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“I’m not banned!” she once again pointed out with a glare that shifted on Danny, who was cuffed to his wheelchair and noticeably cringing as he did anything and everything to avoid making eye contact with her, but he did manage to mutter an, “Oh, shit,” and “fucking hell,” every few seconds whenever someone mentioned “the ban.”
“Are you Jodi Bradford?” the officer in charge asked, cocking a brow in warning as though he expected her to lie.
She opened her mouth to tell him no, but the guilty look on Trevor and Jason’s faces made her hesitate. She looked down at the wedding band on her finger and then at the one on Danny’s hand. With a groan, she closed her eyes and nodded, accepting the truth of the matter.
She was now one of them.
She was a Bradford.
Which apparently was a crime in this state, she realized with a small groan as she put her arms behind her back and waited to be handcuffed.
“Don’t. Even. Fucking. Think. Of. It,” Danny snarled, yanking on his cuffed hands as the officer reached for her.
Jason, Trevor and Ethan, who was now her father-in-law it seemed, all glared at the officer, looking ready to get to their feet and rush the officer if needed. When the officer caught their glares, he hesitated and even took a step back away from her as all four men followed the movement with their eyes.
Wanting to get this over with without ending on the ten o’clock news, Jodi put her hands in front of her and held them out to the officer and waited. With a nod of understanding and a nervous glance towards the four men watching his every move, the officer carefully handcuffed her hands together and gently placed his arm, leading her towards the exit where a curious crowd was waiting with their phones out, taking pictures and ensuring that she never forgot this trip.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” the officer asked with a kind smile as he walked beside her.
“I’m fine,” she said with a small wince when over two-dozen cellphones went off, clicking lights in her face and making her realize that she had the start of what promised to be one hell of a headache. “Just a small headache,” she said, as she was escorted outside into the bright Nevada sunlight.
“Don’t worry. I’m sure that we can find you something at the station to help with that,” the young officer promised.
She opened her mouth to argue, to explain how she reacted to medication, but in the end she simply mumbled a, “Thank you,” and continued walking towards the police cruiser parked in front of them, too tired to argue right now when all she wanted to do was go to the police station, get processed and take a long nap on a lovely wooden bench that she would call all her own until she could make bail.
Chapter 7
“Oh, my God!”
“No, please, God, no!”
“Somebody help us!”
“Not the face! Not the face!”
“Mommy!!”
“I’ll never do it again! Please, just let me go!”
“Help us! For the love of God why isn’t anyone helping us?” one of the officers screamed as he ran past the holding cells, stumbling and tripping along the way as he frantically glanced over his shoulder to make sure that she wasn’t coming after him.
“Maybe we should rent two cars and drive back,” Jason suggested, looking a little bored as he leaned against the bars and continued to watch as all hell broke lose around them.
“That might be the best idea,” his father agreed with a cringe when Jodi managed to make a two hundred and fifty pound officer drop to the floor in a fetal position and sob quietly to himself.
“Flying would be faster,” Trevor pointed out from his spot on the bench where he was trying to catch a few minutes of sleep before the SWAT team was called in.
“We’re banned,” Jason reminded him with a lazy gesture towards Jodi, who was now utterly fascinated with a box of donuts.
That earned a frown from Trevor. “For what?”
“Drugging Jodi,” his father answered with a shrug.
“We’re on the ‘No Fly’ List?” Jason asked, sounding genuinely worried, which was understandable since that would make things a hell of a lot harder on the father of three.
“No, we’re just banned from the Vegas airport,” Danny explained, watching as his wife jumped up on the edge a desk with a jelly donut in her hands and a smile on her lips as she closed her eyes and took a bite of her donut sighing with satisfaction while the officers that hadn’t made their escape yet, ran for the door.
“Maybe we should take a bus?” Trevor suggested only to snort in disgust at his own suggestion and shook his head a few seconds later when he realized what being stuck on a bus for over twenty hours with Jodi, who was not only pregnant, but seriously pissed probably wasn’t the best idea.
And yes, he knew without a doubt that she was pissed at him since the glare that she’d shot him when they’d placed him in the back of the squad car with her had said it all. It also didn’t hurt that she refused to say anything to him. Instead she’d simply sat there, staring forward with her jaw clenched as she pointedly ignored everything that he said to her.
Well, that part wasn’t exactly true. She did seem to get particularly pissed whenever he tried to apologize to her. When nothing he said or did seemed to help, he decided that it would probably be for the best if he kept quiet at the point and gave her some space while he tried to figure out another way out of this.
Four hours later and he still had no fucking clue how to make this up to his wife. His cousins and father had shared their infinite wisdom with him, but since crawling to her on his hands and knees and begging for forgiveness was probably out the question at the moment, he decided to use this time tucked safely behind bars to figure out a way to fix this. The fact that they’d drugged her and all hell had broken lose wasn’t exactly helping with the situation.
“Renting two cars is probably our best bet,” his father said with a nod.
Trevor sighed heavily as he closed his eyes and settled in for the long haul. “It should definitely give the asshole enough time to get out of the dog house.”
“I’m not in the dog house,” he said just as his wife, doped up on liquid Advil, chose that moment to glare at him, putting everything into that one look and letting him know that he’d be fucking lucky at this point to be in the doghouse.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” Jason yelled to the plump detective reaching for the box of donuts, obviously needing the comfort that only the sugary treat could provide him, but unfortunately for him, he wasn’t able to grab a donut and run away fast enough.
The man barely got out a mumbled, “Oh, God, help me,” before Jodi’s head snapped in his direction, her eyes narrowed dangerously on him and before the man could blink or mutter another prayer for help, Jodi had his donut and he was curled up in a corner, hugging himself and rocking himself as he mumbled, “It’s not real. It’s not real.”
Yawning, Danny shifted his attention back to the bench where Trevor was curled up, softly snoring and considered shoving the large bastard off and getting a nap in before he was forced to deal with his wife. Unfortunately for him, that’s when the police chief finally decided to ask for help.
“Please,” he said, looking as though he’d aged twenty years since he’d shoved them in here an hour ago, “save us!”
*-*-*-*
“Maybe we should separate them,” Jason suggested as she sat there on one of those hard plastic chairs, sipping water and trembling as she slowly came down from a Tylenol high.
Trevor laughed without humor. “Do you really think that’s going to help now? There’s no way in hell that they’re getting out of this now.”
“Out of what?” she mumbled, slowly swallowing a sip of water as she prayed that it wouldn’t make her already queasy stomach worse.
Instead of answering her, which they seemed unable to do since yesterday at the buffet when she’d innocently inquired about the matching wedding bands, the men continued to talk as though she wasn’t th
ere. Normally that would piss her off, but right now…
Ah, who the hell was she kidding?
It still pissed her off, but fortunately for them her stomach decided that it really didn’t appreciate that last swallow of water that she’d forced upon it and demanded that she find the nearest bathroom. Knowing better than to sit there and see if it would pass, because she knew that it wouldn’t, she shot the men ignoring her a glare only to once again be ignored and stood up, placed her bottle of water on the seat and went in search of a bathroom before she-
“Oh, God,” she said when she barely made it five feet when the water and everything else she’d eaten in the last five hours decided to make an appearance.
“Oh, shit,” she heard Danny curse as Ethan, Jason and Trevor descended upon her, putting large arms around her and guided her to the bathroom, which was sweet, really it was, but unfortunately she wasn’t quite done and left an embarrassing trail behind her, marking her way back to the chairs in the suddenly quiet rental car waiting area.
She was thankful when they brought her to the family bathroom, but that soon changed when all three of them decided to stand there, hovering over her as she continued to get sick, adding that special touch to this trip from hell.
