Chapter 5
“We have to go!” Danny snapped impatiently from where he sat on the other side of the shower door in his wheelchair, still glaring at her as he tried to rush her to move her butt so that they could leave and head to the airport, but this was Vegas!
She’d never been to Vegas, but she’d always wanted to and now that they were here, he wanted to leave?
Not a chance!
Not that she was a hardcore gambler or even had any interests in gambling. She’d already learned her lesson not to about parting so easily with her money and promised herself a million times a day that she would never do it again. So, finding a casino and emptying out the meager savings that she’d been able to save thanks to Ethan’s help was not on the agenda.
No, what she wanted to do, well, more like needed to do, was to find a buffet and thankfully Las Vegas was famous for them. As much as she’d like to say that she’d never been this hungry before, sadly, she couldn’t. It seemed as though every single minute of the day she was on the verge of starving. It didn’t matter how much she ate, if she was tired, sleepy or crying hysterically because she’d made the mistake of going on YouTube to watch cute animal clips, she felt like she was always starving.
She could be eating a large pizza along with a family order of meatballs and spaghetti, garlic bread and she would still be starving, wondering when the main course was going to be ready. No matter how many times Danny or one of his relatives told her that this was normal, she was terrified that she was going to end up being the spokesperson for a Richard Simmon’s video.
Of course there that other part of her, the part that lived in every woman, that was ecstatic over the possibility of being able to eat whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted without worrying about getting fat. It was a dream come true, one that she fully planned on taking advantage of, regardless of the man trying to rush her through her second shower of the day. Not that she felt like she needed it, but it seemed to calm the babies down so that she could focus on other things…
Like exploring Las Vegas, something that the men who’d dragged her here seemed hell-bent against happening, especially the man demanding that she move her cute little ass so that they could go home.
She considered arguing with him, but thanks to the last five months she’d spent sharing a rental home with Bradfords she knew that the direct approach was never going to work with him. She’d learned a lot from his family and she was going to use every single trick that she’d picked up from them over the last few months to get what she wanted now.
And right now she needed to hit at least five buffets in order to appease the babies making their demands known by taking turns nudging her. One thing she’d learned over the past couple of months, every Bradford male could sense when there was food around. It didn’t matter if it was in a plastic container, in the fridge, in a box or in an airtight sealed bag, if there was food around and it was still semi-edible, a Bradford would find it and since she was carrying two Bradfords…
They were on high alert and letting her know exactly what they wanted, which meant that she was going to have to do whatever it took to get it. Taking everything that she’d learned about dealing with Bradfords, she did what she had to do.
*-*-*-*
“Do something!” his father snapped, looking completely helpless while he sat there doing his best not to roll his eyes while his beautiful, very pregnant wife sat on his lap, wearing one of his shirts and gym shorts as she laid her head against his shoulder, rubbing her stomach and quietly, oh so quietly, cried.
“This is fucking insulting,” Jason said, sighing heavily as he rubbed the back of his neck and gave Jodi a pitying look.
“What can we do, sweetheart?” his father, apparently the biggest pushover in the world, asked as he dropped to his knees besides Danny’s wheelchair and took Tink’s small, dainty little hand in his. “Tell me what I can do?”
“This is fucking embarrassing,” Trevor added, shaking his head in disgust as he sat on the edge of the bed, giving Jodi a look that clearly said it all.
She was trying to play the wrong men.
A small sniffle.
“What is it?” his father asked, sounding desperate to do whatever it took to put an end this sad display.
“Well,” Jodi said with an over-the-top sniffle that he just couldn’t ignore any longer and rolled his eyes, because this was seriously fucking pathe-
“I was hoping that we could go to one of the buffets and get something to eat,” she mumbled with another one of those over-the-top sniffles as she looked up, letting her bottom lip tremble a tad too much, but that was okay, because Jason and Trevor were more than happy to take over.
“When’s the last time that she ate?” Jason asked, kneeling in front of Danny’s wheelchair with a concerned expression on his face as he carefully placed his hand over Jodi’s where it rested on the large swell of her belly.
“Poor thing must be starving,” Trevor added with just the right amount of concern as he took a knee besides Jason and placed his hand on the other side of Jodi’s belly.
“I am,” Jodi whispered with another sniffle that really was just too much, because there was no fucking way that his father was going to take a chance of getting them arrested, not with Jodi pregnant and him in a wheelchair.
“We can grab something on the way to the airport,” he said firmly with a glare for his asshole cousins who already knew better.
Hell, they’d already been through this themselves and knew better to prolong this trip. He needed to get her home immediately before anything seriously fucked up happened. He’d already come close to fucking this up an hour ago when he seriously considered yanking his zipper down, freeing him himself so that he could fuck her, not giving a damn about the repercussions. This was only supposed to be a quick stop, a fun way for them to get married before heading straight home before the curse could get them, but now…
Now it might be too late.
*-*-*-*
“Another scoop please,” she said, keeping one hand pressed against her lower back and one gently rubbing her stomach, promising her babies that the wait would soon be over.
Jason chuckled as he scooped more mashed potatoes onto her plate. Without being asked, he added corn, barbeque chicken and biscuits to her plate. When he couldn’t fit anymore on her plate, Trevor stepped up to his side and started filling another one for her. With a wink and a smile, he said, “Zoe always needed two plates at a time when she was pregnant.”
“Thank you,” she mumbled with a watery smile that he unfortunately knew was all too real. His incredibly beautiful, pregnant wife was overly sensitive these days and the littlest things seemed to set her off, he thought, unable to help but smile as his realized that she was finally his for good.
There would be no more shouting matches with nurses or doctors about visiting hours because they weren’t married, no more nights of falling asleep alone, willing to give up his very soul just to feel her in his arms, or living in terror that she would realize the full implications of being with a Bradford and make a run for it. She was his now and-
“Something feels wrong,” his father announced as he stepped up next to him, which in itself wasn’t at all alarming since Bradfords were a bunch of paranoid bastards when it came to buffets and places that they’ve been banned from.
No, what alarmed him was the fact that his father was standing next to him at a buffet without a plate of food in his hands when most Bradfords would be loading as much food as possible onto their plates before the manager figured out who they were. Telling himself that his father was just being overprotective, he glanced back at his wife and cousins to find them talking and smiling as they moved onto the pasta station.
There was nothing strange about the way they were behaving, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that his father was right. Something felt…off.
“Did you do something to initiate the curse?” his father asked with a frown as he continued t
o watch the trio load various pasta entrees onto their plates.
“No,” he said slowly as he thought about his naked wife straddling his lap, kissing him in a way that should be a sin as he ran his hands over her generous curves that he fully planned on acquainting himself with as soon as they were safely back home and didn’t have to worry about this fucking curse getting them.
“Are you sure?” his father asked, his frown deepening as he glanced around the large restaurant.
No, he really wasn’t, but since admitting that wouldn’t exactly be helpful at the moment, he decided to keep his mouth shut and hope for the best. Hoping to change the subject, he grabbed two plates off the end table and gestured towards the carving station.
Thankfully his father was a Bradford and didn’t exactly require much prompting to get him to shift his focus back onto the food surrounding them. As his father pushed him along the line, filling their plates to the brim with food, Danny kept a close eye on his wife, looking for any signs of the curse.
When Jodi sat down a few minutes later, smiling at something that Trevor said, he felt himself relax. There was no way that this trip could be mistaken for anything but an errand. They’d come here to get married before they went home where Jodi’s father was waiting with a Priest and a church full of people to see them get married in uncomfortable clothes and to toast them with overpriced champagne.
That simply wasn’t the Bradford way.
No matter how many times he’d explained how a traditional Bradford wedding happened, Jodi’s father, a really stubborn son of a bitch who’d promised to kick his ass one second for knocking his daughter up and the next threatened to get a shotgun and blow his balls off if he didn’t do right by Jodi, refused to listen to reason. He wanted his daughter to have a proper wedding and was willing to do whatever it took to make that happen no matter what Danny or any of his relatives told him.
Bradford weddings were tricky, which basically meant that if the marriage didn’t occur through a desperate act such as your basic Bradford kidnapping, then the marriage didn’t have a chance in hell of making it past a year. Over the past two hundred years any Bradford that had made the mistake of proposing and actually going through with a church wedding where everything was planned, invitations were sent out and a small fortune had been spent had regretted it.
The marriage either didn’t happen, because the bride was caught fucking someone before the reception, the groom was too drunk to go through with it, or the rest of the Bradfords decided to knock some sense into the dumb bastard and stop him from making a huge mistake. The few marriages that occurred through a traditional wedding hadn’t lasted even a year, most ending before the first month was over.
Since Danny fully planned on keeping Jodi, he’d refused to allow his father-in-law to fuck this up for him. There was a tradition to uphold and he’d made damn sure that he’d done everything by the book to make damn sure that this marriage wasn’t going to end in divorce, or worse, in the ICU. Bradfords might only be capable of marrying when they were out of their fucking minds, desperate to make whatever woman was foolish enough to fall in love with them their wives, but they didn’t take any risks and taking a honeymoon before the year mark was definitely a fucking risk.
It was a risk that he hadn’t been willing to take.
So, when he’d schemed and planned this elopement, he’d made damn sure that there was absolutely no way in hell that this trip could be mistaken for a honeymoon. Not only had he brought his father and cousins to ensure that they were never alone, but he’d also managed to keep his hands to himself.
For the most part, but since he’d stopped himself before he’d seriously considered consummating their marriage, they should be safe, he reasoned as he pulled his wheelchair up to the large table where his wife and cousins sat, focusing completely on their plates and ignoring each other, which definitely worked for him since it gave him a little more time to figure out how to explain why they were here to-
“So,” Jodi said, pausing to take a sip of chocolate milk before she placed her glass on the table and locked her eyes on him, “are you ready to tell me exactly why we’re here and why we’re suddenly sporting matching wedding bands?”
And just like that, he knew that his carefully orchestrated plans had just gone to hell and they’d be fucking lucky if they didn’t follow.
Chapter 6
Sighing, because she really wasn’t sure what else there was to do, Jodi carefully pushed her chair back and decided to get another plate of food while Danny and the rest of the Bradford men sat there, trying to avoid making eye contact with her and looking absolutely terrified.
Not that she could blame them since she did have a tendency to cry over the littlest things these days. Not that she was proud of this or anything, but it was kind of interesting to see a bunch of Bradfords fall all over themselves to get her to stop crying, or when that didn’t work, watching them beat the shit out of each other as they tried to get away, more than willing to screw each other over in an attempt to get away from her before she turned her sad eyes filled with tears on them.
Since they clearly expected whatever they were keeping from her to make her cry, she decided that it would probably be a good idea to prepare herself for the worst with the help of the dessert tables. They’d obviously taken advantage of her drug intolerance, brought her to Vegas, helped Danny marry her and for whatever reason they were now doing everything they could to avoid talking about it.
She considered sitting there, quietly crying with a sniffle here and there to screw with their heads until they finally caved and told her what was going on, but she decided that whatever they were hiding from her could wait. Besides, she’d been craving a slice of that triple chocolate mouse cake since the moment she’d spotted it when she’d walked inside the large restaurant.
Since she was starving, a bit cranky and admittedly amused by the way that all the men were walking on eggshells around her, she decided not to push the subject any further and just sit back, eat a slice of cake or two and simply enjoy the show. She’d eventually find out what was going on, but until then…until then…
She swallowed hard as the rich scent of warm chocolate teased her senses. She shifted her attention to the new table being rolled out and nearly whimpered with pleasure as her babies shifted approvingly in anticipation as her eyes locked on the large fondue surrounded by every tasty morsel known to man. Shifting nervously, she glanced back at the large chocolate mouse cake that was waiting for her and found herself take a step towards the large decadent treat that she’d been craving for the past hour only to stop and glance at the chocolate fondue table with a sigh.
Heaven help her, but she couldn’t make up her mind.
Oh, she would have both, there was no doubt about that, but she wasn’t sure which one she should start with. It was then that she realized that she didn’t have to choose, not while she was carrying Bradfords.
*-*-*-*
“He can’t tell her,” Jason argued as he shove his plate of food aside and joined the conversation.
“He has to,” Trevor bit out, reaching out and grabbed Jason’s neglected plate and immediately begin to dig in, his glare locked on Jason who was against keeping their mouths shut.
“I’m not going to lie to her,” Danny said, shoving a spoonful of mashed potatoes in his mouth, wishing that he could actually allow himself to enjoy the bounty that surrounded them, but he had much bigger problems to deal with.
“We need to leave,” his father repeated absently as he sat down with two large plates of food overflowing with food.
“Yes, we do,” he said with a pointed look for each them, glaring at them until they got the message, but since two of them were still focusing on their food out of fear of what his hormonal pregnant wife would do to whoever was foolish enough to make eye contact first.
Giving up on the cowards hiding behind their food, he shifted his gaze to his father to find him calmly eating his dinner, lookin
g almost peaceful when they should all be panicking out of their fucking minds. They’d been here too long and even with the three of them tagging along, there was still a very good chance that the curse would take notice and decide that this was a real honeymoon. They needed to grab Jodi, get in a cab and get their asses to the airport, praying that the damn plane didn’t get struck with the curse and make this a truly fucked up trip.
When his glare went unnoticed, he decided to shift his attention to his wife and see what she was…oh…fuck…no.
“Get up,” he said hoarsely, unable to take his eyes off the scene in front of him, terrified that if he looked away even for a second that it would get worse.
A whole hell of a lot worse.
“What?” his father asked, reaching for the salt.
“Get up,” he said, unable to take his eyes off the scene unfolding in front of him, telling him everything that he needed to know.
The curse had started.
*-*-*-*
“What the hell are you talking about?” she snapped, stepping out of reach when the officer went to grab her again.
“You violated the ban,” the officer said firmly, gesturing for her to turn around with a pair of handcuffs.
“What ban?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest as she glared at the officer.
“The one you violated when you entered Las Vegas,” the officer said, sounding annoyed while she stood there trying to figure out how one second she was filling her plate with every chocolate treat known to man and the next she was surrounded by police while Danny, his father and cousins were shoved down to the ground and handcuffed. The odd part was that none of them had looked particularly surprised to find themselves on their knees with their hands handcuffed behind their backs.
Honeymoon from Hell V Page 4