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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.
