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Since she was obviously pissed and there was absolutely no way to make her forget about the “kidnapping,” drugging, and the hundred little things that they’d been forced to do to her to get what they wanted, he decided to take a different tactic, one that would put him on every Bradford’s shit list, but was guaranteed to save his ass.
“It was Jason’s idea,” he said even as he sent a silent apology to the annoying bastard who’d stuck his neck out for him.
He hated to do it, hated to fuck over someone that he cared about so much and had gone through so much shit to help him, but then again, what choice did he have?
“Really?” she said absently, looking a little distracted and not really sounding like she believed him as she continued to toy with a short lock of his hair.
“Yes,” he said firmly with a nod as he pushed the wheels ever so slightly in the direction of the bedroom door, praying that they’d find something, anything to distract his wife in the kitchen before it was too late.
“I see,” she murmured, sounding thoughtful as he sat there, trying to resist the urge to squirm in his chair.
“I’m glad that you do,” he said, swallowing hard as he tightened his grip on the wheels and-
Oh, fuck no…
She set the brakes.
Chapter 12
“So, you’re a victim in all this?” she asked, barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes as he looked her in the eye, letting his bottom lip tremble and said with heavy, tortured sigh, “Yes.”
“I see,” she said, forced to look away before she started laughing, because there was just something so unbelievably cute about a large man like her husband trying to pout his way out of trouble.
It was definitely the Bradford pout, she thought even as she couldn’t help but compare it to Jason’s, who’d most likely perfected the pout before he’d left the womb. Jason could probably pout his way out of anything, but not Danny. For some reason the large ex-marine just couldn’t pull it off. It was adorable even if he couldn’t pull it off.
“They made me do it,” he said in a mock whisper that had her biting her lip and struggling not to laugh. “I’ve never felt so dirty before…so used…”
“And this, um, ban?” she asked, relaxing her hold around him as she settled more comfortably on his lap as she managed to keep a straight face as she looked him in the eye.
All humor vaporized from his expression as he bit out, “Political bullshit meant to keep us down.”
She couldn’t help but frown at that as she slowly said, “From a buffet?”
“Yes,” he said without any hesitation.
“And from Vegas?” she asked, unable to hide the doubt in her voice, because really, how did an entire family manage to get themselves banned from a city?
“A simple misunderstanding,” he murmured as he looked away.
“I see,” she said with a frown, trying to figure out how that was even legally possible.
“Besides,” he said, bringing her attention back to him and away from all the terrifying possibilities running through her head, “it’s not important.”
Since that ban apparently applied to her now, she thought it was kind of important, but since it was also something that was probably going to terrify her, she decided that it was probably a conversation left for a later time. Right now they had other things to focus on.
“Okay, so how exactly would that explain you ignoring me and refusing to touch me since you left the hospital?” she asked, not realizing how much his disinterest had really hurt until that moment.
He sighed heavily as he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her for the first time in days. “The curse,” he said unhappily as though that explained it all.
She waited for more, a better explanation, something that started off with, “We’re not fucking crazy, but…”, however, nothing else followed except for a sigh of relief that told her that he was not only done, but that a huge weight had been lifted off his chest by telling her.
Unfortunately for her, having him wrap all the bullshit over the last couple of days with the phrase, “The Curse,” really wasn’t all that enlightening. It definitely didn’t explain things like the kidnapping, the quick elopement that she really couldn’t remember, why they were all stuck sharing the same hotel room with his cousins and father or why he did everything that he could to make sure that they were never within touching distance.
On top of that they’d been forced to flee the state like criminals, surviving on whatever stale junk food they could find in vending machines, out of the way convenient stores and fast food joints that should have been condemned years ago, which sadly, she was pretty sure that a few actually had been. When they hadn’t been scavenging for stale food to fight over, they’d all been jam packed in a rental car that smelled like feet and ass.
It had made the trip truly memorable.
Not that she was ever going to forget about the time that she got kidnapped, dragged across state lines and came back married to a man that was apparently paranoid. Granted, it appeared that the majority of men in his family were paranoid, but that was a problem for another time.
Right now they needed to settle a few things, find something to eat and hopefully sleep for the next month without having to worry about doctor’s appointments, trying to figure out a way to eat non-stop to appease the very demanding babies shifting anxiously inside her, reminding her that it had been at least an hour since the last time she’d ate, and just relax and enjoy being in his arms without worrying about hospital staff or his family barging in and ruining what little time they had together.
“Any chance that you could explain this whole curse thing as well as the need to drug and kidnap me to get married while we roll into the kitchen and make pancakes?” she suggested, undecided whether or not she was going to share the pancakes once they were done, but that really depended on how well was he able to satisfy her curiosity.
Otherwise…
She’d probably have one cranky Bradford on her hands, but on the bright side, she’d be pleasantly full and ready for a nap. Grinning that sexy grin of his, he reached down, released the brakes on his wheelchair and carefully pushed them towards the extra wide bedroom door and down the hallway towards the large country-style kitchen that his brothers and cousins had designed for them.
As soon as he’d rolled them off the polished wood floor and onto the smooth, shiny kitchen tile, she was climbing off his lap and headed towards the cabinets, searching for everything that she needed to make her famous fluffy buttermilk pancakes and nearly weeping with relief when she found everything that she needed and more.
Setting a large mixing bowl on the kitchen island, she grabbed the eggs and a whisk and gestured for Danny to continue, hoping that something
he said would help her make sense of this past week or at the very least make that paranoid side of her that demanded that she say goodbye to everything in the world she owned and make a run for it, but she figured that she owed it to their babies for her to hear him out.
Besides, she was starving and the pancakes wouldn’t be done for twenty more minutes so she figured she’d give him a chance to explain what happened before she ate all the pancakes, grabbed her stuff and made the walk of shame back to her father’s house where she would have to move back in, knocked up and in need of her daddy to make everything better.
“Will there be bacon or eggs?” he asked with a cocking of his brow, obviously deciding that some negotiation had to be done before he explained his behavior.
“For me?” she said as she opened the refrigerator door and selected the delicious items and set them on the kitchen island near the bowl. “Yes, but I haven’t decided if I’m in a sharing mood quite just yet.”
“I see,” he murmured thoughtfully with a calculating look in his eye as he shifted his gaze from her to the food, obviously trying to decide just how much he was going to have admit to in order to get what he wanted.
In the end, it was the drop pure vanilla extract that she added to the pancake batter that helped him make up his mind. With a heavy sigh, he said, “We were supposed to be married, back on a plane and home before the curse kicked in,” he said, licking his
