These characters belong to Janet I am just borrowing them for my amusement. Although I would love to keep Ranger and the merry men for myself!

This story does contain violence, and touches on dark subject matters. This story is not friendly to Morelli or Helen Plum so for Cupcake fans you have been warned.

Chapter 8: Confessions and Decisions

RPOV

Oh shit. What am I going to say? I was hoping she wouldn't think to ask me that, she is going to have my ass. I look over at Tank and see a smirk on his face, fucker. "Babe you went running out of here like the hounds of hell were chasing you. You scared me. You didn't even take a second to put on shoes, clothing, or a coat. I didn't know what you were thinking or what you were going to do. Tank and I took off in the Porsche while I had Lester send a team of two men to both your parent's and Morelli's house. I asked Bobby to pull up video of feeds just to be sure you took one of the vehicles and then pull up the tracker for that vehicle so I could find you." Well she doesn't appear to be mad yet at least. Whew.

"After the day you had I wanted to make sure you had backup if you needed it." She just looks up at me with those bright blue eyes. "They weren't to interfere with anything only be there if things went south by offering you back up, protection, or anything you may have needed." She looked up and then asked the question I had really did not want her asking if she wasn't mad already this was going to do it.

"Ranger did you know Joe had company last night, before I went into the house?" I looked at the guys for moral support. I could see I was on my own, thanks a lot, assholes. "Yes, but only a matter of minutes before you pulled up and then you ran in. I thought about getting the guys to stop you but honestly they more than likely wouldn't have had time to catch you when you took off running. Babe I want nothing more than to protect you physically and emotionally from everything and anything that could ever hurt you. You have to know that. But someone helped me realize that I also have to let you stand on your own. Allow you to make decisions both good and bad and be there to support you. Please don't be mad at me because I didn't stop you."

"Ranger I am not mad at you. Actually I am glad that you didn't interfere. Had you interfered then I would have never known about Joe and Terry. While I am mad at him for cheating on me, and talking to me the way he did I am not hurt like I thought I would be. I am not exactly sure what that means but all in all I am glad I found out his true colors before I did something that I would regret and forever be sorry for. I actually feel a little relieved like a weight that has been lifted off of my shoulders an odd sense of freedom. I just need to figure out what I am going to do now. I did mean what I said I no longer want to be the laughing stock of Trenton disappointing and embarrassing myself, you guys, or Rangeman. I want to change."

"Babe I told you, we have all told you that you could never disappoint or embarrass us or Rangeman so you don't need to worry about that. As far as what's next I have a few ideas I would like to run past you. Ultimately though it is your decision to make, it is your life. You can take me up on one of my ideas or decide something completely different. Regardless of what you decide know that you have the support of everyone of us in this room." "Ranger I am not sure what I am going to do, but I will listen." Whew she was willing to listen. Well I made it over one hurdle. I hope she chooses to stay with us. I honestly don't know how everyone will take it if she doesn't. I don't know how I would take it. I don't know that I could survive it.

"Babe here are some of my thoughts, you can interject whenever you would like. You could continue doing exactly what you are doing. Bounty hunting for Vinnie, and working with us for a distraction or searches when you want just as you do now. You could come to work for Rangeman part time and do bounty hunting for Vinnie part time. You could come to work for Rangeman full time in which you would become a more integral part of Rangeman than just distractions and searches. Or you could choose something completely different. The choice is yours babe." She thought for a few minutes while we just sat there I was running my fingers thru her hair silently praying she would pick us.

"Ranger what if I wanted to work for Rangeman full time?" My heart smiled. "Well in that case you would start working on searches as you have done, we would introduce you to the security side of the business more and I would probably want for you to start meeting with clients. You would be assigned a partner you would work on take downs and distractions as you have done in the past." Stephanie stopped me from continuing.

"Ranger if I was just some random guy on the street what would I have to do to get a job here?" Why is she asking that? Where is she going with this? "Well Babe typically Rangeman hires either x military men or x gang members or x con's that have decided to use their special talents for the greater good. Typically we hire the best of the best for their specialized talents that Rangeman needs at the time." She looks up at me. "No Ranger I mean what are the requirements for working here. Is there a requirement in order to be hired?" again where is she going?

"Babe, we usually require new hires to pass a series of tests. The tests include marksmanship, defensive driving, fighting slash self defense, and overall physical fitness." Not that she would be required to do any of those to have a job here. If she wants a full time job here she will have it no further questions asked from any of my men. "Ranger what happens after that. Say the guy passes all of the tests then what happens?"

"Well he would be offered a position at Rangeman. Provided we had opens in multiple offices he would be given a choice of location. Then he would be assigned to first work with each member of the core team in that office for a week. Then we would assign him to work with each member of the B team for a week. After that he would be assigned to work with any employee without a partner for a whole week to see if a partnership forms between the two." She looked up at me "Anything after that?" "Well there are the requirements that you are aware of. Beings a Rangeman employee requires you to work out at least an hour 5 days a week, they have to train on the gun range three times a week, and they have to pull regular monitor duties weekly." She kept her eyes on me "Is there any grace period?" "Yes, there is a three month grace period. But typically we know before they are hired if they are going to work out or not. If not, then we definitely figure it out well before they are done working with the core team members from the office."

SPOV

Ranger and the guys are being really supportive. They opened up to me and told me a little about their lives, and their feelings and I love them even more for it. I know they would never lie to me even though I find some of the things that they are telling me to be almost unbelievable. I do believe them. I am still not a hundred percent sure what I should do but I know I want to change. I need to change I can't keep doing what I have been doing.

Maybe if the guys are willing to help me change then I can stay here with them. I don't want to give them up especially now that they have opened up to me. The thought of walking away from them from Ranger was heart breaking I don't think I could do it again. But I definitely can't stay and continue to be the person I am right now it wouldn't be right to Ranger or my brothers, I couldn't do that to them they deserve more. I have to become the Sister they deserve in order for me to stay with them.

"Ranger I really want to change what I am doing. I know you all say that I have the second highest capture rate and maybe I do but let's face it I don't go after really hard criminals. The harder skips you all take. I take the ones that my grandmother could probably capture faster than I do." I took a breath "I want for people to stop laughing at me. I don't want to roll around in garbage and tear my clothes up and have my vehicles blown up by geriatrics." "Babe"

"I don't want to be a disappointment and embarrassment to myself, to you guys, and to Rangeman." "Babe" I know what I want. I want to be a full time Rangeman employee. But I don't want to just be handed a full time job. I want to earn it just like everyone else. I want to be an equal coworker. I want to earn the right to be here just as every other member of Rangeman. I wonder if Ranger will go for it. I hope he does.

"Ranger, I have decided what I want to do. I want to work full time at Rangeman." There are hoots and hollers thru out the room. The guys are happy and it makes me smile. "Great Babe, I will get a contract together and you can start on Monday if you want." "Ranger, not so fast I don't want to be just handed a job. I want to earn this job just like every other guy that is working here." They all just look at me with their blank faces slamming shut. Don't do that to me guys.

"I want the interview process, I want the test process, and I want the same options that are given to every other Rangeman employee starting out. I want to be treated just as any other guy you would hire off of the streets, understood?" He just nods looking thoughtful. Tank just smiles. "Ranger I realize right now I can't pass those tests so I want you to give me two weeks. In that two weeks time frame I would like to train with the guys, if that is okay with you, to learn everything I need to know to pass those tests."

This time Tank speaks up "Little girl we would love to train you." Wonder if they will love to train me when they hear the catch. "Thanks Tank but before you speak up you need to hear the conditions. I will train with any of the guys that want to train me but it can't be while they are on company time. I will not allow Rangeman to pay for my training for the entrance tests. Any other guy from the street wouldn't have Rangeman training coming in and while I will have the guys training me that is true I won't have Rangeman paying for it. If the guys want to train me it will be solely on a volunteer bases because they want to." Ranger groans a little and tried to counter but I stopped him.

"Ranger I am not budging on this. If I am to be a member of Rangeman then I have to earn it. I can't be a member of Rangeman and not be equal with all the guys. I will n o longer allow myself do that. If you just hand me a job then I won't be equal and they will know that I didn't earn it like they did. How will they ever be able to trust me as a partner? How would they ever trust me to know that I have their back and would be able to protect them when I couldn't pass the same tests they had to be here?" All eyes were locked on me. I could see something along the lines of pride in their eyes and it made my heart soar. I knew I had made the right decision. Nothing in my life had felt more right.

"Little girl I am sure all of the guys will volunteer whatever time they can to training you. I will bring it up at the meeting tomorrow morning. I will tell them what you want to do and we will setup a training schedule for you. But I will warn you this won't be easy, these guys will push you and work you hard in your training. They won't hold back on you because you are girl, or because you are their bombshell. They may even push you more because of it. If you ask them to do this then they are going to take your word that you want this level of training and they are going to be serious about it. So before you start something here be sure that this is what you want."

"Tank Thanks. It is what I want. I am serious about change. I want the training. I want to be a full member of Rangeman and I want to do it right. I am willing to put in the hard work to do it. So no holding back on me, okay." "Proud of you Babe I have told you before and I say it again, you never disappoint." Just those words made me smile, made me warm inside, and made me feel like I could fly.

LPOV

I am so excited I can barely contain myself. Beautiful had decided to become one of us. Not that she wasn't already one of us as far as the way we felt about her but she had decided to become a full time Rangeman and she wanted to earn her way in. "Beautiful I know I will work with you off the clock. I am sure I can speak for everyone that we all will help train you off of the clock. Like I told you before we all love spending time with you and we don't need to be paid to do it." She smiled at me. "Beautiful one of my specialties as you know is fighting. I would love to head up your training on the mats. You will work with the other guys as well but I would be honored to teach you to fight and defend yourself." Her smile got even bigger as she nodded "Lester, I would be honored for you to train me." I smiled. "Beautiful I will have you fighting and taking down Tank before the two weeks are up." She looked at me in shock and shook her head. "I will never be able to take Tank down, but I will promise to train my hardest and be the best student I can be. Just don't hold back with me because you are afraid of breaking me." "Trust me Beautiful we won't hold back. If we do you will never pass the tests. We want you working here with us so we want you to past the tests so we will be giving you all we got in the next two weeks." While I will push her and work her I am also going to come up with a way to give her a little happy during the next two weeks. It will help her pull thru and it will be a way I can show her how proud I am of her.

BPOV

She was looking a little nervous at Lester's last comment so I thought I would distract her a little. "Bomber I am happy, I can't wait to see you passing your tests. I know I can help you with your physical fitness test. I will come up with a training program that will have you ready to pass that test in two weeks. I want you to know that it won't be easy but it will be doable if you are willing to work with me." Bomber smiled at me and nodded her head. You could see the excitement radiating off of her. I knew then that she was going to be fine. I couldn't wait for her to join us here at Rangeman as a full time employee. She impresses the hell out of me on a normal day but today has taken the cake. She not only wanted to be a full time Rangeman she wanted to earn it. She knew we would just give her a job at her request but she needed to earn the job. Earn the title of being a full time Rangeman. Just her thinking about it that way made me very proud of her. While I knew we were going to push her I was going to plan a few things that I know will help her survive the next two weeks both physically and mentally because it wasn't going to be easy.

TPOV

I am excited. I can tell that Ranger is excited too. We are going to have my little girl here with us full time. It wasn't a question if we could train her well enough to pass the tests. She would be able to pass the tests with flying colors with the training we were going to give her. We would make sure in the next two weeks that she is trained well beyond what it would take to pass the tests. I could see my little girl radiating with excitement. I knew she had committed to doing this and was looking forward to it. "Little girl I will head up your defensive driving training." She looked at me and smiled then it turned to a playful smirk "Does that mean that I will get to drive a car while you ride in the passenger seat?" Oh shit. She remembered me telling her that I only let women drive me in my bed, never in a car. With a little laugh I conceded "Yeah little girl I guess it does." The smirk turned to a huge smile and then she laughed. I was so proud of her that she wanted to earn her Rangeman job. My Little Girl was finding her legs and starting to stand on her own and I was going to be there every step of the way to do whatever I could to ensure that she could take those first few steps on her own. I knew that the next two weeks were going to be hard for her. I knew we would push and work her hard to get her ready but I had a few tricks up my sleeve to help her make it thru it.

RPOV

When my Babe said she wanted to work full time at Rangeman my heart soared. Then she blew me away when she said that she wanted to be treated the same as every other employee. She wanted to be given the same tests, the same options. Then she completely made my day, year, and life when she said that she would train with my men of course she had to follow that up by demanding that they couldn't be on the clock. But my Babe can be complicated like that even still I have never been more proud of her. The only thing that she could say that would make happier would be for her to say yes to me when I asked her to share her life with me forever.

Once again today I found myself wanting to grab her pick her up and lock us in our bedroom for the rest of time. Our bedroom where had that come from? Granted I had only shared that bed and this apartment with my Babe but when did I start feeling like this was ours rather than mine? Man I am going to have to be careful about that until she decides to live with me. If Tank or Lester ever hear me say that when she doesn't live here I will never leave it down. Not to mention they will have perfect blackmail material on me.

"Babe I know the guys will all volunteer to train you without even a thought of being paid. I can help you with your marksmanship skills. I will have you shooting like a pro in no time." I will also come up with little distractions to help her make it thru the next two weeks.

I am going to have a talk with all my men that volunteer to help her. Her training is top priority she is to be trained well past what she will need to pass those tests. Failure is not an option any employee of mine that I find hindering her training will answer to me directly on the mats. Hell I may have them answer to the whole core team that could be fun.

"Today is Friday, why don't we take the weekend to prepare a plan that will work for everyone. Tank will you inform the rest of the guys about Steph's request for training at the meeting tomorrow if you happen to talk to any of the guys sooner let them know. I am sure once the word gets out everyone will be jockeying to be on the volunteer list. Just make sure they understand that a member of the core team is heading up the training for each test objective. For those that volunteer we should match their specialty with the test. I realize many will overlap and that is fine. "

Now I really need to get my Babe alone. I really need to tell her in English what I said to her last night in Spanish. I just hope that she will be as open and receptive to me as she has been to everything else today. I hope my confessions do not have her running again.