Honeymoon from Hell V (3 page)

Narrowing his eyes on his father, he
gestured with the sandwiches in his hand to the large bag in his
father’s hand. “What’s in the bag?”

His father’s eyes narrowed dangerously
on him as he said, “Nothing.”

“
He’s lying. I can smell
hash browns, pancakes, bacon, maple syrup, eggs and orange juice,”
Jason said accusingly even as he licked his lips and reached for
the-

“
My bag!” his father
snapped, hugging the bag to his chest as he took a step
back.

“
Really?” Danny asked
casually as he tossed his cousin one of the sandwiches and bit into
the other one as he considered his father.

“
Yes!”
his father hissed as he hugged
the bag tightly against his chest as he shifted his terrified gaze
between Danny and Jason.

“
I’m not sure mom would
feel that way,” Danny said with a shrug as he shoved the last bite
in his mouth.

“
You know what?” Jason
asked no one in particular as he pulled out his phone. “Maybe we
should call her to see what she thinks?”

His father’s horrified gasp
startled everyone around them, but Danny didn’t care, not after his
father had given Tink medication, guaranteeing them a flight that
they would never forget.

Chapter 2

“
See?” his father said
smugly from the seat across the aisle from him. “I told you that
there was nothing to worry about.”

“
It’s still early,” Danny
pointed out absently while he placed his hand on Jodi’s belly and
gently rubbed circles over where their baby boys were moving,
wondering when she was going to wake up and if the pilot was going
to have to make an emergency landing.

“
She’s fine,” his father
said, gesturing to the flight attendant for a drink.

“
We’ll see,” he mumbled as
he shifted his gaze back to the door where passengers were still
filing through, trying to decide if it was safer to get her off the
plane and into a hotel room where he could keep her locked up for
the next ten terrifying hours of if he should just give her a few
minutes to wake up and get them all thrown off the plane before it
had a chance to take off.

Twenty minutes later he was
still surprised that she hadn’t opened her eyes, but by the time
the plane landed in Las Vegas he was absolutely terrified, because
she was still out cold.

*-*-*-*

Las Vegas, Nevada

“
I’m going to need to know
what you gave her, sir,” the head of airport security demand,
looking seriously pissed, but not as pissed as Danny was at that
moment.

“
Get the fuck out of my
way!” Danny snapped, seconds away from ramming his wheelchair into
the dumb fuck trying to keep him away from Jodi.

“
Sir, I need you to calm
down,” the security officer said, but Danny was done
listening.

He locked the brakes on his
wheelchair, grabbed hold of the arms and pushed himself up,
determined to get to her, but before he could move his legs that
felt like dead weight, his cousins were next to him, shoving him
back in his chair. Before he could yell at them, Trevor was
stepping behind his wheelchair and pushing him towards the
stretcher where Jodi was curled up on her side, still passed out.
When the officer didn’t get out of the way, Jason got in his face,
glaring down at him and giving him no other choice but to arrest
Jason or to back off.

He backed off.

As soon as Danny was close
to her, he was reaching out and cupping her face in his trembling
hands, terrified that he was going to lose her and their babies.
She hadn’t woken up, not once in the last eight hours and he was
out of his mind with worry. She should have woken up by now, caused
a scene that required him to hold her on his lap, but instead she’d
just sat there on the plane, resting her head against his shoulder
as she slept.

“
I’m only going to ask you
one more time, sir. What did you give her?” the officer demanded as
the EMTs pulled an oxygen tank out of one of the large green bags
they’d carried into the security room and began preparing a face
mask.

“
And I’m going to tell you
for the last fucking time,” his father snapped, gesturing towards
Jodi, “I only gave her baby aspirin!”

“
She wouldn’t be out this
long over baby aspirin, sir,” one of the officers pointed out,
which only pissed his father off.

“
That’s Doctor to you,
asshole,” Jason said, stepping up to Ethan’s side while Danny sat
there, trying not to panic, but it was damn near
impossible.

Christ, he couldn’t imagine his life
without Jodi, without their babies. They needed to pull through
this, they needed to-

“
Stop talking,” Jodi
groaned, carefully turning on her side, grabbed the blanket one of
the EMTs had placed on top of her and pulled it over her head.
“Some of us are trying to sleep here.”

“
What the hell?” one of the
EMTs mumbled, looking just as shocked as everyone else.

“
As I was trying to explain
to you earlier, she does not react to medicine
normally.”

“
Apparently,” the other EMT
said, shooting his partner a questioning look.

“
Sleepy!” the woman that
drove him out of his fucking mind growled, making him chuckle,
because he knew without a doubt that she was going to keep him on
his toes for the rest of their lives.

*-*-*-*

“
Tink, you have to get off
the stretcher,” Danny said, but she just ignored him and snuggled
up with the thin blanket that someone had thrown on her and tried
to go back to sleep, but the persistent bastard refused to allow
her to go back to sleep.

“
Sweetheart, you have to
get off the stretcher now.”

“
Go away,” she muttered
into the paper-thin pillow beneath her head.

“
Sweetheart?” Danny said,
giving her a gentle shake that she really didn’t appreciate, not
when she was this comfortable.

So, she did what she had to do. She
reached back and started slapping weakly at his hands to get him to
go away. Instead of frightening him off with her deadly assault,
the large bastard merely laughed, taking her crankiness up another
notch.

“
I’m sleeping!” she
snapped, sounding kind of whinny, but she didn’t care, not when the
jerk that she loved was coming between her and much needed
sleep.

“
They need the stretcher
now,” he explained as he slid his arms beneath her and carefully
pulled her off the stretcher, instantly waking her up.

“
No, Danny! Your back!”
she said, terrified that he was going to hurt himself and land
himself back in the hospital for another five months.

He smiled as he carefully placed her
on his lap, careful not to place her too close to the armrest so
that it wouldn’t hurt her back. Once he had her in his lap, he put
his arms around her and kissed her neck.

“
Are you still tired,
sweetheart?”

“
No,” she mumbled even as
she snuggled in closer to him and allowed her eyes to close. “I’m
fine.”

*-*-*-*

“
I want to hit a buffet,”
Jason whined from the couch where he continued to flip through the
channels, looking for something to watch.

“
You’re both banned from
the buffets,” Danny pointed out absently as he reached over and
gently pushed back a strand of Jodi’s hair.

“
We’re also banned from Las
Vegas,” Trevor pointed out. “Yet, here we are,” he said, sighing
heavily as he reached over and stole the remote from
Jason.

“
As long as we stay out of
trouble we should be fine,” his father said as he took his
stethoscope out and carefully placed it on Jodi’s stomach to check
on the babies, making sure to jump out of her way when Jodi slapped
at him in her sleep and tried to roll over.

“
We’re going to get
caught,” Jason said, reaching back over and snatched the remote
away from Trevor, earning a glare from the large bastard, but Jason
simply ignored him and returned his attention back to flipping
aimlessly through the channels.

“
We’re fine as long as we
stay here and don’t draw attention to ourselves,” his father said,
chuckling when he placed his hand on Jodi’s stomach and the babies
began pushing against his hand.

“
Basically, we’re going to
starve to death,” Jason said with a glare in his
direction.

“
Man the fuck up,” Danny
said, raising himself up on his hands so that he could scoot down
the bed and lay down beside his beautiful wife.

Not that she was probably going to
remember that they were married, not since they’d sort of rushed
from the airport to the nearest all night chapel and convinced the
Justice of the Peace, or whatever the hell they were called in
Vegas, to ignore the fact that Jodi was sleeping and marry them
with a little intimidation and five hundred bucks.

Whenever the JP needed her
to answer a question, he managed to jostle her just enough to make
her mutter something about chocolate donuts and jelly. When he
asked her to repeat herself, his father and cousins reassured him
that she’s agreed to everything and was overwhelmed with joy. When
the JP hesitated, Jason and Trevor simply folded their arms over
their chest and glared until the JP was able to see their side of
things and continued the ceremony.

Fifteen minutes later, they
were married and Jodi was curled up on his lap softly snoring while
his father paid off the JP and Trevor and Jason made a run for it
when casino security, who’d just happened to be walking by, spotted
them and yelled, “Bradford!” tripping over his own two feet as he
attempted to get away. His father may have made an attempt to get
away as well, leaving him to fend for himself, which he was fine
with since that was the Bradford motto when it came to possible
bans and restraining order violations.

By the time the police showed up, all
they’d found was a man in a wheelchair holding his exhausted
pregnant wife in his arms and the JP quietly sobbing in the corner,
trembling and telling himself that everything was going to be
okay.

Thankfully the cops didn’t
ask for his ID. When they saw the Marine tattoo and his special ops
team motto on his arm they relaxed. At that point they’d realized
that he was an injured vet and had made sure that they got to their
hotel safely where he’d been forced to use Jodi’s ID to check in
since he was technically banned.

Okay, it wasn’t
“technically” since he’d contributed to the ban that got every
Bradford in the world banned from Las Vegas, but he hadn’t been the
one that started it. The large bastard pouting on the couch had
started it all just because a five year old had taken the last Oreo
at the chocolate fondue station at a buffet. Not that he wouldn’t
have the done the same thing, but at least he would have been
prepared for the kick to the shin the kid had dished out after he’d
swiped the cookie from his plate.

Then again, he also wouldn’t have
tried to cut in front of that old woman with the walker. God, he
still cringed to this day when he thought about what she did to
Jason with that walker and the shrimp skewer. At least it hadn’t
left a scar. Not that he’d actually asked Jason to drop his pants
and show him or anything.

“
Can we order food? I’m
starving,” Jason asked, giving up on trying to find something to
watch and tossed the remote over to Trevor.

“
You just ate,” Danny
pointed out, not mentioning that he could use a little something to
eat, too.

Had it really been an hour since
they’d eaten? They were all going to fucking starve at this
rate.

“
And your point is?” Jason
asked with a long-suffering sigh that let them all know that the
bullshit was far from over.

“
We can’t draw attention to
ourselves,” his father said, pulling the covers up and tucking Jodi
in.

She murmured something in
her sleep, rolled over onto her side and snuggled up against him.
She reached over and curled around him as she released a sweet
little sigh that had him wishing that they had their own room so
that he could curl up behind her and hold her. But, they couldn’t
risk it.

They’d come here to get
married, hop back on a plane and have a quick honeymoon in
California next year, but that couldn’t happen until Jodi was able
to stay awake for more than thirty seconds at a time. Which
reminded him…

“
Why the hell did you give
her baby aspirin?” he asked his father, wondering the hell the man
would give Jodi medicine, knowing how she normally reacted to
medicine.

“
I had a hunch,” was all
his father said before things suddenly took a turn for the
worse.

One minute his wife was
sound asleep and the next…she was…she was…oh, God, she
was…

“
Get her off of
me!”

Chapter 3

“
Tink, get off
him!”

“
You son of a bitch!” she
said, ignoring Danny as she tightened her hold around the large
bastard and tried to bring him down to the ground so that she could
beat the shit out of him.