Christmas From Hell (2 page)

After that incident, he’d spend the next eight hours in the emergency room taking care of Jodi and yelling at Danny to stop fucking moving until they cleared his spine. The stubborn bastard refused to listen. He’d been too desperate to get to Jodi and prove to her that he was okay to stay still. So, Duncan had been forced to restrain Danny to the bed himself, which had earned him some rather nasty threats from the unappreciative asshole.

When they’d finally released Danny, Duncan had just enough time to get home, help Danny get back in bed, changed into his uniform and headed to the station to work a twenty-four hour shift on the night of a full moon, which meant that every fucking psycho within a thirty-mile radius had decided that it had been the perfect night to listen to the fucking voices in their heads and make his life a living hell. He hadn’t gotten a single minute of sleep during that shift, which had been bad enough, but as soon as he came home it was time to help take care of Danny, run to the grocery store, the bank and a dozen other places that had helped push him past the point of exhaustion and nearly landed him in a hospital bed of his own.

Thankfully he’d managed to get to bed early that night, but unfortunately for him, so had Danny and Jodi. They’d kept him up for the next four hours with moans and groans of pleasure and what had sounded suspiciously like the headboard banging against the wall. At that point he’d seriously considered telling one of his asshole brothers or cousins to take his place, but then Jodi had brought him breakfast in bed the next morning with a sweet kiss on the cheek and a thank you for helping them.

After that he just kept his fucking mouth shut and sucked it up.

“
What happened?” he asked, rubbing his hands roughly down his face while he prayed that this wasn’t going to lead to another night spent in the emergency room.

“
Umm,” she mumbled, clearing her throat as she shifted her gaze away just as a rather interesting blush crept up her neck and cheeks. “Nothing really,” she whispered as that blush deepened into a fiery crimson red.

“
I see,” he murmured thoughtfully, wondering about that blush.

Fortunately, or rather unfortunately for him, he didn’t have to wonder for very long as he followed Jodi into her bedroom and-

“
You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” he said before he could stop himself, and judging by the homicidal glare that his brother was shooting him, he probably should have kept his fucking mouth shut.

“
I lost the key,” Jodi admitted, sounding absolutely mortified as Duncan stood there, staring at his brother in disbelief.

Those couldn’t be handcuffs…

Yet, they were, he mused as he reached for the cell phone on the bureau.

“
Don’t even fucking think about it,” Danny growled, yanking on the cuffs keeping his arms locked in place.

Sighing heavily, because they both knew that he didn’t have a choice in the matter, he unlocked his brother’s phone, selected the camera app and did what every self-respecting Bradford would do in this situation.

“
Oh my God,” Jodi muttered, burying her face in her hands even as he heard a little snort of amusement coming from her.

“
I. Will. Kick. Your. Fucking ass,” the cranky bastard locked to the headboard snarled, giving him a look that promised all sorts of violence when he got free, but of course, Duncan ignored those threats and did what was expected of him.

“
Say cheese.”

*-*-*-*

Two days and three speeding tickets later…

“
Oh, my God,” Necie said on the verge of a panic attack as she sat there in her grandfather’s driveway, gripping the steering wheel tightly as it finally hit her.

She’d actually told her boss to go fuck herself.

Okay, so she hadn’t actually used those exact words, but she might as well have. After five years of her boss stealing her recipes and passing them off as her own, making her work double shifts, denying her raises and some time off so that she could have some semblance of a life, Necie had finally had enough. So, this morning when she’d showed up for work, she’d marched right up to her bitch of a boss, Kathleen, and flat out told her that she’d had enough and that she was quitting.

Unfortunately for Necie, the horrible excuse for a human being hadn’t heard one word she’d said, instead telling her that she was fired because she was five minutes late. At first she’d been a little shocked and even opened her mouth to beg the evil woman to give her another chance, but then common sense kicked in. She took her last meager paycheck, marched back to her car, slammed the car door shut behind her and promptly groaned when the action caused all the bags that she’d strapped to the top of her car to fall off and land in the street.

That was also around the time that the long line of eighteen-wheelers decided to speed down the street, destroying everything that she owned and leaving her sitting there shaking her head with a sigh, because really, she should have seen that one coming. After observing a moment of silence for her favorite tee shirt from college, the one that had been super soft and was now nothing more than a shredded mass, she decided that it was time to move onto the next stage of her life.

While most people would consider moving back in with their grandfather and working for him a major step back, she didn’t. She loved her grandfather. He was her best friend, the man in her life and the only person who truly understand and accepted her klutzy ways. He always had a ready smile and a wink for her when something went bad…

Which unfortunately for her and everyone around her happened quite a lot.

Coming home for her wasn’t admitting defeat. It meant that she finally felt that she was ready to work for her grandfather as head baker and train so that one day she could take over the family business, something that had terrified her for years, because she never believed that she’d ever be good enough to fill his shoes. Ten years ago when she’d left for culinary school, her grandfather had promised to personally train her and show her how to run the shop, but she hadn’t been read yet and he’d known her well enough to know that she needed to do this her way.

Now, she was back for good and suddenly terrified that she’d made a huge mistake. Maybe she should go back to Boston, scrape her clothes off the road, ask her landlord to let her move back into her apartment and go beg for her old job back. Not that she had a chance in hell of getting her old job or apartment back, she mused unhappily as she continued to sit in her car, staring blindly at the pile of old snow where her grandfather’s truck should be.

Then again, it was two in the afternoon, which meant that he wouldn’t be home for a few more hours. That was fine, she decided as she climbed out of her car and carefully made her way to the back of the house where her grandfather kept the snow shovels. She grabbed the one with the black handle, the one that she’d learned to shovel snow with when she was a little girl and with a heavy sigh, she turned around, deciding that spending the next hour shoveling the driveway was better than sitting inside, feeling bad for herself, dug in.

Five minutes later when her fingers started to go numb and she regretted packing her winter jacket in one of the many bags that was now road kill, she decided that it was time to go inside and grab one of her grandfather’s old winter coats and a pair of his gloves. Wondering if she should make herself some homemade hot chocolate now or after she finished shoveling, she absently slammed the snow shovel into the snow pile behind her and-

“
Son of a bitch!” a deep voice suddenly shouted, really close to her ear, making her wince, because she had a pretty good idea what just happened.

After years of unfortunate accidents, she was well versed on how to handle this. Taking a deep breath, she turned around to tell whomever it was that she’d just impaled with her shovel that she was really sorry when she suddenly lost the power of speech and apparently her footing as she laid eyes on the handsomest man that she’d ever seen.

He was also the most considerate too, she absently thought as her feet slipped out from beneath her and the incredibly hot man wrapped his arms around her, turned in mid-fall and took the brunt of the hit, keeping her safe and making her wonder if there was any chance that he would forget about this one day.

Chapter 1

November 26, 2015

Thanksgiving Day

“
I fucking loved you, you fucking bitch!” the man wielding the carving knife screeched, making Duncan’s headache a hell of a lot worse and making him wish that he hadn’t volunteered to work today of all days, but he’d needed a break from his family and the walking disaster that lived next door.

“
Sir,” he said tightly, shifting to the side to come between the incredibly pissed off man in front of him and the naked couple cowering on the bed behind him.

Not that he could really blame him, Duncan absently thought as he shifted to the left, wondering when the police were going to finally show up so that they could take over and he could put an end to this fucked up day from hell.

“
How could you do this to me?” the man wielding the large knife shouted, sounding more hysterical with every passing second, which Duncan knew from experience was not a good thing.

“
Son, now calm down,” the elderly man trembling on the bed behind him said, temporarily distracting Duncan as his words registered.

There was no fucking way that-

“
Don’t tell me to calm down, Dad! You fucked my fiancé!”

Okay, perhaps there was a chance that this could get more awkward, he realized as the understandably pissed off man lunged to the left, desperate to get his hands on his father or the bitch that had cheated on him. Duncan wasn’t sure which one this guy was more pissed at, but it didn’t matter. It was Duncan’s job to stop him before he did something stupid that he’d regret later.

Praying that this didn’t end with him landing in the Emergency Room tonight getting stiches, or worse, Duncan grabbed the man by his arm, twisted it and forced him to drop to his knees while he applied just enough pressure to make the man drop the knife.

“
Ow! Get the hell off me!”

“
What the hell is wrong with you? Get your hands off my son!” the elderly man snapped, reminding him just how stupid people could be.

“
Get back, sir,” he said calmly as he kicked the knife to the opposite side of the room and forced the hysterically sobbing man to the ground.

“
Get your fucking hands off my son!” the elderly man said, coming over to pull him off his son, but Duncan had had more than enough bullshit to last him a lifetime tonight.

“
Back the fuck up, sir!” he snapped at the asshole, truly not caring if this ended with a write-up or a fucking suspension, because he refused to add wrestling with a naked old man to the ground to his day.

Today he’d had more than enough bullshit to last him several lifetimes.

“
You can’t talk to me like that!” the old man said in outrage while the other moron tried to get out of his hold, most likely to throttle his father, which once again, Duncan really couldn’t blame him for.

“
I just did, sir. Now step back and put some clothes on,” he said, turning his attention to the woman pouting on the bed, “you too.”

“
You can’t-”

“
Now!” he snapped when the asshole opened his mouth to argue with him, startling the old man enough to get him to shut the hell up and do as he was told.

Duncan just needed to keep this situation calm and then he could-

“
What is going on in here?” an elderly woman demanded from the doorway.

He opened his mouth to yell for his partner when everything went to hell.

“
Jane, I can explain,” the elderly dumbass said, yanking up his pants just as the woman on the bed said, “We’re having a baby!”