Chapter 4
“Fuck off!”
“Aw, is little Danny going to cry?” Jodi heard Trevor ask from the safety of the laundry room, where the door was tightly shut. She prayed that she’d have one night, just one night, where she didn’t have to put up with-
“I said fuck off!” Danny snapped as the laundry room door crashed open and the only man in the world that could possibly make her day any worse came storming in, carrying a basket of dirty clothes and looking furious.
Chuckling, Trevor continued to walk past the laundry room door, seemingly oblivious to the panicked looks that she was sending his way. “See you bright and early tomorrow morning, Mr. Foreman!”
“I fucking hate that bastard,” Danny muttered, focusing all of his attention on violently shoving the basketful of clothes into the only other washing machine in the room.
Deciding to take advantage of the fact that he hadn’t seemed to notice her yet, Jodi placed her empty laundry basket on the dryer that she was planning on using once the washing machine was finished and quickly walked out of the room, hoping that she didn’t draw his attention.
When he didn’t say anything to make her want to bash her laundry basket upside his head, Jodi walked down the hallway and let herself into her apartment.
She set the timer on her phone for thirty minutes and was just about to enjoy some of the ice cream that she’d picked up on the way home when the rolled-up city trash bags that she grabbed at the gas station caught her eye.
It was trash night, which meant that her date with rocky road ice cream was going to have to wait.
Then again, she could always take the trash out later…
No, no, she couldn’t, Jodi thought, knowing that the longer she put off taking the trash out front, the more likely that she was going to forget to do it.
Since the trash cans that were assigned to her were full this week, she didn’t have much of a choice.
If she didn’t get the trash out tonight, then she’d have to wait until next week to get rid of it, which would be a problem since she’d be forced to put this week’s trash on the ground and risk a warning.
Since she doubted that she’d be able to find an apartment this cheap, three hundred dollars cheaper now, Jodi decided to just suck it up and get off her ass and do it.
Grabbing the roll of city trash bags, she left her apartment and headed to the back entrance.
Five minutes later, she was standing in front of her assigned trashcans, frowning down at all the trash bags filling her cans.
She didn’t remember going through that much trash.
For a second, she wondered if someone else shoved a bag in her can, but just as quickly, she dismissed it.
For one thing, even though most of the guys that lived here were arrogant bastards, they weren’t pricks.
They wouldn’t do that to her. Well, Danny probably would, but since he used black trash bags, she knew that he wasn’t responsible for this mess.
Realizing that she must have gone through more trash than she thought, Jodi pulled a city trash bag off the roll and opened it, shaking it loose so that she could put her trash bags in it.
As she grabbed the first bag and almost fell over from the weight of it, she couldn’t help but wonder why the city charged two bucks a bag for trash removal when they paid taxes that were specifically allocated for the sanitation department.
It just seemed a bit ridiculous to her that the city was able to charge double for-
“Oh, my God!” Jodi shrieked as the bag that she’d been in the process of pulling out of the trashcan suddenly ripped open.
The sudden difference in weight threw her off balance.
It caused her to stumble back several feet as the gooey contents of the bag spilled out and covered her just as the most repulsive odor that she’d ever encountered hit her, making her gag just before she stumbled back another step, slipped on some of the slimy goo and went flying, landing on her ass.
Too stunned and, admittedly busy trying not to vomit, Jodi sat there, staring down at herself in horror, wondering what just happened when her night suddenly got a hell of a lot worse.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m going to say this as nicely as I possibly can,” Tinkerbelle said as he caught a whiff of a vile odor that was vaguely familiar. “If you even think about calling me Tinkerbelle or saying anything even remotely annoying right now, I will kill you!”
“I see,” Danny murmured absently as he took in the scene and in less than thirty seconds, he realized that his cousin had seriously fucked up.
Bradfords didn’t normally throw away food.
It just wasn’t in their DNA to waste food even if it was past its expiration date and growing penicillin.
They simply scraped the fungus off, covered it in ketchup and savored it.
They didn’t believe in wasting food, none of them did, but since Trevor had fallen in love with Zoe…
Well, they’d made an exception to that rule since none of them had the balls to tell Zoe that her cooking terrified them, especially the bastard that married her.
Most nights, Trevor was able to force himself to eat what his wife cooked, but other nights like last night, the man couldn’t force himself to do the impossible.
When those nights came, Trevor took the coward’s way out and found a way to get rid of the leftovers without Zoe finding out.
Since he couldn’t throw the food away at his house and take the chance of his wife finding out, Trevor usually brought it to one of his apartment houses and dumped it in one of their cousin’s trashcans, which was probably why Trevor stopped by tonight.
The only problem was that Trevor had royally fucked up tonight and placed the trash bags filled with toxic waste in Tinkerbelle’s barrels.
The weird, oddly discolored slime covered her from head to toe, the ground that she was struggling to get off, and her trash barrels.
He’d seen a lot of things in the Marines, but this was easily the grossest fucking thing that he’d ever come across.
It was also probably one of the most embarrassing moments for little Tinkerbelle, he realized with a reluctant sigh as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone.
“What are you doing?” Tinkerbelle asked as she suddenly stopped trying to find a way to get out of the slimy mess so that she could watch his every move.
“My duty,” Danny explained with a heavy sigh as he opened the camera app and did what was expected of him.
“You son of a bitch!” Tinkerbelle snapped as she lunged for him, slipped, and landed right smack dab in a large puddle of goo.
“Say it with a smile,” Danny said, chuckling when she looked up. Well, tried to, at least, but with all that goo weighing her hair down in front of her face, it was kind of difficult.
“Put the camera away, Danny!” Jodi demanded, struggling to get to her feet only to once again slip in the goo, landing smack dab in the middle of it and forcing him to jump back to avoid the goop that was sent flying into the air with the movement.
“It’s not a camera,” he felt obligated to point out as he angled the phone to the side so that he could catch the goo-smeared glare that she was sending him. “It’s a-son of a bitch!” Danny shouted as a big handful of chalk white slime sailed through the air and nailed him in the shoulder.
“Put the phone away,” Tinkerbelle said, swiping up another handful of that slime that he was going to kill his cousin for.
Any other man would have accepted defeat, put the camera away, and made a quick retreat, but he was a Bradford as well as a Marine, which meant that he was going to aggravate the shit out of her for the sheer pleasure of it.
Chuckling, he ducked out of the way as the goop sailed through the air and snapped a dozen more pictures.
The only thing that he cared about right now was pissing Tinkerbelle off.
“Damn it!” Jodi snapped as she once again slipped in the goo, this time landing on her pretty little ass, causing the glob of goo in her hand to slide down her arm, adding an extra layer of slime to her skin and clothes that was going to be a bitch to clean off.
When she let out a defeated groan, he couldn’t help but feel bad for her.
With a sigh, because he knew that he was going to miss out on some really good photo opportunities, he put his phone in his back pocket. “Do you want some help?”
“Not from you,” Jodi bit out as she tried to wipe her hands off on her pants, but by this point, it was hopeless. She was covered from head to toe in the nasty goop.
“Oh, and why’s that?” Danny asked, glancing at the garden hose and wondering if he should hose down this mess before the smell seeped inside the apartment house.
“Because I really just don’t like you,” Jodi admitted as she slowly got on her knees to give standing another try.
“Now, you know that you really don’t mean that,” he said, knowing damn well that she did.
“I really do,” she promised him as she finally managed to get to her feet.
“Are you planning on tracking that shit into the building?” Danny asked, gesturing to the white slime that was slowly traveling down her body, applying another, more even, coat over her body.
“I’ll wash it off,” she said defensively.
“How?”
Her frown said it all. She had no idea how she was going to get that shit off, and to be honest, he really wasn’t sure that water was going to do the job.
At least cold water wouldn’t be able to get it off, Danny mused with a frown of his own when he felt a slight burning sensation on his shoulder right where the goop-
Oh, shit.