Chapter Fifteen
Stephanie's fall came to an abrupt halt when the fire escape wedged between two buildings. The sudden stop pried her fingers loose from the ladder and she fell, landing on her back with a whump, the wind knocked out of her, right smack in the middle of the dumpster. The good news, it was full and broke her fall. The bad, well, there was a lot of bad. Sauerkraut, pizza sauce, mustard, and a variety of unidentifiable goo.
Stephanie laid on her back, staring up at the overcast sky. She wiggled her toes and flexed her fingers. All in nothing seemed broken or dislocated, which seemed like a good sign. She blinked a couple more times and hauled in a shaky breath. Stephanie sat up and took stock one more time. She tried to stand, but just slipped deeper into the garbage that smelled suspiciously like rotting fish.
"Jesus Christ Steph, are you OK?"
Les hauled her out of the dumpster and onto the pavement. Her knees buckled, and he caught her under her arms, steading her for a minute. Adrenaline flooded her system and her hands shook right along with the rest of her. Two near-death experiences in as many days pushed her limit.
Les eased her down to sit on the ground and crouched beside her.
"Damn. I can't stop shaking." Stephanie stammered between her chattering teeth.
"Adrenaline burn-off. It's normal." Les ran his hands over her, looking for broken bones or mortal wounds.
As far as Stephanie could tell, the only thing wounded was her ripped cargo pants and her pride.
"You're OK." It was more a statement than a question, like Les was trying to convince himself it was true. She figured almost getting herself killed twice on his watch was taking a toll. He probably wondered what he had done wrong in a past life to get stuck babysitting her.
Stephanie nodded, unable to speak.
"Anything broken?"
"N-n-n-o."
"Do you want me to call EMS?"
Stephanie gave a negative shake of her head.
Les let out a ragged breath. "Come here."
Les wrapped his big body around hers and cradled her head against his chest. His heart pounded underneath her cheek, betraying his calm exterior.
A few minutes passed, and the shaking slowed. "I don't think I'm cut out for this." Stephanie mumbled into Les' chest.
He tilted her face up to look at him. He was smiling, and there was a genuine softness to him she hadn't seen before. This wasn't bad boy Les, and it wasn't Les the player, this was just plain Les without the various personas to use as armor. She had a feeling not too many people got to see this version of him, and she liked it.
He leaned down and brushed a whisper of a kiss across her forehead. "Look at me." Her eyes drifted up and locked with his.
"You've got this Stephanie Plum. You're going to be one kick ass bounty hunter." He gave her his trademark Santos grin. "Unless you give me a heart attack first."
Stephanie couldn't help but smile back. When Les said it that way, she almost believed him.
"You ready to get out of here?"
"Yes."
Les hauled her to her feet.
"How bad is it?" Stephanie asked as she surveyed the damage. "Looks like I have mustard all over my ass."
Les peered around her shoulder. "Yeah, OK, we will go with that." He leaned in and gave her a sniff. "You don't smell so good. I'm not sure that's just mustard."
Stephanie groaned. "God, could this day get any worse?"
Les' eyes landed on her hair. "Yep, I'm pretty sure it could."
"What does that mean?" Stephanie hissed.
Les' shoulder tilted up. "There's some sauerkraut in your hair, or maybe it's maggots. It's hard to tell." He scrunched up his nose and surveyed the damage. "And some other unidentifiable glob."
An involuntary shiver snaked through Stephanie. "Shit."
"Maybe." Les grinned.
Stephanie gave him her best Burg death glare, and he held up his hands in mock surrender.
Stephanie caught movement out of the corner of her eye and her head whipped around and her gaze landed on a cardboard box.
"Did you see that?" Stephanie pointed to the box. "It moved."
"Probably just the wind or something." Les retorted, not interested in another Stephanie adventure.
"No, that wasn't the wind." Stephanie crept closer, and the box moved again, and she jumped back.
"Do you hear that?" She asked as she edged closer.
Stephanie crouched down next to the box and gingerly opened the flaps. A startled gasp broke from her.
"Hello there."
Inside, five tiny kittens mewled and squirmed, blinking up at her. Stephanie reached in and pulled one out, holding it to her chest, scratching under its tiny chin.
"It's kittens!" She told Les. "Here, help me with them."
"What are we going to do with them? Shelter is closed?" Les slinked a little closer and peered over her shoulder into the box.
"We can't just leave them here. It's cold and they are hungry."
"We can't take them to RangeMan." Les warned.
"Why not?"
"Ranger has a no animals policy."
Stephanie just rolled her eyes. "He will just have to get over it. I can't take them to my apartment because of Rex."
"Rex? Your boyfriend is allergic to cats?"
"No. Rex is my hamster."
Les gave her a look that said Rex and a bunch of kittens wouldn't work out so well, and his money wasn't on Rex. Stephanie thought she ought to be offended on Rex's behalf, but Les had a point.
"Ranger isn't going to like this." Les didn't seem all that concerned.
Stephanie quirked her eyebrow. "Ranger doesn't have to know."
Les gave a negative shake of his head. "Ranger knows everything."
"If he has a problem, he can come talk to me. We need to warm them up, get them something to eat, and Monday we can take them to the shelter." Stephanie shrugged. If Les had a better plan, she was all ears, but she wasn't leaving them in the alley.
Les appraised her. "If anyone can get Ranger to change his policy, it would be you."
Stephanie narrowed her eyes at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"From what I can tell, there is nothing he wouldn't do for you."
"Just grab the box, Santos." Stephanie huffed. She didn't want too spend too much time mulling over what that meant or her head might explode.
They loaded the kittens into the back of the SUV.
"I need something to sit on." Stephanie told Les. "I've got garbage all over me, and there's no garden hose to wash me off."
"It will be fine. Just get in."
Stephanie gave him a dubious look.
"There is a reason none of the RangeMan fleet vehicles have cloth seats. It will clean." Les said pointedly.
Stephanie shrugged and climbed in. Between getting blown up, self-defense training, and the fire escape mishap, her entire body felt like one giant screaming bruise and she really needed a long hot bath. Too bad she didn't actually have a tub. Or hot water, for that matter. Right now, she'd settle for just sitting in something other than garbage.
Les gave her a stiff smile and cracked the window as they drove, working not to gag. Stephanie mashed her lips together in an effort not to laugh. Thank god she'd gone nose-blind to her own stench, otherwise she'd have to hang her head out of the window. The seats might wipe off, but Stephanie wasn't so sure the smell was going to come out.
Les sped through the streets like a driver in the Indy 500, and in no time, he fobbed them into the RangeMan garage. Les had his door wrenched open and was out of the SUV almost before the motor shuddered to a stop. He bent over and rested his hands on his knees and took a couple of breaths before he stood up and headed to the back of the SUV. Stephanie crawled out and joined him, keeping a polite distance. Les grabbed the box of kittens.
"Straight to the break room." He instructed her.
Stephanie nodded and fobbed them onto the elevator.
"And try not to look so guilty." He threw her a sideways glance.
"Me?" Stephanie gave an incredulous snort.
"Yeah, well Ranger isn't going to take your ass to the mats and put you on scut if we get caught."
Stephanie's shoulder tilted up. "Fair point."
The elevator doors opened and Les poked his head out, looking up and down the hall, then high-tailed it to the break room. Stephanie practically had to jog to keep up with him as he speed-walked down the hall.
"Let me recon the break room." Les handed her the box of kittens and he disappeared around the corner.
A minute later, he was back. "All clear." He whispered as his eyes shifted back and forth up the hall like he expected the kraken to be released on him at any moment.
They entered the break room and Les sat the box on one of the tables, prying the lid open. A big bald man materialized out of nowhere without so much as a squeak of his boots on the polished floor and Stephanie swallowed a startled yelp. She recognized him as the one they called Tank. How he'd gotten the nickname wasn't a mystery.
"Let's see." He commanded, and peered into the box. "Looks like they are around four to five weeks. Too young for the shelter. I'll see if some of my buddies can foster them. I can take one, but I've already got a full house."
Stephanie's mouth was hanging open, and she snapped it closed with a clack of her teeth.
Hal showed up. "So how goes operation pussy patrol?"
Stephanie cocked her head and crossed her arms. "Excuse me?"
Hal had the good sense to turn the color of a ripe tomato and cleared his throat. "Sorry ma'am. Operation…." His voice trailed off, looking for a suitable alternative. "Kitty corral he asked hopefully."
Stephanie's eyebrow hitched up, and Hal reached up and tugged at his collar.
"Hal," Tank said. "Stop talking."
"Yes sir." Hal's gaze swung to Stephanie. "Sorry miss Stephanie."
Stephanie looked up and a slim, dark-haired man raced towards them. She thought his name was Hector, but couldn't be sure. He was dressed in the standard black RangeMan uniform, a gang tattoo peeking over the collar, but it was the single teardrop tattooed under his eye that caught her attention. He looked like he should be wearing an orange jumpsuit and leg irons. But hey, what did she know? Maybe he didn't know that a teardrop under the eye signified a gang kill. And even if he knew, it was only one teardrop, so it wasn't like he was a serial killer or anything. That had to count for something.
Stephanie wondered about Ranger and his merry men. A rag-tag bunch with a variety of skills acquired from both legal and not so legal means. It was a family of misfits, and she realized she'd found her people.
Hector fired off something to Les in rapid Spanish that she couldn't understand, but it seemed urgent. Her gaze swept to Les, and she gave him the 'care to translate' gesture.
"Ranger's coming. Hide the cats." Les sounded a little panicked.
Tank and Hal each grabbed a couple of kittens and evaporated out of the break room without a sound. Hector grabbed the last kitten and slipped through the opposite door just as Ranger entered.
Les had that pinched I'm about to die look on his face, and Ranger's was his usual blank mask. Her heart stuttered when Ranger's gaze swept over her from head to toe. She was covered in garbage and smelled like a sewer. To his credit, his lip didn't curl back in disgust or anything. He eyed her like she might make a tasty snack, sending a shiver through her that settled in all the wrong places. She was a giant walking out-of-control hormone around the man.
Ranger stopped just on the edge of her personal space. A little too close for polite, but not close enough for what she wanted him to do to her.
Ranger picked a couple strands of sauerkraut off her shirt and pitched them into the now empty box.
"What happened?"
"I took an unexpected roll in some garbage."
Stephanie figured she'd leave out the part where she'd fallen from three stories into the dumpster before she rolled in the garbage. Les looked pale, and given his skin tone, that was saying something. Between the cats and letting her almost get killed on his watch twice, he was skating on thin ice.
"Hard to believe." Ranger replied as he eyed her. He looked like he wanted to roll his eyes.
Stephanie's shoulder tilted and she gave him the shit happens gesture.
"I don't have a lot of domestic instincts," Ranger said to her, his attention fixing on the unidentifiable glob of goo in her hair, "but I have a real strong urge to take you upstairs and hose you down."
Stephanie went dry mouth, and she resisted the urge to fan herself, or do a good old-fashioned swoon.
"I appreciate the offer," she told him in her best prim and proper voice that sounded suspiciously like a porn star. "Maybe some other time."
The heat in his eyes branded her, and sweat popped out and pooled at the base of her spine. The room had shrunk to just the two of them. All the noise and people faded away, and the connection between them was palpable. Someone must have turned up the heat, Stephanie thought. It felt like a sweltering hundred degrees.
"Not really an offer. More like a promise." His silky voice had a husky quality to it, and the sound tugged at her like an invisible thread pulling at her good judgement and common sense, causing it to unravel as heat pooled liquid, hot, and scary low in her belly.
He gave her that sexy smile that made her heart race like a runaway train. The air around them breathed and pulsed like a living creature full of unspoken thoughts. Her eyes locked with his and she couldn't look away, no matter how hard she tried. She was trapped, immobile in his force field, slowly being pulled towards him with each passing day. It wasn't safe to touch the sun, but her hand came up anyway, drifting towards him.
A black blur halted her progress, and she and Ranger both looked down in surprise as a tiny black kitten climbed the leg of his cargo pants.
"Oh shit." Les muttered.
Ranger's brow cocked, and he gave Stephanie and Les a questioning look as he reached down and pulled the kitten off his cargos, carefully unhooking its tiny claws.
"It was Stephanie's idea. I told her you didn't allow animals." Les stammered.
Stephanie shot Les the thanks-for-throwing-my-ass under-the-bus glare, and Les just gave her the sorry, not sorry look back.
"I may have accidentally, sort of, adopted five cats." Stephanie gave Ranger the what's-a-girl-gonna-do smile, hoping he didn't kick her out of RangeMan and be a hardass about it.
Ranger cuddled the kitten to his chest and scratched behind its ears. The kitten pushed up and rubbed its head under his chin. It purred so loud it sounded like a tiger, not a kitten, as it snuggled into Ranger. Stephanie could relate. She wondered if it was wrong to be jealous of a cat.
"Stephanie, come with me." Ranger ordered and turned on his heel, not bothering to see if she was following.
Les threw her a look that said I told you so, and she slinked away after Ranger. Great, she was getting fired, and he was perp walking her out. A perfect end to a perfectly shitty day. It had been great while it lasted, but screw it. If he was going to fire her for rescuing kittens, she didn't want to work for him, anyway. She squared her shoulders and marched up beside him. She wouldn't trail behind him like a whipped dog.
"I couldn't just leave them out in the cold to die." She huffed.
"Of course not." Ranger agreed, and they got on the elevator.
Suspicion rippled through her when he pushed seven instead of the lobby. They were going to his apartment? A flash of panic streaked through her. Oh great, he knew she had been in his apartment and touched his things. No doubt he was going to lecture her about personal space.
Ranger let them into his apartment and put the kitten down. "Go explore little one."
He headed down the hall towards his bedroom and Stephanie's stomach sank as she followed him. He stalked through his bedroom and pushed the door open to his bathroom, and tugged her inside as fragrant steam billowed out. She recognized the same clean, citrus scent of Ranger's shower gel.
In one corner sat a huge jetted tub, the hot water bubbling away. His gaze met hers and his shoulder tilted up the tiniest bit, like he was embarrassed.
"I thought you might be sore, and a good soak would help." He used his best matter-of-fact voice.
His eyes swept over her again and he winced. "It looks like Ella is going to need to order you a few more uniforms. You can just dump your clothes in the trash."
"Sorry," Stephanie mumbled as she looked down and toed the floor, inexplicably bashful.
Ranger caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilted her head up. "Sorry for what?"
Stephanie scrunched up her nose and gave a half-hearted eye roll. "For being a disaster."
A ghost of a smile played across his lips. "You're not a disaster. You're perfect, and don't let anyone tell you different."
His thumb stroked across her bottom lip. "I really want to kiss you right now."
Her heart stuttered to a full stop. She wondered if he felt it too, the spark, the intensity when they touched. Her eyes skimmed down his face to those sinfully luscious lips, and she remembered what kissing them felt like. Soft and gentle one minute and full of fire and magic the next. Did he remember it too? Who was she kidding? Now that he was her boss, that fantasy was off the table, and she snapped back to reality.
"But I have sauerkraut in my hair." Stephanie smiled at him. "And we're not that kind of friends." Her voice trailed off.
Stephanie wasn't wedded to that last part anymore. Sure, this morning it had seemed like a good idea, but now it rivaled the worst she'd had, which was saying something. She had gone out with Harold on New Year's Eve after all. The whole only friends thing had been a hasty decision on her part that needed to be reversed. She didn't plan to work for him forever she reasoned.
Ranger smiled back, a good one that reached his eyes and softened his features making him almost human. "Something like that."
His thumb stroked over her lip again, and she could tell he was waging an internal debate. The blank mask slammed back down pushing away the softness, and her stomach gave a lurch at his remoteness. It felt like something important had just happened. He'd made a decision, and instinctively she knew he was building a wall between them that would divide out and close off anything more than friends. She wanted to tell him to wait, she'd been hasty in her decision and flip in her answer, but the words stuck in her throat. Ranger stepped away and she immediately missed his touch.
"Let me know if you need anything else."
With that he closed the door, and a little whimper tumbled from her lips. "What if I need you?" She whispered into the silent space. She would never survive that man, and right now she didn't much care.
Stephanie slipped into the hot water, and it enveloped her like a welcoming cocoon, wrapping around her, washing away the grime and soothing her sore muscles. She leaned back and let the jets massage her, bringing a sense of calm and a peacefulness. This was exactly what she needed, exactly what she craved. A whisper of a thought slithered through her mind, maybe Les was right, and Ranger really did know everything. Then again, if he knew everything, he would have kissed her just like she desperately wanted.