Sorry it's been so long! Hope I haven't lost my touch! Oh, and since its been so long, guess I'd better do the whole disclaimer malarkey! Disclaimer: Anything you don't recognise is mine, anything else is JE's, no profit made!

Please let me know what you think! Heather x

'Tell me how you feel about me.' I whispered, feeling so terrified and nervous that I almost thought I might be sick.

'Is that all?' Ranger asked, a hint of dry amusement in his voice, 'well, it's quite simple Babe…I love you.'

Chapter 20

It felt like I'd been waiting forever to hear Ranger say those unqualified words to me. But the problem is, when you've been hoping for something for so long, a small part of you can't help thinking that it will never happen. The happiness his words caused was almost over swept by an overwhelming amount of relief. He loved me. I smiled brightly at Ranger, and then promptly burst into tears.

Through my blurry vision I saw his eyes widen in surprise, guess Batman hadn't been expecting that reaction either. He gathered me into his arms and rocked me slightly.

'Please don't cry Babe.' He murmured.

'I'm not crying.' I said, sniffing, 'I'm just playing with my tear ducts.'

His arms tightened around me and I felt him smiling. 'Playing with your tear ducts. Of course. How long does a game normally last?'

'Not that long.' I hiccupped.

Ranger nodded, and settled us onto the couch. My sobs finally ceased after a few saline-filled minutes. 'You really love me?' I asked, looking into his eyes finally.

'Really.' He agreed.

'Really?' I asked again.

Ranger looked like he was thinking about smiling. 'I love you.' he simply said.

'Even with a puffy face?'

I felt laughter ripple through him.

'It's not so puffy.'

I reached up and felt my face, it felt puffy to me - it felt like puffy central. Someone's telling fibs. But it made me feel better so I didn't call him on it. I snuggled into his body and buried my head into the crook of his neck. 'Iloveyoutoo.' I blurted.

His arms tightened around me. 'I know Babe.'

'One day I'll be able to say it in those three little distinct words.' I informed him, mumbling into his shoulder. Yep, I'm a dope.

'That's ok Babe, one long word is good enough for me.' I pulled back to look into his smiling chocolate eyes.

'Iloveyou.' He said.

I felt the biggest smile draw across my face, no one understood me like him.

'Iloveyoutoo.' I repeated.

Ranger flashed all two hundred watts at me. Then his eyes lost the traces of humour and were filled with some even warmer. His hand ran through the tangles that I called hair and his eyes followed the curves and lines of my face, memorising this moment. I smiled at him, feeling suddenly and ridiculously shy. His lips curved up in a slow sensual smile that had my heart thundering.

Ranger's hand left my hair and his fingers softly caressed my face before gently tipping up my chin so I met his eyes. We held eye contact as his head tilted and moved closer to mine. I closed my eyes and I felt his warm breath skim my lips. It could have been a second or an eternity before his lips finally pressed against mine, all I could think was how right it was. His lips were warm and firm and full, and no matter how many times we had kissed, we had never kissed like this.

Eventually we drew apart and I smiled into his eyes, my heart feeling inexplicably light.

'Hi.' I said.

Ranger smiled that slow smile that I knew was only for me. 'Hi.'

I used a hand on his firm chest to keep myself balanced as I switched positions, from sitting sideways on his lap to straddling him. I settled myself back down against him, leaving next to no space between. Apparently Ranger thought next to no space was a fraction too much and he used the belt loops of my jeans to move me forward until my body was flush against his. I blushed as I was reminded of the tightness of my jeans. Ranger rose as eyebrow at the blush, and then a knowing smirk replaced it.

'You stole my underwear.' I accused him in a low voice.

He smirk widened, 'I think you'll find that I specifically didn't steal your underwear. It's all where you left it - in your apartment.'

I contemplated complaining, but that would just be plain hypocritical. When I had thought he had stolen my underwear a few days ago, I had been nearly hyperventilating with panic, so now when I actually wanted him to have packed me some underwear, he didn't. It was just another example of that phenomenon that so few were lucky enough to witness; Ranger humour.

Ranger brought my attention back to him by shifting his hips fractionally, making all number of interesting things happen. He smiled in satisfaction as my pupils dilated and my breath caught. His smug smile irritated me, so I kissed him instead. His mouth opened willingly under my ministrations and my tongue invaded his mouth, revelling in the warmth and taste that was uniquely him.

His hands slid up the back of my white t-shirt, caressing my back deliciously. My back arched involuntarily as his touch sent shivers to all the right places. I moaned into his mouth as he repeated the action.

'Well well well.' Said an annoying wiseass voice that I recognised easily. 'I guess this means they made up already.'

I ignored Lester and carried on kissing Ranger firmly. Ranger seemed to be getting into my Ignore-Lester plan, but then Tank cleared his throat, 'Ranger, man – later.'

In that moment I knew I was fully capable of committing murder.

Ranger chuckled at the frustrated growl that escaped the confines of my throat. 'Easy tiger.' He murmured, 'no killing Tank until he's finished all his paper work.'

Tank did a fairly credible impression of a burg eye-roll. 'The lead your father's company has been running down has pulled up another blank. We need to re-evaluate the situation.'

Ranger assumed his poker face, but I could tell his emotional dial was pointing to 'not-happy'.

Re-evaluation was not a favourite thing of mine, mostly because I didn't even evaluate to begin with. Head, meet sand, sand this is head. Head proceeds to be buried in sand. It's a simple life, where my biggest problem is sand in my ears. Unfortunately, I was pretty sure that the whole sand thing wasn't going to cut it this time.

Which, apparently, meant re-evaluation - hell if I knew what that was, but it didn't sound like a good utilisation of my time on this earth; time that could be better used to be getting Ranger into his birthday suit. Sadly I was pretty sure Ranger wouldn't agree - Ranger probably invented re-evaluation.

The worst thing was, I probably wouldn't be doing the whole re-evaluation thing anyway, even if I knew what it was. The men in my life had few things in common, but a tendency to try and hide details from me - for my own good of course - was something that they had in common. I guess I would find out from Ranger what they had decided.

I didn't sigh, I didn't pout - and I didn't even pull my hair out in frustration. Ranger was probably stressed out enough without me adding any dramatics to the equation. Instead I just slipped off Rangers lap so that he could be all soldier hunter type.

Ranger stood, but to my surprise he took my hand and started leading me somewhere. We entered an office that had some Men-in-black in it. Guess I was on the re-evaluation team. Go team Stephanie!

'Babe.' Ranger said, 'This is Ram, Woody, and you've met Bobby.' He said gesturing to each Man-in-black in turn.

I finger waved, and suppressed the numerous witty one-liners I wanted to direct to 'Woody'.

Apparently, re-evaluating meant looking at all the evidence again. I tried not to zone out, but Ranger kept writing things on the white board, which gave me the perfect opportunity to check out his amazing butt of steel.

Luckily, I managed to retain enough information to get the general idea. Carlos quickly updated us all on the leads his company had been following up on, with Ricky interceding with a few points every so often. Unfortunately, the gist of their report was that they had eliminated their one and only suspect, at the same time they had eliminated their client because he had been refused bail, and was still in the lockup when I got my presents and oh so lovely phone call.

So basically, there was some unknown guy out there, who wanted my blood. Not a comforting thought. The psycho's I'd gone up against in my past, it was scary, it was horrible, but at least I knew who was terrorising me, and in that I had some small defence that I would be able to lock them away, get evidence on them, avoid them, anything! But we knew next to nothing about this guy.

We knew his MO, we knew he was after me, and we knew now that he was as slippery as an eel covered in Vaseline. His natural tendency towards lubrication aside, we also knew he was damn good at breaking and entering. Not only had he gotten past all my beautiful locks, more importantly he'd gotten past the motion detectors, or managed to reset them; either way, it wasn't good news.

I was putting on a brave face, but even Ranger looked grim. The security in the bat cave was legendary, but one of its main defences had always been that no one knew its location. Ranger had a great security system in place, but the one he'd installed for me hadn't been bad either. Apparently Ranger's had laser beams of light and stuff, like in museums. Normally I would think it was overboard, but right now I was thinking lasers were just fine and dandy. Still, Ranger was taking no risks. He ordered his most trusted men to set up a perimeter around his estate and ordered someone to be watching the cameras full time. I thought it was overkill, but I wasn't complaining.

Finally Lester turned to me, 'you really have no idea who this could be?'

I was tired, stressed and cranky. 'Oh!' I said suddenly, 'Yes! I know exactly who it is – it must have been that guy following me around with the 'I-Plan-To-Kill-Stephanie-Plum t-shirt. Jeez, it just slipped my mind. There. Case solved.' I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at him.

'You're cranky when you have psycho's after you, huh?'

I closed my eyes and started counting.

'Babe?' Ranger asked, 'what are you doing?'

I opened my eyes, 'I was counting sheep to keep me calm.'

Lester shook his head, 'don't you know anything? You count sheep to make you go to sleep.'

'I count them to keep me calm. You got a problem with that Santos?'

He opened his mouth, took one look at my face and closed it. 'No ma'am.'

'Good.' I said tightly, 'don't you have places to be? Now make like an orange and roll.' He stared at me. 'Make like a banana and split?' I offered.

He grinned, 'What is it with you and food?' Lester asked.

I rolled my eyes, 'Duh, food is love.' Lester was looking at me strangely. Guess he didn't understand that in the Burg everything was about food, the whole day centred on those three meals. 'My mum bakes a cake, that's love.' I explained. 'I eat the cake, that's love.'

Lester frowned, 'so if you bake a cake, that's love?'

I rolled my eyes again, 'don't be silly, if I bake a cake, that's hate.'

'What?' Lester was looking even more confused, 'Why, because you're the daughter?'

'No. Because all my cooking is poisonous, if I bake you something, it's because I'm trying to kill you.'

Lester turned to Ranger, 'This is the woman you said those three little words too?'

Ranger kissed me lightly on the lips, 'no, this is the woman I said that one long word too.'

Lester stared in confusion and then shook his head, 'they're both mad.'

I laughed, and hugged Ranger tightly to me. 'Iloveyou.' I whispered to him.

'Iloveyoutoo.' He replied, smiling for me only.

And suddenly, nothing was quite so bad anymore.