Christmas From Hell (17 page)

“
Bullshit,” he said, wondering why he was arguing with the man when he didn’t need his permission to talk to Necie and explain just how badly he’d fucked up and promised that with time and space, she’d be able to move on one day and find a guy that returned her feelings.

He just wasn’t the guy, he reminded himself as his eyes narrowed on the old man that he suddenly wanted to take a swing at while he ground his teeth together. He didn’t want to be that guy, the one that got to hold her at night, tease her, make love to her and get to know the real Necie, because he fucking knew without a doubt that the nervous, shy Necie that he’d seen over the past year wasn’t the real Necie.

No, that wasn’t the real Necie at all and he knew that because he’d held the real one in his arms last night and had seen the fire in her eye when he was purposely pissing her off to get a rise out of her. That was the real Necie, the one that some fucking asshole was going to get and not appreciate one day.

“
Just leave my granddaughter alone,” Mr. Dixon said firmly, glaring up at him through those cold gray eyes that had terrified lesser men.

“
I will, but only after I apologize to her,” he said, because if there was one thing that he was sure about, it was that he was not the type of asshole to treat a woman like shit on accident and not man up and make it up to her.

Mr. Dixon smiled that cold smile of his, the one that sent chills down Duncan’s spine as he backed up towards the door. “You’re going to stay away from granddaughter and that’s final,” Mr. Dixon made the mistake of saying, because if there was one thing that galled a Bradford more than a buffet running out of food, it was being told what to do.

Chapter 18

“
Are you still pouting in there?” her grandfather demanded, sounding grumpy and making her feel kind of bad about ditching him after her, umm, minor breakdown, running to her room, locking the door behind her, crying in the shower for an hour, which had been followed by a pity party for herself on the bed where the theme of the party was her glaring at the wall, giving herself a headache as she tried to figure out the secrets to time travel so that she could go back in time and change the past forty-eight hours.

Once she’d accepted that her plan would never work simply because she’d failed tenth grade physics, she’d popped a few Advil, crawled back into bed and resumed her pity party, which was going well now.

Very well.

“
I’ll go to The Cabin!” he threatened from the other side of the door, earning a definite eye roll, because The Cabin and she had an understanding. They don’t supply her grandfather with any food that would lead to a trip to the ICU and she would continue to supply them with buttery dinner rolls, cakes, pies and those little cheesecakes that their customers seemed to love so much. So, she wasn’t all that worried about her grandfather getting his hands on something delicious.

“
Fine!” she yelled back, not really caring if he spent the next five hours hopping from restaurant to restaurant, trying to get something delicious in his stomach, because she had connections everywhere.

The only thing that he was getting tonight was most likely that oversized salad that she’d made after she’d accepted that she’d never be able to build that time machine. At least with him out of the house she could relax, figure out how to play it cool when she saw Duncan and if that didn’t work, maybe she’d just move.

It was the simplest solution.

Unfortunately that would mean leaving her grandfather and she just wasn’t sure that she could do that. Then again, she could always move away from this part of town, move closer to the bakery and hope that her grandfather took it upon himself to ban Duncan from the bakery so that she never had to deal with him again.

A girl could hope after all, she thought with a wistful sigh as she heard the comforting sound of her grandfather’s truck starting and listened and he backed out of the drive away and headed towards a night of disappointments and garden salads.

Giving up on sleep, she looked at the clock and sighed. It was almost ten o’clock at night, which meant that it wouldn’t take her grandfather long to figure out what she’d set up behind his back. She really didn’t feel like being here when he returned so she climbed out of bed, grabbed a pair of warm, clean clothes and got dressed.

She had absolutely no idea where she was going to go since her options were even more limited, with not having a car and everything. It was freezing out, but at least the walkways had been cleaned and salted so she could take a stroll around the neighborhood until the freezing cold temperatures forced her to return home, drink a gallon of hot cocoa, enjoy a hot bath and hopefully that would be enough to lull her into a deep, dreamless sleep where she’d get to forget about everything for just a few hours.

Then, she would get up before the crack of dawn, catch a ride with her grandfather, who would probably still be pouting, and go to work. Then again, she might just say the hell with it and walk to the bakery. It was only two miles away.

The more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea. She could walk to the bakery, prep everything for tomorrow, maybe make something special, and when she was too exhausted to continue, she’d take a nap on the couch in their office. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was something for now.

*-*-*-*

“
Are you out of your fucking mind?” he demanded, once he caught up with the insane woman just as she lost her footing again and went sliding, but just like the last few times, she somehow managed to catch her balance before she fell on her ass and continued walking.

“
Just go away, Duncan,” she said on a long-suffering sigh, acting as though he was annoying.

He knew that tone by heart, had used it on pretty much everyone in his family and he really didn’t appreciate the little jinx using it on
him
. He wasn’t annoying. He was far from being annoying. He was the helpful fucking one. Everyone fucking loved him, he told himself as he glared as the small woman continued to ignore him and march off towards God only knew where at this time of night.

“
We need to talk,” he said, daring her to give him that look that he used when people pissed him off.

“
No, we really don’t,” she said, shaking her head as she doubled her steps to get away from him when she should have been jumping at the chance to spend time with him.

He chuckled without humor as he reached over and gently grabbed her arm, wanting to get this over with so that they could move on and forget that this ever happened, but something strange happened the moment that he pulled her towards him so that he could apologize.

He realized that he wasn’t sorry.

It didn’t matter that he knew what he did made him an asshole, that he should be muttering an apology, turn around and walk away, doing his best to make sure that their paths never crossed again, but the moment that he looked into her beautiful gray eyes, he was lost.

Before he could stop himself, and he knew that he should have stopped himself, he found himself pulling her into his arms, leaning down and-

Gasping in pain as her knee made contact with his balls.

*-*-*-*

“
Oh…
fuck
,” Duncan gasped in pain as he cupped himself and dropped to his knees, immediately falling onto his side and curling up on the salted sidewalk while she stood there in shock.

Oh, crap…

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She tried to apologize, but she really had absolutely no idea how to apologize for slamming a man’s balls back up inside his body. She considered telling him that it was a natural response that her grandfather had drilled this into her head since that incident on the playground.

“
If a boy lays his hands on you, you take that little pointy knee of yours and ram it into his balls and then when he’s down, you kick him in the balls again for me.”

Her foot twitched with the need to finish the job, but thankfully she was able to overcome years of conditioning. When he started coughing and muttering, “Someone fucking kill me,” she decided that maybe it would be a good idea to help him.

Not really sure what to do, she looked around, trying not to panic, but of course she couldn’t help it. She’d kicked the man that she’d been infatuated with, and yes, she realized now that it had only been an infatuation, in the balls less than a day after she’d given him her virginity. Besides giving her a less than pleasing response to her declaration of love, and had she seriously told him that she loved him? he really hadn’t done anything wrong.

Okay, so the condescending glares were really annoying and she was done with those, but he hadn’t deserved a kick to the balls for-

Wait, why exactly was he following her at this time of night after a major storm? Was the man insane?

Then again, she was going for a walk late at night in the freezing code so perhaps she shouldn’t be judging? she mused as she looked around desperately for something to help him. When her eyes landed on all the snow and ice around her, she had a “duh,” moment, grabbed a big chunk of hard snow and somehow managed to slip on the ice and slam her knees into the hard, salted sidewalk.

Fortunately for her, she was able to stop herself from slamming face first into the sidewalk. Unfortunately for him, she was only able to accomplish this because that large chunk of ice that she’d been holding managed to slam down at just the right angle and hit poor Duncan in the previously affected area. Well, more accurately, the large chunk of ice slammed into Duncan’s hands, which caused a chain reaction, a new and much louder curse and terrified her into trying to make it better.

Which probably wasn’t a good idea, she realized as she grabbed another chunk of ice, desperate to make this right and-

“
Fucking hell!”

Yeah, she probably should have thought this one through, she decided with a wince and a cringe as she watched Duncan’s handsome face turn an unhealthy dark purple as he closed his eyes and tried to breathe through the pain, and there was no doubt that the poor guy was in a lot of pain.

Nervously, she chewed on her bottom lip as she glanced around the empty street and decided that perhaps it was probably for the best if she stopped trying to “help,” him.

Chapter 19

“
Fucking pathetic.”

“
No, shit,” Trevor said in agreement with Jason as Duncan laid there, curled up on his cousin’s couch, terrified that his balls were about to explode and take his poor dick along with it.

He tried to open his eyes to glare at his cousins, tried to tell them to go fuck off, but at that moment he couldn’t do much but-

“
I think he’s going to be sick again,” the abusive woman that had probably robbed him of the ability to have children said nervously as he rolled over and vomited into the small wastebasket that the woman from hell was holding.

Once he was done vomiting, the pressure in his balls eased up enough so that he could open his eyes and glare at the woman that he should have stayed away from, but for some seriously fucked up reason, hadn’t been able to. When he spotted her outside his window, navigating the poorly shoveled walkways he should have just closed his blinds and gone back to bed, but he just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do the right thing and apologize to her.

Okay, so he wasn’t a fucking saint.

He might have told himself that he was going after her to talk to her and make sure that she was okay, but the truth was, for the first time since they’d met and she’d broken two of his toes, he’d wanted to see her. The idea of being next to her, talking to her and touching her had been too tempting to ignore so he’d grabbed his jacket, yanked on his hiking boots and ran after her, ignoring his brother Danny, whom he may have accidentally thrown out of his way when the bastard tried to stop him in the foyer so that he could show Duncan all the pictures he’d taken of the twins over the past few days.

At the time he hadn’t cared that his brother was going to get him back or that Jodi would probably give him the silent treatment for a week for being mean to his brother. All he’d cared about was seeing her. He’d run after her, not really giving a damn if he slipped on the ice and broke his neck. The only thing he’d cared about was seeing her.