“I-I’m not that hungry,” Zoe stammered, more than willing to opt for plan B. Well, she was hungry, but she was also feeling sick as well. She was starting to get a little worried that she might have something worse than food poisoning like e coli. “And I’m pretty sure that I spotted a few hotels close by.”
“Too bad, you need to eat,” Trevor said, pressing a quick kiss to her cheek before stepping back so they could move up in line.
She opened her mouth to argue only to have Trevor give her a stern look and a shake of his head in warning. He’d already warned her that he didn’t want to hear any more nonsense about needing to lose weight. He’d told her that he would end things if she didn’t take better care of herself. It was actually kind of sweet that he cared so much.
“Fine,” she sighed, stepping up to the front of the line.
“How many?” the friendly cashier asked with a huge smile and Zoe idly wondered how long the woman would be able to keep it up before that smile became painful.
“Two,” Trevor answered.
Zoe pulled out some money from her pocket to pay for her meal. She went to hand it to the woman when Trevor threw her a dirty look as he gently pushed her hand away. With a sigh, she put the money away, knowing that this wasn’t a date and really wishing that he’d just let her pay her own way.
“Over here,” Trevor said, placing a hand at the small of her back to guide her through the already crowded restaurant towards the booths closer to the long buffet tables.
“Oh, there’s Haley and Jason,” Zoe said, gesturing towards the opposite side of the room where Haley and Jason sat with their two little ones. Haley went to gesture them over, only to have Jason grab her hand and shake his head.
Frowning, Zoe raised her hand to at least wave to her friend, wondering what Jason’s problem was when she found herself in a similar situation.
“Don’t,” Trevor said, gently pushing her hand down as he continued to usher her towards a row of empty booths near the large bay windows overlooking the parking lot.
“I was just going to say hello,” Zoe explained as Trevor placed their receipt down to claim the table.
“You can’t,” Trevor said, giving her a little nudge in the direction of one of the buffet lines, the black bag still firmly in his left hand.
“Why not?”
“Because she’s with the enemy,” Trevor said tightly.
Zoe shot a look over at Haley to find Jason glaring in their direction. “Jason’s the enemy?” Zoe asked, starting to feel a little confused. She came for entertainment, but instead, she’d found a new level of insanity among the Bradford males. Well, it was entertaining, but a different form of entertainment than what she’d been expecting.
“Now, you’re getting it,” Trevor said approvingly. “Every bastard from my family is a potential threat. We need to maintain our distance and watch our backs,” he said, sounding completely serious, which she found rather cute.
Really, who would have thought that a large paranoid man could be cute? She certainly hadn’t, she just couldn’t help but find the dirty looks he was sending his cousin anything but cute, especially the way he scowled when Jason discreetly flipped him off.
“Why exactly are they the enemy?” she asked, drawing his attention away from Jason, who appeared to be glaring down at his son as Cole grabbed another fistful of spaghetti from Jason’s plate.
“Because one of them is going to get banned today and if we’re not careful, he’ll take us all down with him,” Trevor said, handing her a plate. “Now, go get some food, some real food.”
With a soft sigh, Zoe took the plate from him and wandered around the long self-serve tables as she looked around to see how many Bradfords were here. After Jason, she spotted Jared and his wife sitting at the far end, but they didn’t seem to see her, or rather, they didn’t acknowledge her in any way. She spotted several of the Bradfords that either worked for Jared or stopped by the office from time to time and several large, devastatingly handsome men that could have passed for Bradfords.
As she walked along the buffet tables, trying to figure out what wouldn’t upset her sensitive stomach, she wondered which Bradford would get banned. That, of course, led her back to her earlier thoughts.
How exactly did someone get on a restaurant’s banned list? Or more importantly, how did an entire family manage to get on the list? The possibilities simply boggled the mind.
“You’re with Trevor?” a gruff voice demanded, drawing her attention. She looked up from adding French cut green beans onto her dish and kept looking up until she saw a rather stern, yet incredibly handsome older man with peppered short black hair looking down at her and looking way too serious for a man with deeply etched laugh lines around his mouth and eyes.
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, we’re friends,” Zoe answered nervously.
The man nodded firmly once before shooting a look of what could only be described as a warning across the room at Trevor, who was sitting at the booth with two overflowing plates and several glasses of water. Trevor either didn’t realize he was the object of a glare or simply didn’t care as he dug into his food.
“You tell him that as long as Jared’s boys don’t screw the rest of the family over like they did in Las Vegas that we’ll forgive them for Disneyworld,” the man said, never taking his eyes away from Trevor.
Wow, there was so much in that warning that caught her attention, but she found herself asking, “Jared’s boys?” Because as far as she knew, Jared only had one son.
The man nodded. “Jason and Trevor. Although we all have a soft spot for the boy, Jared’s the one who kept the boy in line and was able to be there from the start because he lived closer. He also took over when our beautiful baby sister passed away,” he explained, his scowl softening as he continued to look at Trevor.
He looked away from Trevor to send her a faint smile. “That doesn’t mean that we didn’t care. I lost count of how many times I asked Sarah to allow Trevor to come live with us, but she was determined to raise the boy on her own. Of course, Jared just ignored her wishes. He’d made sure that they had everything they needed and that included keeping Trevor in line.”
