Alexander Ramos bent down and took my hand.

"A woman as beautiful as you shouldn't be unescorted. I'm glad to see you found your husband. I didn't realise that I knew him also," he said, and looked over at Dickie, who paled.

Crap. I thought old men were supposed to have bad memories. Hannibal was next to his father and I could see Ranger behind him. His face was blank but his eyes looked cold and furious.

"Yes, luckily we found each other again," I said, taking Dickie's arm and pulling him close. I didn't want to story of me chasing Dickie over half of New Jersey to get out, and I also didn't want Ramos to try to defend me and decide that getting rid of my husband would be the best way.

"That's good. I would hate to think that anything would come between such a happy young couple. Especially with a wife as lovely as this one. In fact, if I was any younger, I would try to steal you for myself. And I wouldn't cheat, I am too old for that," Ramos said. Dickie looked nervous. Hannibal was bored, and Ranger looked torn between amusement and wanting to kill someone.

"Thank you," I said to Ramos. I had no idea what to say, so using manners seemed like the best option.

"Excuse us, we have another engagement to get to," Hannibal said.

"Ah yes, I'd forgotten," his father said. Oh that you manage to forget, I thought. I finger waved to the men as they walked away.

I looked over at Dickie. When we were first married, he talked about what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a public defender, good for a background history and networking, and then work his way up into a respectable law firm, stay there a few years, build up some money, and then move into politics. I didn't care about the money, but I did wonder when he had changed – his firm now might have been wealthy, but it wasn't respectable, and I didn't think that having clients like Alexander Ramos would be helping his future political career. Neither was the coke he did at parties. This wasn't the nineties, that wasn't acceptable, and with the interest there weren't secrets anymore. I sighed, suddenly tired.

"I want to go home," I said.

"What, already? Come on, Steph. It's a party!" Dickie said.

"Great party. Any more arms dealers you want me to meet?" I asked him, then walked away while he was silent.

I managed to get out the door without anyone noticing, and started walking down the street. I should stopped and summoned an Uber, but that would require staying still and increasing the chances that Dickie would find me. If he bothered to look.

I'd walked a block when a black SUV glided up beside me and pulled to a stop. A window wound down. I kept walking.

"You need to be more aware of your surroundings, Babe," Ranger said.

"I'm fine."

"Want a lift?"

"No."

"It's late, it's too far for you to walk home, and you could run into trouble."

"No I won't."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm fine," I said again, then yelped as I crashed into a mountain of a man. "Oh no, I'm sorry!" I looked up. And then up some more. He was giant, and dressed in black, so I guessed he knew Ranger.

"That's not fair, you distracted me!" I yelled at Ranger. I heard rumbles to my left and looked over. The man mountain was barely managing to contain himself.

"That's Tank, my partner," Ranger introduced us. "Tank, meet Steph."

"Nice to meet you, Steph," Tank said, holding his hand out. I shook it.

"Would you like a lift home, or would you like me walk with you to escort you safely?" Tank asked me. I sighed.

"Can we go through a drive through on the way? They only had tiny food at the party."

Tank started to rumble again and opened the door for me.

"Where's your friends?" I asked Ranger.

"I was only required at the party. Extra muscle to impress the Grizzolis."

"Tank wasn't invited?"

"Tank is my back-up."

"I'm here in case they need a real man," said Tank.

"Ramos likes you," Ranger told me. I couldn't figure out if that was a warning or a compliment.

"It's a compliment," Ranger said. Did I talk out loud?

"Great. An old arms dealer likes me," I said.

"It could be worse. He could hate you. Besides, it's nice to have powerful friends. It might come in handy one day."

We made it back to my house with a burger and fries for me, and nothing for Ranger and Tank. I invited them in, figuring I could probably find some apples in the fridge. I kept them for when Mary Alice would only eat horse food. I missed that kid. Tank declined my offer to come in, but Ranger said that he would come in and check that the house was safe. Apparently my door locks had not magically grown more secure.

Ranger looked through the house while I rummaged in the fridge for apples.

"You really should get an alarm," he told me.

"You know anyone in security?" I asked.

"I can send someone around tomorrow."

"Why don't I make an appointment next week?"

"I'll look forward to it," he said, handing over a business card. I looked it over.

"I didn't know your real name until tonight. Dickie asked me if I'd been talking to Carlos Manoso and I had no idea who he was talking about," I told Ranger.

"Ranger is my street name. It's what the Trenton police call me."

"What should I call you?"

"Whatever you like."

I handed over the apples, told him to share with Tank and locked the door behind him.

I went to bed, still mad at Dickie. I expected to see him there in the morning when I woke up, but he wasn't there, and his side of the bed looked untouched. I figured that he must have decided to sleep in our spare bedroom, but that bed was empty too when I checked.

I started worrying. Had Dickie not come home last night? Had he been in an accident? Did Alexander Ramos decide that I was better off without him and have him removed?

I pulled out my phone and called Dickie. No answer. The phone went straight to message bank. Half an hour later I was on the verge of panicking. I heard a noise at the front door and rushed to open it. It was Dickie, fumbling with his keys.

"Dickie! Oh my God, I was so worried!" I said, throwing myself into his arms.

"Geez, Steph, calm down. What's wrong?"

"You didn't come home last night and you're not answering your phone. I was worried about you."

"I'm fine. I had too much to drink and decided to stay the night in one of Brad's spare rooms. My phone battery went flat."

I took a step back and looked at him. Although he was still wearing the same clothes as last night, he looked freshly showered and clean, and there were no signs of frostbite, so he hadn't fallen asleep on a park bench anywhere.

"Do you want to go out for breakfast? I need some pancakes," he said. Well, there was a good idea. I showered and got dressed while Dickie changed his clothes, then we headed out to a nearby cafe for a late breakfast.

We'd placed our orders of pancakes, bacon, eggs and sausages and were waiting on coffee when Dickie started talking.

"I was thinking about what you said. You're right, Steph, this firm isn't what I thought it would be when I joined up. I didn't realise that I'd be assigned to Alexander Ramos."

"You're not okay with working for Ramos?"

"No! I don't want my name associated with him."

"So what will you do?"

"I'll find another firm" Dickie said. "There's a new one opening up and they did ask me to come and work for them. I wasn't sure because it's quite small but maybe it's the right move to make for a few years. They're offering a lot of money."

"I don't care about the money, Dickie."

"No offense, Steph, but that's easy for you to say. I'm paying most of the bills in the house, and thinking about our future. You don't plan past tomorrow."

I thought that was unfair. I had a five year plan, it was just completely different to Dickie's five year plan so he thought that it didn't count. I wanted to build Plum Lingerie into a success story, get the product into stores, start my own production instead of relying on other manufacturers and be a big enough success that I could employ my friends who were unhappy at their jobs. Because it didn't involve children and a bigger house and a perfectly groomed golden retriever and supporting my politician husband, Dickie thought that it didn't count.

Our coffee arrived and interrupted that train of thought. I added sugar to mine and waited. I hadn't drunk much that night, but had enough of a hangover that I wanted to go back to bed and ignore Dickie for a while.

The food arrived soon after so I got to ignore Dickie in favour of eating. Pancakes and bacon could make anything better.

Monday morning arrived too quickly. I usually loved Mondays and the ability of focus on my business without a sense of Catholic guilt that I was working on a Sunday instead of going to church. But today, I had to deal with Val. She arrived and promptly burst into tears.

"Oh Steph! What will I do? I'm still married, I can't even get married again even if I wanted to!"

"What does Joe want to do?"

"I don't know! We haven't talked about it. He dropped us home on Friday and we were going to talk but then he got a call into work and had to leave and I haven't heard from him since."

"Well you need to talk to him first of all. It's his baby, right? So you need to talk it over with him."

"Of course it's his baby! Whose else would it be?"

I bit back my reply. No need to point out to Val that traditionally babies come from your husband, not the Italian Stallion a few streets away who likes to walk his dog past your house. Then again, this is the Burg. There are probably way more Morellis around than everyone admits to.

I sighed. Dealing with Valerie and being her support network took up a lot of my work time. I told Val to go into the spare bedroom and take a nap. She looked like a wreck.

I went into my office to turn on my computer on to check our latest orders and noticed a business card on the keyboard, where I'd put it to remind myself to follow up on Monday. I picked up my phone and called the number on the business card.

"RangeMan, how may I direct your call?"