Christmas from Hell

Okay, so he wasn’t a fucking saint.

He might have told himself that he was going after her to talk to her and make sure that she was okay, but the truth was, for the first time since they’d met and she’d broken two of his toes, he’d wanted to see her. The idea of being next to her, talking to her and touching her had been too tempting to ignore so he’d grabbed his jacket, yanked on his hiking boots and ran after her, ignoring his brother Danny, whom he may have accidentally thrown out of his way when the bastard tried to stop him in the foyer so that he could show Duncan all the pictures he’d taken of the twins over the past few days.

At the time he hadn’t cared that his brother was going to get him back or that Jodi would probably give him the silent treatment for a week for being mean to his brother. All he’d cared about was seeing her. He’d run after her, not really giving a damn if he slipped on the ice and broke his neck. The only thing he’d cared about was seeing her.

He couldn’t explain the desperation that he’d felt at the time, but he’d been helpless to fight it and now, thanks to his own stupidity and pathetic excuses, she’d probably turned him into a eunuch.

“I’m so sorry,” she said for the thousandth time since she’d unmanned him as she fidgeted over him, trying to help him.

Normally he would have just sucked it up, told her that he was okay and got the hell away from her as fast as humanly possible or called up one of his brothers for a ride to the hospital, but things had changed between them over the last couple of days and he found that he couldn’t slip back into the old ways. She’d fucking kicked him in the balls like some mad woman, because he’d wanted to kiss her.

So, instead of telling her that everything was okay, which his balls told him was definitely a lie, he settled for glaring at her.

*-*-*-*

Okay, the glaring was really starting to freak her out, she had to admit as she paced the large living room, well aware that the glare followed her every move.

“It was an accident,” she muttered again, because she honestly had no idea what to say to the man.

It also didn’t help that his cousins, regulars at the bakery, apparently found this whole thing amusing.

“Should we continue calling him Duncan or should we just start calling him Dannilyn?” Jason teased from the safety of the other side of the room where he held a sleeping baby in his arms.

When Duncan’s glare didn’t shift to his cousin, but simply narrowed on her, she knew that he was not going to forgive her like all those other times. She was in deep trouble here and that glare let her know it.

“I-I just reacted,” she said defensively with a self-conscious shrug, which didn’t seem to mean anything to the man curled up in the fetal position with a large ice bag pressed between his legs, glowering at her like she was Satan himself.

When his cousins and their wives glanced her way, she swallowed nervously and gestured awkwardly in the direction that she thought her house might be in and said, “Grandpa showed me what to do,” she said with another one of those awkward shrugs, hoping that they understood.

By the winces and nods, they understood without making her explain, which was understandable since her grandfather did have a bit of a reputation…

Still, the man glaring at her didn’t seem all that understanding or forgiving, which unfortunately had the unfortunate side effect of ramping up her nerves to a dangerous degree.

“Umm,” she mumbled, clearing her throat awkwardly as she pointed towards the kitchen, “do you mind if I grab a glass of water?”

“Sure,” Trevor said, shooting Duncan an amused look that seemed to piss Duncan off more. Not at his cousin of course since he was still glaring at her.

Swallowing nervously, she turned around and walked towards the kitchen, the only place in the world where she felt at peace.

*-*-*-*

“Go check on her,” Duncan snapped, groaning in discomfort as he forced himself to sit up and take a deep breath, closing his eyes when his world started to spin.

Jason and Trevor both snorted at that while Zoe and Haley shot the kitchen door a nervous look. “There’s no way that I’m going in there to deal with your girlfriend after you made her cry,” Jason said, shaking his head in refusal as he sat back and folded his arms over his chest, clearly letting Duncan know that he was on his own.

“I didn’t make her cry,” he bit out simply because telling them that she wasn’t his girlfriend felt…wrong.

He had no idea why and at the moment he really didn’t fucking care, because his balls felt like they were the size of mellons, his cousins were assholes and he felt like the biggest piece of shit for making Necie cry.

It hadn’t been her fault. He’d taken her by surprise and he should have known better. For Christ’s sake, she’d been raised by old man Dixon! He was lucky that the woman hadn’t slit his throat with a piece of ice.

“She’s been in there for a while. Someone should go check on her,” Zoe said, nervously working her bottom lip between her teeth as she sent a look to her husband only to find the man shaking his head.

“Leave the poor woman alone,” Trevor said, which of course was followed by Jason, “God only knows how badly this sick bastard scarred her for life.”

“I didn’t fucking scar her for life!” he snapped, which only earned pitying looks from the annoying bastards.

He considered pointing out that he’d been the one injured, but that would only remind them that he’d gotten his ass kicked by a woman who was half his size so he kept his mouth shut.

“That’s not what it looked like to me,” Jason said with a pitying shake of his head that had Haley rolling her eyes in disgust and mumbling something that Jason simply ignored as he continued to enjoy fucking with him.

“Definitely looked like she was going to need a strong shoulder to cry on and help her push past this tragedy,” the asshole added.