the refrigerator door close and walked back the way that she came, contemplating her choices. She could go next door and see what Andrew had, but something told her that her brothers and cousins had most likely spent the night over there, staking out the house, waiting for a chance to get their hands on Connor and finish what they’d started and had probably already eaten everything that they could get their hands on.
That left her with a couple of choices, she could go pick up donuts, drag Connor out of bed and make him take her out for breakfast or go back upstairs, crawl back in bed and have her wicked way with her husband again.
Decisions…..decisions…..
“I’m going back to bed. Make sure to lock up on your way out, boys,” she said, heading for the kitchen door that she’d already decided to replace with her own design when all five of her brothers stepped in front of her and blocked her way.
“Not just yet,” Bryce said, folding his large arms over his chest as he did his best to glare down at her.
“Not until we have the ‘talk’,” Johnny added, mimicking Bryce as the rest of her brothers followed suit.
“Oh my God, you can’t be serious,” she said, rubbing her hands down her face, because if they were seriously trying to have the sex talk with her, she was going to have to-
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Connor drawled as he strolled into the kitchen behind her brothers, tossing the set of handcuffs to one of the twins, and startling the hell out of all of them and making them jump out of the way as Connor, wearing only a pair of jeans and a devilish glint in his eyes that she knew only too well, walked past her brothers, who practically scrambled across the room to get away from him.
“Sick bastard!” Bryce hissed as he grabbed one of the kitchen table chairs and pulled it in front of himself as though that would somehow protect him from the man that only seemed to have eyes for her and seriously making her wonder what he’d done to them, because she’d never seen any of her cousins or brothers this freaked out before.
Then again, this was Connor they were talking about here…
“Good morning, Rory,” he whispered, oblivious to the fact that he had every single man in the room plastered against the wall and shooting desperate glances at all the exits. He leaned down and kissed her, ignoring the gags and groans of protest coming from her brothers, he gave her the sweetest kiss, laying claim to her and letting her brothers know with that one kiss that he would not be intimated by them.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling back as she returned his kiss, pleased beyond words that she’d found the one man in the world that wasn’t afraid of her family.
“You got up too early,” he said softly, wrapping his arms around her and pulled her close so that he could press a kiss to her forehead as he savored the feel of having her in his arms.
“Look,” Jason said, reminding them that they weren’t alone, “as much as we’d all love to be mentally scarred for life, we came here for a reason.”
Connor pressed one last kiss against her forehead before he let her go. “You mean besides eating everything that wasn’t nailed down?” Connor asked with a weary sigh as he leaned back against the kitchen island, which for whatever reason seemed to startle every single man in the room.
She shot Craig a questioning glance only to find him shooting Connor a nervous glare even as he shifted ever so slightly to the right and further away from her husband. Frowning, she looked around the room to find all of her brothers and cousins doing the same thing. When Reese and Darrin, two very large and highly trained police officers who never backed down from a fight, noticeably swallowed as they shifted away, she decided right then and there that it was probably for the best if she never found out what happened in the woods.
“Sick bastard,” Trevor mumbled, looking panicked as he moved even further away from Connor.
Yeah…
There were definitely some things that she didn’t want to know about, she decided as she hopped up on the counter and sat next to him, loving the way that he placed his hand on her knee with a look that pretty much dared any of her brothers and cousins to bitch. She tensed up and opened her mouth, ready to remind her brothers that she was a married woman now and to back off when the most amazing thing happened.
None of them said anything about it, which meant that they’d accepted Connor. More importantly, it meant that they trusted him to take care of her and put her first, which was something that didn’t come easily to the men in their family. They always had a hard time trusting that someone outside the family was going to do right by the women in their family. Whatever happened during the last week, and she’d already decided that she really didn’t need to know the details, it had changed their minds about Connor. He was one of them now, whether he wanted to be or not and something told her that most days he probably wouldn’t want to be, but that was a problem for another day. Right now, she had to figure out how to get rid of her brothers and cousins so that she could climb back in bed with Connor.
“We came to warn you,” Jason bit out, folding his large arms over his chest.
“Not that you deserve it, you sick son of a bitch!” Trevor muttered with a pout and a glare that had her rolling her eyes as she waited for the men to get on with it so that she could tell them that the “talk” wasn’t necessary when something in Jason’s expression made her stomach twist with fear.
That look…
She’d seen it before, but she just couldn’t for the life of her remember when. That is, until she shifted her gaze to Trevor and saw the same expression on his face, the same one that she remembered seeing on Uncle Alex’s face when she was five years old, sitting around the campfire with her brothers and cousins as he explained for the first time about the Bradford curse.
“Warn us about what?” Connor asked, sounding bored as she sat there, trying not to panic and failing miserably.
She needed to get them out of there before they could say something to clue Connor into the fact that he’d married into a crazy fam-
“The curse,” Jason said, sighing heavily as he reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly looking exhausted and like he’d rather be anywhere but here, probably because he knew that she had no choice but to kill him now.
“Jason,” she said in warning, leveling a glare all her own on the large bastard that was about to give Connor enough reason to file for a divorce based on insanity, because really, there was no other way to explain the bullshit that the Bradfords bought into and like it or not, she was a Bradford.
Speaking of her Bradford roots…
Shooting Jason an additional glare to warn him to keep his big mouth shut, she hopped off the counter and walked around the kitchen island to the cabinet near the sink, the same one that she’d claimed as her own last week when she’d moved in, and opened the cabinet, silently promising to kick every last one of her brothers and cousins’ asses if they so much as-
She released a pleased little sigh when she saw that her hot cocoa supply cabinet was just as she’d left it last night. Deciding that offering them a cup of hot cocoa would only encourage them to stay, and since that was not in her best interest, she grabbed two of her favorite mugs and set them down on the counter. Connor walked past her, barely pausing long enough to press a kiss against the top of her head and brush his hand down her back in a slow caress as he made his way past her and filled a kettle with fresh water.
“Rory,” Jason said with a touch of annoyance, “we have to have this talk.”
“No,” she said, focusing her attention on making two cups of hot cocoa, “we really don’t.”
“He knows what he’s talking about,” Johnny said, not really surprising her since all of her brothers, like most of their cousins, had always bought into the bullshit Bradford traditions and dire warnings of doom.
“No, he really doesn’t,” she said, adding an extra spoonsful of cocoa to her mug, because she knew that she was going to need it.
“Then explain D
ad,” Bryce said, sounding a touch too smug for her liking and for that alone, she decided to argue just to shut the large bastards up and get them out of the house.
“That doesn’t count,” she said firmly, because it didn’t and it shouldn’t and the fact that they didn’t see that still pissed her off even after all these years really pissed her off.
“Someone want to tell me what’s going on,” Connor said, reaching over and added two small pieces of Belgium chocolate to her mug, knowing her well enough to know that she was going to need it this morning.
“No,” she said, right around the time that Craig took it upon himself to add, “The curse.”
“The curse, huh?” Connor repeated with an amused chuckle and a wink.
“It’s not a joke, asshole,” Bryce snapped with a slight pout, sounding offended as most of the men in her family who took the curse seriously usually did when it was questioned or mocked, which was pretty much guaranteed to happen anytime it was mentioned.
“This is serious,” Brian added before Darrin stepped in with a sigh and an expression on his face that told her that even though he didn’t buy into the whole curse bullshit, he was still here to watch out for her.
“Even if it’s bullshit, it’s still better to be safe than sorry,” Darrin said, gesturing to Connor, who was watching her cousin with an odd expression that she’d never seen before. It was more thoughtful than anything and was gone seconds later, but it was still enough to instantly put her on alert. It was a reaction that had been instilled in her after twenty years of making each other’s lives a living hell and something that she couldn’t easily ignore.
Well, she actually could since it wasn’t aimed at her, she mused a moment later when Connor handed her a cup of delicious hot chocolate. It wasn’t as good as hers, but it was a close second so she happily sipped her cocoa while she sat back and decided to watch the show since convincing her brothers and cousins to drop this whole thing probably wasn’t going to happen. They really were a bunch of stubborn, loveable bastards, she thought with a resigned sigh as she sipped her cocoa, absently noting that her husband was definitely making progress with the ratio of cream and cocoa mix.
“Enlighten me,” Connor said, leaning back against the kitchen island as he sipped his cocoa, causing the muscles in his perfectly sculptured torso to ripple and flex, earning a sigh of appreciation from her that earned a few eye rolls and muttered curses from her brothers and cousins that she easily ignored as she focused on her husband and wondered if they could get right to the point so that she could get her husband back in bed where they belonged.
Chapter 6
“Did Rory ever tell you about the curse?” Jason demanded, looking completely serious and making it difficult for Connor to keep a straight face, but somehow he managed it.
“No,” he said, technically not lying since it had actually been Mr. James that had taken him aside at the emergency room and further explained Bradfords and their seriously fucked up traditions and bullshit beliefs.
If the warning had come from anyone other than Mr. James, he would have called it bullshit, told him to fuck off and walked away, but the fact that Mr. James had been so worried about his little girl getting hit with the Bradford curse that he had actually taken him aside and forced himself to explain the whole thing to Connor even though it had clearly embarrassed him to do it had caught his attention. Even though he was clearly skeptical about the “curse” and thought it was foolish, he had still forced himself to tell Connor with the hopes that he would be saving his little girl from a nightmare.
So of course Connor had listened…
And then immediately came up with a plan of his own that would save them from hearing about this bullshit for the next year while still taking his incredibly beautiful wife on a honeymoon. Not that she would know that they were going on a honeymoon, because really, did it matter if she knew that she was going as long as he kept her safe? As long as he didn’t make the mistake of referring to their little trip away as anything more than a business trip, they should be safe from hearing anymore Bradford bullshit and get him exactly what he wanted.
His wife, naked and smiling, in his arms for the next two weeks without any interruptions from the overbearing assholes in her family.
It was going to be fucking perfect.
Okay, so it wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind when he’d been thinking about bringing her on a honeymoon, but as long as he had her to himself for the next two weeks then he could wait a year before they went on their real “honeymoon.” He’d bring her to a tropical island where the only thing that she needed to wear was a skimpy bikini that he would remove every night with his teeth before he slowly licked her-
“Look,” Trevor cut in, drawing his attention away from his plans for Rory’s incredible body and back on the men that he needed to get out of his house, “here’s the deal,” the large bastard that screamed like a girl whenever a spider was around, said as he rubbed his hands roughly down his face. “If you take her on a honeymoon before the year mark you’re going to seriously fucking regret it.”
“You have to wait a year. I know it sounds stupid, but-,” Jason cut it in while the rest of the men began nodding in agreement, but he didn’t have time for this bullshit so he decided to end it before it could get out of hand and he was stuck with a houseful of Bradfords and James boys for the night.
“Let me stop you right there,” he said, holding up his hand to stop the large bastards, because honestly he wasn’t sure that he could listen to another moment of Bradford bullshit no matter how good their intentions were. “We’re not going to be able to go on a real honeymoon until sometime late next year.”
“What are you talking about?” Craig asked, sharing a look that he couldn’t read with his brothers and cousins.
“We’re merging our companies after completing an extremely large renovation on time and under budget. We’re going to have more work than we can deal with in a few weeks and probably have to hire more men. We’re in no position to turn down the work right now, not if we want to take advantage of all this good press we’re getting right now.”
“So,” Trevor said, narrowing his eyes suspiciously on him, which would have hurt if he really cared at all, “you’re not going to take Rory on a honeymoon until next year?”
He sighed heavily as he shook his head regretfully. “I don’t think we’re going to have a chance, Rory,” he said, sending his wife an apologetic look that had the rest of the men visibly relaxing and his wife busied herself with her cocoa, clearly suspicious of him, but not foolish enough to point that out in front of her relatives, not if they wanted to get rid of them.
“That’s okay,” Rory said with a shrug and a questioning look that he easily ignored, because it meant that she was willing to go along with whatever plans he had and he had plenty.
He released a long-suffering sigh, careful not to go overboard with it and adding just enough regret to his expression as he placed his nearly full cup of hot cocoa next to her on the counter as he leaned back against the counter and folded his arms over his chest, making damn sure to look pissed when he said, “I’m afraid that I’m not even going to be able around much for the next two weeks.”
“Why’s that?” Craig asked, cocking his head in question, clearly suspicious, which was fine with him since he was used to dealing with the paranoid James boys.
“Because,” he said, reaching up to rub the back of his neck, “I have to head up to Maine for a few weeks and do a consultation job that I’ve been putting off since last year. As much as I’d like to put it off for a few more months, I can’t. I promised that I would come up there after Strawberry Manor was done and help get the old place off the ground and ready for the spring season.”
He dropped his hand down by his side and took Rory’s hand in his. He gave it a small squeeze as he leaned down and brushed his lips against hers in apology. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said, resisting the urge to look up and see if th
e assholes he’d enjoyed torturing over the past week were buying this line of bullshit.
“But, we just got married,” Rory whispered softly, sounding hurt as she entwined her fingers with his and looked up, sending him a look that would have normally had his stomach twisting and his heart breaking, but the discrete little caress she ran over the back of his hand with her thumb let him know that she was on board with whatever he had planned.
“I know and I’m sorry,” he said, dropping her hand and pulled her into a hug, kissing the top of her head as he held her tight. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
“When do you have to leave,” she asked, sounding a little distracted and drawing his attention to the fact that her attention was now on the cup of cocoa that he’d left on the counter and damn near making him roll his eyes, because the little addict was seconds away from giving them away for a second hit of cocoa.
They really needed to find a twelve step program for her, he mused as he pulled back so that he could brush his lips on her forehead and try to get her to focus, because if she didn’t they’d end up with a houseful of assholes with absolutely no way of getting rid of them. He needed to get rid of them so that they could make their escape and he could comfortably spend the next two weeks lying between her legs and making his cock extremely happy. Before he could do any of that, and his cock was definitely on board with where this plan was heading, he needed to convince these bastards to leave them alone.
Then they were going to make a run for it, because if there was one thing that he knew about the James boys, it was that they would do whatever it took to keep her safe, even from a bullshit story passed down from generation to generation meant to warn them away from the dangers of taking a honeymoon before the year mark. If he tried to take her now, they’d attempt another “talk,” which he was ninety percent positive that he could get out of again.
That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he didn’t want to waste another week on her brothers and cousins. He wanted to spend the next two weeks with his wife, savoring the fact that she was his before their schedules filled up with more work than they could handle and finding time to be together took effort. He’d do whatever he could to be with her. That wasn’t the problem. He didn’t care if he had to sneak in some time at lunch, or on the way to give an estimate for a job, or just holding her in his arms and falling asleep on the porch because he was too damn tired to do anything more, he’d savor every single minute with her.