As always for the great reviews!

Here's the 8h part, sorry for any typos! And I don't own anything.

"Yes! And I am going to show you tonight just how open I am to meeting new guys" Hm maybe I was more drunk than I thought.

"Bring it on honey" she smiled at me and we walked off giggling into the night.

Too many drinks and many dances later I was having the time of my life. Mary Lou and I had been dancing like crazy, guys had been flirting with us and the drinks had been delicious. One bartender had given me his number and hadn't even been trying to get it! We were on top of the world.

"Hey Steph!" Mary Lou yelled over the music

"Yeah?"

"My feet are killing me, can we take a break?"

"Yeah sure!" When went and sat down at a small table. After a few minutes the bartender who'd given me his nr approached us.

"Here you go ladies, compliments of the house" he sat down two Strawberry Daiquiris on the table. Yey!

"Oh thank you so much! These are SO delicious!" I blurted out happily. He winked at me and walked off.

"Girl you're on fire tonight" Mary Lou said laughing.

"I told you I was open to meeting new guys"

"Well to be honest you haven't really been proving that" she took a sip from her drink

"What? I got that guys number! That's something!"

"But you didn't try to get his number, there's a big difference"

"So you're saying I'm gonna have to flirt and beg for it to count?" I was seeing two of my drink right now.

"That's what I'm saying" she smiled.

"Well then I'm just gonna have to get back out on the dance floor don't I! You just schit back and watch the master at work" Wow did I just slur?

"Yeah, go show me what you can do" Somewhere in the back of my head I knew that Lou was laughing at me and not with me, but I didn't care at the moment. Instead I wobbled of to find a guy. I got out on the floor and started to dance, trying to be aware of my surroundings… my surroundings being how many cute guys I could spot. Suddenly I felt someone poke my shoulder, I turned around but didn't see anyone. Then I looked down and saw a little guy smiling his most sleazy smile at me. Why was it always the short guys? Did they like to feel dominated or what was the deal? And why was it always the guys with unbuttoned silk shirt, a carpet of chest hair, back slick hair and sleazy smile. I don't know about you but I could never be comfortable with a guy who wore more gold jewelry than I. I turned away from him and started to dance again. Then I finally saw the back of what seemed to be a very promising body, oh I mean man. As I started to get close I realized that the backside seemed familiar. Wait a minute… I knew that backside. It was Tank! Poor fella, he was dancing with a girl you couldn't stop staring at him, a typical I-can't-believe-I'm-dancing-with-such-a-hot-guy-stare. He didn't look too comfortable so I decided it was okay to intervene. I danced up next to him and tapped him on the shoulder. When he looked over I smiled my biggest smile, he light up and turned towards me.

"Hey Bombshell! What are you doing here?"

"I'm celebrating a second birthday with Mary Lou"

"Well happy second birthday then" he gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. I could see that the girl he had been dancing was sending me a death glare. Yikes! I leaned over and whispered in his ear.

"You need help with getting away from Miss Muscle Struck over there?"

"Yes please!" I spun around towards the girl.

"Uh-uh, sorry hun but this one's spoken for!" I gave here Ricki Lake look and pouted my lips before grabbing Tank's arm and pulled him of the dance floor. When we got to a table Tank was laughing so hard that he was having trouble standing up.

"And that my friend is how it's done"

"Never knew you had it in you"

"Well you'd be surprised" I winked at him.

"Hey Bomber what are you doing here?" I turned around and got a big hug from Lester.

"I'm saving Tank from scary girls. But I think the real question is what are you guys doing here? I mean this is a club… there is a chance you might have fun here. Are you aloud to have fun?" They both laughed this time.

"Every once in a while we sneak out of the cave to get some fresh air"

"Ah sneaking out leaving the bossman at home, you guys better watch yourself or you might get detention…or worse, security room duty!" I let out a pretend horror gasp.

"Naa, Ranger doesn't come along often. But it does happen"

"There you are, for a while there I thought you had snuck out" Mary Lou made her way through the crowd, carrying our drinks.

"No no, just found some men in need. Oooh schank you!" I slurred when she gave me my drink.

"Wow Steph, how many of those have you had?" Lester asked amused.

"Well I can't help that the bartender is in love with me" I tried to sound innocent.

"So he just gave you a bunch of cocktails?"

"What can I say, I'm fabulous" I smiled my most seductive smile. Tank started laughing again.

"You sure are cocky sometimes"

"Well I'm drunk, what's your excuse?" Mary Lou raised her hand to a high-five

"Score Steph – 1, Tank – 0"

"Uh-oh I better take you out on the dance floor before Tank decides if that was rude or not" Lester said grabbing Mary Lou and pulled her out on the floor. She didn't look like she mind at all, on the contrary the looked very pleased. Well who could blame her, she was dancing with the hottest guy on the floor and every girl out there was jealous of her.

"You know, Les thinks she's quite a knock-out" Tank said and nodded towards Lou.

"To bad the whole husband and children thing is in the way"

"Hehe yeah." We sat quiet for a while until Tank broke the silence.

"Any chance you saw Ranger earlier today?" He had a strange look in his eyes. Or at least I think so, things were beginning to spin quite well by now.

"Yeah, he stopped by my apartment earlier… to give me the fee for yesterday"

"Yeah I figured... what the hell did you do to him?" What was he talking about?

"Wadda you mean?"

"You must have done something to the man" Now I was getting confused

"Tank can you please stop speaking in riddles, if you haven't noticed my mind is a little schlow tonight" he chuckled.

"Well at least your ability to speak is" I gave him the Burg glare.

"Will you get to the point!"

"When Ranger came back tonight he was like a freakin' thundercloud, you must have done something to make him pissed like that."

"He was pissed?" Well, well, well this was getting interesting.

"Yeah, I'm talking screaming orders at everybody, slamming doors and all that. So what did you do to him?"

"What makes you think I did something? For all we know he could have been some other place too"

"Bombshell I've known Ranger almost all my life and there are very, and I mean very, few things that makes him lose control but you are definitely one of those things. And you're probably the first woman ever to make him lose control. So don't try to act all innocent with me, spit it out!" I think my jaw had dropped an inch or two.

"Wooow wait wait wait!" I stood up to quickly and almost lost my balance but Tank grabbed my arm just in time. "What the hell do you mean I make him lose control? That man has nothing but self-control around me! I on the other hand can't get a grip of my self! I mean every time he breaks of a kiss it takes me about a minute to realize that he actually has let go of me. But him, oooh no! He doesn't seem to be effected by anything, he's just always aware of the surroundings and bla bla bla" Okay I was rambling.

"Steph are you even listening to yourself? You're missing the point here, you make him lose enough control to actually kiss you! How aware do you think he is of his surroundings when he does that? And about the whole effected part, believe me, his is effected by you, a lot, he's just better at hiding it." I sat quiet for a while staring at him.

"I don't know if I can believe that" Tank sighed and focused on me.

"Does he ever come over without a reason?" I thought of the countless times when he'd stopped by my at apartment for just a few minutes, saying something to throw me off balance... or kiss me to really throw me off balance. Then leaving me without a clue what he wanted.

"Uhm… yeah" I finally admitted.

"There you go, how often do you think he stops by at my place just to chat?"

"Okay Ranger doesn't chat" Tank chuckled.

"You know what I mean. How often do you think he pays me a nightly visit huh?"

"You know about those?" I couldn't help but be surprised, I mean it seemed kind of impossible that Ranger actually would have told him about it.

"As I said, I know the guy. Also I've seen him leave when I've had control room duty… and you know about the trackers on the cars so it isn't exactly a secret where he goes" I was so confused.

"Are you sure about this?"

"totally sure Bomber… even though he doesn't say anything he's feelings is kind of obvious"

"Obvious? Obvious? Then would you mind telling me 'cause I sure as hell can't figure it out! He has his damn blank-army-face on every time he's around me"

"How can you not see it? The way he looks at you or the way he drops what ever he is doing to go to you every time you call him? He loves you god damnit!"

"Then why did he send me back to Morelli?" Now it was Tanks turn to look confused.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know if you know this but we did sleep together once and the morning after Ranger told me to go back to Morelli…"

"Wow, he did what?"

"He fucking broke my heart! And I'm not going to take any more shit from him or any body else. And no matter what you say about love he has made it very clear that he only wants sex from me and guess what, that's not good enough" I got up and left the table exactly when Lester and Mary Lou returned. They both looked surprised when I stormed passed them and turned to Tank to get an explanation, but he just stared after me with a puzzled look. I was going to show Ranger, and myself, just how well I could do without him. I didn't need him or Morelli in my life, there a hundreds of other great guys out there and I was going to find at least one of them tonight. I got on the dance floor and started to dance. I danced with a few guys but none of them really got my attention. But then I turned around and locked eyes with a good-looking guy. I mean he was no Ranger or Joe… but he wasn't bad. He smiled seductive at me and I batted my eyelashes. The good thing about being drunk is that you get the guts to dance sexier than usual to get guys attention, if I saw myself dancing like I was doing now with sober eyes I would die of embarrassment. The guy seemed to enjoy my sexydance and moved closer. After a little while we were moving together, hardly leaving an inch between us. The guy was looking me straight in the eyes and gently placed on hand on my hip. Oh if only Ranger could see me now, then he could see just how fine I was without him.

"I'm Daniel" he whispered in my ear.

"I'm Stephanie"

"Gorgeous name on a gorgeous girl" Okay very sleazy but what the heck. I smiled back at him. I was beginning to realize how drunk I really was as we were dancing. I was having more and more trouble keeping my balance as I tried to move to the rhythm and kept bumping into Daniel over and over again and from time to time I hade to grab his arm not to fall over. But he didn't seem to mind… on the contrary. We talked a little about this and that as we danced and before I knew it we were so entangled that we probably looked like a couple from "Dirty Dancing".

"You're a very good dancer" he said with a smooth voice.

"Thank you"

"You look so sexy you almost make me lose control" He breathed and placed his hand on my but. I let out a small giggle and his hands started to explore my body more and more. That we were on a public dance floor didn't seem to bother me at the time. But somewhere in the back of my head I was hoping he didn't try anything else. As much as one part of me wanted to get back on Ranger the other part didn't want to sleep with this guy just to prove something. So when his hand started to get a little to close to my breast I gently removed it. When he tried again I removed it a little more firmly but he didn't seem to take the hint since he tried again.

"Hey, let's take it easy okay" I said softly.

"Why?" He smiled and tried to kiss me. I pushed my head back as he got closer.

"No wait, I said…" Before I could finish a voice growled behind me.

"I wouldn't try that again if I were you" I looked over my shoulder and saw Ranger staring at Daniel.

"And why is that?" Daniel shot back at him… a little too cocky. Even though Ranger seemed calm on the surface I could see the fury in his eyes. Uh-oh.

"Because she told you to stop"

"And who are you to come here and tell me what to do" I saw the tension building up in Rangers arms. Okay Daniel needed to take it easy or he was gonna end up dead.

"Now wait just a minute" I stepped in between. "Ranger what are you doing here?"

"No Steph, the question is, what are you doing? Why are you doing this?" His voice eased up a little as he spoke to me.

"I'm free to do what ever I want with who ever I want Ranger."

"Is that right? What happened to the whole having something special part?" Okay I could see he was angry… and possibly upset?

"Look Ranger I don't need you to rescue me every time, I can take care of myself you know" I was just about to take a step towards him to really show that I meant what I said. But instead my legs decided I was too drunk and I tripped and almost fell over. As usual Ranger caught me in time and scooped me right back up.

"Don't need me huh?"

"Okay if you didn't notice the lady said she didn't need your help and if you don't mind, we were dancing okay?" Daniel grabbed my arm and pulled me towards him. Ranger's eyes went dangerous again and he gave him a look that qualified as an if-looks-could-kill type of looks.

"Look pal, if you want to wake up tomorrow I suggest you never touch her again" Oh boy. I guess Daniel didn't think I was worth it and turned around and left. I couldn't blame him, Ranger could scare the bejeebees out of you.

"Well thanks a lot Ranger, thank you for scaring off the cute guy:" I turned around to walk away but my legs failed me and I almost fell but of course Ranger did the scooping up thing again. Just great.

"Come on Steph you're too drunk, let me take you home"

"I don't need you to take me any were, I'm perfectly capable of doing that myself." Or at least a cab was. I could hear him sigh behind me. I walked over to the others and gave Tank a did-you-do-this-look but he just put up his hands in an I'm-totally-innocent-gesture, yeah right! We both knew that he had called Ranger.

"So how about another round guys?" Everybody started to give each other insecure looks.

"Uhm Steph maybe it's best if we decided to call it a night…" Mary Lou started carefully.

"Oh come on I'm not that drunk" I turned around to get a bartender but instead I slipped on my high heals. Damnit! My legs just weren't cooperation tonight.

"Okay that's it" Ranger stepped up, scooped me up into his arms and started to walk towards the entrance. "I'm taking you home whether you like or not Babe."

I'm not to pleased with this chapter, think I could've done it better, but I hope it was okay.