nowhere."

Finally convinced (after the aforementioned kidnap) that she needed to protect herself, Stephanie had been training with the Merry Men three times a week, she still hated her gun but was at least proficient, what she really liked was hand to hand and she was pretty good at it to, plus it was great for her figure.

Ranger sighed when he realized that Stephanie's convoluted theory actually made sense to him. Stephanie sense anyway.

"You're always running from me." He murmured into her curly hair.

"I didn't know you were chasing." She said quietly after a minute.

His chocolate eyes dropped to meet her blue ones, she smiled at him sleepily and snuggled closer.

Ranger didn't know when it happened but Stephanie had changed, their relationship had changed, the problem was that he didn't know what to do about it.

Pulling himself out of his thoughts, he found his Babe asleep, there was a momentary battle with himself, but it was Stephanie's arms tightening around him that won the war. After shedding his armaments, he stripped down to his boxers and slid in next to her. Tucking her back to his front & banding his arms around her he was soon asleep.

Please review, this my first published work, I've written alot but have been wary. I think I'm ready for some readers now.