The great JE created all the characters here.

Jenny (JenRar) thank you for your hard work as the beta on this story. Once again, you've made what I've written even better.

Chapter 22 – Best Served Cold

"How do you want to play this?" Ranger asked, sitting outside the Plum house.

Stephanie had woken up at 1100 hours and announced they were going to have some fun finishing the plan to take care of everyone who'd conspired against them. Not able to refuse her anything, he'd informed her that he was at her disposal for whatever she had in mind.

Unfortunately, what she'd had in mind was going to her parents' house to crash their lunch and not staying in and finishing what they'd begun last night...and continued through the early hours of the morning. Although, based on how slowly she'd moved when getting out of bed that morning, it was probably best they take a break. He'd been as tender as he could be, but there was no denying that the sheer number of times they'd come together had made her sore.

When she'd come out of the bedroom, he was surprised by her outfit. Clearly she was beautiful, no matter what she wore, but he'd expected to see her more covered up. He may have been gentle, but he'd been thorough, and her body bore a number of large and obvious marks from their first night together as a couple. She was in a pair of stretch pants with a low-cut scoop-collar shirt. Her hair was twisted behind her head, so her entire neck, collarbone, and upper shoulders were on display. Without moving around behind her, he could count eight marks from his seat across the room. When he'd asked about her reasoning for going in with everything on display, she'd laughed and said she was just trying to draw out the enemy. There'd been an evil gleam in her eye, so he'd decided to sit back and enjoy the ride, knowing the show would no doubt be worth it.

As they drove over, he asked why she waited to talk to her mother. "It's best served cold," she answered cryptically.

"You're going to lock her in a freezer?" Ranger asked, knowing it wasn't what she meant, but unable to figure it out.

Stephanie laughed, and even though he figured it was at his expense for asking a ridiculous question, the sound was soothing, and he found himself smiling along with her. "No, but I needed time to get over the hurt and anger about what she did so I could be more objective and make the punishment fit the crime a little better. That's what I always figured the expression meant."

Then it all fell into place. "Revenge is a dish best served cold," he put it together.

"That's right," she agreed. "Just ask Tank." Once again, they drove along laughing and Ranger wondered if life could get much better than this.

In the Porsche outside her parents' house, the only directions she provided were, "Follow my lead and keep your blank face in place no matter what I say, all right?"

He nodded, knowing that was something he could do, and hopped out to open her door.

They were three steps from the porch when the front door opened. Mrs. Plum stood there, wiping her hands on the half apron that she seemed to wear to accent every outfit. "Stephanie," Helen greeted them, stepping back and doing a quick sweep behind them to see if anyone was watching.

That was the first test of Ranger's blank face. He knew Frank had been in the Army back when the draft ensured most men served their country, but Helen seemed to have the more instinctual awareness of her surroundings.

"What a pleasant surprise," her mother continued, sounding pleased. The moment her eyes stopped surveying the neighborhood and fully took in the people in front of her, the smile fell. "Stephanie, what on earth happened to you?"

Mrs. Mazur walked behind her daughter and laughed at the question, "If you don't recognize a hickey when you see one, Helen, then you and I need to have a little talk, and I finally have the answer about why you're such an uptight pain in the—"

"Mother!" Helen interrupted before Edna could finish her thought. "I know what a hickey is, I just don't understand why Stephanie appears to be covered in them."

"Because she's a lucky girl going out with a man who evidently knows his way around a body," Edna continued. "He hit all the obvious spots and a few lesser-known hot areas too."

"Frank!" Helen called out for her husband, although Ranger felt it was more to interrupt her mother than because she needed backup.

"Hey, pumpkin," Frank called out when he realized who was there. "Ranger." He stuck his hand out, and Ranger immediately shook it. It was unusual to get any kind of greeting from Stephanie's father, and he refused to turn down what he believed was an olive branch of sorts.

"Do you have enough to add two places to the table for lunch?" Stephanie asked. Her voice was full of forced sincerity, and Ranger knew she was baiting her mother. Nothing was a greater insult to a 'Burg woman's skills as a hostess than having to admit she didn't have enough food to feed unexpected guests.

"Don't be ridiculous, Stephanie," her mother scolded. "Set the table for you and your guest, and I'll bring out lunch for everyone."

Stephanie held her head up and followed her mother with none of the usual trepidation that seemed to come over her when she had to enter the kitchen without backup. Ranger watched until the swinging door closed behind her and realized there were even more marks on the back of her neck. He didn't even remember giving her a couple of them, but he knew anytime he did something that evoked a response from her, he tended to keep at it, so it wasn't surprising to see so much evidence about their night together.

"I'm assuming there's a reason my daughter looks like she was around a toothless vampire all night?" Mr. Plum asked, speaking more words than Ranger ever recalled him saying at once.

Fortunately, the women came back out of the kitchen before Ranger was forced to reply that the reason Stephanie looked like that was because she was a damn sexy woman with a sex drive that matched Ranger's and he'd spent all night worshiping her the way she deserved and the way he'd wanted to for years.

Once everyone was seated, Mrs. Plum spoke first, "What's the occasion for your visit today?"

Stephanie held up a finger and finished chewing a bite of the roast beef sandwich before replying, "Ranger and I are going to move to Miami." She immediately took another bite of her lunch and looked around, as though she'd casually mentioned a sale at the mall.

"What do you mean you're moving to Miami?" Helen gasped. "When? Why?"

"That's a lot of questions," Stephanie calmly replied, perfectly in control of her expression and forcing the tempo of the conversation to stay slow. If Ranger weren't so caught off guard by the announcement that he was moving, he might have enjoyed her masterful manipulation of the people around the table.

"Ranger and I are together now, and since we're going to share our lives, we decided it would be easier to do that in a place where we aren't being judged constantly, so we're going to move closer to his family, where there's an office of RangeMan to work from."

He couldn't believe how beautifully she was lying to her family. Stephanie knew his immediate family was all in Newark, not Miami, although most of his extended family was in southern Florida.

"What do you mean a place where you aren't judged?" Helen demanded.

"The last time we were here, you made it abundantly clear that you thought Ranger was a horrible person who killed people, associated with lowlifes, and was one step away from being a thug himself," Stephanie answered and then took a long sip of iced tea before picking up the sandwich once more. "I refuse to have the man I love talked about that way, so we're leaving the place that seems to believe lies about him."

"You don't need to do that," Helen argued. "Most people consider him to be an upstanding businessman."

"Most people…" Stephanie repeated, "But not you?"

Helen put her fork down and gave up pretending to eat her potato salad. "The last time you were here, we may have had a slight misunderstanding."

"No, we didn't," Stephanie disagreed. "You said horrible things. I understood every one of them. So, we're leaving, and we have no plans to return for visits."

"Now wait," Frank spoke up, which seemed to surprise everyone at the table. "Helen, I told you this fool-brained idea would come back to bite you. You tell her the truth right now because I'm not losing my daughter over this."

Helen took a drink, which appeared to be water, much to Ranger's relief. "Some of us who know you well thought you'd been unhappy lately and wanted to help you."

"You decided to make me happy by insulting the man I love?" Stephanie asked, pointing out how ridiculous that sounded.

"You do love him..." Helen seemed genuinely pleased, then she shook her head in much the same way Stephanie would if she was trying to clear her thoughts. "No, I wanted to help you do something about how you felt by making it clear in front of him what you thought about him. You'd never say it unless you were forced, and I knew if someone attacked him, you'd get mad, rush to his defense, and then speak honestly before you realized what you were confessing."

"So you pretended to not like Ranger?" Her voice was dripping with doubt.

"Yes," Helen replied emphatically.

"I know it sounds ridiculous, but Mary Lou came by and talked your mother into it," Frank spoke up, obviously taking the idea of his daughter leaving to heart. "I don't know why they thought it had to be done behind your backs, and I know she was horrible to you, but I'm telling you, her intentions were good, even if her methods were harsh."

"I don't know, Daddy," Stephanie replied, playing to what he'd said. "They were so smooth coming out of her mouth, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized she's never said a single positive thing about Ranger."

Edna finally made some noise at the end of the table. "Then you've never been out with her, because every chance she gets, she tells something about you and the hot bounty hunter working together, and she brags about his fancy cars and his big building. She says plenty of good stuff; she just never says it to you."

"That's just his bank account," Stephanie said, cutting her grandmother off. "It's easy to love appearances. I need to know how you feel about the man."

"Obviously I like him," Helen said quickly. "I was one of the first people to agree to Mary Lou's plan to get you two together."

"That's not telling me anything new."

Stephanie was obviously trying to push her mother into something, so Ranger sat back and watched, wondering who was going to win.

Helen broke first. "I like the way he watches over you. Every time I see him with you, it's like he is literally shielding you with his body. Whenever your cars explode or your apartment is broken into, he's the one that comes to rescue you and gives you whatever you need to keep you going. You and Joe could have made a life of sorts together, but I could see that you wouldn't be really happy with him. Every time you and I have been out and Ranger has appeared, you light up like you do when I bring out dessert. It's that expression every mother wants to see on their child's face. I don't honestly know the man, but I know how he acts toward you, and that's enough for me to respect him and welcome him into the family."

By Plum family standards, that was a long, emotion-ridden speech. Helen reached for her goblet, took a drink, and then made a face, as though the water that hit her tongue wasn't nearly strong enough to help her recover from everything she'd just said.

"If all that's true, then what might you have done differently to have avoided this whole mess?" Stephanie asked, turning the question on her mother that she'd said she always had to answer as a child when she got in trouble.

Helen smiled slightly, and Ranger imagined her remembering a time when the roles were reversed between them. "Instead of trying to trick you, I would have told you more directly that you were scaring people with your snappiness and temper and that there was a growing group of people who were ready to intervene if the two of you didn't hurry up and admit you wanted to be together."

"We weren't that bad," Stephanie defended weakly.

"Don't give me that," Edna spoke up. "Stiva's called and told me they were willing to arrange a time for me to come privately check out the body on display in order to keep me from having to bring you as my escort, because you were scaring all the other mourners. If you were considered more frightening than I was, then you definitely needed an intervention...or maybe a trip to that store on the east side with all those graphic toys…"

"Anyway," Helen thankfully interrupted so that Ranger didn't have to hear the old woman talk about sex toys, "The point is, I could have found a better way, other than pretending to not like him in order to get you to point out his good points where he could hear it. I'm sorry for not being more direct and honest about what I was doing, but at the time, I thought it was for your own good."

With those words, Stephanie's face finally softened and she smiled at her mother. "If you'd led with that, we could have avoided all this trouble. Next time, just tell me to stop acting like a brat, but don't try to trick me. It will only come back to hurt you, because you know I can't let stuff go until I get to the bottom of it."

Helen nodded, as though she knew that lesson well. "Are you still going to move to Miami?" Her voice sounded very unsure if she should be pressing the point just yet.

"We were never going to move to Miami. I just wanted to let you know what it felt like to be forced to say things you didn't want to say in front of a group because someone was lying to your face."

Frank sat back in his chair, but raised his fork in his wife's direction, "I told you this was going to blow up on you."

"Oh hush, Frank," Helen chided him. "I told you that she'd be mad, but in the end, it would all work out, and that's what's most important here." After straightening the tablecloth in front of her nervously, she added, "Now, who's ready for dessert?"

An hour and a half later, Ranger walked Stephanie back to the Porsche at the curb and smiled at how drowsy she looked. True, she hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, but he had his suspicions that it was just as much to do with the third slice of chocolate cake she'd eaten before they left that had her in the near sugar coma. But she looked content and happy, and it was an expression that suited her.

"That was fun," she commented lightly as they drove back to Haywood.

"Dessert?" he wondered, not assuming she was referring to anything but the copious amounts of sugar her mother was willing to buy her daughter's affection with.

"Well, that too, but putting everybody in their place," Stephanie explained. "It's too bad we're done, because I'd love the chance to plan something else."

"You know..." Ranger picked up her hand and kissed the knuckles of her fingers before placing it on his thigh. "The Secret Service sent me a file overnight about a money laundering ring they've been trying to break, but they can't figure out how to come up with a plan where the brains behind the operation gets called out."

"Secret Service?" She seemed confused by the branch commissioning the work.

"This involves printing fake money, which is a Secret Service matter, not FBI," he explained. "The point is, I was going to turn it down because I was more interested in staying close to home…but if you're looking for a way to keep planning intrigue, you might want to flip through the folder first and see if something comes to mind."

"You'd let me help you work an assignment?" She sounded shocked, which caused Ranger to vow that he'd work tirelessly to rebuild whatever damage he'd done to her self-image over the years if she thought there was a chance he didn't want her to work with him. "There's no one else I want to work with," he replied, lacing his fingers through hers.

"Maybe it will help me to beat the whole Bombshell Bounty Hunter nickname, since the Secret Service probably doesn't like references to bombs," she laughed.

Waiting until he'd parked in his reserved space, Ranger shifted in his seat to better face her, intentionally letting his eyes rake over her body before settling on her eyes. "Then they're shit out of luck, Babe, because everything about you is the bomb."

Her movement was so unexpected that when she jumped and flung herself at him, he hardly had time to react before her lips were attached to his and the windows of the car began to fog. She pulled back slightly and whispered, "That was the corniest and sweetest thing you've ever said."

"Come upstairs with me, and I'm sure I can be even sweeter," he taunted, knowing it was true if he could speak in Spanish. Somehow, being open and honest was easier in that language than English, but he'd gladly translate if it meant another of those surprise kiss attacks from his woman.

She laughed and answered, "Lucky for you, I have a really high tolerance for sugar," before climbing out of the car.

They rode to seven in relative silence, with Ranger stuck in his thoughts about how amazing it was to be with Stephanie. He'd known she was the woman for him since they met in that dinner at Connie's insistence. Knowing their friends had once again worked to push them together wasn't overly surprising. Hopefully they had their act together enough to make it without any more subtle persuasion. They'd intended it to be gentle, but that might have been the flaw in their plan.

Stephanie and Ranger were both forces of nature, and when they came together, it was strong and wild and with complete abandon. Their friends had tried to ease them together, but what they'd actually needed was to collide with no boundaries so that their lives immediately mixed and meshed. She was willing to work a case with him that he was convinced she could strategize brilliantly, which would be one more way he could support her, and she could be his partner in life.

He'd gotten a text from Hector that morning that the guys had made it out of the freezer unharmed. He'd make a note to buy them all new winter parkas and the newest model stun gun to commemorate the night they'd spent in the freezer and thank them for helping him get his head out of his ass so he could finally see what had been right in front of him all along.

Stephanie captured his attention once more. "Ranger, are you just going to stand there grinning, or are you going to join me?"

He gave what he'd heard Stephanie refer to as his wolf grin and nodded that he was definitely coming. Wild, complete abandon, passionate partner…hell yeah, he was coming. No persuasion necessary.

A/N: Thank you for coming along for another Babe adventure with me. I know I was a little rusty after such a long time away, but your support kept me typing as I got back into the swing of things. I'm going to take a little time off, and maybe return with a holiday story closer to Christmas. In the meantime, I'm going to start working on the sequel to A Killer Cup of Joe and will update my profile with notes about the progress and timing for publication.

Thank you again for all your reviews, private messages and e-mails. You guys are the greatest!