Because of him she hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep all night. Now she was tired, cranky, admittedly bitchy, and had to work on re-writing a proposal for the library renovation that had taken her a month, in fourteen hours and without pay. All because the Town Council didn’t feel that the first proposal properly conveyed the importance of the library and its staff, meaning that she had to figure out a way to bring the budget for library renovations down by ten grand or start looking for a new job when they were forced to close the library.
“For your information,” she bit out, taking a step towards him and pretending that he didn’t have more than a foot on her as she glared up at him, “I was asking to get out of my lease. Not that it’s any of your business.”
For some reason that seemed to amuse him, because his scowl was instantly replaced by that smug grin of his that her palm was itching to slap off his face. “Trying to run away from your feelings for me, Tink?” he asked, bringing her rage to a whole new level.
“Did….,” she started to say, only to force herself to take a deep breath before she did something that would involve that defense attorney that she’d already decided she couldn’t afford. “Did you just call me Tink?” she asked with barely suppressed rage.
Oblivious to how close he was to certain death, Danny merely shrugged as he grabbed the towel from around his shoulders and dried his face and chest. “Mmmhmm.”
“That’s not my name,” she bit out, her eyes narrowing on that towel as she thought of a whole new way to get rid of the bastard.
“Well,” he said, pausing to rub the towel against the back of his head, “it really should be.”
“It’s not,” she snapped, knowing that if he called her Tink one more time that she would-
“As much as I’d love to stand here and chat with you, Tinkerbelle, I have somewhere to be,” he said with a wink as he shut the door, leaving her standing there, seething with rage and making her wonder how she was going to get through the next ten months without killing him.
Chapter 2
“I’m raising your rent,” Trevor announced as he passed one of the large bowls of mashed potatoes to him.
“And why is that?” Danny asked, picking up the wooden spoon stabbed in the center of the thick white goo and scooped up a large amount.
“It’s either raise your rent or let your future wife move out,” Trevor explained as he squirted ketchup on his meatloaf. At least, Danny thought it was meatloaf, but since Zoe had cooked this meal he really couldn’t be sure of anything.
“She’s not my future wife,” Danny said, sighing heavily as he placed the bowl of mashed potatoes down. “You really need to quit that shit.”
“Then what is she?” Jason, another one of his cousins asked as he gestured towards the bowl of mashed potatoes. “Pass the scalloped potatoes.”
Frowning, Danny looked around the table, but he didn’t see anything that even remotely resembled scalloped potatoes.
“That’s rice,” Trevor said tightly, shooting them a glare with the silent message to shut their mouths and not question the food, something that he badly wanted to do. But since it would just end in a fistfight and with answers that he probably really didn’t want, he let it go and answered his cousin.
“She’s just the woman that rents the apartment across from me and that I torment for my own entertainment when I’m bored or I’m just in the mood to piss her off,” which was every day, but he didn’t bother to point that out since it would just encourage his cousin’s bullshit.
“I see,” Jason said, sounding amused.
“I’m glad that you do,” he said, glad that this bullshit was over wi-
“She’s definitely your future wife,” Jason said, chuckling and pissing him off.
“We could have the wedding in our backyard,” Haley, Jason’s wife and a cute little thing that he wouldn’t have minded spending a little time with before his cousin corrupted her, said, looking hopeful as she pushed her glasses back up her nose.
Zoe sighed, shaking her head as she picked up the bowl of what appeared to be gravy and said, “Bradfords don’t have weddings. Weddings imply that some planning went into it and the bride was asked when what it really comes down to is a kidnapping, a terrified Justice of the Peace, a quick ceremony and a race across town to have the marriage consummated before the bride comes to her senses and gets the marriage annulled.”
Trevor gasped in outrage. “You said that it was the most romantic night of your life!”
“Oh,” Zoe said, blinking before she added, “It was,” in a placating tone as she reached over and gave her husband’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
“Keep your lies, woman!” Trevor snapped, sounding pissed, but when Zoe sighed and tried to move her hand away, he quickly snatched it back and entwined their fingers together even as he continued to glare accusingly at her.
“Just because we didn’t have a wedding doesn’t mean that no Bradford has ever had a wedding,” Haley pointed out, picking up a bowl of….well, Danny was at a loss at what the chunky, clear pink gunk was.
“Yes, it does, my little grasshopper,” Jason said as he took the bowl from Haley and with a discreet shake of his head, warned her away from the stuff that not even a Bradford would take a chance on.
“There’s only been three weddings in the Bradford family in the last two hundred years,” Trevor said, picking up the bowl of pink goop and scooped some onto his plate.
“See!” Haley said, sounding triumphant as she moved to pick up what Danny thought was gravy, but another discreet shake of Jason’s head had Haley quickly passing on that to take a sip of water.
“And all three of those marriages ended with divorce in less than a month,” Jason added, receiving a nod of agreement from both Trevor and Danny, because every Bradford knew the family history, traditions and counties that they were still banned from by heart.
Bradford men didn’t propose, because a proposal meant that he wasn’t out of his mind in love. It was the same reason that they didn’t buy rings or plan weddings, because if a Bradford male was thinking rationally enough to do any of that shit, then he wasn’t really in love. A Bradford male might realize early on that he’d found the woman of his dreams, but until he was at the point that he was willing to risk a kidnapping charge, he wasn’t ready for marriage.