Honeymoon from Hell VI (5 page)

“
You…
bastard
!”

“
Oh, but don’t worry,”
Darrin said, grabbing their bags and gesturing towards the door, “I
made sure to switch the room over to your credit card.”

“
You
mother fu
-”

Before Jason could finish that lovely
sentiment, Darrin had her in the hallway and was shutting the door
behind them with a satisfied sigh while she was trying to tell
herself that this was really what she wanted. A nice relaxing week
at home was better than nothing.

It was fine.

Absolutely fine.

*-*-*-*

“
Are we taking the train
home or a bus?” Marybeth asked with a forced little smile as she
stood next to him, waiting for the elevator and pretending like she
didn’t care if they had to go home and call an end to their
honeymoon.

“
Neither,” he said as they
stepped into the elevator.

“
A rental car?” she
absently asked as he reached over and pressed the button for the
tenth floor.

“
No,” he simply said,
shaking his head and wondering if she really knew him at
all.

He’d planned the perfect honeymoon and
he was damn well going to make sure that she had it. When the
elevator stopped at the tenth floor and he gestured for her to step
out, she did, but not before throwing him a curious look. He tilted
his head to the side and gave her that bad boy smile that he knew
she loved so much.

“
Did you really think that
I’d let my cousins wreck our honeymoon?” he asked as he leaned down
and brushed his lips against hers, biting back the groan as his
body stirred, demanding that he stop playing all the fucking games
and take her before he lost his goddamn mind.

As much as he wanted to shove her up
against the nearest wall and fuck her raw, he couldn’t. This was
their honeymoon, a once in a lifetime opportunity to show her
exactly how much he loved her, how much he appreciated the fact
that she’d married him, not that he’d really given her much of a
choice, meant the world to him.

To that end, he was going to give her
the most romantic week of her life even if it killed
him.

*-*-*-*

“
So…,” Marybeth began only
to stop when she realized that she really just didn’t know what to
say as she stood there in the middle of the king suite that her
husband had apparently booked in addition to the room
downstairs.

“
So...,” Darrin said with
that mischievous smile that she loved so much as he reached for
her. “Why the two rooms?” he asked, reading her mind.

“
Well, I was wondering
about that,” she admitted, returning his smile with one of her own
as she reached up and wrapped her arms around his shoulders as she
leaned into him.

He chuckled as he wrapped his arms
around her and leaned down to kiss her. “I’m a Bradford,
sweetheart.”

“
Meaning…?” she asked,
teasing his lips as she ran her fingers through his short hair,
enjoying the silky strands as they slipped through her
fingers.

“
Meaning,” he said, pausing
to brush his lips against hers, “that I know exactly how quickly
they can fuck everything up. So, I made sure that I was
prepared.”

“
By renting two suites?”
she asked, trying not to frown at the thought of how much that must
have cost them.

This was their honeymoon
and she shouldn’t be worried about costs, but she couldn’t help it,
not with the babies on the way and the fact that she was taking a
year off from working fulltime so that she could be a stay-at-home
mom. Money was going to be tight for a while. They would be okay,
but with three babies on the way, a mortgage and only one income,
it was hard not to think about how much this week away was going to
cost them.

“
Stop worrying,” he
whispered against her lips. “This trip isn’t costing us a
dime.”

“
Because you found a coupon
for two free suites at the Ritz?” she asked dryly, nearly
whimpering when he gently nipped on her bottom lip for teasing
him.

“
No, brat,” he said,
chuckling as he kissed the tip of her nose.

“
Then how exactly did you
manage to swing two suites for free?” she asked, continuing to
twirl her fingers around his hair.

“
The first one, which we
will call Decoy Suite A was paid for with Jason’s credit card,” he
admitted, taking her by surprise, because she’d honestly thought
he’d been kidding about that.

“
Why Jason’s?” she asked,
trying not to think about how warped the Bradford mind really was,
because it was actually kind of terrifying if she thought too long
about it.

“
Because,” he said, leaning
down so that he could press a kiss against the sensitive spot just
below her neck, “the bastard went to Harvard so the odds were in
his favor that he was going to figure out my plan first. Besides,
he’s the most persistent bastard so I covered my bases.”

“
And this second suite?”
she asked as she tilted her head back and closed her eyes as he
continued his sensual assault.

“
Is a belated wedding
present from your brother,” he said, sounding rather distracted as
he continued to kiss her.

That surprised her, not
that Jake would do something sweet for her, but that he would be
okay with Darrin taking her on this honeymoon since he’d been
raised on the same Bradford bullshit stories as she had. While
she’d believed them to a certain extent, putting the blame for
their seriously fucked up honeymoons on poor planning, bad timing
and Bradford stubbornness, she also believed that all those
honeymoons from hell happened because they expected the shit to hit
the fan.

When you were brought up believing
that you would have a fucked up honeymoon if you took it before the
year mark was over, it was going to screw with your brains and
cause you to make choices that would make those warnings eventually
come true. She’d chosen to take this chance with Darrin with a
clear head, knowing the family history and exactly what could
happen if they made every move in an effort to avoid this supposed
curse.

Jake on the other hand…

While he may not be related to the
Bradfords or have to worry about this “curse” biting him in the ass
one day, he was definitely a believer. Whenever a Bradford bit the
big one and finally settled down, Jake was always there, placing
bets on just how fucked up the honeymoon would get. He’d made a lot
of money over the years, lost a lot as well, but he always found
amusement out of watching another Bradford get his ass kicked by
the curse.

That is until she married a Bradford
and the full implication of what that meant hit him. He’d been
adamantly opposed to her going on a honeymoon, had threatened to
tie her up and keep her locked up in their mother’s basement until
the year mark was up. He’d even come over and had a shouting match
with Darrin, which had actually terrified her enough to grab the
phone and start calling Reese, Darrin’s twin, and father to stop
them from killing each other. Before she got the chance to hit
“send,” her husband and brother had quieted down and were even
chuckling, which shouldn’t have frightened her, but it
did.

An hour later, Jake had walked out of
Darrin’s office, gave her head a patronizing pet on the head with a
grin and left while whistling a jaunty tone. She’d wondered about
that, had actually had a few nightmares about it since, but had
simply put it out of her mind when the Bradfords decided to talk
Darrin out of taking her on this honeymoon. Darrin hadn’t been able
to talk his family out of letting it go, and honestly hadn’t tried
very hard, which made her wonder what he’d said to Jake to change
his mind.

She knew that she should
just let it go and be happy that her brother had let it go,
but…

She really needed to know.

“
What exactly did you tell
my brother?” she asked, stepping back just far enough so that she
could look up into his handsome face as he explained exactly how
he’d managed to pull this one off.

Darrin chuckled as he leaned down and
kissed the tip of her nose. “Nothing much.”

“
Nothing much?” she
repeated back slowly, knowing that he was full of sh-

“
I just reminded him that
we’d already had our very own fucked up honeymoon so there was
absolutely nothing to worry about.”

Chapter 6

“
We did?” she asked in a
tone that sounded suspiciously as though she was questioning his
sanity, which was probably appropriate considering that she was
sending him a matching look that said the very same
thing.

It definitely wasn’t a look that he
believed a loving, devoted wife that worshipped the very ground
that her husband walked on should be sending him, he mused,
deciding to forgive her, because that was just the kind of husband
that he was.

God, he really was too good to her, he
thought with a pained sigh as he rewarded her disloyalty with
another one of those teasing kisses to the tip of her nose simply
because he knew it annoyed the shit out of her before he explained
what she should have already figured out.

“
We did.”

“
Was I there or did this
‘honeymoon’,” she said, pausing to make air quotes around the word
honeymoon before she continued, earning his displeasure and making
him reconsider grabbing the last set of handcuffs that he had and
cuffing her beautiful ass to the toilet for treachery, “or did it
all happen in your head?”

“
You
were there,”
he said evenly as she glared
at her, seriously considering spanking her even knowing that it
would result in the violent removal of his balls.

“
Really?” she asked slowly,
giving him a bored look that told him everything that he needed to
know.

She was about to ditch his ass for
room service and a hot bath.

Glaring at the
traitorous little thing that he wanted to fuck so badly, he bit
out, “
Florida
.”

When her lips pulled up into an
adorable frown, he considered risking his balls, but when her frown
turned confused he decided to give her another opportunity to make
this up to him for doubting him.

“
You mean your family
trip?” she asked with a look that said it all.

She thought he was out of his fucking
mind, but that was okay with him since that was the way most
Bradford wives looked at their husbands most days anyway. Since it
was good news, he decided to forgive her as he pulled her into his
arms and kissed her forehead.

“
Yes, our trip to Florida,”
he agreed, knowing that she would quickly comprehend his meaning so
that they could move on and get back to the perfect honeymoon that
he’d planned for her.

Correction, the perfect makeup
honeymoon that he’d planned for her since the first one had been
seriously fucked up, which of course was to be expected since he
was a Bradford and taking a honeymoon before the year mark always
ended in disaster. Since they’d already taken a honeymoon that had
ended horribly for them and everyone involved, they were
untouchable on this trip.

They didn’t have to worry about any of
the normal Bradford cursed honeymoon on this trip. There would be
no muggings, food poisoning, trips to the hospital, identity theft,
missing limbs, worries about getting hit by a cab, or attacked by a
group of rabid squirrels, because they’d already been through that
hell.

No, this trip was going to be fucking
perfect.

Not even the annoying assholes
currently locked up in the suite downstairs could ruin this. They’d
already paid their dues and now, they were going to enjoy this
trip.

“
How exactly did that count
as our honeymoon?” she asked when it should have been
obvious.

“
Because that was the trip
that we took after we got married,” he explained to her anyway,
even though, really she should have been able to figure this out on
her own.

“
You mean after you
blackmailed me into saying ‘I do,’?” she asked as though there was
really a difference.

“
Yes,” he said with a tired
sigh, wondering why it was taking her so long to show her
appreciation.

“
I see,” she murmured
thoughtfully as she pulled away from him and wrapped her arms
around herself.

“
Do you?” he asked with a
grin, deciding that it was time to focus back on their perfect
honeymoon.

“
Mmmhmm,” she murmured,
throwing a nervous glance around the room as she headed for the
door, pausing only long enough to grab her bag as she grabbed the
door, threw it open and rushed out of the room.

“
Where the hell are you
going?” he demanded as he hurried after her.

“
To get home before it’s
too late,” she said, shooting another nervous glance over her
shoulder as she rushed towards the elevator doors.

Sighing heavily and shaking his head
in disgust, mostly at himself, he grabbed her and threw her over
his shoulder, wondering why women had to be so damn
difficult.