“Scraps?” Connor repeated numbly. “The kitchen was full of food not even twenty minutes ago!”
“That was twenty minutes ago,” the other one said with a shrug as he pressed a hand against his stomach and headed for the door.
“Learn to keep up with the times, roomie,” the larger one said with a mocking smile and a wink as he headed for the door, leaving Connor to process what he’d just said and when he did, he turned a glare back on Rory.
“What exactly does he mean by ‘roomie’?” he demanded as Rory gave him another cute smile that set off warning signals in his head.
“Well, while you were grabbing a shirt, we talked it over and decided that it would probably be better if Trevor and Jason stayed with you,” Rory explained, looking at him but not quite meeting his eyes as she said it.
“Why is that exactly?” Connor asked with his jaw set and his hands clenched tightly into fists as he patiently waited for the woman that he loved to explain why she’d just fucked him over.
“If they stay with me, everyone will figure out who they are and we’ll lose the extra help.”
“And we’ll also face a night in jail, a large fine, and community service,” Connor said dryly, noting her wince.
“I’d actually forgotten about the community service part,” Rory admitted with a frown, but it quickly disappeared as she waved off what he’d said. “Don’t worry about it. No one is going to figure out who they are. We’ll get the help we need and everything will be fine.”
He cocked a brow as he looked pointedly around his now-barren kitchen. “How exactly do you propose that we hide this?”
She worried her bottom lip as she followed his gaze. “It will be fine,” Rory said, but she didn’t sound like she believed it. “We’ll just keep both houses filled with food and avoid taking them out to eat in public. As long as they don’t get hungry, we should be fine.”
“How exactly do you propose keeping one Bradford, never mind two, full?”
Her answering smile nearly undid him, but her next words had him cursing up a storm.
“Sam’s Club.”
“So, you think you’re good enough for my cousin?” Jason asked offhandedly as Connor pulled his truck into the parking spot of the wholesale food store, wondering how Rory had managed to talk him into this bullshit.
He remembered putting his foot down and telling her that there was no way in hell that he was going to harbor Bradfords when the kissing started. He barely remembered the rest of their conversation, but he definitely remembered the way she yanked his mouth down to hers and kissed him until he forgot about her cousins, his empty refrigerator, and everything else that no longer mattered. He would have made love to her on his kitchen table if the bastard sitting next to him hadn’t stormed back into the house and demanded that they feed him.
“Yes,” Connor answered, deciding to be honest and noting twin looks of surprise on her cousins’ faces. No doubt they thought he was going to give them a kiss-ass answer, but he didn’t play around when it came to Rory and never would.
“Why is that exactly?” Trevor, the larger of the two, asked, looking seriously pissed off by Connor’s answer. Well, that was too fucking bad because it was true.
“Because I piss her off,” Connor said with a shrug, shutting the engine down and grabbing the keys.
Instead of getting angry and tearing into him like any sane relative would have done, her cousins’ glares turned into shit-eating grins. They shared a quick look, nodded and focused back on him, which was kind of unnerving and he really wished that they’d rode with Rory instead. They’d insisted on riding with him and he’d just assumed that they were going to try and kill him. He’d been fine with that, expected it even.
“You’re that scrawny kid that crashed our family reunion, aren’t you?” Trevor asked, chuckling as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees while he considered Connor.
“I wasn’t scrawny,” he bit out tightly.
Jason shrugged. “Compared to us, you were.”
“Point taken,” Connor sighed with a nod.
“You know, you were lucky that Grandma Beth showed up when she did, don’t you?” Trevor asked, and Connor couldn’t help but wonder if either one of these men was one of the large boys that had been ready to tear him apart with their bare hands all those years ago. A couple of them had managed to get in a few good punches before this sweet little old woman put an end to it. She’d swatted the much larger boys away and even demanded that they help him to his feet. Of course, when the boys explained why they’d wanted to kill him, the sweet little woman reached up, grabbed him by the ear, twisted it, and dragged him the half-mile back to their campsite where Mr. James and a very pissed off and embarrassed Rory were waiting.
By the time she’d released his ear, it had been numb, but at least he’d managed to tell his side of the story. It had probably stopped Mr. James from killing him, but it hadn’t stopped the man from grabbing a few of his large relatives and hunting down the real culprits. They hadn’t believed that he wasn’t the one spying on Rory as she’d changed out of her bathing suit. When he’d showed them that his hands were bloody and raw from beating the shit out of the two men that he’d caught watching her, they’d believed him.
“You really should have told us why you were there,” Jason said around a bored yawn. “We probably wouldn’t have made you cry like that if we had.”
“I wasn’t crying, asshole!” Connor snapped back, still pissed after all these years about those ten hours he’d been forced to wait at the campsite while every single Bradford and James taunted him for crying.
“Really? Then why were tears streaming down your face?” Trevor asked as his attention went to searching the glove compartment for something to eat.
“Because one of you dumb bastards shoved my head in the pond! That was pond water streaming down my face!”
