Christmas From Hell (31 page)

Which meant that Grandpa would be stuck eating turkey, boiled potatoes, peas and if he was lucky, unsweetened applesauce for dessert. Normally she would feel bad that he was stuck on a restricted diet on days like this, but not after last night when she’d caught him sneaking a large slice of chocolate fudge cake when he was supposed to be watching his great-granddaughter so that she could finish up some last minute orders at the bakery and Duncan could grab an extra shift so that he could have today off.

Instead, they’d found him sitting on the couch with Uncle Jared, Jason, Trevor and three of his brothers, all eating the chocolate cake that she’d made for today with their baby girl sleeping on Jason’s shoulder, her face covered in chocolate and looking happier than they’d ever seen her.

“Think you can watch your granddaughter without spiking your sugar?” Duncan asked, already handing the little girl over to her grandfather.

“Watch it, boy,” Grandpa warned, “One day you’ll be my age and have to do the same damn thing.”

With that bad boy smile of his, Duncan took great pride in reminding Grandpa of the one thing that guaranteed that he would never have any food issues with one word, “Bradford,” which of course earned him another glare from Grandpa even as he kissed the sweet little girl in his arms.

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to give my wife her Christmas gift before the guests start arriving,” he said, taking Necie’s hand in his and lead her towards the door all while glaring over her head at her grandfather, who’d taken great pleasure over the last year out of making his life a living hell.

Apparently, Grandpa had a set of rules for the man who stepped up and took over his job of caring for Necie, and he made damn sure that Duncan memorized each and every rule and if he didn’t, he went out of his way to terrorize her poor husband.

“Why are we going outside?” she asked, smiling as she gave his hand a gentle squeeze, telling him just how much she loved him.

“Because I have a surprise for you,” he said with that bad boy smile of his that she loved so much. “Not that I want you using it,” he said, the smile instantly gone as he threw her a look of warning, “but I found the perfect snow shovel for you.”

“You bought me a snow shovel?” she asked, amazed that he would even consider letting her go near another one with what happened this past fall with the rake, which had been an accident!

“Yes, ma’am, I did,” he said, proudly as he reached past her and grabbed a bright yellow snow shovel that was wrapped in a bright red bow, leaning against the house and handed it to her. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” he said as he handed it to her.

“Thank you!” she said with a watery smile as she accepted it, not because she was so in love with shoveling the snow, but because he was trusting her not to send him back to the emergency room to get his foot put in a brace or his jaw taped for stitches.

It really was the sweetest gesture, she decided as she threw her arms open and went to hug him only to cringe when a sickening
crack
rant through the air and Duncan grabbed his jaw, bent over and said, “Fuck it. I’m hiring a snow plow.”

A sneak peek at my special project #1

Fire & Brimstone

Chapter 1

“
You're fired,” Lucifer bit out as he openly glared down at the small woman sitting across from him, silently daring her to argue with him, again.

Five goddamn long years he'd been trying to fire the woman staring back at him through deceptively innocent baby blue eyes and every single time she’d somehow managed to get out of it, but not today.

This time she’d gone too far.

“
Is this about the uniforms?” Rebecca Shaw, the bane of his existence, asked with a slight frown that only managed to piss him off more.

“
Yes,”
he snarled at the little hypochondriac that missed more days than all his other employees combined, somehow resisting the urge to throttle the meddling woman that had made his life a living hell since the day that he’d foolishly hired her.

Her frown deepened as she glanced over her shoulder at the stack of boxes that had arrived early this morning. “Did they mess up the order?” She asked, having the balls to look adorably confused as she returned her attention back to him.

“
You could say that,” he said, honestly surprised that he hadn't resorted to shouting at the little pain in the ass yet.

He glanced at the Coca Cola clock hanging above the door and noted that it was still early. It usually took her a good ten minutes or so to reduce him to monosyllabic words and incoherent rants yelled at the top of his lungs .

“
Damn it!” She said, getting to her feet and shaking her head in disbelief as she walked over to the boxes that were being returned first thing in the morning and ripped open the box sitting by the door. “I was hoping we'd be able to have them by this Friday,” she explained as she pulled out a black tee shirt and inspected it.

“
I'm sure you were,” he said dryly as he watched her inspect a few of the shirts and aprons in the box.

“
I'm not seeing a problem,” she said with that damn small sigh of hers that always grated on his nerves as she returned her attention back to the shirts and started the inspection process all over again.

“
Don't you?” He asked, cocking an eyebrow as he leaned back in his chair and-

“
What the hell are you doing?” He demanded when the woman that he should have realized was crazy years ago, pulled off her off-white Fire & Brimstone tee shirt and tossed it on his desk, leaving her in a black bra that looked like it was struggling to keep the large pale breasts that she'd somehow managed to stuff in it from bursting free.

“
Trying on the new uniform,” she explained with an expression that clearly told him that it should have been more than obvious what the crazed woman was doing while he sat there, watching helplessly as she reached up and adjusted her bra, wondering where he'd gone wrong.

It was in that moment that he would forever be grateful that he was an ass man, otherwise-

“
Don't. Even. Fucking. Think. Of, it,” He bit out, stressing every syllable to make sure that she heard him.

She stopped unbuttoning her pants, opened her mouth to argue, but something in his expression must have clued the psychotic woman into the fact that he was seconds away from throttling her with his bare hands, because she released a long-suffering sigh that would put every man in his family to shame, and fixed her pants.

“
I don't see the problem,” she said, gesturing to the shirt that she’d had absolutely no business ordering.

“
That's because you're-where the hell are you going?” He demanded when she suddenly turned around and left without another word, leaving him just as he was about to fire her ass and bringing his rage to the homicidal stage

He sat there for another minute, refusing to chase after her. He'd planned on firing her in his office, had actually fantasized about it, and he was damn well going to do it in his fucking office. He opened his mouth to demand that she get her ass back in there so that he could live out his fantasy when the next words out of her mouth had him releasing a vicious curse and racing for the door.

“
Hey, Jeff! What do you think of the new uniforms?”

He was going to kill her, he decided as he stormed out of his office and across the taproom to find the little pain in the ass showing everyone the uniform that she’d ordered behind his back.

“
Oh my god! I love it!” Abigail, his bar manager, gushed approvingly, further pissing him off because there was nothing wrong with the fucking uniforms that he'd designed five years ago.

“
It's about damn time,” Jeff said with a smile that quickly disappeared when he spotted Lucifer coming towards them.

“
I think this will go a lot better with the new…,” Rebecca started to explain only to let her words trail off with a resigned sigh when he grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder. “Didn't we talk about the manhandling?” She asked as she settled in over his shoulder, getting comfortable as he walked back to his office.

“
We need to have a little chat,” he said softly, deciding that there really was no need to yell and ruin this momentous occasion.

“
Another one?” She asked, not sounding particularly worried as he carried her back to his office, pausing only long enough to kick the door shut behind him before he deposited his unwanted waitress in the rickety old chair he saved for just such an occasion and returned to his desk, satisfied that everything was as it should be.

He sat down, cleared his throat and opened his mouth to recite the speech that he'd been working on since the moment he’d realized his mistake when he'd hired her, but he closed his mouth and instead took a long, satisfying breath, deciding to savor the moment.

It was a mistake and part of him knew that when he decided to do it, but after five long years of hell and bullshit he hadn't been able to help himself. After all the crazy bullshit she’d brought into his life he'd wanted to savor that one precious moment when he finally freed himself of her.

“
I was hoping to talk to you this morning,” his own personal reminder that hell did in fact exist, said as she stood up and walked around his desk, but this time he’d been prepared and stacked a large pile of files on the corner of his desk so that she couldn't-

“
What the hell do you think you're doing” he demanded as she simply walked past the large pile of folders he'd stacked to keep her off her customary spot and hopped up on his desk and sat down.

Right. In. Front. Of. Him.

“
Nothing,” she said, shooting him a frown as though he was the one that had lost his goddamn mind.

“
Move,” he bit out between clenched teeth as she lazily crossed one leg over the other and leaned back and grabbed-

“
Please tell me that you're fucking kidding me,” he said when the crazed woman reached back and grabbed the clipboard that had helped make his life a living hell over the past five years.

He still wasn't sure how she did it, but whenever she felt the urge to see if he was willing to do ten to life behind bars for manslaughter, she pulled that damn clipboard out. She never carried it around, but it always seemed to be within her reach, something that had driven him nuts until he realized that he was allowing this small, plump pain in the ass that much power over him. Once that was done he'd forced himself not to care that she was able to pull the fucking torture device from thin air and ruin his whole fucking day with just a few key, “points.”

“
I had to switch Jenn to the morning shift, because I have an appointment this morning, but I should be back in time for the lunch rush,” she began, trying to prolong the inevitable and bringing this whole thing to a new level of sad.

“
There's no point in you coming back,” he explained before gently reminding her, “you're fired.”

“
Uh huh,” she mumbled absently, clearly ignoring him, which unfortunately for her was one of the things that pissed him off the most about her.

Well, to be honest he hated a lot of things and just about everyone. Except for his family. He tolerated them, because he had to or his mother would probably beat the shit out of him.

Then his father would of course feel obligated to kick his ass for upsetting his mother.

Then his brothers would try to kick his ass. That is, if he survived the ass whooping from his father, which wasn't likely. So, for self preservation, he tolerated his family.

To a point.