AN: Giant shout out to my beta reader, Cornfedfiddler, who willingly took up the Sisyphean task of fixing my comma mistakes. She's awesome! This fic is rated M for smut. Consider yourself warned.

Chapter 1

When I was a kid, I used to play house. Well, my perfect sister, Valerie, would play house. I'd screw it up. Not intentionally. It's just that Val's idea of an ideal home involved her playing the mommy, me playing the daddy, and a couple baby dolls happily seated around a table enjoying an evening meal. To spice it up, I'd improvise a bit. You know, like turn the daddy into Superman. And in the middle of dinner, he'd hear someone calling for help and rush off to save the day. Val would throw a fit, insist I had messed up her idyllic pretend family dinner, and run crying to our mother.

A lot has changed since then. Val's been married —twice— and currently has a dining table surrounded by real children and an acceptably boring husband who never runs off to save the world. I've also been married. For about a minute. Instead of saving the world, my ex used the dining room table to boink another woman.

Since then, I've often felt like I'm still playing house, faking my way through life. Except, instead of being a superhero, I'm a bond enforcement agent. Better known as a bounty hunter. And I still screw up plenty, except now the whole town calls my mother to tell her about it instead of just my sister.

And from the looks of things, she was about to get a mess of calls.

From my perch atop my just-cuffed skip, my eyes tracked the still-burning candle rolling across the floor. It bumped into the edge of a starched olive curtain. I held my breath.

Whoosh.

The stiff material ignited like kindling, flames jumping from one window to the next down the entire front of Mama Matuzzi's Italian Restaurant. Around us, the other diners screamed, running for the exits. For a moment, I sat transfixed, caught like a moth to a light. With a squawk, the smoke alarms began to wail. A second later, the sprinkler system activated, the chilly water pulling me out of my daze.

Dammit. There went my chance of mooching dinner off my mother tonight.

With a sigh, I un-straddled my skip, Ronnie Gross. He remained on the floor, groaning, a trickle of blood oozing from his nose after my tackle. Being new to the whole bail-skipping world, I figured he would be an easy capture. Especially after he was dumb enough to check into Mama Matuzzi's on Facebook, advertising his attendance at their special Valentine's Day Afternoon Speed Dating event. What I hadn't counted on was Gross jumping to his feet when I slapped a metal bracelet around his wrist, knocking over his table, and ultimately flinging a lit candle into the curtains.

"Get up!"

"What the…" Gross finally seemed to recover his faculties. He blinked up at the ceiling, as if he couldn't believe what his senses told him.

I tugged on the cuffs and pulled him to his feet, pushing him toward the door. We were the last ones out, completely soaked from the sprinklers. A blast of icy February air hit us as I hustled Gross toward my latest craptastic vehicle. The VIN claimed the car began life as a red Ford Focus. How it had become the half blue, half green sedan currently parked at the edge of the fire lane was a mystery I would likely never solve. Given the current arctic vortex gripping Trenton, all I really carried about was that its heater worked.

As I reached for my keys, I realized my bag remained inside the restaurant, with my cars keys and cell phone inside it. I'd dropped it as I'd wrestled Gross into the cuffs on the floor.

Crap.

Looking back inside, thick smoke filled the space. The sprinklers, having doused the flames, continued to spray water everywhere. A stream flowed out the front door, almost instantly turning the sidewalk and street into an ice skating rink.

Gross and I stood, shivering, next to my car, unable to get into it.

"G-get me s-s-somewhere w-warm!" He demanded.

"M-my k-keys are s-s-till in-inside."

Dammit, I couldn't stop shaking. My clothing grew stiff, literally freezing on my body.

A siren screamed as a ladder truck raced into view, lights flashing. The truck angled into the fire lane, barely braking. Only then did the driver see the ice from the sprinkler run off. And my car. I watched as his eyes widened, panic flashing across his young face. Brakes squealed.

Gross and I jumped away only a few seconds before the firetruck plowed into my rust bucket. Metallic shrieks split the air as the Ford crumpled like an accordion. The force of the collision shoved its front end under the back of the pickup truck parked in the legal space in front.

As the firetruck finally came to a stop, silence hung heavy in the air. Everyone seemed frozen in place, and not by the cold.

BOOM!

My Focus exploded into a ball of flames and everyone scattered. The firemen, their truck hardly even dented, spilled out onto the sidewalk and affixed a hose to the nearby hydrant. They turned the nozzle on my car. Nothing. They considered each other, then the hydrant.

"Damn water line is frozen," one shouted. "Call for the tanker."

Meanwhile, my car burned like a merry little bonfire, flames consuming the entire vehicle. But at least it threw off enough heat to begin thawing my clothes.

BOOM!

The fuel tank of the truck in front of mine ignited, tossing it into the Honda CR-V in front of it. Flames began licking at the CR-V. Horrified, Gross and I watched as the line of vehicles blew up like pyrotechnic dominoes. One after another, all the way down the block, while the poor firemen scrambled around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Trenton PD and EMTs arrived in time to catch the tail end of the fireworks display. A female EMT wrapped a silver thermal blanket around my shoulders. She looked at Gross, down at his handcuffed wrists, then over at me, eyebrows climbing into her hairline.

"Bond enforcement," I explained dryly as she draped another blanket over him.

The air pressure changed, a familiar tingling raising the hairs on the back of my neck. Turning, I saw Ranger parting the sea of first responders, his steps quick, just barely below a run. A caramel-skinned Cuban sex god made mortal, he'd been my mentor when I first stumbled into my bounty hunting career. Now our relationship, if you could even call it that, hovered in the murky no-mans-land between occasional lovers and something more. His eyes focused on the warped shell that remained of my car. Then he turned and caught my gaze, the tension immediately easing off his shoulders.

"I'm okay," I said as soon as he fell into ear shot.

He closed the final distance between us and ran his hands down my torso anyway, seeing for himself that I remained in one piece. "Babe, you're soaked."

I nodded toward Mama Matuzzi's. With the front door now propped open, huge fans blew the remaining smoke outside. "Automatic sprinklers. It wasn't my fault."

The corners of Ranger's lips twitched.

"My skip knocked over a table when I tried to cuff him, and the candle caught the curtains on fire. I managed to get him out but left my purse with my cell phone and keys inside."

Somehow, Ranger managed to suppress the smile threatening to shatter his carefully constructed blank face. "That explains why you weren't answering your phone. And your car?"

"Not my fault either. The firetruck slid on the ice from the sprinkler run off and smashed into the back of it. Set off a series of explosions."

Ranger's face remained stoic, though laughter danced behind his brown eyes, which only now slid over to Gross. "Want help getting him to the station?"

"Please."

"Before I turn into a popsicle," Gross muttered. "I can't feel my toes. What if I have frost bite? What if they turn blue and fall off?"

"It's your own fault for starting the fire."

"No, it's your fault. Who crashes a speed dating event? Where's the love? On Valentine's Day, of all days!"

"Enough." Ranger fixed Gross with a scathing stare. "If I hear another word from you, losing toes will be the least of your worries."

Gross gulped visibly and shut up. Ranger got permission from the nearest cop to clear us from the scene. Then he tracked down a fireman, who scurried inside the restaurant and reemerged with my dripping messenger bag.

Ranger led us to his black Porsche Cayenne, parked three blocks away, engine still warm from his drive here. Sitting on the thermal blanket to protect the upholstery, I directed every vent on the dash to blow heat in my direction and willed my teeth to stop chattering. Catching sight of myself in the side mirror, I grimaced. My blue lips and frost covered hair made me look like a demented Elsa from Frozen.

Ranger stayed with the Cayenne while I walked Gross inside the police station. I watched for my ex-boyfriend and vice cop, Joe Morelli, from the corner of my eye. Since he hadn't shown up at the scene of my latest disaster, I felt sure he would ambush me at the station. After a month, my blood still boiled whenever I thought of our last fight. But by the time Gross was processed and I received my body receipt, there was still no sign of him.

"Where to?" Ranger asked as I hopped back in next to him.

I looked at the receipt clutched in my fist and considered my options. I could go to the bonds office and get Connie to cut me a check, but it was unlikely I'd make it to the bank to cash it before they closed. Not to mention, my wet clothes clung uncomfortably to my body and my shoes squished with every step. At least I'd thawed enough to no longer resemble an ice queen.

"Home. All I want is a nice hot shower. Then I have plans for a ménage-et-trois with an extra-large pizza and a bottle of wine."

Being single on Valentine's Day sucked. Even more so because even Lula managed to find a date for tonight. One hot enough she'd ditched me to begin primping after lunch.

"Babe." The word rode the coattails of a laugh as Ranger's rare smile lit up the car. "You never disappoint."

He leaned across the console, planting a scorching kiss on my lips that gave me ideas about a ménage-et-quatre.

Ranger found a spot at the very front of the lot behind my drab, red-brick, three-story apartment building. He retrieved my messenger bag from the cargo area, where it had been resting on a plastic tarp to avoid soaking the interior and followed me upstairs and through the door of my apartment. I flicked the switch to turn on the kitchen light. Nothing happened. I toggled the switch repeatedly. No light.

"Bulb must have blown," I mumbled.

Ranger plucked a piece of paper off the floor in front of my door. "Babe, when was the last time you paid your electric bill?"

"I might be a little behind. Why? Are they threatening to turn off my power again?"

The arctic cold had put a serious dent in my income. No one was skipping bail because no one was committing petty crimes. It was too damn cold. And those who did get arrested didn't want to leave jail. Half the apartments on Stark Street had no heat. The prison did.

I could see the tiniest hint of his smile in the fading daylight from my living room window.

"More than threatening, Babe. They cut you off."

"What?" I grabbed the paper from his hands and read it twice. I looked around, disbelieving. No numbers on my microwave. Refrigerator eerily silent. "Seriously? What kind of Scrooge-run company turns your electric off on Valentine's Day? That's just not right. Where's the love?"

His smile grew.

"Don't look at me like that." I jabbed a finger into his chiseled chest. "Gross was different. He made the bad choice not to appear in court. I have an obligation to society to return him to police custody." I threw my hands up in disgust. "What am I supposed to do? I have electric heat! What about the food in the fridge?"

His eyes flicked to the useless appliance. "Do you actually have food in the fridge?"

"That's beside the point."

No. Of course there was no real food in the fridge. If I had money to buy food, I would have paid the damn electric bill. But it was the principle of the thing.

"Babe."

"Ugh. Why couldn't they have waited just one more day? One day! I have the money now." I waved my body receipt in the air like a raving lunatic. "I'm sure if I call them and promise to pay it tomorrow, they'll come turn my electric back on. Right?"

Okay, so I know that's not how the world works, but I dug for my cell phone anyway. Everything in my messenger bag was soaked. My fingers closed around my cell phone and I pressed the power button. Nothing. Might as well be holding a brick. Maybe if I went out and got some rice…I reached for my car key, only to remember the car no longer existed.

I wiped my phone on a dish towel and tried the power button again. Please. Please just throw me this one bone. Please, please, please.

I didn't realize I'd begged out loud until Ranger gently took the phone from my trembling hands. "Babe, it's dead," he whispered.

My eyes burned as I blinked back the sudden tears. This was it. Rock bottom. No money. No car. No phone. No electricity. Sopping clothes. "My mother is right. I'm a mess!" I wailed.

As the first tears slid down my cheeks, Ranger pulled me against him. I grabbed fistfuls of his shirt like my life depended on it. Big ugly sobs racked my body. He rubbed gentle circles on my back. Saying nothing, he just let my emotions run their course.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered as I wiped the final tears away, aghast at the large wet spot spreading across Ranger's shirt.

"Nothing to apologize for, Steph." He caressed the side of my face softly. "Feeling better?"

I nodded. "I think I have some candles, somewhere. That'll get me through the night. Then, tomorrow, I'll get my check from Connie and get my power back on."

There might even be enough left over for a new phone. A cheap one. The kind I bought out of the trunk of a sketchy looking guy on Stark Street.

Ranger shook his head. "I'm not leaving you alone with no power, no heat, no phone, and no car. You can spend the night with me."

My eyebrows rose as a flash of heat spontaneously manifested in my chest and shot southward. Okay. Maybe rock bottom wasn't so bad. Not if it came with thousand-thread-count sheets and the possibility of Ranger induced orgasms.

"What about Rex? I can't leave him here with no heat."

"Bring him," Ranger replied. "Do you need to grab anything else, or are you okay with what Ella has for you at my place?"

What Ranger's housekeeper, Ella, had for me at his place consisted almost entirely of solid black, and she'd sewn "Rangeman" onto everything. And I mean everything. I owed a lot to Ranger, including my life on several occasions. Still, I had trouble walking around with his name stitched into my unmentionables. A girl needed some commitment, maybe even a ring, before being comfortable with a guy's name on her ass. And while Ranger did many things, commitment wasn't one of them.

"I'll just be a minute."

I hurried into my bedroom and haphazardly tossed a couple outfits into a clothes basket, before adding underwear, bras, dry sneakers, and socks. From the bathroom I gathered my toothbrush, makeup, hair products, and my blow dryer. Then I carefully balanced Rex's glass aquarium on the top.

"Ready," I announced to Ranger.

He plucked my messenger bag off the floor and led me back outside. Ranger's "place" was the penthouse apartment of the seven-story building he owned on Haywood Street in downtown Trenton. The other six-stories were occupied by his high-tech security business, Rangeman. I tried not to imagine what the men watching the monitors must be thinking after we parked in the secured underground garage and walked toward the elevator. I'm sure they'd already heard all about my misadventure this afternoon thanks to the chatter on the police bands.

I settled Rex onto Ranger's pristine marble kitchen countertop, then announced, "I'm overdue for a shower."

Ranger's eyes darkened. "Need any help?"

Tempting. Very, very tempting. But I had a list of problems a mile long right now, and I didn't need to add any post-sex-with-Ranger guilt to it.

"If I do, I know where to find you."

Twenty minutes later, I'd begun to prune even though the seemingly endless supply of hot water still ran strong. Turning off the shower, I towel dried my hair then made my way to Ranger's walk-in closet. I emerged in comfortable well-worn jeans and a soft faux-angora sweater.

I found Ranger in his study, typing a response to an e-mail. He pressed send as I entered, then pushed back from his desk and stood, eyes sweeping across me in a way that made me feel like I were still naked.

"Feeling better after your shower?"

"Yes. Thank you for letting me stay."

"You are welcome anytime, Babe, it's why you have a key. Ella has the night off, so we'll go out for dinner."

"You know it's Valentine's Day, right? Every restaurant will be booked solid, with hour long waits."

The way his lips curled upward made me think he was internally laughing at my naivety.

"Not for me. As long as you don't mind mixing business with pleasure?"

The way he uttered the words set my skin on fire. I nodded dumbly, mind completely absorbed by the pleasure aspect.

Padding into the kitchen, I began to sort through my soggy bag, currently residing in the kitchen sink, to see what I could salvage. My cell phone seemed to be missing.

"Did you put my phone in rice?" I called to Ranger.

"No. The trash," he replied, walking in. He plucked a sleek, shiny, black iPhone from the island and handed it to me. "I had this lying around. I already transferred your SIM card."

I looked at the mind bogglingly expensive piece of technology, jaw on the floor. "You keep nine-hundred-dollar cell phones just lying around?"

"I always have a spare, in case mine breaks."

My eyebrows knitted together. "When was the last time you broke a cell phone?" Ranger never broke anything he didn't intend to destroy.

Without missing a beat, Ranger answered. "When I dove off a bridge into the Delaware after you." His lips twitched. "Coincidentally, that's also when I began keeping a spare."

"As soon as I buy a new phone tomorrow, I'll give this back. Promise."

"Babe, worry about getting your electric back on and food in your fridge. Use the phone for as long as you need."

I'd heard those words before, except they were usually attached to a shiny new set of wheels. And what Ranger implied when he said it was, "use it until you destroy it."

"You've got insurance on this, right?"

That got him to crack a smile. "Comprehensive. Drops, spills, accident prone bounty hunters. Covered." Carefully, he picked the phone from my fingers and laid it back on the island. Then he grabbed my hips and pulled me into him, his mouth warm and eager against mine.

About the time his hands slipped under my bra, chasing away all my earlier reservations about sleeping with him, my fancy new phone rang.

"Ignore it," he urged, thumbs teasing my peaked nipples, drawing a low moan from me.

And ignore it I did, until it began ringing again. "What if it's my mother, checking to make sure I didn't die in a fiery car explosion?"

Something that sounded suspiciously like a sigh escaped Ranger's lips, and he took a single step back. I snatched the phone from the counter, but the three letters splashed across the screen didn't spell M-O-M. They spelled J-O-E.

"You should answer it," Ranger said gruffly, his eyes flicking from the screen to my face before he stalked from the kitchen.

I contemplated sending the call to voicemail, turning off the phone, and then dragging Ranger between his gazillion-thread-count sheets. But in the end, I swiped the green circle and lifted the phone to my ear. "Hello."

A relieved exhale greeted me. "Are you okay?"

"You heard about Mama Matuzzi's, huh?"

"I heard your car blew up and started a chain reaction that took out five other vehicles, but I got held up at a triple homicide inside one of the drug dens on Stark Street. I've been calling for the last hour, worried sick as to why you weren't answering."

Something that sounded suspiciously like a bottle of Tums rattled in the background. Morelli made it no secret that my escapades gave him indigestion.

"Sorry. My phone got soaked and I just got my SIM card into a new one."

"I tried stopping by your apartment. None of the lights work and Rex is gone."

"Yeah…" I drew out the word. "There was a minor mix-up at the electric company. The lights will be back on tomorrow, but with no heat I've made alternate accommodations for tonight."

Morelli groaned. "You'd better be at your mother's."

"And what if I'm not?" The tone of his voice raised my hackles. "We broke up, Joe. I can spend the night wherever I damn well please."

"We didn't break up. You walked out because you're ridiculous."

"I walked out because you cancelled our date night, claiming there'd been a homicide, when you were really going to poker night at your brother's!"

Morelli sighed. "How many times do I need to apologize for that? I'm sorry. Alright?"

"No, it's not alright," I snapped.

"Come on, Cupcake. You wanted to drag me to that chick flick. You know I hate those movies."

It hit me like a fist to the chest. The only thing Morelli was sorry for was the fact I'd caught him in his lie. And the fact I'd cut him off from sex for the past month. Next time I wanted to do something that didn't interest him, he'd come up with another excuse. God, how many times had he already done it and I never knew? All those times a convenient murder occurred…

I saw red, and before I could truly consider my next words, they flew from my lips. "Well, Joe, guess what. You won't have to worry about ever seeing a chick flick with me again, because it's over." I ended the call with a sharp jab of my finger and stopped myself just short of smashing the iPhone off the kitchen counter.

That's the one thing I missed about old fashioned land lines. Slamming down the receiver to hang up on someone felt so much more satisfying.

For a couple seconds I just stood there, chest heaving. I'd been yelling at the end. There was no way Ranger hadn't overheard it.

A few minutes after six, I emerged from Ranger's bathroom, face freshly made up, hair tamed, toes squeezed into 4-inch FMPs, and a black long-sleeved Ralph Lauren wrap dress hugging every curve of my body. I'd found it in the Stephanie section of Ranger's closet, and the seasonal appropriateness made me question when Ella had purchased it and what kind of sixth sense she possessed to know I'd need it. And, wonder of wonders, she hadn't branded it with the Rangeman logo.

Ranger turned at my approach, eyes appraising me for a second before a wolfish smile broke across his face. Black dress pants hung low on his hips, black button-down dress shirt tucked into the waist with nary a wrinkle to be seen. With the top two buttons undone, he looked like he'd just walked out of a Times Square billboard. Based on the heat flash cauterizing my veins, I didn't think I'd require a coat to keep warm outside.

"Will this meet the restaurant's dress code?" I asked nervously, tugging at the snug hemline hitting a few inches above my knees. Ranger refused to divulge our destination, other than to imply it's a fancy establishment with a dress policy. In Trenton, that could mean anything from jeans without holes to tuxedos and ball gowns.

He gave an affirmative growl as he closed the gap between us, running his index finger down one side of the plunging V-neckline, raising goosebumps on my flesh. "It's missing something."

"If you're planning to say your hands inside it, I've heard that one before," I replied dryly.

Laughter ignited behind his dark eyes. "Let's save that for later. I had something else in mind."

He strolled back into his closet. I followed, curious, and caught him tapping in the code to the small safe he kept there. He did tell me this dinner mixed business with pleasure. Was he going to ask me to carry a gun? Where the heck would I put it?

Instead of a weapon, Ranger withdrew a large, rectangular, black velvet box. Cracking the hinges, he revealed a stunning necklace strung with more teardrop diamonds than I could count. The modern design was unlike anything I'd ever seen. There was no clasp. In fact, the necklace didn't even complete a whole loop. Instead, the smallest diamonds started in the hollow of the throat, a sparkling chain growing incrementally larger as they circled around the neck before plunging downward on the other side, culminating with several massive teardrop diamonds.

My jaw hit the floor. "You bought me diamonds?" Hysteria tinged my tone.

The corners of his lips twitched. "More like borrowed."

"It's stolen?" My voice hit a new octave.

That drew forth a low chuckle. "Babe."

Okay, not stolen. "Then what the heck does borrowed mean?"

"You'll understand in a bit. I have a business proposition I'd like to discuss over dinner."

"And it has to do with jewelry?"

"Yes. May I?" Lifting the necklace from its case, he motioned to my bare neckline.

With a gulp, I nodded, not wanting to know how much money he was about to drape around my neck. Ranger brushed aside my hair, tamed into sleek curls, and gently laid the necklace onto my skin, the diamonds icy against my flesh.

He turned me, so I could admire it in the full-length mirror, then stepped away and retrieved a much smaller box from the safe before returning to me. Gently, he slid matching earrings into my lobes. I gazed at our reflections, Ranger standing just behind me, his hand on my waist. Even I had to admit, tonight we made one gorgeous, sophisticated couple.

A vision swam into my mind of a future where this wasn't just some charade for the evening. One where gold bands graced both our ring fingers. One Ranger had made unequivocally clear we could never have. One I'd never even thought to hope to consider. And yet there it was, staring me in the face temptingly.

My face flushed as I shook away the notion. A product of the day, I told myself. Nothing more than a fanciful dream conjured up by all the pink hearts and confetti of Valentine's Day.

AN: I'll be posting a new chapter every couple of days. Please drop me a review and let me know what you thought about chapter 1. Nothing brightens my day and encourages me to keep writing like reading the reviews from my lovely readers.

I'm doing something for this fic I've never done before: making a pinterest board for it. So if you would like to see a picture of the diamond necklace described in this chapter, please check out my Making Waves pinterest board. Full link can be found in my author's profile or if you'd like, you can cobble it together from the description below, since I can't post links into the story.

pinterest.c o m

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