“Then what’s it about?”
“Did I not mention that I hated you?” Trevor asked with a disgusted shake of his head, taking another sip of water.
“But you love Marybeth,” Darrin pointed out.
Trevor looked up and met his gaze head on, “So do you.”
“Never said that I didn’t.”
“But, you’ve never told her.”
He actually had…
But since he’d been drunk and had mistaken her roommate for her, who’d sort of flipped out when she’d realized that he was in love with Marybeth, he decided that it was probably one of those things that shouldn’t be mentioned.
Ever.
“I don’t need to tell her.”
Trevor chuckled, shaking his head in wonder. “You’re hoping that the Bradford curse will do the work for you.”
“Maybe,” he said with a shrug.
“It’s not going to work.”
“It just might.”
Trevor muttered something as he put his cup down. “The curse is bullshit. It’s not going to work.”
“Then explain Zoe,” he said as he placed his cup of coffee on the table.
“She begged me to marry her and I just didn’t have the heart to turn the poor thing down,” Trevor said with an exaggerated sigh and a sad shake of his head.
“Didn’t she lose a bet?” he asked with a frown.
“You bastard!”
“Just sell me the house,” he said, hoping to get this over with so that he could hunt Marybeth down and start the long process of convincing her that this was a great idea.
“Not happening.”
“Yeah, it really is.”
“I’ll sell the house to Marybeth, but not to you!”
“That’s really not going to work for me,” he pointed out.
“Because she’ll be able to kick you out?” Trevor guessed, shaking his head in disgust.
“Exactly.”
“I’m not selling you the house,” Trevor said firmly.
“Oh, but I think you will,” Darrin said, pushing away from the wall as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone. “Unless you want Zoe to see what you were doing last night,” he said, holding the phone out to his cousin so that he could see the damning picture in all its glory.
“You…bastard!”
“It sure would be a shame if Zoe found out that you were throwing away the lunches that she packed for you everyday,” Darrin explained as he returned the phone to his back pocket.
Trevor narrowed his eyes on him. “You’ll regret this one day, you son of a bitch!”
“Probably,” he agreed with a careless shrug as he headed for the door. “But look on the bright side, you just stopped yourself from becoming Bubba’s bitch.”
“He would have been gentle!” his cousin yelled after him, making him chuckle as he headed towards the waiting room, preparing for the fight of his life.
Less than a year later…
She never should have agreed to come on this trip, she realized as she turned over onto her side and blinked away another tear as she listened to the Bradford boys talking and laughing around the fire.
At least if she’d stayed home she’d be able to lounge around in her pajamas, eating junk food and watching Lifetime movies while she wallowed in self-pity. Instead, she was stuck on this trip, forcing herself to smile and laugh at jokes while pretending that she wasn’t dying inside. Maybe she should just tell them that she wasn’t feeling well and get a ride into town, she thought even as she dismissed the idea. She didn’t want to talk about it and if she told them that she wasn’t feeling good, they’d gang up on her until she told them what was going on.
Sighing, she rolled over onto her other side, trying to find a comfortable position on the old, lumpy sleeping bag that Darrin had dug out of his parents’ garage. After a few more turns, groans and sighs, she decided to steal Darrin’s sleeping bag and use it as a mattress. Sitting up, she reached over to do just that when she heard a twig snap close by.
“I’m fine,” she muttered as she grabbed her sleeping bag and threw it on top of his.
“Then come out and join us,” Darrin said as he unzipped the large net window at the back of the tent.
“No,” she simply said as she sat on top of her mattress, laid back and closed her eyes.
“You want to tell me what’s wrong?” he asked, not exactly surprising her that he’d realized that something was wrong, but she’d kind of been hoping that he’d just assumed that she was upset about Malcolm.
“No,” she said, rolling over onto her side, facing away from him and hoping that he’d just take the hint and go away.
“I know that you’re not upset about that prick, so tell me what’s going on?” he asked just as she registered the feel of his fingertips tracing a line down her neck, leaving a path of goose bumps behind.
“He wasn’t a prick,” she admitted with a grumble.
Malcolm had been a nice guy, sweet, kind, considerate and had apparently been falling in love with her, something that she’d warned him against. Unfortunately he hadn’t listened. While she’d been hoping for something casual to pass the time, he’d been imagining a life together filled with children, puppies and a white picket fence.
“Maybe not, but he wasn’t the right guy for you,” he said softly as he continued caressing her cheek.
Hating the way that she reacted to him, she reached up and brushed away his touch. “I’m tired, Darrin,” she said, pointedly closing her eyes, hoping that he’d just leave her alone so that she could continue to wallow in self-pity.
“I see,” he murmured.
“Good. Then go away.”
“I will...just as soon as you complete the dare I just gave you,” he murmured, sounding thoughtful as she lay there, frowning and wondering what he was talking about.
“You didn’t dare me,” she pointed out as she rolled over onto her back.
“I didn’t dare you to go skinny dipping?” he asked, sounding thoughtful as she immediately sat up and headed for the tent flaps, all while praying that she made it in time before he could dare her to take a dip in the ice cold lake that she’d been avoiding since they’d arrived earlier this afternoon.
She’d just managed to grab hold of the zipper standing between her and freedom when the large bastard sealed her fate with four simple words, “I double dare you.”
*-*-*-*
“You. Bastard!”
“How’s the water?” he asked, shooting her a smile and a wink as he threw another log on the fire.
“I hate you!” she hissed as she continued to slowly make her way into the ice-cold lake as he took his time setting up their mini camp.
“You love me and you know it,” he reminded her as he walked over to the fallen log and grabbed the rolled up sleeping bag that he’d hidden earlier.
“Hate! I hate you!” she snapped around chattering teeth.
“That’s just the freezing cold water talking, sweetheart,” he said as he rolled out the sleeping bag in front of the roaring fire.
“No, this is,” she bit out, sounding triumphant and letting him know that he was about to get a taste of his own medicine, but he’d been expecting it. “I double dare you to get your ass in here.”
“I see,” he muttered, making sure to sound appropriately put out as he kicked off his shoes and pulled off his clothes.
“I hope you freeze your balls off, you sick bastard!” she hissed through a clenched jaw as he tossed his boxers aside and stepped into the cold lake.
“Shit,” he hissed as he forced himself to keep going, wishing that he’d come up with something else to help take her mind off that asshole.
“This was a dumb dare,” she muttered as he joined her.
He chuckled as he reached for her, pleased when she wrapped her arms around him and held on, most likely trying to steal the last of his body heat, but at the moment he didn’t care. “I’d imagined this going a little b
it differently,” he admitted, deciding that telling her that he’d actually planned a romantic midnight picnic for two by the lake probably wouldn’t be in his best interest, not when the admission would cause her to shove him away and storm off.
“You lose your dare privileges for two weeks for this bullshit,” she announced as she wrapped her legs around him and tightened her hold around his shoulders.
“Fine,” he said, deciding not to argue, not when she was in his arms like this.
“And you’re doing my laundry for a month after this,” she informed him as she buried her face against his shoulder.
“Will it count if I drop it off at a Laundromat?” he asked as he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her shoulder before he could stop himself.
“It depends,” she mumbled against his shoulder.
“On what?” he asked, closing his eyes as he prayed for control.
“On whether or not you’re willing to splurge for the good softener,” she mumbled, making him chuckle as he tightened his arms around her.
“You’re a greedy little thing,” he said distractedly as he moved back in the water, needing to do something to take his mind off of just how good it felt to have her in his arms like this.
“You already knew this,” she muttered as she reached up and gently trailed her fingers through his hair.
He sighed heavily as he kissed her shoulder. “True,” he agreed, closing his eyes as he moved through the water, enjoying the fact that he could hold her like this without worrying about some prick trying to come between them.
This time he wasn’t going to wait for the right time to tell her how he felt. This time he was going to tell her that he loved her before some other asshole could come into the picture and force him to wait again. He couldn’t stomach the idea of sitting back and watching as some other asshole held her when he knew with every fiber of his being that he was supposed to be the one holding her in his arms. He swallowed hard, dreading her reaction even as excitement tore through him.
“I need to tell you something,” he said even though he had absolutely no idea how to tell her that he was in love with her, not after all this time.
She shifted in his arms and sighed heavily. “If it’s something that’s going to depress me, I’d rather you kept it to yourself.”
“It’s not depressing,” he promised her, although he was pretty sure that he would find it depressing if she rejected him.
“Okay,” she said, pulling back so that she could look up at him as her fingers continued to toy with his hair, “tell me.”
He opened his mouth to tell her that he loved her, that he wanted to be with her, wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, to have children with her, but he couldn’t find the right words. He’d practiced this in his head a hundred times a day for years, but now that he had her in his arms and another asshole was out of the picture, he couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to say to make her take a risk on him, on them.
“What is it?” she asked, shifting her hand away from the back of his head so that she could cup his jaw. “Darrin? Are you okay?”
“I…,” he started to say only to end up shaking his head with regret, because no matter what he said or did, he was going to fuck this up and probably lose her.
So instead, he kissed the top of her head and told himself that this wasn’t the right time.
Chapter 1
Present Day
It must be Saturday, she realized with a sigh when she felt Darrin press another kiss against the back of her neck and his large body curled up behind hers, pressing the abnormally large erection, that she was ninety-nine percent positive was the result of an accident involving radioactive waste, against her bottom as his arm wrapped around her. There really was no better way to wake up, she thought as she settled back against him, reached down and-
“Ow! Son of a bitch!” Darrin yelped, jumping off the bed in record time as she took her time sitting up and climbing off the bed.
She groaned softly as she stretched her arms over her head, noting the way the bastard paused in rubbing the back of his hand to watch her. With a roll of her eyes and a chuckle, she headed for the bathroom, throwing over her shoulder, “Get the hell out.”
“No,” he grumbled around a loud yawn as he stumbled back towards her bed and threw himself across it.
“Then you better have breakfast ready when I get out,” she said, absently noting that he was wearing black boxers, her favorite.
Pathetic, she thought with a sigh and a smile as she walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She used the bathroom, brushed her teeth and had just stepped in the shower when she heard the bathroom door open behind her.
“You have your own apartment,” she reminded him.
“But I like yours better.”
“Too bad,” she said, tilting her head back and closed her eyes as she allowed the water to pour over her hair.
When she heard the sounds of the shower curtain being pulled back she smiled. He was such a persistent bastard.
“Don’t even think about it.”
With a chuckle, he released the curtain. “What do you want for lunch?” he asked, making her frown.
“What happened to breakfast?’
“It ended about two hours ago,” he said sounding amused while she stood there, shoulders sagging and muttering, “Damn it!”
“What?”
“I have a date at one that I forgot to cancel,” she said, opening her eyes and grabbing the bottle of shampoo, resigning herself to a nice relaxing bath tomorrow morning after she got home instead of a leisurely shower now.
“You don’t sound too happy about it,” he noted, sounding hopeful.
Because she hadn’t been looking forward to this date. He was her brother’s accountant or something like that, not that she really cared, because she already knew that it wasn’t going to work out. According to her brother, his friend was in his early thirties, funny, smart and ready to settle down and start a family. In other words, he wasn’t for her.
“Jake,” was all she needed to say to make him understand.
With a chuckle, he said, “Oh, I see.”
She just bet he did, she thought as she heard the bathroom door click shut behind him. For a minute, okay, maybe a second, she considered going after him and stopping him, but then she realized that it really was for the best. Besides, this way she’d be able to meet Zoe and kids earlier than planned.
*-*-*-*
“What do you want?” Darrin demanded as soon as he ripped the front door open.
“I, um,” the man standing on his front step said, looking a little unsure of himself, “I’m here to see Marybeth?”
“Do you have an appointment?” Darrin asked as he folded his arms over his chest, giving the confused man a good look at the gun he’d shoved in the front of his pants.
“Umm,” the man said, glancing down at the gun, “her brother arranged a date for us. I’m supposed to pick her up at one.”
“She’s just finishing up with her last client,” he said, leveling a glare on the much smaller man.
“A client? Jake told me that she was a painter.”
“Are you a cop?” Darrin asked in his sternest tone, the one he’d honed to perfection over the years.
“A cop?” the other man repeated, noticeably swallowing as he shifted nervously. “No, I’m not a cop.”
“Good,” Darrin said approvingly with a firm nod. “Did Jake tell you to bring cash for your donation?”