Christ, he couldn’t imagine his life without Jodi, without their babies. They needed to pull through this, they needed to-
“Stop talking,” Jodi groaned, carefully turning on her side, grabbed the blanket one of the EMTs had placed on top of her and pulled it over her head. “Some of us are trying to sleep here.”
“What the hell?” one of the EMTs mumbled, looking just as shocked as everyone else.
“As I was trying to explain to you earlier, she does not react to medicine normally.”
“Apparently,” the other EMT said, shooting his partner a questioning look.
“Sleepy!” the woman that drove him out of his fucking mind growled, making him chuckle, because he knew without a doubt that she was going to keep him on his toes for the rest of their lives.
*-*-*-*
“Tink, you have to get off the stretcher,” Danny said, but she just ignored him and snuggled up with the thin blanket that someone had thrown on her and tried to go back to sleep, but the persistent bastard refused to allow her to go back to sleep.
“Sweetheart, you have to get off the stretcher now.”
“Go away,” she muttered into the paper-thin pillow beneath her head.
“Sweetheart?” Danny said, giving her a gentle shake that she really didn’t appreciate, not when she was this comfortable.
So, she did what she had to do. She reached back and started slapping weakly at his hands to get him to go away. Instead of frightening him off with her deadly assault, the large bastard merely laughed, taking her crankiness up another notch.
“I’m sleeping!” she snapped, sounding kind of whinny, but she didn’t care, not when the jerk that she loved was coming between her and much needed sleep.
“They need the stretcher now,” he explained as he slid his arms beneath her and carefully pulled her off the stretcher, instantly waking her up.
“No, Danny! Your back!” she said, terrified that he was going to hurt himself and land himself back in the hospital for another five months.
He smiled as he carefully placed her on his lap, careful not to place her too close to the armrest so that it wouldn’t hurt her back. Once he had her in his lap, he put his arms around her and kissed her neck.
“Are you still tired, sweetheart?”
“No,” she mumbled even as she snuggled in closer to him and allowed her eyes to close. “I’m fine.”
*-*-*-*
“I want to hit a buffet,” Jason whined from the couch where he continued to flip through the channels, looking for something to watch.
“You’re both banned from the buffets,” Danny pointed out absently as he reached over and gently pushed back a strand of Jodi’s hair.
“We’re also banned from Las Vegas,” Trevor pointed out. “Yet, here we are,” he said, sighing heavily as he reached over and stole the remote from Jason.
“As long as we stay out of trouble we should be fine,” his father said as he took his stethoscope out and carefully placed it on Jodi’s stomach to check on the babies, making sure to jump out of her way when Jodi slapped at him in her sleep and tried to roll over.
“We’re going to get caught,” Jason said, reaching back over and snatched the remote away from Trevor, earning a glare from the large bastard, but Jason simply ignored him and returned his attention back to flipping aimlessly through the channels.
“We’re fine as long as we stay here and don’t draw attention to ourselves,” his father said, chuckling when he placed his hand on Jodi’s stomach and the babies began pushing against his hand.
“Basically, we’re going to starve to death,” Jason said with a glare in his direction.
“Man the fuck up,” Danny said, raising himself up on his hands so that he could scoot down the bed and lay down beside his beautiful wife.
Not that she was probably going to remember that they were married, not since they’d sort of rushed from the airport to the nearest all night chapel and convinced the Justice of the Peace, or whatever the hell they were called in Vegas, to ignore the fact that Jodi was sleeping and marry them with a little intimidation and five hundred bucks.
Whenever the JP needed her to answer a question, he managed to jostle her just enough to make her mutter something about chocolate donuts and jelly. When he asked her to repeat herself, his father and cousins reassured him that she’s agreed to everything and was overwhelmed with joy. When the JP hesitated, Jason and Trevor simply folded their arms over their chest and glared until the JP was able to see their side of things and continued the ceremony.
Fifteen minutes later, they were married and Jodi was curled up on his lap softly snoring while his father paid off the JP and Trevor and Jason made a run for it when casino security, who’d just happened to be walking by, spotted them and yelled, “Bradford!” tripping over his own two feet as he attempted to get away. His father may have made an attempt to get away as well, leaving him to fend for himself, which he was fine with since that was the Bradford motto when it came to possible bans and restraining order violations.
By the time the police showed up, all they’d found was a man in a wheelchair holding his exhausted pregnant wife in his arms and the JP quietly sobbing in the corner, trembling and telling himself that everything was going to be okay.
Thankfully the cops didn’t ask for his ID. When they saw the Marine tattoo and his special ops team motto on his arm they relaxed. At that point they’d realized that he was an injured vet and had made sure that they got to their hotel safely where he’d been forced to use Jodi’s ID to check in since he was technically banned.
Okay, it wasn’t “technically” since he’d contributed to the ban that got every Bradford in the world banned from Las Vegas, but he hadn’t been the one that started it. The large bastard pouting on the couch had started it all just because a five year old had taken the last Oreo at the chocolate fondue station at a buffet. Not that he wouldn’t have the done the same thing, but at least he would have been prepared for the kick to the shin the kid had dished out after he’d swiped the cookie from his plate.
Then again, he also wouldn’t have tried to cut in front of that old woman with the walker. God, he still cringed to this day when he thought about what she did to Jason with that walker and the shrimp skewer. At least it hadn’t left a scar. Not that he’d actually asked Jason to drop his pants and show him or anything.
“Can we order food? I’m starving,” Jason asked, giving up on trying to find something to watch and tossed the remote over to Trevor.
“You just ate,” Danny pointed out, not mentioning that he could use a little something to eat, too.
Had it really been an hour since they’d eaten? They were all going to fucking starve at this rate.
“And your point is?” Jason asked with a long-suffering sigh that let them all know that the bullshit was far from over.
“We can’t draw attention to ourselves,” his father said, pulling the covers up and tucking Jodi in.
She murmured something in her sleep, rolled over onto her side and snuggled up against him. She reached over and curled around him as she released a sweet little sigh that had him wishing that they had their own room so that he could curl up behind her and hold her. But, they couldn’t risk it.
They’d come here to get married, hop back on a plane and have a quick honeymoon in California next year, but that couldn’t happen until Jodi was able to stay awake for more than thirty seconds at a time. Which reminded him…
“Why the hell did you give her baby aspirin?” he asked his father, wondering the hell the man would give Jodi medicine, knowing how she normally reacted to medicine.
“I had a hunch,” was all his father said before things suddenly took a turn for the worse.
One minute his wife was sound asleep and the next…she was…she was…oh, God, she was…
“Get her off of me!”
Chapter 3
“Tink, get off him!”
“You son of a bitch!” she said, ignori
ng Danny as she tightened her hold around the large bastard and tried to bring him down to the ground so that she could beat the shit out of him.
“Get her off me!” Jason yelled even as he placed his hands on her sides to keep her safe as she continued her assault, but sadly her belly and the fact that she really needed to use the bathroom kept her from giving him the beating that he deserved.
There was a putout sigh, and then she was carefully plucked off Jason and placed on the floor. Eyes narrowed on the bastard, she moved to continue her assault when one of the babies chose that moment to shift a little too far to the left and pressed down on her bladder. Torn between killing the large bastard and really needing to use the bathroom, she stood there for a few more seconds until she gave up and snapped, “Bathroom?”