Honeymoon from Hell Part I (8 page)

“
I’m not sure what your plans are now, but if you want to try and salvage this honeymoon of yours, there’s this little bed and breakfast not too far from here that just might do the trick,” Ed said with a pointed look towards the truck where Haley was probably praying for a hole to open up and swallow her whole.

“
I don’t think there’s any chance of salvaging this honeymoon,” he finally admitted to himself, giving up any hope of making this right for the woman who deserved better and settled on praying that he was able to get her home before anything else could go wrong.

*-*-*-*

“
Do you want me to drive?” she asked, worrying her bottom lip as she watched Jason struggling not to lose it.

“
No.”

“
Are you sure?” she asked just as the very angry police office returned with Jason’s Driver’s license, registration and what appeared to be that speeding ticket that he’d threatened Jason with when he’d pulled them over.

“
Yes,” he bit out as he accepted the items from the police officer intent on sending him one last glare before he walked away.

Not really sure how to deal with Jason when he was like this, because she’d honestly never seen him quite like this before, she settled on nodding and pulling the damp, mud-caked, torn blanket tightly around herself and shifted her attention back to her window and her earlier thoughts. Maybe she should bake him a cake or ten? she wondered, already knowing that wouldn’t be enough to fix this.

God, why did she have to take off her glasses? Why couldn’t she have just left them on and accepted the fact that she wasn’t sexy? She should have just brushed her hair, threw on a little blush, a little lop gloss and the Yankees panty set and made the best of it.

Now thanks to her aspirations to become a Victoria Secret model, their honeymoon was ruined, their luggage was destroyed, they’d spent the night on the side of the road where they were caught doing…
things
, got into one fender bender, managed to get three speeding tickets, a cracked window, and they were heading home in a truck that she wasn’t really sure was going to make it. He’d worked so hard to give her the perfect honeymoon and she’d ruined it.

“
I’m sorry, Jason,” she whispered, wondering how she was going to make this up to him.

When he didn’t say anything, she decided that it was probably for the best. Their honeymoon was already ruined and there was no sense in adding a fight to make things worse. Sighing, she drew her knees up to her chest and settled on staring out the window, counting down the minutes until she could take a hot shower, climb in bed with Jason and put this whole thing behind them.

“
Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Jason said right around the time the familiar weird chuffing and clanking noise started up again. “This cannot be fucking happening.”

Since she had a pretty good idea what was happening thanks to the incident this morning, she decided to keep her mouth shut while Jason slammed his fists against the dashboard.

“
Son of a bitch!”

Yeah, definitely a good time to keep her mouth shut, she decided as she pushed her glasses back up her nose. At least they were only a few blocks away from home, she thought with a sigh of relief as she adjusted the filthy blanket that she was going to throw away just as soon as they got home, around her.

Without a word, and to be honest, at this point she wasn’t really expecting him to say anything to her, he popped the hood and climbed out of the truck, slamming the door shut behind him and making her wonder if she should walk the short distance home and make him something to eat.

“
Fucking unbelievable!” he shouted, making her sigh as she resigned herself to an interesting walk home.

Chapter 10

“
What the hell are you doing?” he asked, trying to make sense out of what he was seeing.

“
I’m walking home,” she said with a pained groan as she gave up on trying to put her foot down and settled on hugging the large oak tree in front of the Jacobson’s house instead.

“
I see,” he murmured thoughtfully as he glanced back over his shoulder at his truck, which was less than ten feet away, and then back at his wife as she struggled to hold her blanket up while she held onto the tree for dear life.

When she just stood there, trying to…

Well, he had no idea what the hell she was trying to do, he realized as he rubbed his hands down his face and accepted the loss of his truck. If it had happened any other day, at any other time, he would have bitched and moaned about it, but he had no room to complain, not after he’d been warned. They’d told him about the curse when he was a child, but even to a child their dire warnings had sounded like bullshit.

When his father and a few of his uncles had taken him aside to plead with him to put off their honeymoon for a year, he’d shrugged it off, not really listening to them, and told them that he’d take his chances. Now he was paying for it…literally.

Deciding that now wasn’t the best time to think about the damage to the hotel that he was going to have to pay for, the speeding tickets that were going to clean out his checking account, the clothes that he was going to have to replace and the new truck that he was most likely going to have to buy and couldn’t afford, he walked over to his wife and picked her up.

“
Umm, what are you doing?” she asked even as she wrapped her arm around his shoulders.

“
Bringing you home.”

“
And you need to run in order to do this?” she asked, tightening her hold on him as she licked her lips nervously.

“
Yes,” he said, praying that he was able to get her home and end this honeymoon before anything else could go wro-

“
My glasses!” Haley cried when her glasses suddenly slipped off her face and fell. She tried to grab them, but she only managed to hit them, sending them flying.

“
Shit!” he snapped, slowing down so that he could-

Crunch
.

“
Fucking perfect,” he said, dropping his head back as he closed his eyes in defeat, because honestly, he wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

“
I-I don’t think they can be fixed,” Haley whispered softly.

“
Can you see them?” he stupidly asked even though he already knew that she couldn’t see a damn thing without them.

“
Well, no, but that crunch didn’t exactly sound promising,” she murmured thoughtfully as he forced himself to open his eyes and look down.

“
Please tell me that you have another pair,” he muttered, feeling his stomach twist in dread when he spotted the remains of her glasses scattered around his foot.

“
I do,” she said, making him sigh with relief, because finally, something was going his way. That is until she added, “But Grandma had them packed for me.”

“
Great,” he said, deciding that it was time to move his ass and get her home so that he could end this horrible nightmare, he started running again.

“
Why are we running exactly?” she asked, grabbing onto his shirt and holding on tightly as he ran as fast as he dared with her in his arms.

“
The curse,” he reluctantly muttered right around the time that he heard that vicious snarl breaking up the otherwise quiet morning.

*-*-*-*

“
Ow!”

“
Put me down,” she said, trying to worm her way out of his arms, but the stubborn jerk refused to stop.

“
No,” he bit out with a determined glint in his eyes that was a little disturbing.

“
You’re limping,” she pointed out, again. Although, at this point she wasn’t sure that limping fit anymore, not when it appeared as though he was now dragging his right leg behind him.

“
It’s fine,” he gritted out between a clenched jaw as he continued his excruciatingly slow pace towards home.

“
I can walk,” she argued, pretty sure that she could at least walk better than him at this point.

“
No, I’m taking you home,” he argued, which wasn’t exactly surprising.

Sighing, she shifted in his arms as they slowly turned the corner onto their street. “Why don’t you put me down so that we can take a look at your leg?”

“
I’m fine.”

Biting her bottom lip, she shifted so that she could squint over his shoulder. “I’m not a hundred percent positive, but I’m pretty sure that you’re leaving behind a trail of blood.”

“
I’m taking you home,” he bit out, somehow managing to sound even more determined and kind of freaking her out just a bit.

“
Jason, that puppy could have really done some dam-”

“
It wasn’t a puppy!” he snapped.

“
It sounded like a puppy,” she said with a slight shrug.

“
It wasn’t a puppy! It was a large, vicious man-eating dog and it could have killed me!”

“
Umm, I think the kitten did the most damage,” she felt obligated to point out as they slowly made their way past the house on the corner.

“
It wasn’t a kitten!”

“
But that’s what Mrs. Briars called it,” she pointed out helpfully.

There was a slight pause before he said, “She lied. It was fucking huge.”

“
And the post office worker who stopped to pull the kitten off your leg and called it the cutest kitten that he’d ever seen?” she asked, wondering why he had such a problem accepting the fact that he’d survived a baby animal attack.

“
Fucking delusional,” he practically snarled as he tightened his grip around her and continued to hobble towards home, which brought up an interesting question.

“
Umm, Jason?”

“
Yeah?”

“
Which house are we going to live in?”

After another slight pause he asked, “Is there food in your fridge?”

“
It’s packed full,” she said, wondering what that had to do with anything.

“
Then your house,” he said, making her lips twitch.

“
I see,” she murmured thoughtfully as she laid her head against his chest. “Can I ask you something?”

“
It wasn’t a kitten!” he snapped defensively.

“
Not that,” she said, rolling her eyes in exasperation, because really, this was just getting sad. “I was wondering what you meant about a curse.”

“
Oh.”

“
Are you going to tell me about it?” she asked, squinting up at his handsome face.

“
Are you going to laugh?” he asked after a slight hesitation.

“
Of course not!” she said on an outraged gasp, insulted that he thought so little of her. “I would never laugh at anything you told me.”

“
Fine,” he said, sighing heavily before he admitted, “I think we’re cursed.”

Chapter 11

“
I’m sorry!”

“
We’re not speaking,” he reminded her as he focused on the long walkway in front of them that would bring this nightmare to an end.

“
I thought you were joking!”

“
You can tell the judge that when I file for divorce,” he bit out, ignoring the way that all those damn scratches stung as he forced himself to keep moving. Vicious little bastards, he thought bitterly, half-thinking about going down to the pound and adopting a puppy and kitten of his own just so that they could avenge him.

“
Are we really back to this again?” she asked in a tone that he didn’t much care for.

“
We never left.”

“
Fine, then I get all your Yankees memorabilia in the divorce.”

“
Fine, then I get to put a sex clause in our divorce settlement,” he said absently even as he decided to add a cooking clause as well.

“
A sex clause?” she asked, still sounding amused and giving him hope that the curse was almost at an end.

“
Mmmhmm, a sex clause,” he said with a firm nod as he stumbled his way up the narrow walkway.

“
And what exactly would be in this clause of yours?”

He paused to blink down at his beautiful wife. “Sex. Was I not clear about that?”

Her lips twitched as she cleared her throat, most likely to stop herself from laughing. “And, uh, what exactly are the details of this clause?”

“
You have to provide me with incredible sex twice in the morning, once after work and three times at night,” he said, liking this idea the more that he thought about it.

Not that he was ever going to give her a divorce. He wasn’t fucking stupid after all. She was the best thing that ever happened to him and he was too fucking greedy to give that up.

“
No bi-monthly BJ?” she asked, blinking innocently up at him.

“
No,” he said, leaning down so that he could brush his lips against hers. “Those are daily.”

“
And how exactly are we going to fit a daily BJ into your schedule?” she asked in a teasing whisper as she brushed her lips against his.

“
Oh, I’d make the time,” he promised her with a wink as he came to a stop in front of her house.

He nearly sighed with relief when his eyes locked on that front door. Finally, this nightmare of a honeymoon was over. “Thank God,” he mumbled, shifting Haley in his arms as he walked up the two steps that would save them and-

“
Do you have the keys?” Haley asked, earning an unwarranted glare as he carefully shifted her in his arms so that he could reach into his front pocket and-

Shoved his fingers through a large hole in his jeans where his front pocket should be.