This was not a talk I wanted to have with Ranger, but since the other option was to have a talk with our son and I wanted to do that even less, I sucked my stomach in and headed to Ranger's home office. I knocked on the door – the door was ajar, so he wasn't in any confidential phone conferences – and marched in.

I stopped in front of his desk and took a deep breath. "Ranger, I'd like you to have a talk with Alec."

He put the work in front of him into a folder and, shutting down and closing his laptop, gave me his full attention. "About?" He sat behind his desk, his hands folded in front of him, head tilted to the side.

He was wearing a button-up medium gray shirt and dark gray cargo pants – the Ranger equivalent of being colorful – with the top two shirt buttons undone and the sleeves rolled up. His hair was cut short and the silver that had started at his temples a few years ago gleamed in the office lighting. I was still coloring my hair to hide the gray, but silver on him made him look even more attractive, which was just unfair.

I shook my head and got back to the topic at hand. "I was at his water polo match today and I noticed all the girls eyeing him. And he seemed to eye a few of them back. I mean, he's just turned 17, and he has to be thinking about girls-"

"Babe," he said, his voice slightly amused. "I had the first version of that talk with him when he was 14."

"14!" I shouted.

"Calm down," he said and then shrugged. "That was about the age when I started noticing girls and I thought it was time."

"He's too young for that!"

"And how old were you the first time you kissed a boy?"

"We aren't talking about me," I said, dodging the subject. I'd been 15 the first time I'd kissed a boy – I remember thinking it was sort of slimy but sort of exciting – and the next kiss was when I was 16 and had sex with the then 18-year-old Joe Morelli on the floor of Tasty Pastry. Not the kind of sexual contact or experience I wanted my kids to have. Then a thought hit me and I narrowed my eyes at Ranger. "How old were you when you had your first kiss?"

"15," he said promptly.

"And the first time you had sex?"

"15," he said again. "The same encounter."

Yeah, that did not surprise me. "Okay, then, I guess I can see that. But 14! Alec was so young," I said, blowing out a long breath and smoothing my hair back. "And what do you mean, the 'first version'?"

"The first talk was pretty general. Then, about a year later, he had questions." The corner of Ranger's lip twitched up. "I answered them. Since then, we've had a couple more talks."

"Do you think he has … acted on your advice?"

"I have reason to believe that he has certainly discovered girls for himself. Nothing too serious. Yet. And I didn't give him any kind of go-ahead. Merely pointed out the … mechanics involved, and discussed the issues."

"What, you told him that sex is fun?"

Ranger grinned at me. "Didn't see a point in lying to him and it would have made all the rest of the issues we discussed suspect."

I did not want to picture my little boy out having sex with the entire young female population of Miami, although I was aware that he wasn't 5 anymore, but a tall, athletic, handsome 17. "And what issues would those be?"

"Like pregnancy, STDs, social issues and complications, the emotional roller coaster that he is not ready for."

I tapped my foot at him. "Don't think that I don't know that you have him watched, just like you have me watched. You'd know even if he didn't tell you."

He dipped his head in acknowledgment. "That is true; I do have someone on him at all times. The order is, above all, to keep him safe and to observe – discreetly – and report."

"And what are the reports?" Ranger tilted his head, clearly trying to decide if he was going to tell me. "Ranger-" I said, letting my irritation show.

"Nothing he hadn't already told me himself. He has been involved in a few heavy make-out sessions, nothing more; probably more because he knows he is watched than any desire to stop. Slipping away for privacy is not really an option, although I wouldn't put it past him if he was … well-motivated. He also got into a street brawl about six months ago."

"Why am I just hearing about all this now?"

"Babe, it's between a boy and his dad."

"He has been getting into street fights?" My voice was close to a shout. "Are you keeping secrets from me about our son?"

"If he comes to me, in confidence, and tells me things and I tell you and then you tear into him, he won't come to me any more. Which would you prefer – that one of us knows or that he tries to keep us both in the dark?"

"You let him get into a street brawl? With Rangeman watching?"

"If a weapon had been produced, they'd have stepped in and ended it. It stayed a bunch of teenage hotheads swinging at each other. No real harm done. A couple of black eyes."

"He told me he got that black eye playing basketball."

"He did. That was where the street brawl happened."

I eyed Ranger. "Someone gave your boy a black eye and you didn't step in?"

"He's been in martial arts classes since he was 10. Now he's training in the sparring ring at Rangeman in how to apply everything he's learned."

Of course. "So," I said, "Grace turns 13 next week. Are you going to have the same discussions with your daughter?"

Ranger's face turned very, very serious. "I stepped up her sparring training as well. Any boy who tries to touch Grace will learn the error of his ways from her."

"Uh huh. And what if she is the one doing the touching?"

Ranger let out a low growl and I rolled my eyes. This was going to be an interesting decade.