Long A/N: Several of you have asked in recent chapters "why do people dislike Stephanie so much". First and foremost, Stephanie is a grown woman who needs to act like one. Falling asleep at work because you're 'bored' is teenager shit. In canon, she is irresponsible, immature, reckless, unfaithful, shallow, and self-absorbed. She wasn't always that way (or at least not to that extreme), but with subsequent books continues to get worse (I'm looking at you Now or Never). In canon, Ranger certainly recognized at least some of this and loved her and accepted her for who she is. But he was blinded by his feelings for her. In this story, Ranger has a new perspective on life between being mentally twenty years older than everyone else his age and because of his relationship with Julio. Julio doesn't like Stephanie because he doesn't have the blinders Ranger has but his own biases based on what he has heard about her from Ranger (who simply shared the facts of a situation without considering how messed up it might have been). Morelli did not have the experience with Stephanie in the OFTM stuff because he never killed Kulesza and was on the run with her help proving his innocence. He's operating off the Burg gossip about her divorce. Stephanie is being held accountable for herself in this story, even though Ranger might sometimes slip into old habits. Hope this helps to explain things.

October 26, 2017

We hadn't been down to Miami for a visit since our high school reunion three years earlier, a fact that I'd felt increasingly guilty about. Julio and I each talked to Grandma on the phone every week, and had an ongoing text thread with Mariana, Paolo, Eduardo, and Louisa, but we hadn't seen each other in person. Time had gotten away, as it usually did. We had all been busy with work and kids, or in our case, the complexity of trying to have a child.

I knew there would be paperwork but had been surprised by the amount of detail required. But since Nadine was a family member who was all too happy to give away her eggs and our surrogate had been through the process once before and had already been through the required screenings, it hadn't taken long for us to get the process started. We'd been told not to get our hopes up that she would get pregnant right away and had been surprised two weeks after the first transfer when she texted us a picture of a positive pregnancy test.

Grandma sobbed when we showed her the ultrasound photo. The woman had fourteen grandchildren and twenty-three great-grandchildren, but a passerby might have taken her reaction to be that of someone becoming a grandmother for the first time. She took a picture of the ultrasound with her phone so she could keep looking at it after we left.

"Are you going to find out what you're having?" Mariana asked us over dinner at Grandma's on our last night in town. "Or did you do the sex selection thing? I had a friend who did that because she had two boys and wanted a girl."

"We're going to be surprised," Julio said, tossing a glance in my direction. "Everything about this kid has been planned like a damn battle. At least we can have one thing that feels kinda normal."

Eduardo chuckled as he swallowed a bite of food. "I bet Carlos loves that."

"Carlos loves him enough to deal with it," I corrected.

"But what about baby clothes?" Louisa asked. "You'll just have a bunch of gender-neutral stuff, and I can't see you two out shopping."

"We don't need to. Once that kid's here and we can tell everyone what it is, you all will be sending us shit," Julio said. "Or we'll just order stuff online. We've thought this out. My kid is gonna look fly as hell."

"You have to remember their age and the seasons," Mariana reminded us. "You live in a cooler climate."

Julio rolled his eyes. "Yes, Tía. We know."

We told them the due date was April twenty-eighth, but weren't telling everyone that the baby was being born in Newark to avoid a revolving door of Manosos visiting us while we were bonding with our newborn and its measly immune system. Amira and Lamar were planning to visit once we had been home a couple of weeks to give us time to get used to parenthood while also being there early enough to give us a break during the grueling newborn days.

It was nice to visit my family and slow down for a few days, especially since we would be in overdrive for the next several months getting ready for the baby. I wanted to be an active, present father in my children's lives, which meant changing my work habits. Julio would be staying home to take care of them, but I didn't want to put all the responsibility on his shoulders. I wanted my children to remember me being home and spending time with them, not just the guy who showed up right before bedtime to say goodnight. Fathering a child in my last life had been a drunken accident with a stranger. This time it was a sober, conscious choice made with my husband, and I was going to act accordingly.

We flew home on Friday because I had to work on Saturday. I would be training Stephanie on doing protective details after she had spent the last year mostly doing office work while occasionally going after an FTA or doing other field work. After watching her chase Randy Briggs down, followed by her adventures in chauffeuring Sheik Ahmed Fahed a couple of days later, I figured I owed her a change. This job was ideal for her because it involved a woman and small children, who would probably be more comfortable having a woman around on occasion. She had shadowed Rowan on a couple of shifts while I was out of town, but would get her official training with me today.

"You aren't gonna get shot, are you?" Julio asked me Saturday morning as I got dressed. He was still in bed and would undoubtedly be asleep again before I pulled out of the garage.

"Hopefully not. But I'll have a vest just in case and my men outside will likely see someone coming before they reach the house."

"I didn't mean by the stalker. I meant by Stephanie," he replied.

"Babe."

"I'm serious. She shot that propane tank and blew it up. You got all cut up from glass."

"The FTA started shooting first. Her bullet went wide. No one got seriously hurt and the car that got damaged was able to be fixed."

"Just don't stand too close to her or anything explosive if she pulls her gun."

I put one hand on the headboard as I leaned down to kiss him goodbye. It was only supposed to be a quick kiss, but a slight tug on my shirt kept me close as he pushed his tongue between my teeth. A few seconds later, his hand was stroking the length of my cock through my pants, making me gasp.

"I'll be late," I murmured.

"So? You gonna write yourself up or something?"

"I'm supposed— to set— an example," I said between kisses.

He pulled back without letting go of my shirt and gave me a knowing look. "You're always on time. Always. Do you think your men would give up the chance to get laid just to show up to work on time?"

I took a millisecond to consider that and checked my watch. I was due to start my shift in twenty minutes. The house was five minutes away. Allowing five minutes to clean up and redress meant I had ten minutes to have sex. We'd certainly done it in less time.

"If I'm late to work, I get to pick where we go tonight," I said as I kicked off my shoes and climbed into bed.

"Deal."

After his relapse, we had worked on ways to make sure our relationship stayed strong, especially whenever I was busy with work. I had gone with Julio to a few therapy sessions, and his therapist had given us a book about the ways people expressed and received love and encouraged us to figure out what each of us needed. It was the last book either of us would have read on our own, but he was committed to do the work to stay sober and repair the trust between us, and I was committed to him. My results were physical touch and acts of service while Julio's were quality time and words of affirmation. We came up with a set of rules for what we needed from each other. Sex at least twice a week, date nights on Saturdays, no work on Sundays, and at least one hour of uninterrupted time together on the other days. He had worked on his insecurities, and I had worked on being more communicative. I felt like I'd made decent progress, but it was nothing compared to Julio. He'd become lighter and happier in the year since learning about his father's sexuality and rejection of our relationship, finally understanding that Jaime's behavior wasn't about him. I didn't anticipate a reunion between the two in this lifetime or the next, but at least Julio wasn't being held back by him any longer.

I was four minutes late as I pulled into the parking lot of a bank half a block away from the client's home. I was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved gray shirt with my Glock hidden under my coat. Two of my men were parked in cars on opposite sides of the street while two others were inside with the family. We were doing our best to blend in with the quaint surroundings.

Tabatha Bartlett was a thirty-four-year-old attorney who had been launched into the limelight recently after she had defended a man charged with killing a police officer, arguing that the man had acted in self-defense when the officer pulled him over for no reason other than racial profiling, then began assaulting him when he was ordered out of the car. The camera footage had been damning for the cop, but the prosecutor insisted on charging the man with second-degree murder. The jury had come back after six hours of deliberation with a not guilty verdict. The defendant had left town immediately due to the threats against his own life, but he was single, childless, and had lost his job because of his arrest, so he had nothing holding him here. Tabatha had a husband and two small children keeping her anchored in Allentown. She had hired us to protect the family until the stalker was caught or the threats stopped. She had filed reports with her local police department, but they weren't especially interested in helping since (in their eyes) she had let a cop killer go free.

Tabatha, her two-year-old daughter Abigail, and five-year-old son Jared were eating a breakfast of pancakes and bacon when I arrived at the house, entering through the back door to avoid arousing suspicion. Rowan was leaning against the kitchen counter eating his own pancakes and Derek was watching out a window that overlooked the backyard drinking coffee and munching on bacon.

"It was quiet all night," Rowan said. "No contact from the stalker on any of her devices. Do you think he knows we're here?"

"Possibly. If he does, we're testing his motivation. He'll either try something no matter who's here or he'll give up after a while. Time will tell."

"I haven't told anyone that I hired private security," Tabatha said quietly as she came over to join us. "I haven't even told my family about the stalker, so I can't tell them about hiring you. Plus, I don't know how far this guy's reach is and if he's somehow tapped into my phone or someone else's trying to find out things about me. I'm afraid if he knows you're here, he might go after my parents or siblings. I'd rather he stay focused on me and get caught off-guard if he shows up."

"We can get you secure phones. If you tell us who you want to talk to, we can deliver some to them as well."

Tabatha shook her head. "I'd rather they not find out about this. My parents will get worried and want to be here, and that'll just be more of a headache. They already worry when Travis has to take long work trips like this. I really hope we catch this guy before he gets back from Singapore. He won't like that I hired you."

Tabatha's husband was a buyer for a large manufacturing firm and frequently travelled for work. He had been in Asia for the last two weeks and wasn't due back for another two. Travis Bartlett hadn't taken the threats seriously because Tabatha had been threatened before and nothing had happened. She'd been livid when he still left for his month-long business trip and called us the next day to set up a detail. I had offered to put her in a safe house, but she had declined, worried that the change would be too much for her small children.

"My IT guy said the messages are all coming from a prepaid cell phone. The stalker appears to be using a virtual private network to send them, so the IP address changes every time, but we'll keep checking. He might slip up."

Tabatha nodded and rinsed her dishes in the sink. "I hate this. Travis is probably right that nothing is going to happen, but he's always been here the other times. And something about this time just feels different. It feels more personal."

I was just about to ask what she meant by that when Stephanie came through the back door. She was dressed in jeans, a green t-shirt, and gray sweatshirt.

"Sorry I'm late," she said. "I had a fender bender."

"No worries. Carlos was late too," Rowan said, nodding in my direction.

Stephanie put her messenger bag on the counter and pulled out a bottle of water. "You're never late. Did you get rear-ended too?"

If she only knew.

We did a quick shift change, transferred comms, checked in with the men in the cars and checked on the cameras and sensors that had been installed around the house. Everything was in working order. I called the office and answered emails while Tabatha and the kids got ready for the day. Stephanie had been reviewing our manual for protective details and asked questions as I walked her through the routine and various strategies should someone show up. We had asked them to keep their routine as normal as possible, and thankfully their Saturday routine was family time at home.

Tabatha took the kids outside to play before lunch while Stephanie and I kept watch of the surroundings and kept in contact with the men on the street. The kids entertained themselves rolling around in a pile of leaves Tabatha had raked for them.

"Do you want kids?" Stephanie asked me as we watched the family play.

"Yes, do you?"

"I don't know. I'm lucky to keep myself and a hamster alive most days. I'm not sure if I'm ready to upgrade. Maybe someday, if I find the right man."

"Morelli's not the right man?"

Stephanie rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Morelli's a jerk. He pulled me over the other day for going three miles over the speed limit."

"You did throw his clothes out your bedroom window and kick him out of your apartment naked. He might still be a little annoyed."

"He started talking about Terry Gilman and how he used to sneak in her bedroom window in high school!" she said indignantly. "I'm just supposed to stand there listening to him talk about another woman while we're getting busy?"

"You could have just told him to shut up."

"I was pissed off," she huffed. "Besides, he grabbed a pillow off my couch as he left. He covered himself up."

It had taken him twenty minutes in the rain and dark to find his clothes, cell phone, wallet and keys. He pledged to get revenge, and I didn't think pulling her over once was going to fulfill that promise.

"I'd suggest you watch your back. Morelli's probably not done with you. He had to buy a new phone."

"I'm not talking to Morelli anymore. I don't know why I ever thought I'd give him a chance." She crossed her arms and glanced around the yard. "I really fucked up," she muttered.

"By giving Morelli a chance?"

Stephanie shook her head but didn't elaborate. I moved away from her after a minute and took a different position in the yard. I felt her watching me as the children finished playing and headed inside for lunch, but she always looked away when I glanced in her direction. After Julio highlighted the issues I had when it came to Stephanie last year, I'd worked on keeping myself emotionally distanced. Despite my best intentions, we had gotten closer than I liked. I considered her a friend, but kept up a wall. It had been around this time in my last life that I'd kissed her for the first time after months of simmering mutual attraction, when our relationship had been somewhere between mentor/mentee and friends. I'd kept her at arms' length then because I knew deep down that I was falling for her. This time I was keeping her at a distance for her sake as much as my own, especially as I noticed her attraction building. I didn't say or do anything that could remotely be construed as flirting. I kept physical space between us. I avoided anything that even smelled like impropriety, but I could still feel it. It was the electricity that had always sparked between us, even though I didn't want to be with her. I hadn't imagined her in any sexual fantasies in over a year and had been working to push away my memories of our relationship in my last life. But it wasn't always easy, especially when I was intervening in her life without her knowing it.

The most recent event had been to prevent her Uncle Fred from being killed. I'd told Morelli about how Fred stumbled upon Allen Shempsky and Larry Lipinski dumping the body of Lipinski's wife after they killed her. The investigation into RGC was ongoing, and Morelli couldn't really do much more about it. We hadn't been able to prevent Laura's murder, but Morelli managed to prevent Fred from witnessing them dumping the body by 'accidentally' running into him while Fred was loading the leaves in the car. Morelli offered to get rid of the leaves for him and Fred happily took him up on the offer since it saved him gas money. Morelli had gone to that alley, witnessed the disposal of the body, and Shempsky and Lipinski had been arrested. But Fred Shutz had still disappeared last Friday and hadn't been heard from since. I'd given Morelli the details of what happened in my last life, but we hadn't been able to piece together what could have happened since the two men were in police custody. It wasn't Morelli's case, and since he wasn't talking to Stephanie, he couldn't pretend to be interested for her sake. People weren't especially concerned about Fred Shutz. They just assumed he had a stroke and wandered off or had taken up with a woman and decided to stay with her instead. I made a mental note to be well-liked enough that people gave a damn if I went missing.

We followed the family inside and sat in the living room reviewing the protective detail manual more as Tabatha fed the kids their lunch. I quizzed Stephanie on procedures, and she did well, only missing one question.

"Do you ever wonder what might have happened if we'd stayed together in college?" Stephanie asked once Tabatha had taken the kids upstairs for Abigail's nap.

"A few times before Julio and I got back together," was the most diplomatic answer I had.

She glanced out the side window at the space between the houses. "What did you think?"

I shrugged and opened my laptop. "Not a lot. I might not have joined the Army if we'd been together. You wouldn't have liked military life."

She nodded. "All the moving and deployments and rules? No thank you. What would you have done instead?"

"Worked for my father. Then I would have taken over his business when he was ready to retire."

She turned around to watch me, but I kept my attention on the computer screen. "Do you think we'd still be together?"

"I don't know. All I do know is I'm glad it didn't happen that way. I don't like to imagine a life where I'm not with Julio."

Stephanie was quiet for a minute and when I glanced up to look at her, she had turned to look outside again. I thought I heard a small sniff at one point, but tried not to read into it. I hadn't been trying to hurt her, but I wasn't going to lie either. No matter what she had meant to me in my last life, she wasn't that person in this one. I still loved her in my own way, but Julio had my heart and soul.

We didn't talk anymore over the next two hours. Stephanie moved around the house, keeping her distance while I checked in on the other offices. Things would probably be awkward for a while, but Stephanie was resilient and would get over it in a few days, pretending it had never happened.

"Do either of you have kids?" Tabatha asked us later that afternoon. She had worked in her office for a couple of hours while Abigail napped and Jared had quiet time in his room.

"Does a hamster count?" Stephanie asked, making Tabatha chuckle.

"I will in April," I said, noticing how Stephanie's head whipped around to look at me. I hadn't told her about the baby and learning it after our earlier conversation wasn't the best timing.

"Then you'll probably understand why I want you to promise that if something happens, you'll make sure my kids are safe first," she said. "Even if that means letting something happen to me."

This set off alarm bells in my head. "We can protect all of you. It won't come to that."

Tabatha shook her head and fiddled with her wedding rings. "Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but something feels wrong. I don't know what exactly. I just need your promise that you'll protect my kids first."

Did she know something I didn't?

"I promise we'll protect your kids. Has something happened? Did you get another message?"

She shook her head after the briefest hesitation. What was she hiding? And why? She had hired us to protect her family. She hadn't been shy about showing us the messages she'd received, but she had also been protective of her clients' private information and hadn't allowed Matt to look at anything other than the messages. What was bothering her to the point that she didn't want to share it with us, but simultaneously wanted our assurances to protect her children?

Any further conversation was interrupted when her cell phone rang. "It's Travis," she said, not sounding especially happy. She considered her phone for a moment before swiping the screen and putting it up to her ear. She stepped out into the backyard while she talked. I couldn't hear what she was saying but was able to see enough of her expression to see she was upset and arguing with him. She paced as she talked, and the call ended less than five minutes later.

"I need to finish a few things while Abby's still sleeping," she said once she was back inside. She hurried upstairs without waiting for a response from us.

"That was weird," Stephanie whispered, seeming to forget the awkwardness between us. "What do you think that was about?"

I shook my head and pulled out my phone. "Nothing good." I dialed Matt's number, and he answered on the third ring. "I want you to go deeper through Travis Bartlett's life and see what he has going on. And see if you can learn anything about his trip to Asia. I need the information yesterday."

"Will do. Did something happen?" Matt asked.

"Not sure. But I'm getting the impression there's more going on than we know. Keep me posted."

"What are you thinking?" Stephanie asked once I ended the call.

"I've seen her talk to Travis on the phone before. She was pissed at first but cooled off after a couple of days. Shift reports from the last week didn't say anything about her arguing with him. Did you notice anything when you worked with Rowan?"

She shook her head. "No, she seemed normal. She said she didn't want him to get suspicious that she had hired security, and sometimes she made comments about how he was probably right, and she was overreacting. I didn't see her argue with him or look angry when they talked."

"What's changed? She was in a better mood before she put the kids down and started doing some work. That makes me think she found out something."

"Maybe she's found evidence of an affair?" she suggested.

I nodded. "Possibly. And maybe she suspects the person he's seeing is the one making the threats."

Stephanie grimaced. "What if he's trying to take his family out so he can start over? Or have I just listened to too many true crime shows?"

I'd been having the same idea. "That's why I want Matt digging into him. We've been focused on Tabatha's work and most of our background research has been on her and the people closest to the cop case. We did just a basic overview of him. Nothing stood out."

Stephanie pulled a granola bar out of her bag and started eating it. "Between this, Morelli, and my Aunt Mabel and Uncle Fred, I'm not finding any good reason to get married again. I'll be the spinster aunt with my hamster."

This was a dangerous path given our earlier conversation, so I steered us in a different direction.

"Any update on Fred?"

She shook her head. "Nope. Mabel doesn't even seem to care that much. She bought a new car, new bedroom furniture, and she's planning a trip to Hawaii."

"Are you sure she didn't bump him off for the insurance money?"

"My grandmother suggested that. I don't think so, but I guess you never know. I'm told he can't keep his dick in his pants and has had all these girlfriends over the years. Maybe he messed with the wrong guy's wife."

"Wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened, though it doesn't usually involve people in their seventies," I said.

"Right? He's seventy-two and still sleeping around. Do men ever stop being pigs? Do they all cheat? Everyone knew, but no one ever talked about it. It was just like with my cousin Amanda. Everyone knew her husband was beating her and no one said anything. I didn't know about it until she skipped town and filed for divorce."

Amanda White's divorce had been finalized earlier in the year. She went back to her maiden name, changed her hair color, and got a job transfer to Denver. I'd never told Stephanie about being the one to help get Amanda out of town. Technically I could since Stephanie worked for the company, but I'd decided against it. Amanda knew she worked for me, and if she wanted Stephanie to know who had helped her, she could be the one to disclose that.

"I can't speak for all men, but it's never been an issue in my marriage," I said, skirting around the topic of her cousin, but instantly regretted bringing up anything to do with relationships.

"Speaking of your marriage, when were you going to tell me you were having a baby?" she asked. She was trying to sound neutral and interested, but I could tell she was hurt. Despite everything, she was still my friend. Morelli, Rowan, and Tank all knew. But I hadn't told her.

"We waited until the first trimester was over to tell anyone," I said. "We went to the first ultrasound with the surrogate right before we left for Miami."

"Do you know what you're having?"

I shook my head. "We're going to be surprised."

"You hate surprises."

"Yes, I do. But Julio thinks something about the whole process needs to be a surprise."

She nodded in understanding. "How did you choose an egg donor? I've always wondered how people do that. Do you try to find someone kind of like the other partner? Or just whoever seems to have the best traits?"

"We didn't have to choose. A relative offered to be our egg donor so we'd both be related to our kids."

"Wow," she said. "I don't think I could do that. It would feel weird to have my kid out there, but it wouldn't be my kid, you know?"

"She's an identical triplet. All her nieces and nephews would show up on a DNA test as her kids, so it doesn't really bother her."

"Well, congratulations. I'm sure you'll both be great dads."

"Thanks."

There was an awkward silence after that, and she eventually excused herself to the bathroom. I texted with Julio for a few minutes about our date that night until I heard the sound of the kids talking and running around upstairs. Tabatha appeared a minute later with Abigail in her arms and Jared walking down in front of her. He ran straight for the toy box that sat in the corner of the living room and Abigail ran straight for Stephanie as she came out of the bathroom.

"Um, hi," she said when the little girl came up to her. Abigail held up a stuffed animal and jabbered in something resembling English. Stephanie nodded and gave the toddler a tight-lipped smile. "Yeah, that's nice."

"Wanna play cars?" Jared asked me. He had a container of race cars dumped out on the floor and was setting up a racetrack.

I helped him set up his track and spent a few minutes racing cars to the finish line at the bottom. He cheered loudly when his cars won and dramatically collapsed to the floor when I beat him. He rambled on about the different cars and told me when he'd gotten them, who gave them to him, and which were his favorites. Abigail wandered over and tried to join in, but her brother yelled at her to leave his cars alone. When Julio and I decided to have children, I always imagined we would end up with girls. Maybe it was because we'd both grown up with a bunch of sisters, but the possibility of having a boy hadn't crossed my mind. The Manoso men seemed to produce one boy for every five girls, so I'd assumed I wouldn't be any different. But playing cars with Jared had me imagining what it would be like to have a son.

My phone rang at five-thirty as Tabatha was getting the kids to settle down for dinner. The display told me it was Matt, so I stepped out back to take the call.

"Where is Bartlett supposed to be?" Matt asked.

"Singapore. He was supposed to spend ten days in Beijing, a week in Singapore, then move on to Seoul for the last week and a half. What did you find?"

"Well, I haven't had a geography class in a while, but unless there's a Singapore in Delaware, Travis Bartlett hasn't been anywhere near Asia."

A/N: This was such a long chapter that I needed to break it up. Stay tuned.