by Hadena James
The Dysfunctional Honeymoon
Hadena James
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are purely fictitious. Any resemblances to any persons, living or dead, are completely coincidental.
Copyright © Hadena James 2013
Cover Photo Copyright © Anton Gvozdikov
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 10: 1484163060
ISBN 13: 978-1484163061
The Dysfunctional Honeymoon
Hadena James
Copyright 2013 by Hadena James
Smashwords Edition
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Other Books in The Dysfunctional Chronicles:
The Life & Dysfunction of Nadine Daniels’
The Dysfunctional Valentine
Books in the Brenna Strachan Urban Fantasy Series:
Dark Cotillion
Dark Illumination
Dark Resurrections (Releases May 2013)
Books in the Dreams & Reality Thriller Series:
Tortured Dreams
Elysium Dreams (Releases July 2013)
Acknowledgments and Dedications
This book was specifically written for my mother, Mollie, and my mother-in-law, Kris… Both of whom gave me a hard time for another cliffhanger ending. The two are not only family, but huge fans of the hapless Nadine.
I need to thank Beth. Her dedication to reading and offering opinions on what would and would not work, are essential to this series. I specifically dedicate the armadillos in this book to her.
I also want to thank Jason for putting up with my writing passion and my nephews, Michael and Andrew, who recommend my books to anyone that can read. And of course, my father, Jim, who foists my books onto anyone and everyone he knows.
Finally, my fans, without whom, I probably never would have considered writing The Dysfunctional Valentine, let alone a second novella.
Prologue
Three days ago, I was married. I kept waiting for the Russian Mob to firebomb the church or for a freak tornado to hit. Nothing did. There was a moment when I thought “my intended” would pass out, but Zeke stood his ground and even managed to kiss me without being struck by lightning.
Turns out, it was because Fate was waiting for our honeymoon.
Monday
Thirty minutes after stepping off the plane, I was bitten by a mosquito. That was yesterday. We had come straight to the hotel. Zeke spent the night playing nurse.
This morning, he had gone out to get me allergy medicine. He had come back without the medicine and acting like a lunatic. Currently, he was shoving all the stuff we had unpacked into the suitcases.
“We have got to go, Nadine,” he told me for the twelfth time.
“Yeah, I hear you, I just don’t understand. Are the hives worse?” I had hoped to enjoy my trip to Belize, but it was looking less and less likely.
“Finish packing this, I’ll call the airline and get us tickets on the next flight out,” Zeke handed me something that turned out to be the pearls that didn’t go around the neck. Zeke had explained them and promised I’d be modeling them later. We’d been in first class, no seat mates thankfully, as he gave the explanation. However, that didn’t stop the flight attendant from overhearing. As she walked past, she had quietly slipped me a piece of paper that said “Couldn’t help but hear, the front bathroom is pretty big.” Zeke had grinned and explained “The Mile High Club” at that point. Of course, I didn’t live under a rock completely and knew what the “The Mile High Club” was, but I blushed anyway.
As he talked on the phone, I put stuff into the suitcases. My goal was to be more organized than him. Our clothes were getting mixed together and he had wadded them up into balls ensuring that they didn’t all seem to fit anymore. Worse, all the crap my mother and his mother had packed was strung about the place as Zeke had been taking things out to make room.
I was fine with leaving behind some of the things our mothers had packed. All those stupid batteries had set off red flags the first time we had gone through the airport. I didn’t think they had packed any unmentionables in my carry-on luggage. I had been mortified when the TSA Agent had started pulling them out. Zeke had deftly explained it was our honeymoon. They had wished us well and continued to go through my bags while I blushed to the point I had to sit down or faint.
“Faster,” Zeke made a weird motion with his hand. I rolled my eyes at him and continued to pack at my own pace. There was a skill to this and obviously, he lacked it.
“Ok, taxi will be here in twenty minutes, flight leaves in three hours,” he said, coming back over to me.
“What is the deal?” I asked, shoving a pair of his bikini underwear into the bottom of a duffle bag.
“You know all that stuff I can’t tell you about that I used to do?” He asked.
“Sure,” I nodded.
“It’s here,” he handed me the cell phone and shoved more stuff into the bag. The waiting screen was back on, meaning the call had ended, so I hit the button and stuck it into my pocket.
“Here? What?” I stopped, feeling slow and confused.
“Yeah, someone that shouldn’t be here, let alone alive, is in town.”
“Maybe he just looks like someone who shouldn’t be here, let alone alive,” I offered.
“Nadine, trust me on this, it’s him.”
“Well did he see you?” I asked still looking for a way to salvage some dignity. I had no desire to sit in an airport lobby covered in hives.
“If he didn’t, we might live long enough to get back to the States. Pack faster,” Zeke ran into the bathroom. I gave up on organized packing and sat on the duffle bag. When I was sure all the air was pretty well squashed from it, I shoved a whole bunch of clothes in it and forced it to zip.
Zeke came out with toothbrushes, a hair brush, toothpaste, and other toiletries. He looked at the bags and dropped them into the trashcan.
“That’s my favorite hairbrush!” I told him, walking over to reclaim it.
“I’ll buy you a new one, with diamonds or something. We don’t have room for it,” he checked his watch, “and we need to go.”
He hoisted the bags onto his shoulders. I grabbed our two small carry-on bags and followed him out of the hotel room.
“Yes, we need to go, her doctor is afraid without medical treatment there will be severe scarring,” Zeke was telling the front desk clerk. Suddenly, he was calm and suave again, the Zeke I was used to seeing.
“Oh, Mrs. LaRouche, I am so sorry to hear about your allergic reaction,” the desk clerk said when he saw me. He had a slight British accent. “Try some of this to make the ride home more comfortable.”
The desk clerk handed me a pill and a bottle of goo. The goo looked like calamine lotion, the pill looked like a Benadryl. These were exactly the things I had hoped Zeke would bring back. I started to open the bottle.
“Not now Nadine, you can apply in the airport, we’re going to miss our flight,” Zeke gave
me a look.
“But it itches now,” I gave him a look right back.
“I’ll help you, but we need to load the taxi and get to the airport,” he seemed to put emphasis on the entire sentence. I huffed and put away the stuff the desk clerk had given me.
“Thank you so much,” I smiled at the desk clerk. He finished running Zeke’s credit card.
A hotel person grabbed the bags around Zeke’s feet. We all trudged out to the taxi. Zeke and the concierge loaded the luggage while I took one last look at the beautiful beach. The waters I would never swim in. The bikinis my mother had forced on me wouldn’t be used. I didn’t mind that so much.
“Nadine,” Zeke said my name.
“What?” I looked at him.
“You want to give us those last two bags?”
I was still holding the carry-on bags. I handed them to Zeke, who jerked them without me letting go. The zipper busted and stuff flew everywhere, including a piece of glassware that wasn’t for cooking, the pearls that didn’t go around the neck and things that took batteries. I blushed, realized it would probably make the hives look even worse, and hid my face. I couldn’t believe how much of that stuff he had shoved into the carry-on bag.
“Nadine,” Zeke’s voice was almost pleading. I followed the pearls down the driveway while he went the other direction. The concierge was even gathering stuff. The taxi driver got out to help.
“I got it!” I squealed triumphantly just before the taxi blew up.
My feet left the ground as the impact hit me. I landed quite hard on a small shrub. The branches snapped under my weight. Little needle-like splinters of wood were digging into my back. I touched my face. It was warm, most likely from the hives, but I couldn’t be sure. I also couldn’t hear anything.
For several minutes I refused to move. I was sure I was bleeding from somewhere. I had no proof of this, it was just a feeling I had.
“Nadine?” Zeke’s voice was very muffled, but his face swam into view above me and that helped.
I frowned at him.
“Are you okay?”
“Not in the least,” I answered, my own voice sounding very loud inside my head.
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you stand?”
I wiggled out of the shrub and found I could stand. No blood seemed to be oozing from anywhere. Things were looking up.
“Ok, so he saw you and it probably isn’t a doppelganger,” I told Zeke.
“And he knows we are here and called for a taxi,” Zeke told me.
“How do you know it wasn’t a random taxi bombing?” I asked.
“With you, that makes sense,” he frowned at me.
“I know and just think, you said ‘until death do us part.’ That might happen faster than expected. Have you updated your life insurance yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Then don’t die,” I sat down on the curb.
The desk clerk was standing near me. He gave me a sympathetic look, like this happened all the time. I was betting it didn’t, but he was well trained.
“An ambulance is on the way,” he told me.
“Thank you,” I answered.
“It seems that the bomb might have helped…” he leaned in and let out a scream. Blood exploded from his shoulder. Zeke crashed into me, we both rolled to the ground. A barrage of plinking noises were echoing in my ears.
“Sniper,” he hissed.
“Why is there a sniper?” I hissed back.
“I’d say this guy would like me dead,” Zeke gave me a look that said I had just asked a really stupid question. I was betting I had a lot of questions for him if we survived this. I hadn’t intended to marry someone that was the same disaster magnet as me.
There was another plink and bits of the wall above us exploded. Zeke looked at me. I frowned back.
“You aren’t a very cheerful person,” he said, “you’re always frowning.”
“Someone is trying to kill us and you are concerned with my frowning?”
“Have I ever let you die in the past? Besides, when you get old, you’ll have more frown lines than smile lines at this rate,” he flashed me a quick grin. I couldn’t argue with that, he’d saved my butt a few times.
“True, but we are so not consummating this marriage until I am convinced that I don’t want an annulment and right now, it’s not looking so good for you,” I retorted.
“We’ll worry about consummating later, right now, we need to head for the jungle, that’s our best option.”
“With the mosquitoes,” I gave him another look.
“Well, I admit, you aren’t that attractive with hives and no eyebrows and I don’t want it to get worse, but a bullet in the skull is much worse than hives.”
“What do you mean no eyebrows?”
“They burnt off, Nadine, they’ll grow back,” he took hold of my hand.
Carefully, he got up and took cover behind a car that hadn’t exploded. He pulled me up next to it. More people were running to the scene. More plinking could be heard.
He made some hand signals that indicated I was to stay where I was and stay low. I had worked with him enough to understand them. Quickly, he grabbed the last carry-on bag and ducked back behind the car with me.
“Ok, now we head for the jungle,” he motioned with his head to the back side of the hotel.
“We go through the hotel or around it?” I needed clarification.
“Through,” he shook his head.
“I’ve never dodged snipers in Belize, how was I supposed to know?”
“Not now,” he shook his head again, took hold of my hand and set off running.
I would have bet money that playing with the dogs every day kept me in shape. This didn’t seem to be the case. Zeke was out-running me and dragging me along. I jerked my hand from his and found I could go a little faster without the umbilical cord stringing us together.
We exploded out the back doors, down an alley and past some very surprised spectators that seemed interested in watching the smoke over the hotel. We also passed a few vendors that seemed far less surprised or interested, they kept peddling their wares. Maybe the car bomb wasn’t that unusual in Belize.
Zeke found another cab and tossed me and the bag into it. He gave instructions to the driver. The driver responded by flooring the car. I was forced back into the seat. The driver took a corner and I felt my head slam the side of the car door. The window didn’t break, but it felt like my skull had.
Gingerly I touched it. No blood was a good sign. I figured I already looked like a hell, a few new bumps on my head wouldn’t be noticed.
“Call Anthony,” Zeke told me as the driver took a corner on two wheels.
I dug for the cell phone and speed dialed Anthony.
“No phone calls, you’re on your honeymoon,” Anthony answered.
“And we were almost killed by an exploding taxi and someone was shooting at us,” I responded back, trying not to sound hysterical.
“What?” Anthony roared into the phone. There had been a time when Anthony had been hired to protect me from men with money and guns and very little brains. He had helped me start my business as a result.
Zeke took the phone from me.
“I did a job about ten years ago in Colombia. The guy was a cocaine baron. Guess who I ran into on the streets of Belize today?” Zeke said into the phone.
There was silence for a few seconds. The driver took another corner on two wheels. I let out a squeal.
“Yeah, get your ass down here, because I don’t think we can get out.”
More silence except the car. It screeched to a halt and catapulted me into the seat in front of me. My nose hurt, but again, no blood was a good sign. There was nothing around. I looked at Zeke who was already opening the door. He gave the driver a couple of hundreds and yanked the bag from the car. I followed.
“No, we have our passports, but he’s going to be watching the airport. It took him less
than an hour to rig a taxi with a bomb and set a sniper on a roof. He’s determined.”
I have never been in a jungle. Probably with good reason. I found it creepy. Even on the border of civilization, the trees almost instantly began to block out the full effects of the sun. The ground was littered with dangerous undergrowth that threatened to send me sprawling. There were noises that I hadn’t heard in the city, noises that belonged to animals and I didn’t know how many of them were predators, but I was guessing there were at least a few.
There would also be snakes, poisonous vipers that were hidden in the trees and camouflaged into the undergrowth. I had read about a few of the indigenous species while on the plane and they could all kill you quickly and painfully with a single bite. And of course, at night, there would jaguars.
None of this eased my mind as we hovered just inside the trees. Zeke was finishing up his conversation with Anthony. When he did, he handed me my phone and took off, leading me deeper into the jungle. In here, everything seemed alien. There were noises I couldn’t identify made by animals I couldn’t see. Branches above us rustled and danced as the unseen creatures moved above us. The sound of the city was lost.
“Well?” I asked.
“Well, Anthony, Sebastian and Alex are on their way down here. I’m not sure why Anthony is bringing Sebastian and Alex unless he is using them as cover,” Zeke told me.
“And?”
“And it will probably be tomorrow or the next day. Until then, we need to stay alive and away from the city. We will hike through the jungle to the next village and see about finding a place to stay.”
“Hike through the jungle?” I asked skeptically.
“Yes, through it. We can’t go around it, someone will see us. Better to look like lost tourists than Americans on the run.”
“You aren’t an American.”