Checkmate

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.

If she thought that Andrew was lazy before then she’d been dead wrong. Over the past couple of weeks the man had given a whole new meaning to the term lazy. He was constantly late, left early most days, hung out in the parking lot every couple of hours and several times he’d been found asleep in his truck or on the site. It was also becoming painfully obvious that the man had a substance abuse problem. He was seen vomiting several times, having the shakes, sweating profusely after one of his many trips to the parking lot and he’d lost a great deal of weight.

Instead of firing him like any other boss would have done, Connor turned a blind eye to his best friend’s downward spiral. They’d actually gotten into a few arguments over it, but no matter what she said, Connor wouldn’t fire his friend. The only concession that he was willing to give her was that Andrew would not be touching any power tools. It wasn’t much and she wasn’t happy about it, but she’d take it.

For now.

The moment Andrew became a danger he was gone. She didn’t care if he worked for her or not. She was not about to put her men in danger to make Connor happy. As much as she cared about him, and she knew that she was in love with him, she couldn’t keep turning a blind eye to this situation. She was very much afraid that Andrew was going to end up killing himself and she was terrified that it would destroy Connor. It didn’t matter that she didn’t particularly like Andrew, she loved Connor and this situation was hurting him. She could see it in his face every time he watched Andrew stumble, drop something, or head for the parking lot.

“And now it’s yours,” Connor said, his tone hard, leaving no doubt in her mind that it wasn’t up for discussion. Bryce seemed to pick up on the hint as well, because with one last glare, he stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him hard enough to shake the trailer.

“Connor, we need to talk,” she said, hoping against hope that this time he would listen.

“Tonight, okay?” he said softly, looking miserable and tired and heaven help her, but she didn’t want to make him feel worse so she did something that she knew she would regret later.

She dropped it.