Everybody and anything familiar belongs to Janet. Mistakes are mine alone.

"This is really fucking with you, isn't it?"

Tank should know better than to talk while I'm driving, but here he is yammering on anyway.

"Stephanie understands more than anyone that you have to move on a skip when you get a tip or you may lose your opportunity for a successful capture."

"Steph may understand that you have to work, but will Morelli?"

"She doesn't give a fuck about him."

He nodded in a way that would've made me punch him if I weren't driving.

"True," he continued, "but everybody and their mother knows the cop still wants her. He's going to use any opportunity you're away from Steph to try to do some moving in himself. You two have been good lately, I can catch Goatey alone even half-asleep and on a bad day. Don't lose what progress you've made on my account."

"You didn't figure into anything beyond preventing my company from losing money."

"Still being a hardass even after I generously offer to help you keep your love life in the black?"

I cut my eyes to him. "One more word and I'm pulling over just so I can shut you up with my bare hands somewhere in the vicinity of your throat."

He thankfully went silent, but we both know he accomplished his goal. I did want to be with Stephanie while she's helping Edna celebrate her seventy-ninth birthday. And I definitely do not want Morelli near her again. Steph and I both had separate and collective concerns about Helen inviting the fucker just to shove him where everybody knows he doesn't belong, namely our relationship, but my woman assured me that she, her knee, and her stun gun, can handle him if he unwisely decided to show up.

Trusting Stephanie isn't the issue here. Work warring with my need to be there in person to protect her is my current problem. In emergencies, I've dropped everything I was doing to get to her, yet a party shouldn't qualify as a major crisis. But Tank had to go and make it fucking sound like one. Without another word or thought on the subject, I made a U-turn at the next light.

"You're welcome," Tank said, clearly amused that I'd changed our direction and my objective.

"Fuck off," I said, with clear affection in my tone. He's been my best friend for years for a reason. "Pick Lester up after you drop me off. Two-man teams are required, even for you, and Goatey already thinks Santos is 'cute'. He'll be less likely to run once he sees him. It'll also work as payback for Lester for eating the peanut butter/chocolate chip muffin Ella had put aside specifically for Stephanie."

"That's fitting, since you had to make a doughnut run just to take the edge off her temper that day."

This time, he and I were both grinning ... picturing Lester's impending fit. When I pulled onto Steph's parents' street, I placed a hands-free call to her cell.

"Yo," she answered on the first ring.

Those two letters had taken a load off my mind. She reserves them solely for me, and these days ... usually only when she's feeling flirty.

"Change in plans," I informed her. "Turns out I can make it. I'm pulling up to your parents' place right now."

She was quiet for a moment, sensing that this is an important event beyond it being Edna's birthday. "Really?" She asked finally.

"Come see for yourself," I teased, as I parked at the curb but left the SUV running since Tank will be taking my place momentarily.

I could hear muffled conversation and laughing in the background, so I knew she kept the line open as she made her way to the front door and flung it open wide.

I had every intention of telling her that she'll always be more important to me than any job. Or once again pointing out how beautiful she is, especially wearing nothing but skin and my shirt, but that she's absolutely breathtaking when she puts some time in and goes full throttle on enhancing her natural beauty.

Edna wanted a theme for her party and Steph and Valerie won the popular vote with their Top Secret Speakeasy idea, knowing how much Grandma Mazur would love getting into character and allowing or denying access to Burg residents based on their knowledge of the codeword that had been circulated on the sly. But Steph had been seriously contemplating kicking herself with an extremely thin heel as we both got ready for our separate jobs today.

"I look like a friggin' figure skater," she'd said, as she repeatedly turned one way and then the other, trying to take in every angle of intricate beadwork and fringe lining her theme-dress while she stood in front of the full-length mirror hanging in my walk-in closet. "I'll have to turn in my 'Jersey Girl' card for not thinking ahead about the wardrobe involved in this party idea."

That was said to me as much as to herself. It would've been a crime not to thoroughly inspect her body, and after I did ... I couldn't find one flaw in the shimmering dress or the woman it was cascading over.

"You look incredible, Babe," I'd said in response. "I'm about to call the control room and order you two bodyguards for today."

"I'll be okay on my own. If anyone bugs me, I'll just do a Wonder Woman spin and I bet this fringe will cut Morelli, or anyone else bothering me, to shreds."

The gory image of that playing on repeat in my mind, and the knowledge that she hadn't really been kidding about how she'll defend herself, allowed me to let us part ways in my garage. But knowing I'd made a mistake overtook pictures of Morelli being turned into chum until I decided to ditch Tank for a better alternative.

The smile Steph's currently giving me for correcting my earlier error, knowing that I am here for her, wiped out all reason and forced me to react solely on instinct. I reached out, slid my hand along the nape of her neck, and used my gentle grip to pull her towards me. I slanted my mouth over hers and I stopped thinking altogether until Tank hit the horn in a cocky 'I told you so' and a goodbye as he took off. I would have given him the finger if my arms weren't busy closing around Stephanie's body.

My lips and tongue weren't interested in releasing any part of hers, but eventually oxygen became a need more than just a want. Our mouths parted but we didn't move far, pressing our foreheads together to keep up some form of contact.

"Wow," Steph said finally, pulling back and licking her lips like they were tingling or already missing mine.

The movement had me hardening as it brought to mind how we spent the pre-dawn hours of this morning. Down, Soldier, I ordered myself. But when Steph reached up, I assume to make sure none of her garnet-colored lipstick had transferred onto me, I opened my mouth slightly, caught the pad of her finger between my teeth, and licked it with just the tip of my tongue to give her a few flashbacks of her own.

As I did earlier in my bed, only when she moaned did I release her.

"Something wrong, Babe?" I murmured.

"Nope, but there's a whole hell of a lot that feels very right. I just wish we were someplace way more private than my parents' front door right now."

"We'll have plenty of private-time tonight. We should make sure Edna enjoys her day first before get back to savoring ours."

"You're right, but I'm just so happy to see you. The only thing better would be if Tank could've stayed. I feel a bit outnumbered here. It's been Grandma, Mary Lou, and myself, against the room."

That had me going still. "What happened?"

"Nothing more than usual or what we'd expected. Morelli showed up even though this has nothing to do with him. Every time I move away from someone, I hear comments that my dress is either too tight, too short, or too flashy. And my Mom has been flipped to the non-stop-complaint channel about everything Val and I have done for Grandma ..."

"Is Edna happy?" I interrupted to ask, so I wouldn't dwell on Helen or the cop and how much I'd enjoy eliminating both.

"Grandma is practically floating from guest to guest ... she's loving this so much."

I tightened my hold on her. "That's all that matters, for you anyway. You can't help but look amazing no matter how you're dressed. Their jealousy is their own problem and has nothing to do with you. You did good and should only be feeling proud of yourself for pulling off a party Edna is happy she lived to see. I'm here to deal with the rest."

"Damn. I thought you were here because you missed me."

"That too," I assured her.

Seeing her again, and being with her in any capacity, is my motivation for pretty much everything I do.

She hugged me and tried to relax my body by using the entire length of hers. The feel of her tight to me created a different type of rigidity. I was picturing her naked more than I was thinking of the quickest way to turn every party guest inside out for their lack of manners, so she succeeded.

"Thank you for coming," she whispered.

"I realized that I couldn't miss this."

She grinned up at me. "Grandma will love hearing that. I think I could sneak my present out now and just claim your presence at her party as my birthday gift to her, but I'm looking forward to our trip to Atlantic City with her too much to take back."

"Edna is a force to be reckoned with, but she's not why I'm here."

"You love me."

I nodded. "I do. And it's time everyone accepts that fact."

"I can't agree more," she said, letting me go to re-open the front door that she'd let close when I'd reached for her.

No secret code was needed for us.

I looked out of place in the Plums' living room, and not only due to me being in a Rangeman uniform instead of something popular in the twenties. In the twenties, I wouldn't even have been allowed to attend a birthday party here or to mingle with these particular people. Fortunately for me, Stephanie made sure that I, along with every other person under this roof, understood that I belong here by using her arm like a vise to keep me close. I suspected her hold on me is also to make herself feel better and stronger. She has a till-death-do-us-part ally here now, in spirit if not law, and I have her suddenly feeling invincible.

"Ranger!" Edna called, lighting up faster than a birthday candle when she spotted me. "You're here!"

She put every Running Back to shame when she maneuvered around guests, sometimes even shoving them out of her way, to reach where Steph and I are standing.

Steph looked up at me. "Your appearance seems to have a similar effect on the women in this family."

I glanced to where Helen had been switching out an appetizer tray. Her face is pinched, with complementary thinned-lips and eyes that narrowed to slits as she shot them to - and quickly away - from me.

"Not every woman in your family appreciates my presence or my considerable charm," I replied.

"Take my mother's reaction as a good thing," Steph told me. "If she liked you, I'd know you're not the guy for me. She barely tolerates me, so any person I bring home that she approved of would be a bright red flag that she thinks she found someone that will 'fix me', which is why she and Joe got so chummy after warning me for years to steer clear of him. I love you so much because you never thought I needed any fixing. What you see in me is always what you've wanted."

"I'm glad you've figured that out. 'No strings' had multiple meanings. Happy birthday, Edna," I said, as Grandma Mazur closed in on us. I leaned down and kissed her cheek. "Work could wait, spending time with two of my favorite ladies on such a special day, couldn't."

"Hot damn ... I got me a kiss from Hotcakes! Wait till I tell Gladys from the deli. She's gonna wet her knickers for sure!"

She scurried off with pink cheeks, something to talk about, and a smile that rivaled Stephanie's.

"Thank you for making her life," Steph told me. "Though I'm a little afraid she's going to now use our b-day trip to A.C. to get her cheek tattooed with the words 'Ranger kissed me here'."

"I'm more interested in where you'd choose to place those words."

Her smile turned innocently-seductive as she swung her body into the front of mine. "If I ever decide to do that, I'm going to let you go on a search and seizure mission to find them."

Nothing, not even Morelli trying to kill me seven ways to Sunday using only his piss-colored eyes, would have stopped me from kissing her. Today is the first of many where my woman, and my needs regarding her, will come before anybody and everything else.