Eleven on Top (Stephanie Plum 11)

“I'll feel better tomorrow. The sugar will be out of my system. The cravings will be gone.” I sat down and faced the keyboard. “How do I do this?”

Ranger pulled a chair next to me. His leg pressed against mine and when he leaned forward to get to my keyboard we were shoulder to shoulder, his arm brushing the side of my breast when he typed. He was warm and he smelled delicious. I felt my eyes glaze over, and I worried I might start panting.

“You should take notes,” Ranger said. “You're going to need to remember some passwords.”

Get a grip, I said to myself. It wouldn't be good to jump on him here. You'd be on television. And you haven't got a door on your cubby. And then there was Morelli. I was living with Morelli. It wouldn't be right to live with Morelli and boink Ranger. And what was wrong with me, anyway, that I needed two men? Especially when the second man was Ranger. Ever since we'd had the discussion about marriage my imagination had been running wild dredging up possibilities for his deep dark secret. I knew it had nothing to do with killing people because that was no secret. I knew he wasn't gay. I'd seen that one firsthand. The memory brought a new rush of heat, and I resisted squirming in my seat. Was he scarred by a terrible childhood? Had his heart been so badly broken he was unable to recover?

“Earth to Babe,” Ranger said.

I looked at him and unconsciously licked my lips.

“I'm going to have to disconnect your cubby's security camera,” Ranger said.

“I just heard everyone in the control room gasp when you licked your lips. I could have a hatchet murder taking place in full monitor view on one of my accounts, and I don't think anyone would notice as long as you're sitting in here.” Ranger signed off the search he'd just pulled up. He took my pad and wrote out instructions for retrieving information from newspapers. He returned the pad to my desk and stood. “Let's go on a field trip,” he said.

“I want to see the area where the bodies were recovered.”

I thought that sounded sufficiently grim to be a good doughnut diversion. I stood and clipped my new cell phone onto the waistband of my jeans. I pocketed the key fob. And I stared at the gun. The gun was in a holster that attached to a belt, and I wasn't wearing a belt.

“No belt,” I said to Ranger.

“Ella has some clothes for you upstairs in my apartment. Try them on. I'm sure she's included a belt. I'll meet you in the garage. I need to talk to Tank.”

I took the elevator to the top floor and stepped out into the small marble-floored foyer. I'd lived here for a brief time not long ago, so I was familiar with the apartment. I opened the locked door with the key he'd given me and stepped inside. His apartment always felt cool and serene. His furniture was comfortable, with clean lines and earth tones, and felt masculine without being overbearing. There were fresh flowers on the sideboard by the door. I doubted Ranger ever noticed the flowers, but Ella liked them. They were part of Ella's campaign to civilize Ranger and make his life nicer.

I dropped my keys in the silver dish beside the flowers. I walked through the apartment and found my clothes stacked on a black leather upholstered bench in Ranger's dressing room. Two black shirts, two black cargo pants, a black belt, a black windbreaker, a black sweatshirt, a black ball cap. I was going to look like a mini-Ranger. I stepped into the cargo pants. Perfect fit. Ella had remembered my size from the last time I'd stayed here. I belted the cargo pants, and I tugged the shirt over my head. It was a short-sleeved shirt, female cut with some spandex. It had a V-neck that was relatively high. Rangeman was embroidered on the left breast with black thread. The shirt was a good fit with the exception of being too short to tuck into the cargo pants. The shirt barely touched the top of the cargo pants waistband.

I called Ranger on his cell. “This shirt is short. I'm not sure you're going to like it on the control room floor.”

“Put a jacket over it and come down to the garage.”

I shrugged into the windbreaker. Black on black again, with Rangeman embroidered on the left breast of the jacket. I took my phone off my jeans and clipped it onto the cargo pants. I grabbed the black-on-black ball cap, and I left Rangers apartment and rode the elevator to the garage.

Ranger was waiting by his truck. He was wearing a windbreaker exactly like mine, and the almost smile expression was fixed on his face.

“I feel like a miniature Ranger,” I said to him.

Ranger unzipped the windbreaker and looked me over. “Nice, but you're no miniature Ranger.” He took my Sig out of his jacket pocket and snapped it onto my belt just in front of my hip, his knuckles grazing bare skin. “There are some advantages to this short shirt,” he said, sliding his hands under, fingertips stopping short of my bra.

“Okay, here's the deal,” I said to him. “You know how when you squeeze a jelly doughnut and the jelly squirts out in the weakest spot of the doughnut? Well, if I'm a jelly doughnut then my weak spot is dessert. Every time I get stressed I head for the bakery. I'm trying to stop the dessert thing now, and so the jelly is squirting out someplace else.”

“And?”

“And this place that it's squirting out. . . maybe squirting out isn't a good way to put this. Forget squirting out.”

“You're trying to tell me something,” Ranger said.

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“Yes! And it would be a lot easier if you didn't have your hands under my shirt. It's hard for me to think when you've got your hands on me like this.”

“Babe, has it occurred to you that you might be giving information to the enemy?”

“The thing is, I have all these excess hormones. They used to be jelly-doughnut hormones, but somehow they got switched over to sex-drive hormones. Not that sex-drive hormones are bad, it's just that my life is so complicated right now. So I'm trying to control all these stupid hormones, to keep them locked up in the doughnut. And you're going to have to help.”

“Why?”

“Because you're a good guy.”