NFH 03 Checkmate (37 page)

He loved her too much to fuck this up. He
had five months to prove to her that he was the man for her, and he
was going to make them perfect.

Chapter 32

July

“
Are you still not talking
to me?” Rory asked, shooting Jacob a glance as she sorted through
the large pile of mail that he’d left on her desk.

“
Yes.”

“
Are you going to tell me
why?” she asked, already guessing that it was going to be another
big fat “no.”

For the past couple of weeks he’d been
giving her the silent treatment. He only answered her when it was
absolutely necessary and he made damn sure that it wasn’t
necessary. His mood had been sour since she started this thing with
Connor and only got worse when she had to call him up at three in
the morning to come bail her and Connor out of jail. Grudgingly, he
agreed and came down to the police station two hours later with the
checkbook for petty cash. He only stayed long enough to bail her
out, confirm that she was engaged and send her a glare as he
stormed out of station, leaving her to bail Connor out.

She tried to make it up to him and find out
why he was so upset, but the stubborn bastard just kept on ignoring
her and sending Connor glares whenever the two men were in the same
room. Speaking of stubborn bastards………

“
You need to sign this so
that we can have more lumber delivered,” Bryce, another bastard
that wasn’t happy with her, demanded as he stepped into the
trailer.

Word about her engagement to Connor had
spread very quickly. Her family’s reaction varied greatly. Her
father simply called her up while Connor was arguing with the guard
that had impounded her Jeep. He’d been very direct and unemotional
as he asked if the news was true. She’d been scared to death of his
reaction when she explained that it was true, but she needn’t have
worried. There was a small pause after she told him that she was
engaged to Connor. She almost asked him if he heard her when he
simply told her to make sure that she made it next Sunday for
fishing and then he hung up.

Her brothers’ reactions were a bit
different. As soon as she managed to make it into work, two hours
late, they hunted her down in her office and blocked off her exit,
demanding to know if she was out of her fucking mind. Johnny went
as far as to demand that she take a drug test. After a lot of
arguing, a few threats to have her locked away and a few shin
kicks, her brothers agreed to let it go for now and get back to
work. As they walked out, a few limping, they all glared at her and
she’d been fully prepared to keep Connor company in the emergency
room that night, but they didn’t touch him. They only glared at
him. Okay, there was that one time that Craig had to wrestle a
hammer out of Brian’s hand when he went to throw it at Connor, but
other than that they hadn’t beaten the shit out of him or harmed
him in any way.

The fact that they hadn’t sent Connor to
Intensive Care actually scared the hell out of her. Every guy that
spent time with her got the warning. It used to piss her off, but
now she was wondering why the guy that she’d agreed to spend the
rest of her life with, if he met her conditions, hadn’t received
the same warning. Actually, one would think that the man that she
planned on marrying would receive a more thorough warning, but so
far, nothing. That could only mean that they were trying to handle
this a different way and she knew exactly how they thought they
were going to do that.

By having their cousins drive her and Connor
out their goddamn minds.

Well, that probably was the plan, but it was
failing miserably. The first week Trevor and Jason stayed with
Connor. The next week they were replaced by two of her other
cousins and every week after, two fresh Bradfords showed up at
Connor’s door. This week the twins were staying with him. Well,
they stayed in Connor’s house, but not with him since Connor ended
up sleeping in her bed, holding her all night. The first night he
tried to get her to sleep in his bed with him, but having two
Bradfords getting into a shouting match at two in the morning over
the last jar of pickles quickly changed his mind. He hadn’t brought
up who was selling their house and neither had she. She was too
happy to ruin it and God, was she happy.

Never in her wildest dreams would she have
imagined a man treating her the way that Connor did. He was sweet,
funny, attentive, and he went out of his way to make her feel
special. The other night they came home after putting in a fourteen
hour day, looking forward to a quick meal, a hot shower and bed.
Instead of the relaxing night that they’d hoped for they’d been
greeted with a nightmare, a Bradford nightmare to be more exact.
They pulled into her driveway only to find a terrified pizza
delivery kid stuck up in a tree where he’d been forced to run for
his life.

Not that she could really blame the kid for
being scared. He had forgotten her cousins’ double order of chicken
tenders and honey mustard sauce back at the restaurant. It probably
wouldn’t have turned out so bad if the kid hadn’t got lazy and
offered a credit for the chicken tenders instead of going back and
getting them. At that point, her cousins had been seeing red and
the delivery boy was lucky that all he got was the hell scared out
of him. She’d actually been pretty scared that their little secret
was going to get out and that they were not only going to end up in
jail, but lose the extra help that they desperately needed.

Just as the kid in the tree finally managed
to pull his phone out and started to call the police, Connor
climbed up the tree and snatched the phone out of the kid’s hand
and somehow managed to talk the kid down. Then of course her cousin
Devin just had to go and make the kid cry, again, which sent him
right back up the tree. It took Connor an exhausting half hour and
a hundred bucks to get the kid to come back down and get him to
promise not to call the cops. When Connor was done with that, he
sent her cousins off to yet another buffet since Jason and Trevor
had unintentionally shut down the last one.

After that she’d been more than ready to
settle for a peanut butter sandwich and bed, but they quickly
discovered that her cousins had cleaned out both kitchens to hold
themselves over while they waited for their delivery. She’d been
tired, hungry and was starting to get pretty pissed that she had to
run out and hit the grocery store for the second night in a row
when Connor, who she knew was just as tired as she was, gave her
one of those sweet kisses and told her to go take a shower and
relax.

By the time she was done with her shower,
dressed, and ready to go get the trip to the grocery store over
with, Connor surprised her with a large hot chocolate from
Brennigan’s and a sandwich with all the fixings from her favorite
sandwich shop. As she took her first sip of that lifesaving elixir,
Connor kissed the top of her head and told her that he’d be right
back, which turned out to be a bit of a lie.

She tried to wait up for him, but she’d been
too tired by that point to do much of anything but lie down and
once she did, she was out for the night. The next morning she was
woken up by Connor kissing her and the scent of hot chocolate. The
kiss was sweet, but the way he took her that morning had been fast
and hard and had her toes curling for the rest of the day.

It wasn’t until she went downstairs to feed
Bunny that she discovered that he’d made two runs to Sam’s Club the
night before and stocked both their kitchen’s with food. He’d also
had a word with her cousins and told them to stay out of her
kitchen and to get their own damn food from now on. Her cousins
hadn’t been happy about having to get their own snacks, but they
weren’t dumb enough to bitch, not with Connor providing them with
the names and locations of the buffets and restaurants offering
“All You Can Eat” deals.

“
Oh my fucking word, you’re
thinking about him again? Really?” Bryce said, dragging her
attention away from the man she decided that she should have a
meeting with in about an hour, a very secret and private meeting
that would most likely involve her being bent over her desk with
her pants around her ankles, again.

She really loved their lunchtime
meetings.

“
Rory? Rory!” Bryce snapped,
wrecking her little fantasy. So, with a glare and a kick to the
shin, she yanked the clipboard out of his hand and signed her
name.

“
You bitch!” Bryce gasped in
pain, but she knew that he didn’t mean it. He’d beaten the crap out
of enough guys who called her that for her to know that he didn’t
stand for anyone disrespecting her. She also knew that he’d feel
bad once the throbbing in his foot subsided. He would apologize
with a large cup of hot cocoa. Connor on the other
hand…….

“
Mother fucker!” Bryce
shouted as he stumbled back, cupping his nose as blood poured down
his chin.

“
Don’t you ever call her
that again,” Connor said evenly as he stepped in front of her and
faced off with her much larger brother.

Was it wrong that this turned her on?

Probably, but damn, it was really nice to
have a man love and adore her and treat her like a woman, like she
needed protection. She didn’t, but it was still nice all the same.
She never thought the day would come when Connor’s chivalrous
behavior would stop annoying her and start making her smile, but
here it was, she mused as she shoved him aside and went to help her
brother.

“
She kicked me!” Bryce said
accusingly, his eyes narrowing to slits on her and if she was still
a kid, that look would have her hiding her tooth brush for a month
so that he couldn’t give it a “special” cleaning.

“
I don’t care what she did,
don’t fucking call her that again!” Connor snapped, grabbing a roll
of paper towels off the counter and tossing it to the big
baby.

“
She knows that I didn’t
mean it,” Bryce muttered as he tore off a bunch of paper towels and
pressed it against his face, leaving enough of his mouth uncovered
so that she could see that he was pouting. He really was a big
baby.

“
It’s fine,” she said
dismissively, turning her back on her brother and ignoring him as
he continued to mumble and bitch.

“
No, it’s not,” Connor said,
sending Bryce one last glare, which earned him another bout of
muttered whining before he turned his attention on her. As soon as
his gaze landed on her, his expression softened and he smiled that
sweet little smile that seemed to be reserved only for
her.

“
Miss me?” he asked, taking
her good hand into his.

Ignoring Jacob and Bryce’s twin sounds of
disgust, she shook her head. “Nope, not at all,” she said, lying
her ass off, but before that smile of his could turn knowing, she
quickly changed the subject. “What did you need?” she asked, hoping
that he needed her in the office for an early “meeting.”

He leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to her
lips, which earned more of that damn muttering that was really
starting to annoy her. “Sorry, baby, but I was actually looking for
the big cry baby behind you.”

“
What do you need?” Bryce
asked, not sounding happy at all about having to deal with Connor,
which she knew that he wasn’t. Not that she cared. She didn’t. For
the first time in her life she was truly happy.

It didn’t matter that her assistant wasn’t
on speaking terms with her or that her brothers were up to
something and really starting to annoy her with their attempted
daily interventions. It seemed that every time her brothers tried
to corner her to talk some sense into her, their plans would get
screwed up by whichever cousins were staying at the time. The
interruption was usually work based and while it pissed off her
brothers, they understood that the project needed to be
completed.

Sometimes they tried to hold their sad
little interventions outside of work, but those all failed as well,
mostly because everyone was too damn exhausted to get into an
argument. It also didn’t hurt that her brothers had to take turns
babysitting their cousins. The few times that her brothers tried to
stall their cousins into waiting to eat so that they could try and
talk some sense into her hadn’t ended well. Apparently they hadn’t
listened when their father warned them never to come between a
Bradford and his food, because more than once over the past couple
of weeks her brothers had learned that valuable lesson the hard
way.

She was still cringing at the memory of what
happened last night when her brothers tried to ambush her while
she’d been snuggled up with Connor in bed, watching a movie. The
twins, Reese and Darrin, warned her brothers several times that
they were coming between them and a buffet, which was more than any
other Bradford would have given them, but then again, the twins
were both police officers so it was probably more out of habit than
anything. If her brothers had listened they probably wouldn’t have
been dragged from her room, screaming and begging for mercy. It was
more pathetic than anything, but she hadn’t complained about how
the twins got the job done since it left her free to snuggle in
Connor’s arms.

“
What do you want?” Bryce
said, tossing the bloodied paper towels in the trash, his glare
shifting between her and Connor.

“
I need you to take over the
third floor,” Connor explained, stepping past her and grabbing two
bottles of water out of the fridge. He handed her one before he
took a sip from his bottle.

“
That’s your little buddy’s
job,” Bryce said with a bit of a bite, his glare taking on a whole
new meaning and for good reason.