Honeymoon from Hell V (8 page)

“
Besides,” his father
continued with a careless shrug, oblivious to the nervous glances
that he was sharing with his cousins, “this whole thing will be
cleared up in the morning when it goes in front of a
judge.”

“
Tomorrow?” he snapped,
right along with his cousins as they shared a horrified look before
glancing back at the small woman sitting across from them with her
arms folded over her ample breasts, glaring at them and clearly not
willing to accept any more of their bullshit stories any
longer.

Not that he really thought for one
second that she was buying any of the half-assed bullshit stories
that they’d been feeding her since they’d left Vegas. But since she
hadn’t called them on their bullshit, mostly because she was too
busy ignoring them as she glared at them, he figured that he had
plenty of time to figure out how to explain this mess to her later,
when they were safely home and this fiasco was officially
over.

Thanks to his father’s unhealthy
obsession with Hostess products, they were once again fucked. They
couldn’t afford to stay overnight and risk anything else happening,
especially with Tink pregnant. He would rather die than risk
anything happening to his wife or children.

He didn’t give a flying fuck if the
curse was nothing more than just bullshit stories passed down from
generation to generation to fuck with their heads. The only thing
that mattered was his family and he wasn’t going to take any risks,
which meant that they needed to continue heading home tonight. They
couldn’t afford to add an extra day to this fucked up trip,
especially with the rate that things were going.

“
We can’t stay,” he
stressed, meeting his father’s bored glare with a murderous one of
his own, reminding the father what was at steak here.

With a frown, his father shifted his
attention back to glaring pregnant woman behind them, cringed,
cursed under his breath and then finally in typical Bradford
fashion, sighed heavily. “Someone needs to help Danny get Jodi home
before it’s too late.”

“
Too late for what?” his
inquisitive wife asked evenly with a suspicious glare that had his
balls pulling up tight in an attempt to hide in terror.

“
To find a hotel for the
night?” Trevor said, trying to help, but sadly there probably
wasn’t anything at this point that would save his ass.

“
Really,” she drawled
heavily with sarcasm. “At five o’clock at night?” she asked,
cocking her head to the side as she considered them and the
officers, who were starting to squirm nervously from her
glare.

“
Very busy weekend,” he
suggested, struggling against the urge to swallow nervously and
avert his eyes, but then she would have him by the balls and that
was not a place that he could afford to be right now.

“
It’s Tuesday,” she pointed
out dryly.

Swallowing hard, he slowly nodded.
“Yes, yes it is.”

“
Are any of you gentleman
finally going to tell me what’s going on or do you want to keep on
pretending that I don’t know anything about this curse of
yours?”

As one they blinked, “What
curse?”

*-*-*-*

Closing her eyes, she shook her head,
because she’d finally had enough. “That’s fine,” she said, grabbing
her bag, threw it over her shoulder and decided that enough was
enough.

She was getting her ass home, taking a
hot bath and ordering as much takeout as her credit card could
handle.

“
Tinkerbelle, stop!” Danny
yelled, shoving his cousins away so that he could push his
wheelchair after her, but seriously, after waking up from a baby
aspirin hangover, getting arrested, banned, a police escort to the
city border and then one to the state border where the Governor
awaited to give them a warning not to fuck up his state and cause
another state of emergency, being ignored, exhausted and dragged
from here to there and every damn where, she was so
done.

“
Jodi” he yelled, coming
after her, but she knew that if she didn’t get away from him right
now and get a chance to calm down that she was going to so say or
do something that she was going to regret, and sadly, kicking him
in the balls probably wouldn’t make her feel bad right
now.

So, with that in mind, she continued
to walk towards the exit, ignoring the curious looks as well as the
ones of disgust because she was walking away from a man in a
wheelchair. Yeah, she’d admit that she was acting like a bitch, but
she really didn’t care at the moment. She was too damn tired and
too damn hungry to give a damn what anyone thought.

Doubling her steps, she walked through
the exit, past the tired looking travelers and headed for the line
of taxis. Within seconds she was in a car and heading towards the
nearest hotel with twenty-four hour room service.

The boys could have their
secrets.

That was more than fine with her, she
told herself trying not to cry or feel sorry for herself, but with
so many hormones surging through her body and the fact that she was
tired and hungry, it was impossible. By the time they’d arrived at
the large hotel she was a mess, barely able to say thank you to the
taxi driver as he helped her with her meager possessions or the
doorman who held the door for her as the concierge ran to get her a
box of tissues.

Since she wasn’t able to communicate
without hysterically, they settled for nods, shakes of her head and
holding up fingers to let them know how many rooms she needed,
nights, etc. Twenty minutes later with a new understanding of
mortification, she was finally in a room, the door locked behind
her and a large room service order placed.

Knowing that she had time for a warm
bath to settle her nerves before the food arrived, she started a
large bath in the two person garden tub, took off her clothes,
grabbed a twenty dollar bottle of orange juice from the mini-bar
and settled into the nice, hot bath and felt herself instantly
begin to relax.

This was exactly what she needed, she
told herself as she took a sip of the overpriced-watered-down
drink. She just need a night for herself to think things through
and figure out some things for herself. She already knew that she
would do whatever it took to make things work with
Danny.

That really was a no
brainer.

She loved him more than anything and
wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. No, her problem was
this secretive business between the cousins, the fact that he
hadn’t even mentioned that they were now married even though they
were both wearing matching bands and she’d found the Las Vegas
marriage certificate in the bottom of his duffle bag the other
day.

The problem she had was this
highhanded bullshit that apparently went along with being a
Bradford.

Well, that and she had a craving for
pumpkin pie…

Chapter 9

“
I’m sorry, sir, but I
can’t release that information,” the desk clerk said with a
professional, friendly smile, but the look in his eyes said it
all…

He thought Danny was the biggest piece
of shit to ever disgrace his hotel lobby. That was fine, because he
wasn’t all that thrilled with himself either at the moment. That
didn’t mean that he was going to sit here and let some asshole keep
him away from his wife.

It just wasn’t happening.

“
Tell me which room my wife
is in,” he bit out between clenched teeth as he grabbed onto the
armrests of his wheelchair, prepared to shove himself to his feet,
uncaring that he couldn’t walk on his own yet, just so he could
grab this prick by the throat and force him to tell him where his
wife was.

“
I’m sorry, sir, but we
respect our guest’s privacy,” the man said with that damn polite
smile that was going to get him killed even as the look in his eyes
told Danny how much the little prick was enjoying this. He’d bet
every last cent that he had that his wife had been crying by the
time she got here, which only made him that much more desperate to
get to her.

He would have been here sooner, but
since his father was currently indisposed that left him with Jason
and Trevor to help him and since both of them were full of
shit…

“
You’re going about this
all wrong,” Trevor pointed out as he idly tapped his fingers
against the marble countertop as he glanced around the small, empty
hotel foyer.

“
You’re wasting your time,”
Jason added from where he leaned against the wall behind
him.

“
No, I’m not,” he bit out,
damning that bike messenger to hell and back for cutting him off
before he could get in the cab and away from his
cousins.

“
You really are,” Jason
said with a shrug as he pushed away from the wall and helped
himself to a small cup of lemonade by the courtesy desk. “If you
were smart,” Jason started to explain only to pause to take a sip
of his juice, “you’d let one of us take her home so that the curse
would end sooner.”

Trevor shook his head with a disgusted
snort. “That’s not going to work.”

“
If we separate them, the
honeymoon ends,” Jason said, gesturing towards Danny with his cup,
“End of story.”

“
You think so?” Trevor
asked, chuckling without humor while he sat there, wondering how he
kept getting stuck with assholes.

They were great guys.

They really were and if they weren’t
his cousins, they’d probably still be two of his best friends, but
God, some days he just wanted to beat the shit out of them and
throw their bodies down a deep fucking well and today was
definitely one of those days. While he was trying to get to his
wife and make sure that she was okay, they were arguing about this
fucking curse, trying to decide “their” next move and making this a
hell of a lot more difficult than it needed to be.

All he wanted to do was to find his
wife, pull her in his arms and hold her before he broke the bad
news to her that she was now a Bradford, which meant that she was
going to have to deal with some seriously fucked up shit for the
rest of her life.

That was it.

“
The curse only fucks with
us during the first year of marriage and only until we get home.
Once we get them both home safely, this fucking curse will end and
they can get a fresh start,” Jason argued.

“
How do you know this won’t
follow them if we intervene?” Trevor snapped and it was in that
moment that he realized that his family was fucking
crazy.

Well, he’d already figured that out
before, but that wasn’t the point. He’d been lucky enough to marry
the woman that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with and
instead of savoring that victory, he’d been doing everything he
could to protect her from a curse that he suddenly realized might
be nothing more than Bradford bullshit that they’d all made come
true over the years as a result of their paranoia.

He was truly a fucking
moron.

“
Where are you going?”
Trevor asked, but he ignored his cousin and focused on the prick
manning the desk.

“
My. Wife,” he bit out,
sounding every bit the marine that he’d once been. “Where is
she?”

*-*-*-*

“
I’m sorry, Mrs. Bradford,
but we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”

“
I’m sorry, what?” she
asked a bit distractedly as she frowned at the nervous man in front
of her, almost positive that this had been the overly-polite man
that had handed her a box of tissues when she’d checked in a few
hours ago.

He shifted nervously as he wrapped his
arms around himself, but the move didn’t hide the fact that he was
trembling. He looked over his shoulder, towards the elevator as he
cleared his throat. “We need you to leave,” he repeated hoarsely,
looking close to crying.

“
Because…,” she said
slowly, having a pretty good idea about what had terrified the
middle-aged man.

Keeping his eyes locked on the
elevator, he admitted, “I’d rather not say.”

“
I see,” she mumbled,
following his gaze to the elevator and then to the stairway door
where another employee stood waiting and looking like the tiniest
noise would set him off into a full out run.

“
Does this have anything to
do with a very large man in a wheelchair?” she asked, and yup, just
like that, the man standing near the door made a run for
it.

“
I-I can’t say,” he said,
turning an interesting shade of green as he watched the other man
run with away, telling her absolutely everything that she needed to
know.

“
I see,” she murmured
thoughtfully as she considered her options.

“
Please leave,” the man
whispered, pleadingly.

She opened her mouth to refuse, but
the sheer terror that she saw in his eyes had her sighing and
nodding her head, because sadly, she knew exactly how determined a
Bradford could be, which was absolutely terrifying to most
people.

It really didn’t bother her, but then
again she also knew how to screw with a Bradford’s head for her own
enjoyment, something that she’d learned from Haley and Zoe over the
past few months. It wasn’t exactly something that she could put on
her resume, but it was a useful skill to have when she was pissed
or well, bored.