Honeymoon from Hell VI (2 page)

“
Mom
,” Darrin said evenly, stressing
all of his displeasure in that one word.

“
She’s not going!” mom
practically yelled as she tightened her hold around Marybeth to the
point where she actually feared that she would pass out in a few
more seconds. “I won’t let her go!”

“
Sweetheart,” her
father-in-law said gently as he placed his arms around his wife and
pulled her away just as black spots began to dance along her
vision, “you’re going to suffocate her and send her to the hospital
if you keep squeezing her like that,” Dr. Bradford explained calmly
while Darrin reached over with a bored sigh and put his arm around
her when her legs threatened to drop her on her ass.

“
That’s
safer than where
he’s
planning on doing to her!” her mother-in-law cried against her
husband’s chest with a heartfelt sob.

No one needed to ask
her who
he
was
since she’d been referring to Darrin like that since she found out
that her son was actually going to ignore Bradford tradition and
take Marybeth on a honeymoon before the one year mark was over.
Since then she’d been begging Marybeth to reconsider and even
slipped her a business card for a good divorce attorney, telling
her that she was too young and sweet to go through something like
this.

This
being their honeymoon.

“
Mom, she’ll be fine,”
Darrin stressed with a bored sigh that earned another one of those
rather frightening glares from his mother.

“
You don’t know that!” his
mother cried a bit hysterically as she held onto Dr. Bradford, who
simply held his wife and rolled his eyes heavenward.

“
Yes, I really do,” Darrin
said, keeping his arm wrapped around Marybeth as he reached down
and grabbed their suitcase. “We’ll be back in a week,” he announced
as he headed to the door, dragging her along with him as she was
torn between coughing and laughing her ass off.

In the end she settled for a weak
mixture of the two as Darrin helped her inside his truck and she
snatched a bottle of water from the console, slowly sipping it as
she tried to stop laughing, but the annoyed little grunts and
glares that her husband was sending her had her smiling as she
carefully sipped the lukewarm water.

She considered mocking her
husband, for her own entertainment of course, but the look that he
sent her had her rethinking her comments and slowly sipping more
water as she considered her options. As her gaze landed on the
large group of Bradfords standing in front of their truck, trying
to stop them from going on this trip, she had to admit that there
were many ways that she could screw with her husband’s head right
now and most likely get away with it, but she had to ask
herself…

Was that really the best way to start
a honeymoon?

Probably not, but she was going to do
it anyway.

“
Maybe we should listen to
your mother,” she said with an innocent little shrug as she worried
her bottom lip, mostly to stop herself from laughing at the
murderous expression on Darrin’s face.

“
We’re. Going,” he said
firmly, narrowing his eyes on the men determined to stop
them.

“
But it feels wrong,” she
said in a mock whisper as she let her bottom lip tremble and her
eyes watered as she sat there, toying with her fingers waiting
until she was sure that she wasn’t going to start laughing before
she shot Darrin an imploring look. “It feels so wrong,” she
whispered harshly, wrapping her arms around herself. “So
wrong.”

“
You’ve got to be fucking
kidding me,” was all Darrin said with a sigh as he put the key in
the ignition and turned it. There were three sputtering sounds as
the engine desperately tried to do its job before absolute silence.
They shared a look before shifting their gaze to the two-dozen
Bradfords standing in front of their truck, blocking their
exit.

When they grinned smugly
and crossed their large arms over their chests, looking triumphant
as a few of them pointedly looked around at the parked cars and
trucks blocking any further attempts to escape.

They were good and blocked.

There was a small tap at her window,
and without bothering to look to see who it was, she grabbed her
duffle bag, threw it over her shoulder and waited for Jason to
finish opening the door for her. Once it was open, she jumped out
and headed into the house where a dozen more Bradfords were
waiting, making sure that they got their point across.

They weren’t going on a honeymoon
before the year mark was over.

Sighing heavily, she headed
into the house, already knowing that Darrin, who was understandably
pissed since they’d fucked with his truck, was right behind her.
She didn’t bother acknowledging the Bradfords standing in the hall,
lounging in her living room or helping themselves to everything in
the kitchen, she simply headed up the stairs towards her bedroom,
promising to strangle any Bradford foolish enough to be in her room
with her bare hands.

Thankfully they all knew her well
enough to stay out of her room as well as give her a wide berth
when she was pissed, which she should be right now, but then again,
she’d married Darrin, one of the cagiest Bradfords alive so she had
absolutely nothing to worry about.

She walked into their room, tossed her
duffle bag on the chair, climbed onto their large, comfortable bed
and closed her eyes with a sleepy little sigh. “How long?” she
asked, not bothering to open her eyes as she heard her husband walk
into the room, closing and locking the door behind him.

“
Two hours,” he said,
joining her on the bed and sat back against the headboard with the
remote.

“
Perfect,” she said,
cuddling into his side as she wrapped her arm around his waist and
settled in for what she already knew was going to be a very
enjoyable nap.

That is, until the screams for help
and mercy began, but even that didn’t wreck the enjoyment she’d
found from one of the best naps she’d ever had. The sobbing was a
little unnerving, but she’d been to a lot of Bradford get-togethers
so it really didn’t bother her, but it did alert her to the fact
that the house was pitch black.

“
Ten minutes,” Darrin said
into darkness just as she registered the feel of his lips brushing
softly against her temple.

Nodding, she stifled a yawn against
her hand and threw her legs over the side of the bed. She carefully
made her way to the bathroom, used the bathroom, washed up and even
had time to brush her teeth before she walked back into the
bedroom, grabbed her bag and headed for the window. She threw the
lock, pushed the window open and tossed her bag out, not bothering
to make sure that the coast was clear, because she knew how her
husband worked.

Less than sixty
seconds later she was carefully dropping to the ground with a soft
“
oomph
,” grabbing
her bag, she dusted her pants off and headed towards the backyard
where she knew he would be waiting.

She hadn’t counted on all the
Bradfords lying on the ground, moaning and bitching, but then
again, it wasn’t as though it was really all that unexpected.
Shifting the bag over her shoulder, she carefully stepped over
Bradfords curled up and bitching and made her way to the silhouette
of the man leaning against the fence, waiting for her.

“
What did you do?” she
asked, smiling as she handed her bag over to him.

“
Do you really want to
know?” he asked in a seductive whisper that made it impossible to
care about the big babies curled up on the ground, begging for
medical attention while others were begging for pot
roast.

“
No,” she said, shaking her
head with a smile as she reached up and wrapped her arms around
him, “I’m good.”

“
Help…us…,” Jason? said,
but she simply ignored him, leaned up and kissed Darrin’s chin
before she stepped back, grabbed hold of the top of the chain-link
fence and climbed over it and headed towards the woods.

Before she made it to the path, Darrin
was there, taking her hand in his and leading her through the pitch
black woods and towards the car he’d parked three streets over the
other night as their backup just in case his brothers and cousins
tried to pull something like this.

Sure, she felt bad that they had to do
it, but sometimes there was no other way to deal with a Bradford
other than to temporarily maim him or distract him with food and
since they hadn’t bothered to go grocery shopping since last
weekend…

Well, she was sure that they’d be okay
eventually.

Chapter 2

“
Did you get me some?” he
asked the greedy little thing as she tossed another package of Snow
Balls into the hand basket he was carrying.

“
No,” she
simply said with a
pop
as she pulled the lollypop that she’d been suckling on out of
her mouth so that she could stick her cherry red tongue at him with
a wink.

He sighed heavily even though they
both knew that she was going to share every last delicious morsel
with him. She loved to tease him and heaven help him, but he
fucking adored it when she did it. So, like the dutiful husband
that he was, he followed her from the junk food aisle to the
beverage coolers and began adding bottles of water, chocolate milk
and soda to the basket without sparing him a glance and moved on to
the ice cream cooler where she grabbed a pint of Ben and Jerry’s
ice cream and carried it with her as she stepped in line to
pay.

“
Are they still calling
you?” he asked, coming up behind her so that he could place his
hand on her hip as he breathed in her intoxicating butterscotch
scent that she wore every now and then just to drive him out of his
fucking mind.

“
Yes, yes they are,” she
said, reaching into her pocket and pulled out her phone and held it
up so that he could see that she had over a hundred missed calls
and texts waiting for her. “Have they tried calling you yet?” she
asked as she put away her phone and grabbed a King-size Almond Joy
candy bar and tossed it in the basket.

He chuckled as he leaned down and
brushed his lips against hers. “No, they know better,” he said with
a boyish grin that made her wish that they were somewhere alone so
that she could show him just how much she liked that smile of
his.

“
They’ve given up all hope
of talking any sense into me so now they’re going to rely on your
fear of dying in a horrifying, tragic death to talk you into
calling this honeymoon off for another year,” he explained as he
placed the basket on the counter and began unloading all the junk
food that they’d grabbed.

“
I see,” she murmured as
she added a bag of peanut butter M & Ms to the large pile of
obscenely fattening food that they would probably end up devouring
in less than an hour.

He chuckled as he pulled
out his wallet. “I’m sure you do,” he said, pausing to kiss her
cheek as he paid for their snacks with cash since he knew better
than to leave any paper trails that his family could
follow.

“
Time to shut that phone
off,” he said with a pointed look towards her phone.

With a sigh, because she
was really going to miss screwing with all his brothers’ heads, she
promised herself that she could always sneak on later and post an
ominous photo on Facebook later to screw with his family later,
knowing just how much she’d hate herself if she let an opportunity
like this one pass her by.

“
You know they’ve probably
already reported my car stolen, don’t you?” she pointed out as she
looked up just in time to see a police cruiser drive by her parked
car for the fifth time in the last ten minutes.

“
They reported it stolen
two hours ago,” Darrin said with a wink as he paid for their
things, waited for them to be bagged.

“
I see,” she said, not at
all surprised that his family was going overboard considering the
family’s history.

She’d heard and seen some
pretty fucked up things over the years happen to the Bradfords,
some that had frightened her, some that even managed to give her a
nightmare or two over the years, but nothing that she’d heard or
seen had been enough to scare her into rethinking this honeymoon.
Besides, she was with Darrin, a trained police officer as well as a
Bradford that seriously enjoyed fucking with people’s heads so she
felt completely safe no matter what the “curse” threw at
them.

“
Let’s go, sweetheart,”
Darrin said, grabbing their bags as he reached down and took her
hand in his.

Curious to see what he had planned
next, she allowed him to lead her out the front door, past her car
and down the street where a black livery car was parked. Without a
word, the gentleman driving the vehicle stepped out of the vehicle,
opened the back passenger and murmured, “Good evening, Mr.
Bradford,” with a polite smile.

Admittedly impressed that he was on
top of his game, she climbed into the car, curious to see where
this night was going to end.