Disclaimer: The characters of the Stephanie Plum Series belong to Janet Evanovich and are used here without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: This is in response to Rena’s Perfectly Plum challenge to use the phrase: “Babe,” Ranger sounded – best I could tell for the first time ever – truly flabbergasted. “I’m looking at it, but I don’t believe what I am seeing.”
Rating: Suitable for all ages
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Two New Rules
By TT

I stood at the side of the gym and opened the tasty pastry bag, checking on the status of my Boston crèmes. Fortunately I’d gotten to the bag before Lester could do any damage.

Taking out the first of my delightful treats, I let out a satisfied sigh and glanced around the room. Ranger was standing by the doors, looking like he’d just arrived. I waited as he stalked across the room.

When he was a step away from me he reached out and tucked a stray curl behind my ear before taking up a position next to me, leaning against the wall and surveying the gym.

“Babe,” Ranger sounded – best I could tell or the first time ever – truly flabbergasted. “I’m looking at it, but I don’t believe what I am seeing.”

“What?” I asked defensively, swallowing the last bite of my first donut.

“Babe,” he said, disbelief evident in his voice. “You just took out eight Merry Men in less than five minutes. Not even entire gangs can do that.”

I pulled out another Boston crème and took a bite. “I didn’t mean to take them all out,” I defended after swallowing the first bite of the new donut. “It was all Lester’s fault anyway,” I informed, indicating the prone man lying in the middle of the mat, shaking his head and muttering softly as he stared at the ceiling.

“So, would you explain to me why you needed to take Lester out?” Ranger asked.

I swallowed the last bit of my second donut and licked the chocolate off my fingers. “Well,” I began, “I stopped by the Tasty Pastry today and picked up a few donuts for breakfast. I figured I deserved a reward after my self defense training.”

Ranger nodded.

“So, I put them to the side of the mat as incentive to get through the session with Lester. Only it didn’t go so well,” I admitted with a shrug. “I just couldn’t seem to get the move right. The last time I tried, Lester flipped me onto my back and I just lay there for a few minutes. That’s when he made his mistake,” I continued, my voice getting low and hard. “He walked to the side of the mat and picked up my donuts. He said I hadn’t earned them so he was going to eat them all.”

Ranger said nothing to this, but his lips were trying to smile and his eyes were showing his amusement. He seemed to know what was coming next.

“Anyway, I stood up. My t-shirt was a little twisted, so I just stripped it off.” Of course, now that I said that, I became very aware that I was wearing nothing but a sports bra and some spandex bicycle shorts.

Sensing my sudden discomfort, Ranger chuckled, stripped off his t-shirt and slipped it over my head.

Somewhere between the smell of the t-shirt and Ranger’s bare chest, I lost track of everything around me. It wasn’t until Ranger prompted with a “Babe” that I seemed to snap out of it.

Shaking my head I finished up the story. “Well, anyway, I went right up to Lester and successfully executed the move he’d been trying to teach me and got my donuts back,” I ended brightly.

“And the other seven?” Ranger inquired, still amazed as he watched his men slowly stand from their various positions around the gym.

“Not entirely sure,” I replied, puzzled. “Guess we’ll have to watch the surveillance tape to find out.”

Later that night, after work, that’s exactly what he and I did.

It turns out that my taking my top off was a little distracting to the Merry Men. Go figure.

Tank and Ram had been working out with the free-weights. When I took my top off, Ram accidentally hit Tank in the back, knocking the big man off-balance and onto the floor. While he was falling, Tank lost hold of his weight and it dropped onto Ram’s foot, causing him to fall to the ground too.

Hector had been crossing behind the two treadmills where Hal and Binkie had been running just about the time I stripped down to take on Lester. Binkie lost his footing and threw out an arm to catch himself. He caught Hal instead, pulling them both backward, off the treadmills where they crashed into Hector and ended up in a pile on the floor.

In another corner of the gym, Cal had been working on the heavy bag that Bobby was holding still for him. I guess he got a little distracted because he accidentally missed the bag and hit Bobby instead. Bobby went down quickly knocking the bag into Cal who ended up on the floor.

Huh. Guess I really am good at distraction.

Needless to say, the next morning there were two new rules at Rangeman – one written, one not. The written rule was that all employees using the gym had to wear shirts at all times. The unwritten one was really just a statement of something they should have known anyway – never get between my food and me.

End.

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