Christmas From Hell (18 page)

He couldn’t explain the desperation that he’d felt at the time, but he’d been helpless to fight it and now, thanks to his own stupidity and pathetic excuses, she’d probably turned him into a eunuch.

“
I’m so sorry,” she said for the thousandth time since she’d unmanned him as she fidgeted over him, trying to help him.

Normally he would have just sucked it up, told her that he was okay and got the hell away from her as fast as humanly possible or called up one of his brothers for a ride to the hospital, but things had changed between them over the last couple of days and he found that he couldn’t slip back into the old ways. She’d fucking kicked him in the balls like some mad woman, because he’d wanted to kiss her.

So, instead of telling her that everything was okay, which his balls told him was definitely a lie, he settled for glaring at her.

*-*-*-*

Okay, the glaring was really starting to freak her out, she had to admit as she paced the large living room, well aware that the glare followed her every move.

“
It was an accident,” she muttered again, because she honestly had no idea what to say to the man.

It also didn’t help that his cousins, regulars at the bakery, apparently found this whole thing amusing.

“
Should we continue calling him Duncan or should we just start calling him Dannilyn?” Jason teased from the safety of the other side of the room where he held a sleeping baby in his arms.

When Duncan’s glare didn’t shift to his cousin, but simply narrowed on her, she knew that he was not going to forgive her like all those other times. She was in deep trouble here and that glare let her know it.

“
I-I just reacted,” she said defensively with a self-conscious shrug, which didn’t seem to mean anything to the man curled up in the fetal position with a large ice bag pressed between his legs, glowering at her like she was Satan himself.

When his cousins and their wives glanced her way, she swallowed nervously and gestured awkwardly in the direction that she thought her house might be in and said, “Grandpa showed me what to do,” she said with another one of those awkward shrugs, hoping that they understood.

By the winces and nods, they understood without making her explain, which was understandable since her grandfather did have a bit of a reputation…

Still, the man glaring at her didn’t seem all that understanding or forgiving, which unfortunately had the unfortunate side effect of ramping up her nerves to a dangerous degree.

“
Umm,” she mumbled, clearing her throat awkwardly as she pointed towards the kitchen, “do you mind if I grab a glass of water?”

“
Sure,” Trevor said, shooting Duncan an amused look that seemed to piss Duncan off more. Not at his cousin of course since he was still glaring at her.

Swallowing nervously, she turned around and walked towards the kitchen, the only place in the world where she felt at peace.

*-*-*-*

“
Go check on her,” Duncan snapped, groaning in discomfort as he forced himself to sit up and take a deep breath, closing his eyes when his world started to spin.

Jason and Trevor both snorted at that while Zoe and Haley shot the kitchen door a nervous look. “There’s no way that I’m going in there to deal with your girlfriend after you made her cry,” Jason said, shaking his head in refusal as he sat back and folded his arms over his chest, clearly letting Duncan know that he was on his own.

“
I didn’t make her cry,” he bit out simply because telling them that she wasn’t his girlfriend felt…
wrong
.

He had no idea why and at the moment he really didn’t fucking care, because his balls felt like they were the size of mellons, his cousins were assholes and he felt like the biggest piece of shit for making Necie cry.

It hadn’t been her fault. He’d taken her by surprise and he should have known better. For Christ’s sake, she’d been raised by old man Dixon! He was lucky that the woman hadn’t slit his throat with a piece of ice.

“
She’s been in there for a while. Someone should go check on her,” Zoe said, nervously working her bottom lip between her teeth as she sent a look to her husband only to find the man shaking his head.

“
Leave the poor woman alone,” Trevor said, which of course was followed by Jason, “God only knows how badly this sick bastard scarred her for life.”

“
I didn’t fucking scar her for life!” he snapped, which only earned pitying looks from the annoying bastards.

He considered pointing out that he’d been the one injured, but that would only remind them that he’d gotten his ass kicked by a woman who was half his size so he kept his mouth shut.

“
That’s not what it looked like to me,” Jason said with a pitying shake of his head that had Haley rolling her eyes in disgust and mumbling something that Jason simply ignored as he continued to enjoy fucking with him.

“
Definitely looked like she was going to need a strong shoulder to cry on and help her push past this tragedy,” the asshole added.

“
What tragedy?” Duncan demanded, wondering what the hell the bastard was talking about.

Then again, this was his cousin so…

Everything they said was pointless, full of shit and meant to fuck with his head. He should just get up, hobble to the door, flip them off and walk home, but he wasn’t leaving without his little jinx.

“
What tragedy?” Trevor repeated with a horrified gasp that had Duncan ready to say the hell with it and break the bastard’s nose, uncaring that he’d probably end up with a broken jaw as a result.

Right now he didn’t really care just as long as-

“
What’s that?” Jason asked, suddenly very alert.

Trevor sniffed the air just as the scent of warm chocolate hit them all, teasing their senses and enticing Duncan enough to get up and wobble towards the kitchen.

“
It can’t be…,” Trevor murmured as he walked past Duncan and headed inside the kitchen.

“
Oh, my God,” he heard Jason gasp as he slowly, but surely made his way to the kitchen where the scents of baked goods grew stronger.

Remembering whose house he was in, he knew instinctively that this had to be an illusion. There was no way that anything that smelled this good should be coming out of Zoe’s kitchen, but it was.

The disturbing growl that Trevor made when he stumbled to a halt halfway in the kitchen told him everything that he needed to know.

Someone had cooked something incredibly delicious and it sure as hell hadn’t been Haley.

When he stepped inside the kitchen and saw the spread set out before him, he lost the ability to speak as did apparently his cousins, because all three of them just stood there, staring in awe and wonder at all the trays of baked goods covering the counters and table.

“
How
?” Trevor whispered reverently as he gazed at all the baked goods tempting them into killing each other.

“
She was only in here for an hour,” Jason said hollowly as he too was lost in the wonder that was now Trevor and Zoe’s kitchen.

The woman who had been able to create a buffet of desserts in less than an hour stood in the middle of the large country kitchen, wringing a towel nervously in her hands as she admitted, “I’m sorry, but I bake when I get nervous.”

Which of course meant that he was going to have to make her nervous…a lot.

Chapter 20

Tuesday, December 8
^th
.

Very early in the morning…

Very. Early.

“
Oh, God, just kill me,” the man who’d insisted on being dropped off with her a few hours ago said from what she was starting to think of as his table since he was curled up on it with a fresh ice pack, groaning, moaning and bitching while she was trying to work.

“
I’m sure that if you just called your brother, that he would come and pick you up,” she suggested again, trying to hide her impatience at having the big baby wreck the best part of her day, the time when she got to decide the day’s menu, prep for the day and savor the first aromas of fresh baked bread, muffins and donuts cooking before the bakery became packed with employees and demanding customers.

Instead her normally pleasant morning was filled with a large male, who couldn’t seem to stop moaning miserably, but every single time she suggested that he either go to the hospital or go home, he would stubbornly shake his head and tell her that they needed to talk.

She didn’t want to talk with him.

In fact, she really didn’t want to look at him either, because every time she did she felt her heart tear open a little more and wanted to cry like some pathetic teenage girl that just realized that her first crush thought she was a joke. The comparison hit a little too close to home and she wanted him to leave before she did something incredibly foolish like started crying again.

They didn’t need to talk.

They were good.

She’d even told him that, but the large jerk refused to listen to her. Every single time that she told him that it was fine and that she just wanted to move on and forget what happened, he would interrupt her, start muttering something, groan, cough, groan, cough some more and then if she was lucky he would doze off for a little bit.

Praying that luck was finally with her, she looked up and thanked whoever was watching over her, because the annoying bastard that had taken over the best guest table in the house was now fast asleep. Relieved, she turned around, opened the oven and very carefully placed one of the large mini-bread pans inside. She added two more before she carefully closed the door and set the timer. Not that she actually relied on timers anymore when she could tell when something was done by the aroma as the food cooked.

It was something that she’d been able to do since she was a baby. She could always tell by the scent of food as it cooked when it was done, the very second that it had stayed in the oven too long, and wasn’t up to her standards. Even though she could easily keep track of all twelve ovens going at once by scent, she still used the timer to make her grandfather feel better.

She also used the timer just in case she had to leave for a call or deal with a vender so that she could make sure that the food was taken out at the precise moment when it was absolutely perfect. Yes, she was a perfectionist when it came to her cooking and her grandfather had lovingly teased her about it over the years, but she didn’t care.

She believed that everyone was born with at least one special skill or talent that set them apart from the rest of the world and if they were lucky enough to figure it out, then they should embrace it. She knew how fortunate she was to have figured out her gifts at all, never mind at such a young age. She loved cooking, loved the way it made her feel, the way she could lose herself in it and pretend that all was right in her world. When she was cooking it was just her, the ingredients and a formula in her head to turn them into something decadent.

Cooking truly was the love of her life, she realized sadly as she looked over at the incredibly handsome man laying in the fetal position, watching her every move like a hawk.

*-*-*-*

“
So,” Duncan said as he carefully jumped up on the counter a few feet away from the woman working with the largest industrial mixer that he’d ever seen in his life, “when did you know?”

“
When did I know what?” she asked absently, seemingly unaware that she’d said anything or that he was even there. All of her focus was on the insanely large bowl of batter that she was making.