Chapter 2
Stephanie -
The fucking ringing. Make it stop. I need more than 4 hours of fucking sleep, I thought, as I slammed down the "off" button on the alarm and pulled the covers back over my head.
The fucking ringing, again! Swinging my hand to whack the alarm, I belatedly realized the ringing was coming from the other side of the bed. My phone, not the alarm clock. Finally grasping my phone, I answered with a garbled "hhellmoo."
"Beautiful! Where are you? You're late."
"Huh?"
"It's 9:00. You missed the morning meeting. You okay?"
Shit. "No, Lester, I'm not okay. You all had me out until after 3:00 a.m. last night and, unless I'm remembering wrong, I was the only one standing in five-inch heels for three hours while we waited for that jackass to show. I'm tired. Leave me alone." Click.
My god, the ringing! "What?"
"Babe, you alive?" I glanced at the clock.
"Funny, Ranger. Did I get a concussion last night?"
"Not that I know of. Why?"
"Because I keep getting woken up every two hours! Are you people insane?"
"Coming to work today, Babe?"
"Yes. Right after I check the employment ads. Bye, Ranger."
I had gotten in the habit of dressing fairly feminine - black feminine, of course - since I started working full time at Rangeman. I thought it was good for the guys, good for unexpected client interactions, and good for my own personal morale.
Today, though, I felt beat and, well, the day was half over. So I slid on faded jeans and a Rangeman fitted tee, grabbed my keys, and headed out.
Despite my bark to Ranger this morning, I really liked my job. I stayed busy, and I was good at it. And I'm sure Ranger pays me way more than the going rate. We had a bit of an argument over it at the beginning, and Ranger won. He challenged me to find one single person in the state, country, or world that had the same job duties and requirements as me, and compare the pay scales. It was a good point, and I gave up. As far as I could tell, no one else helped run a security office, met with private clients, met with a multitude of ABC agencies, did distractions, chased skips, and served as social director for a company of special forces misfits. So I cashed my exorbitant paychecks and shut up about it.
And I knew Ranger knew I liked my job. And I knew he thought I was good at it. Yep, we had our work roles all figured out.
We did not have our personal roles figured out. To that end, we mostly bumbled around together in denial land, with some flirting and some boundaries. He's a good friend, and I knew I should be grateful to be his friend.
Before I got 10 minutes into some paperwork, I was interrupted by a knock on my office door. I looked up to the man himself standing in my doorway. "What's up, Batman?"
"Nice of you to join us, Babe."
I flipped him off. "What's that?" motioning to whatever he was holding.
Looking down at it, he said "It was on my desk when I came down this morning." When I made the "and" motion with my hands, he said, "and I like it - a lot."
He came over and sat on the edge of my desk, so I could see it was a picture frame but not the actual picture.
"Ranger, I don't have x-Ray vision."
He slowly turned it around, and my mouth dropped open. What the fuck!