Page 7 of Another Christmas from Hell

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“God,you’re right. She really can’t seem to stay away from you,” Johnny said, chuckling as they watched Cayley walk into the small diner with the asshole, who hadn’t stopped glaring at her since she beat the shit out of him with that broom, storming past her as he muttered, “You’re buying me lunch.”

“I’m really not, though,” Cayley said with a sad shake of her head as she made her way to the table in the corner.

“We’ll see,” Sean bit out as he dropped down on the chair across from her while Bryce sat there, seriously contemplating going to another restaurant only to realize that he really didn’t have time today.

They were already starting to fall behind on the renovations and-

“Tell me something,” Brian said, drawing his attention to find his brother helping himself to his fries.

“What’s that?” Bryce asked as he pulled his plate away with a look that told his brother exactly what would happen if he touched his fries again.

Shrugging it off, Brian turned his focus back to his own plate as he continued. “If she’s obsessed with you, then why was she engaged to another man?”

“Because at some point, she’d accepted the fact that nothing was ever going to happen between us and she forced herself to move on,” Bryce explained, wishing like hell that asshole hadn’t dumped her because she seemed more determined than ever to be with him.

He still couldn’t fucking believe that she’d moved in across the hallway from him. Christ, she was getting desperate if she hoped to use his family’s curse against him. The problem with the Bradford curse? It was all bullshit. He didn’t fucking care what his cousins, uncles, or even his sister said, but apparently, Cayley bought into that line of bullshit and was hoping to use it in her favor.

When it came to marriage, his family believed that they were destined to fall in love with their neighbors and clearly, Cayley was counting on that being true. The problem was, she seemed to have ignored the rest of the bullshit tale. In order for this to work, Bryce needed to lose his fucking mind over her and be willing to risk everything to have her.

That was never going to happen.

He would never see her as anything more than the pain in the ass that used to follow him everywhere and he sure as hell wasn’t about to lose his fucking head over her. As far as Bryce was concerned, she was just his little brother’s pain in the ass best friend that he was stuck with until she finally gave up and accepted that nothing was ever going to happen between them and moved on.

Until then…

He was going to make sure that he didn’t do anything to encourage the little pain in the ass.

CHAPTER4

“He’s glaring at you again,” Sean said on a heartfelt sigh, sounding pleased.

“And she looks like she wants to kill you,” Cayley said with a pointed look across the diner where her cousin, Jess, stood, looking as though it was taking everything that she had not to walk across the room and beat the crap out of Sean.

It probably was, Cayley mused as Sean popped one of her fries in his mouth as he glanced over his shoulder and-

Winked.

Oh, that dumb bastard, Cayley thought with a sad shake of her head as Jess made her move, grabbing a chair only to have several bus boys jump over the counter and grab her before she could follow through with any of the threats that she’d made over the years.

“Probably,” Sean said, not sounding all that concerned as they were forced to wrestle the chair out of Jess’s grip as she snapped, “I’m not going to hurt him. Just let me kill the little bastard!”

“She’s going to kill you one day,” Cayley said, still wondering why Sean seemed to go out of his way to piss her cousin off.

“It does seem that way, doesn’t it?” Sean asked, shifting his attention back to his food and-

“He’s still glaring at you,” he said, reaching over to steal her fries.

“Of course, he is,” Cayley said, sighing heavily as she found herself once again wondering why Bryce hated her so much. She considered asking Sean, but…

She knew better.

He would take the opportunity to make her life a living hell, and honestly, she just didn’t have the patience to deal with his bullshit right now. Between ending things with Kevin and being forced to start over, she…suddenly had a bad feeling that she knew why she’d been fired. Really hoping that she was wrong, Cayley looked at her best friend as she said, “Please tell me that you didn’t sleep with my boss.”

The look of disgust that took over his face had her quickly amending her last statement. “Not your sister, you weirdo. My last boss, who for some reason called me at one in the morning sobbing hysterically and rambling on incoherently about her desk and the fact that it would never be the same before she fired me.”

Blinking at her, Sean said, “Don’t slut shame me.”

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