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, every night. The first night, he’d 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 again 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 exact. They’d 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 badly if the kid hadn’t gotten 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 worried that their 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 and 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’d waited for their food. 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 Brennagin’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 awakened 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’d discovered that he’d made two runs to Sam’s Club the night before and stocked both their kitchens with food. He’d also had a word with her cousins and told them to stay the hell 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 that she’d decided that she should have a meeting within about an hour, a 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 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 meant it. He’d beaten the crap out of enough guys who called her that to know that he wouldn’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, Rory 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 had still been a kid, that look would have had her hiding her toothbrush 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 shouted, grabbing a roll of paper towels off the counter and tossing it at the big baby.
“She knows that I didn’t mean it,” Bryce muttered as he tore off a bunch of paper towels and pressed them 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,” Rory said, 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 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,” Rory 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.”
Connor leaned down 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 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 were really starting to piss her off with their 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 with her 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 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 make their cousins wait 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 snuggling 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 didn’t complain about how the twins got the job done since it left her free to stay in Connor’s arms.
“What do you want?” Bryce asked, tossing the bloodied paper towels into the trash as his glare shifted 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.
