Then again, it was two in the afternoon, which meant that he wouldn’t be home for a few more hours. That was fine, she decided as she climbed out of her car and carefully made her way to the back of the house where her grandfather kept the snow shovels. She grabbed the one with the black handle, the one that she’d learned to shovel snow with when she was a little girl and with a heavy sigh, she turned around, deciding that spending the next hour shoveling the driveway was better than sitting inside, feeling bad for herself, dug in.

Five minutes later when her fingers started to go numb and she regretted packing her winter jacket in one of the many bags that was now road kill, she decided that it was time to go inside and grab one of her grandfather’s old winter coats and a pair of his gloves. Wondering if she should make herself some homemade hot chocolate now or after she finished shoveling, she absently slammed the snow shovel into the snow pile behind her and-

“Son of a bitch!” a deep voice suddenly shouted, really close to her ear, making her wince, because she had a pretty good idea what just happened.

After years of unfortunate accidents, she was well versed on how to handle this. Taking a deep breath, she turned around to tell whomever it was that she’d just impaled with her shovel that she was really sorry when she suddenly lost the power of speech and apparently her footing as she laid eyes on the handsomest man that she’d ever seen.

He was also the most considerate too, she absently thought as her feet slipped out from beneath her and the incredibly hot man wrapped his arms around her, turned in mid-fall and took the brunt of the hit, keeping her safe and making her wonder if there was any chance that he would forget about this one day.

Chapter 1

November 26, 2015

Thanksgiving Day

“I fucking loved you, you fucking bitch!” the man wielding the carving knife screeched, making Duncan’s headache a hell of a lot worse and making him wish that he hadn’t volunteered to work today of all days, but he’d needed a break from his family and the walking disaster that lived next door.

“Sir,” he said tightly, shifting to the side to come between the incredibly pissed off man in front of him and the naked couple cowering on the bed behind him.

Not that he could really blame him, Duncan absently thought as he shifted to the left, wondering when the police were going to finally show up so that they could take over and he could put an end to this fucked up day from hell.

“How could you do this to me?” the man wielding the large knife shouted, sounding more hysterical with every passing second, which Duncan knew from experience was not a good thing.

“Son, now calm down,” the elderly man trembling on the bed behind him said, temporarily distracting Duncan as his words registered.

There was no fucking way that-

“Don’t tell me to calm down, Dad! You fucked my fiancé!”

Okay, perhaps there was a chance that this could get more awkward, he realized as the understandably pissed off man lunged to the left, desperate to get his hands on his father or the bitch that had cheated on him. Duncan wasn’t sure which one this guy was more pissed at, but it didn’t matter. It was Duncan’s job to stop him before he did something stupid that he’d regret later.

Praying that this didn’t end with him landing in the Emergency Room tonight getting stiches, or worse, Duncan grabbed the man by his arm, twisted it and forced him to drop to his knees while he applied just enough pressure to make the man drop the knife.

“Ow! Get the hell off me!”

“What the hell is wrong with you? Get your hands off my son!” the elderly man snapped, reminding him just how stupid people could be.

“Get back, sir,” he said calmly as he kicked the knife to the opposite side of the room and forced the hysterically sobbing man to the ground.

“Get your fucking hands off my son!” the elderly man said, coming over to pull him off his son, but Duncan had had more than enough bullshit to last him a lifetime tonight.

“Back the fuck up, sir!” he snapped at the asshole, truly not caring if this ended with a write-up or a fucking suspension, because he refused to add wrestling with a naked old man to the ground to his day.

Today he’d had more than enough bullshit to last him several lifetimes.

“You can’t talk to me like that!” the old man said in outrage while the other moron tried to get out of his hold, most likely to throttle his father, which once again, Duncan really couldn’t blame him for.

“I just did, sir. Now step back and put some clothes on,” he said, turning his attention to the woman pouting on the bed, “you too.”

“You can’t-”

“Now!” he snapped when the asshole opened his mouth to argue with him, startling the old man enough to get him to shut the hell up and do as he was told.

Duncan just needed to keep this situation calm and then he could-

“What is going on in here?” an elderly woman demanded from the doorway.

He opened his mouth to yell for his partner when everything went to hell.

“Jane, I can explain,” the elderly dumbass said, yanking up his pants just as the woman on the bed said, “We’re having a baby!”

And just like that, his night got a hundred times worse.

*-*-*-*

“Is there a reason why you’re standing there, staring out the window and watching the neighbors? Are we preparing to kill them and drag them down to the basement and bury them alive?” Grandpa asked, making her smile despite the butterflies going wild in her stomach as she searched for his truck.

“No,” she said, rolling her eyes as she turned around to find her grandfather perusing the sweets that she’d worked all day making. “You know that you’re not allowed anything sweet.”