Standard disclaimers all apply.

No Merry Men or Boy Scouts were harmed in the creation of this story. They will all be returned unharmed (mostly) at the end.

Jaime: I couldn't have done this without you and the wee-hours of the morning editing/brainstorming sessions. You rock!

Kate Manoso – thanks for your attention to my editorial lack of powers

Melody – thanks for finding the inconsistencies I have overlooked by being too close to them!!

♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣ ♣♣♣♣

How Ranger wound up in my tent in the middle of the night was beyond me. I felt him before I heard him, as usual. I knew damned well that Ranger noticed the sleeping bags were zipped together. Things looked bad for me because Hector had one leg over mine, his hand under my shirt, my head was on his arm. We couldn't have gotten any closer without trading places.

Damn it.

Stephanie's Gamble

By Alfonsina

Chapter 11 ♣ May The Trip Part 2

Of course Ranger immediately noticed the fact that our sleeping bags were zipped together and we looked pretty damned cozy. I shifted myself so I was mostly out of so intimate a position. I would have scrambled further away, but I was all zipped in. This was like a line out of an old country western song, "if it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all."

Hector mumbled, "No te vayas, nena." (Don't go, babe.) Then he reached out for me and tried to pull me back where I'd been so cozily ensconced. I moved his hand and tried a little harder to get away, not that there was anywhere to go.

Ranger's face head jealousy written all over it. 'Oh come on,' I thought. 'This isn't how it appears. It's like when I slept with Lester. Jeez.' God I hoped that Ranger didn't hear what I was thinking.

Ranger started to say something so I cut him off and whispered to him first, "Don't wake Canelo up, he's had a long day. We've all had a long day."

"Babe," he started.

"No Ranger, don't start."

Hector mumbled in his sleep, "Everything OK?"

I knew Ranger wasn't happy, nope not happy at all. Thankfully Ranger kept his composure.

"Babe, Bobby and I are handing out the wool blankets from the back of the SUVs. Do you guys want a couple to keep you warmer?" he asked trying to keep the malice out of his voice.

"Ranger, of course we'll take an extra couple of blankets. It is freezing around here. Why would God let it snow in May, for crying out loud?" I said softly. Ranger was still shooting daggers at Hector so I raised my voice, "Canelo, you are gay right?" I had asked the question loudly enough for both men to hear my voice.

"Yes, very, very gay. I promise. Back to sleep, please, nena," Hector said.

"See Ranger, no problem. What you've seen is just for warmth, I promise. Nothing going on," I said.

"OK Babe. But, if you want to change tent buddies for a couple of hours, I am more than willing to keep you warm."

I was ready to say something when I heard Hector's voice mumble, "Si. Very, very gay. Muy feliz." Then he mumbled a few more things in Spanish which I couldn't hear and didn't think Ranger could either.

"Good night Ranger, I'll see you in the morning. Thanks for the extra blankets. Sleep tight."

"Good night Babe, Hector," Ranger said stiffly.

What the hell did he expect? I was asleep, warm and comfy and had to find that position all over again. I shouldn't have worried. Hector pulled me into him, his hand returned to the bare skin of my belly, and he kissed my neck. We both went back to sleep almost instantly.

Right around dawn next morning, Bobby started to bellow something along the lines of, "Rise and Shine."

All I could do was groan. My cramps had returned with a vengeance. My body was sore from sleeping on the ground, despite or maybe because of the thing layer of foam. Lastly, my tent buddy was no longer keeping me warm. Hector had rolled away from me at some point and was sleeping on his side facing away from me. Why couldn't he have been in that position when Ranger looked in? Oh yeah, because this trip had disaster written all over it from the beginning, that's why.

Hector must have heard Bobby and felt me stretch and yawn. He rolled onto his back and reached out for me. "Ven aqui, OK," he said (Come here, OK.) I didn't get the meaning of the words, but the pantomime made his point clear. I rolled to where he was and put my head on his shoulder. It just felt right somehow, nice.

He said, "Hi." A man of few words in the morning, probably he needed coffee and so did I.

I sighed and said, "Hi to you, too."

Somehow he shifted both of our bodies so we were on our sides facing each other, it would have been romantic under other circumstances and with a straight man.

He put his hand to my face and rubbed it gently with his thumb. "How are you today? Better?" he asked quietly.

"Just a little sore, thanks. How did you sleep?"

"It was the nicest dream I can ever remember. Why was Ranger in my dream?"

"Probably because he gave us extra blankets late last night," I said.

"I understand," he said. He had been rubbing my face gently the entire time.

I was starting to prop myself up on my elbow so I could get a start on the day when he stopped me. The man moved like a cat. He was over my body instantly and he began to kiss me. It was a lot like the kisses last night, but these were rapidly growing in both heat and in intensity. It didn't take long for my breathing to become ragged. Just as I thought things could get really interesting between us, he stopped.

He must have heard something outside of the tent. I was completely caught up in the moment and had been blissfully unaware of my surroundings. Hector must have been multi-tasking.

"Knock, knock Bomber, Canelo," came Lester's voice. "You two decent? I hope not, I am looking for a cheap thrill this morning."

The voice coming from outside the tent was like a bucket of cold water on me. Lester said something in Spanish that sounded like a tease, but I had no idea what it was. Lester made his way quickly inside of our tent looking incredibly pleased with himself. I had been making an attempt to get out from under Hector and disentangle myself. I wasn't getting very far because he wasn't letting go very easily. Hector was shooting a very angry look at Lester. Damned zipped sleeping bag, I didn't think I was going to ever get out of it.

Lester leaned down and whispered into my ear, "Ranger will blow a gasket if he finds you two like this, Steph. Do you really want to pull that tiger's tail?" Then a little louder he said, "Canelo coffee is ready for you and it's your turn to get wood this morning. Never mind, I see you have morning wood."

Oh my god, Hector definitely did have morning wood.

He promised he was gay last night and mumbled a lot of other things, so what's with what's been going on just now? I had been so caught up in the moment and the pure physicality of it all that I hadn't been thinking. Then again that seemed to be how I wound up in most of the messes in my life; I don't think enough.

"Come on you two, you were among the first to bed and now you are the last out of the sack this morning. You aren't going to be invited back to camp this summer, Beautiful, if this keeps up. Everyone else is up and rearing to go. I've got to get breakfast started. Don't make me send in the munchkins to get you moving," Lester said with a huge smile in his voice.

I shot Lester my best pissy look, the one I save for special occasions, as I said, "Hey Buster, I'm not worried about being invited back for the summer camp. Besides, I had unexpected 'issues' yesterday. I should be over the worst of them today. So I am up and going to make the long walk to the facilities."

With that I unceremoniously got of out Hector's grip and out of the sleeping bag. I gathered my dignity, put one of the blankets over my shoulders, grabbed my flip flops and left the two men in the tent. I walked over to the fire to see if my shoes were done, the flip flops offered nothing in terms of keeping my feet warm. The shoes were dry, singed but dry. I took them off their sticks went back to my tent, grabbed the makeup bag and went on the long trek to the little girls' room.

Because it was cold and Ranger made sure the only water was for the toilets, I had no shower, and I had no water to tame my hair with. I did what I could with what I had on hand and with what God gave me, which isn't saying much for the results. All the guys had seen me before looking far worse and the Scouts didn't matter, I was sure they'd all seen their moms have bad days.

It was going to be a scary day for everybody.

If anyone so much as mentioned my hair or lack of appropriate makeup I might just kill someone, unless of course they had a doughnut in their hand. The chances of finding a Boston Crème this morning were slim to none.

When I finally made it to the group of adults, Bobby made a point of saying, "Nice of you to join us, princess. We were starting to wonder whether or not you would be with us this morning."

I so wanted to lay into him and say what was really on my mind, but I couldn't. Somehow I just couldn't shoot the bird in front of all those eleven year old boys. I just knew they would tell their mothers when they got back and then it would get back to mine. So far, my mother wasn't taking in any extra laundry and this would set off a spray starch shortage of epic proportions. I reluctantly decided it was best to keep my fingers to myself.

"Well Mr. Brown, sometimes it takes a lady a little longer in the morning. Beauty, such as it is, has a price either in money or in time; sometimes in both. I do thank you for welcoming me back to the group this morning," I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

I was getting ready to reach to make a cup of coffee. Before I could do it myself, Hector shook his head at me and then poured a cup for me and added milk and sugar just the way I liked it. Then he handed it to me with a smile. Damn, the boy had manners.

Lester shot a look over at Bobby. Bobby looked at Tank. The three of them looked at Ranger. Ranger looked at me and my newly presented cup of coffee. He was obviously steaming, no pun intended. I noticed the look but Hector seemed to be oblivious to Ranger's dark mood, just as well.

'What crawled up his ass and died? I'm the one having my period. I have an excuse to be in a bad mood, not Ranger. Ranger is used to the twigs and berries while living in the open. He should just get over it at least until my coffee and Advil kick in,' I thought to myself and I didn't really care if any of that was said out loud.

I did say out loud, "Bobby do you have any more of those magic pills available this morning?"

"Again? Steph, it really can't be that bad," he said.

Stupid. Stupid man. Captain Oblivious, yep, that should be his name. No wonder there were a bunch of former girlfriends.

"Bobby, unless you want to be dealing with cramps of your own, inflicted by me, you'll kindly provide some of those PILLS. NOW," I said, the bitchy tone in my voice was growing by the second. "I don't mean to lose my temper. But come on, they're just pain killers for some freaking killer pain here people!"

All of a sudden the men who had been crowded around me started to give me a little more room to breathe. A bunch of former military men who made a living by intimating others were intimidated by me, pretty funny. Well everyone except for Hector, who wasn't ex-military, who came closer to me.

Tank said in a stage whisper, "Aren't you even a little afraid right now?"

"No. I have six sisters. I've seen it all. I lived with it for years. It will pass," Hector said with a smile.

Hector stood behind me leaning into me with one of his hands around my waist and the other low on my tummy rubbing it just the right way to make me feel better. He was whispering I have no idea what in my ear; it was soft and melodic. Just hearing his voice made me relax. I was feeling a little better, clueless to what he was saying, but definitely feeling better. I was finally starting to breathe normally again and relax. 'At last,' I smiled as I thought to myself, 'a man who understands women, the rest of these men are just plain clueless.'

Bobby had disappeared for a minute and reappeared looking sheepish.

"Steph, here're your pills. Hey, why don't you work with some of the guys and get some firewood? We don't have enough to get the fire hot enough to make breakfast and lunch. If this weather keeps up, we're gonna have to call it a day early anyway. The parents get upset if the kids come back sick from over exposure to the cold," Bobby said from behind Tank.

Chicken. He could look at all kinds of blood and guts, but he couldn't cope with me.

I found Larry and Timmy and we headed out to look for more firewood. Seemed that no matter how much you thought you had, you were going to need more. Ah, to get warm all the way through and not have to worry about all the extra layers. I wasn't listening to their conversation and I was off in Denial Land; the home of the never ending hot water tank and bubble bath stuff. I hoped Larry could figure out how to get us back to camp later. I had no idea where we were or how we had gotten there. An hour and some creative swearing later, we found our way back.

We didn't find as much wood as Lester wanted to keep the fire going, so I was sent back out, again, with another batch of recruits. It seemed that Joey and Matt must have done something wrong in a past life because they got assigned to go with me and do the whole looking for wood thing. Couldn't we just go to the store and buy some precut stuff they sell outside? Jeez.

We got back to find that Lester had provided oatmeal for breakfast and had started some kind of canned tomato soup and was making sandwiches assembly line style with a couple of the guys for lunch. 'For this I needed to be out walking in the woods? I've been cold for over two hours. Good thing I was never a Boy Scout,' I thought to myself and then laughed.

"Doing better, Babe?" Ranger asked. His bad mood about the coffee earlier had passed.

"Yup, just looking forward to when I can feel my feet again. Dang it's cold. How long before we hit the road?" I asked.

"Probably after lunch. Bobby turned on the radio to find that there is an even bigger snow storm headed this way in a couple of hours and we need to get ready to move out. You know, we really haven't had any alone time this weekend."

"I know we haven't, but I didn't expect you here in the first place. I thought you were going to 'listen to the trees' by yourself. I sort of thought there would be some boring dads to keep me company and I sure wasn't expecting this kind of weather."

"Babe, remember when we initially laid out all of your stuff on the bed to pack you?" I nodded. He continued, "I knew then that you might need some extra moral support and I wanted to give that to you. I didn't expect Aunt Flo', but I did plan to expect the unexpected," he said.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means, I have more of your clothes in my tent and I think you might want to add at least one of the sweaters and put real gloves on, not the socks you've got on your hands," he said teasingly.

"You break into my apartment to see what I left behind, Batman?"

"Guilty," he said.

"Thank you. Do you mind leading me to the sweater and gloves, please?" I asked.

I really wished he would have mentioned the additional clothes a couple of hours ago, but I had scrounged an extra t-shirt here and a sweat shirt there. I wasn't a fashion plate by anyone's estimation and I wasn't all that warm. I guessed he had to get himself together over the whole Hector thing.

I followed him into his tent and then he zipped it closed. He scrounged around for my sweater and gloves. I took off my borrowed jacket and sweater, anticipating the new one. Before I could take the new sweater from his hand, Ranger held me closely, kissed me thoroughly and breathed into my ear, "You have no idea how much I wanted you in here with me last night. I ached to feel you in my arms, to hold you, to kiss you. You don't know what you do to me." He began another long drawn out kiss. I was sure it would have gone on much longer but I was shivering.

"Ranger," I barely breathed.

"Yeah, Babe," he said.

"Freezing here, Ranger, need to put more clothes on or go into the SUV and turn on the heater. I know you'd like to keep me warm, but right now isn't the time or the place. Besides we'll have an audience and I'm definitely not into audience mode."

Reluctantly he handed me my sweater and I added it to the previously shed layers. I tried to look normal, as in hadn't just had the daylights kissed out of me by Ranger, and I failed.

As I expected, there were several campers with Lester hanging out in front of Ranger's tent. Lester was trying to look nonchalant. The harder Lester tried to look nonchalant, the more 'chalant' he looked. I never would have guessed that Lester was actually the head gossip monger of the Rangeman grapevine. I always thought that Lester was too busy playing the field to notice any of the everyday stuff around him. Wrong.

"Come on guys, back to work. Nothing exciting happening over here," Lester sang out cheerily as he sauntered back to the food prep area.

I went back into my own tent and started to repack my stuff by myself. I wasn't trusting my hormones alone with Ranger and a ready made audience. I got my stuff repacked and as squished as I could so it would all go back in the original bags. I unzipped the two sleeping bags and noticed the lingering fragrance, it was subtle and spicy. God, it smelled good. I bent down and picked up his sweater, it had the same smell. I had never noticed the cologne Hector wore before and damn if this wasn't about to kill me.

I repackaged 'my' sleeping bag and the foam I had been using and made it into as neat a bundle as I possibly could. I did the same for Hector's, I was here. It was here. It smelled like him.

Shit.

My hormones were in overdrive. I wasn't sleeping with Ranger for any number of reasons, the least of which was the audience thing. I was sleeping with Hector and he was gay. Both of them had been kissing me during the last several hours. I was going to go nuts.

I had a passing thought to help Hector to pack just to stay near that smell. Mental head slap, right now I needed away from too much male closeness.

Things were getting seriously out of hand, if I didn't find some chocolate soon there would be an incident. I was going to take someone, anyone, behind a hill and have my way with him, at this point it didn't matter to me which 'him' it was as long as 'he' was anatomically correct and capable. Thank God it was snowing or one of them would be in some serious trouble, audience and reputation be damned.

I left the tent looking for support of some kind any kind or even a distraction. Thankfully I found Tank.

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