I don't own them, don't make any profit, will return them…. Rating for language

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…

"Fuck you." She grabbed her clothes and marched away. "Asshole!" she yelled over her shoulder.

The bedroom door slammed shut behind her. He let his head fall forward against the wall where he had just held her pinned and pounded his fist above his head, muttering curses under his breath at her and this whole damn situation and most of all at himself for being so fucking weak.

With a final, vicious curse, he turned and grabbed his cell phone. He punched in the speed dial for Tank. "Get Steph on the next flight back to Trenton," he growled into the phone. "I don't care what time it is, just get her the fuck on it."

Running his hands through his hair, he paced until it rang again. "When?" he said when he answered.

"An hour," Tank said.

He hung up and headed for the bedroom. The shower was running. The bathroom door was locked, but it was flimsy and his boot against the side of the door opened it easily. He jerked open the door to the shower stall and froze at the sight of Steph curled up on the floor under the spray, sobs shaking her body.

"Fuck." The instinct to comfort her - to pull her up and hold her tight until her body stopped shaking - was overpowering.

He almost did it.

His hands were reaching for her before he was able stop himself. But they were past the point of being able to offer comfort to each other. The best thing he could do for her was to get her home and stay the fuck away from her. She'd be better off. Ruthlessly shoving aside any tenderness, he closed his hand around her upper arm and hauled her to her feet.

She bit back a terrified sound and glared at him. "Let me go." She tried to pull her arm away, but he held her still. His gaze lingered on her softly rounded belly. He hadn't noticed it before, but then, he he'd been to frenzied with a terrifyingly desperate need for her to focus on anything but the feel of her body.

"Get your fucking hands off of me, Ranger." Fresh tears continued to spill from her eyes, but even that wasn't making her back down. She yanked on her arm. Normally, he didn't curse a lot, but at the moment, he couldn't seem to stop. He had done this to her. He'd hurt her, because for some godforsaken reason he apparently could no longer control himself.

He closed his eyes and dropped his hand. Turning away, he grabbed a towel and held it out to her. "Get out."

She did, turning off the water and wrapping the towel around her, hiding herself. She stepped out onto the rug.

"Get dressed."

She planted her feet. "Why?"

"You're on a flight back to Trenton in an hour."

She stared at him with those big eyes, so vulnerable he couldn't stand to keep looking at her. He turned his back and walked toward the door. "Hurry up," he said, his voice more gruff than he intended.

…

He pulled over in front of the departures terminal and put the truck in park. She was relieved she was leaving - if he hadn't booked the flight, she would have insisted. No way was she staying anywhere near him tonight.

She stared at his profile, but he looked as cold and closed off as he had since they had…she mentally groaned. How could she be so stupid?

If only she hadn't given in to him. Then she could blame the whole thing on him. But that's exactly what she had done - he had gotten in up close and she had caved, just like she always did. She should have stood her ground, told him no and walked away, like they both knew damn good and well she could have done.

But she hadn't.

He still didn't look at her. She had the irrational thought that he was going to drive away and that would be that. Leave his lawyer to handle the paperwork and exit from her life as smoothly and irrevocably as he had entered it. Then again, maybe it wasn't that irrational.

"Will I see you again?" she said.

He flinched, making her wonder how close to the truth her thoughts had ran. "Of course you will." He looked at her and let his gaze drift down to her belly. Just as quickly, he looked away. "I'll call and check on you both. Hurry up or you'll miss your flight."

She waited another beat, desperately needing some expression of tenderness from him. Something. Anything to know that he was coming back, that he still cared about her at some level. But nothing about him had been tender since she told him about the pregnancy. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. She sighed. "You're a real bastard, you know that?" she said without heat.

Blood returned to his hands as he relaxed his death grip. Tension eased out of his body, but still he didn't look at her. "I never claimed to be anything different, Stephanie."

She wanted to read more into that statement, into the almost wistful tone of voice. But that would be a futile attempt to convince herself that he did care.

"I shouldn't have done that to you," he said. Finally, he turned to look at her, but she couldn't read anything in his expression.

"You didn't. I did it to myself. I knew better and I should have--" She swallowed hard. "It doesn't matter."

He stared at her for a moment before reaching into his pocket for something. "Here. It'll help with the gossip when you get back." He dropped it into her hand.

It was a ring. A wide gold band, with an intricate swirling pattern etched onto it. Subtle and unassuming, it was stunning. "It was my grandmother's," he said in a gruff voice. "I'm sure it'll need to be sized."

She stared at him, but his eyes were just as cold and empty as they had been before. She felt like she should say something more – something appropriate to the occasion. But nothing came to her. She grabbed her bag and climbed out of the truck, not bothering to look back.

…

Lester was waiting at the airport for her. It was two am, and she was dead on her feet. Lester shifted his gaze between her, her belly, and the ring on her finger before pulling her into a bear hug. "You okay, beautiful?"

"I'm okay. Just tired."

He grabbed her bags and led her to a waiting SUV. She leaned back and closed her eyes, letting the soft music that was playing clam her. Lester's quiet, solid presence was reassuring in all the ways Ranger's hadn't been, and for the first time since this whole mess started the day before, she felt her equilibrium returning.

She had thought, at some level, that if she went along with him, that somehow their friendship would survive this marriage and this child. With a heavy heart, she realized that tonight proved that theory wrong.

Not a mistake she would make with Ranger again.

She shifted in her seat, her sore muscles tight after the long flight. Lester glanced at her, but she just smiled. "So you and the boss are having a baby," he said.

Steph snorted. "I'm having a baby. He's having a fit. He wants nothing to do with us."

"He'll come around," Lester said.

She shook her head. "It doesn't matter if he does."

…

Steph stumbled out of bed the next morning. A glance at the clock confirmed that it was after eleven. Oh well - Lester told her to take the day off anyway. She made her way through her morning routine. It wasn't until she was brushing her teeth and caught sight of the ring flashing in the mirror that it all came rushing back to her.

She held on to the vanity as the room around her swayed. She was married to Ranger. The tumult of incessant activity over the past two days had prevented the reality from settling in. For years, Ranger had been her protector. He'd taken care of her, and always, no matter what, always been there when she needed him.

He wasn't now.

She flung her toothbrush onto the counter and stomped out the bathroom. Fuck Ranger. She had decided two days ago, before she told him, that she and this baby would be just fine without a man in their life. That wasn't any less true today than it had been then. She had married him - had even agreed with his reasons for doing so - but that didn't mean he had anything more to do with her and this baby than he had before.

Stomping her way to the kitchen for breakfast, she froze when she saw the light on her answering machine in the middle of a spastic fit. Surely not...surely someone had just called to check on her. There's no way word of the 'wedding' had spread that fast.

She stared at the blinking light, trying to come with a way to justify ignoring it. Finally, with a shaking hand, she reached out and pushed the play button.

An automated voice said, "You have eighty-seven new messages. To hear your messages, press--"

"Shut up, phone bitch," she muttered as she jerked the answering machine away from the wall. Throwing it down, she raced for her closet. This meant her mother knew. She pulled on clothes as she ran for the front door, pausing only long enough to scoop up her keys and pocketbook.

No one was standing at the door to her parents house when she pulled up. Bad sign. She stepped inside and hurried down the hall, where she could hear her mother's voice.

"I am quite sure that Stephanie did not run off to Cuba, marry a black man, and have his baby." Her mother caught sight of Steph and, with a hand over the phone receiver, said, "You didn't, did you?"

"He's Cuban, not black, and it was Florida."

Her mom gave a triumphant smile and turned back to the phone. "He's not black, he's Cuban and they were in Florida--" She froze mid-sentence, and the phone dropped from her fingertips, clattering onto the floor. Her face was pale when she turned to Steph.

She held up her left hand and shrugged.

"Oh my god. You really got married."

Steph nodded.

"And you're pregnant?"

"Four months."

Without a word, her mom turned and walked into the kitchen. Steph followed to see her mom opening and closing cabinet doors and muttering under her breath.

"I'm sorry you found out this way. I didn't realize it had already hit the grapevine. I was coming over to tell you this afternoon."

Her mom stopped and looked at Steph. "You really got married. Tell me you're married."

"I'm married, mom."

Ellen heaved a huge sigh of relief. "Okay. I can deal with this. As long as you're married. Thank you for that. Now, where is this man? Is he coming for dinner?"

"He's staying in Miami," Steph said, ignoring the catch in her voice when she said it.

Her mom heard it though. She frowned, and then started looking around the kitchen again. "Here," she said, grabbing a plate. "German torte cake. I made it yesterday before all this." She steered Steph toward the table, and within seconds had produced a huge slice of cake and a glass of milk.

The cake Steph was staring at swam as tears filled her eyes. In the language of her family, German torte cake was the epitome of unconditional love. Her mom grabbed another fork and pulled up a chair. For that blissful instant, Steph couldn't have asked for a better mother in the world.

"Now," Ellen said, "Let's talk about childbirth."

Steph groaned and shoved a huge bite of cake in her mouth.

Twenty minutes later, dead center in Ellen's recitation of the role of amniotic fluid, her dad walked into the kitchen. He froze at the word 'placenta.' His terrified gaze swung back and forth between Steph and Ellen.

"It's true then?"

Steph ducked her head before saying, "Yeah, daddy. It's true."

Her dad dropped a kiss on the top of her head as he walked past the refrigerator. "It'd better be a boy," was all he said.

Steph smiled at her dad and shoved another bite of cake in her mouth. She was sure it was a girl, but there was no point in dashing her father's hopes this early.

Three hours later, she escaped. Still shuddering over her mother's descriptions of what the next five months would bring, she let herself into her apartment with a sigh of relief. She dropped her bag on the floor of the foyer and stumbled toward the living room. The sight of Joe sitting on her couch - long legs stretched out in front of him and his arms propped on the back on either side of him - brought her to an abrupt halt.

"Congratulations," he said. His tone was mild, but his eyes were darker than normal.

She dropped into the other chair. "I wondered how long it would take you to hear."

"I gotta say, I was more surprised by hearing about the wedding than the baby."

"Yeah, well, the wedding wasn't my idea."

Joe smiled. "I didn't think that it was." They stared at each other for a moment as the silence between them turned awkward. "Are you sure it's his?"

She nodded. "I could give you the whole explanation of my ovulation cycle that I had to give Ranger."

Joe wrinkled up his nose. "I'll take your word for it."

"I'm sorry, Joe. I..." She glanced down at her hands.

He sat up and leaned toward her. "Why don't we call it a wash, Steph. I slept with Terry, you slept with Ranger." He raised his hands in surrender the second she opened her mouth to set him straight. "I know - I slept with Terry first and started the whole thing. I'm sorry."

She smiled, even if wasn't as bright as normal. "Thanks." It was slightly gratifying to hear him admit to cheating on her, but with everything else that had happened since then, it no longer seemed important.

"Friends?" he said.

Her smile was a little brighter, a little more sincere this time. "Yeah. I'd like that."

Joe stood up. "So for the first order of business as your friend, where the hell is Manoso, because I'm going to kick his ass."

"Don't do that," she said, rolling her eyes. "He's in Miami anyway. I don't know when he's coming back, or if he is at all." She frowned at the last thought, surprised by the relief she felt at that fact.

"You mean he's leaving you here to do this alone?"

"I'm not alone! And I didn't want his help anyway. I've got Mary Lou and Lula and Valerie and my mom - I'll be just fine."

Joe studied her for a minute before sitting down beside her and pulling her against him. "Don't forget. You've got me too, Cupcake." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "I'm not going anywhere."

She curled into his chest, thankful for any buffer she could get between herself and Ranger. A part of her could understand Ranger's anger. After all, he hadn't wanted a relationship or ties to her, and now he had both. Permanent ties. His loss of control was more difficult to understand. Ranger had always had a tight grip on his emotions. Never gave away what he was thinking or feeling.

She had the distinct suspicion that part of his anger stemmed from revealing more to her than he had ever meant for her to know. She had seen emotion in him, and more than that, she had seen those moments when he needed her, was desperate for her.

She had seen his vulnerability, and that wasn't something he easily forgave.

…