“You’re late for dinner,” his father absently said, making him chuckle until the pain in his head had him turning over and vomiting on the floor.

“Sorry, Dad,” he managed to get out as he rolled over onto his back and promptly passed out.

*-*-*-*

“We are no longer speaking, sir!” Necie yelled over her shoulder at the man standing there, sipping a cup of coffee and looking quite pleased with himself.

“That’s fine,” Grandpa said with a wink as he took another sip of his coffee.

She glowered at him for another few seconds, contemplating switching his coffee to decaf, but just as quickly she decided against it. As much as she would love to get him back for this, she really didn’t want to deal with him without his caffeine. So instead, she returned her attention to all the cars parked in the driveway next-door as well as the ones lined up and down the street, terrified that she’d see his truck even as excitement coursed through her, making her rethink this whole thing.

She didn’t want to see him, talk to him or see that look in his eye as he was forced to acknowledge her existence in some way when it was clear that all he wanted to do was to pretend that she didn’t exist. Not that she could blame him since every single one of their unfortunate encounters always left him…cranky.

Cranky was probably the most fitting word to describe the state that he was usually left in after one of their encounters.

Mostly because he couldn’t stand her.

Not that he’d ever flat out told her that he hated her. He was much too polite to say it, but then again with the way he looked at her and reacted every time that she was around, it wasn’t all that difficult to figure out.

Which was why she really didn’t want to be out here, standing in the cold, hoping to catch a glimpse of him when she knew that she should get this cart next-door as fast as humanly possible and make a quick retreat before she could make things between them any worse. Not that, that was humanly possible, she reminded herself with a pathetic little groan that had her moving her butt and pushing the cart the rest of the way across her freshly shoveled driveway, careful of the black ice threatening to knock her on her ass.

When she made it to the other side of their driveway, she sighed in relief, because she was halfway there and she hadn’t-

“No!” she shouted when the front wheel of her cart suddenly caught on a patch of black ice, slid forward a little faster than she’d expected and took off before she could stop it.

Without thinking, she ran after it and-

Slipped on the same patch of black ice that had stolen her cart from her and fell on her ass, making her gasp in pain. Grimacing, she forced herself back to her feet and ran after the cart. As she slipped, stumbled and tripped her way down the long driveway, watching the large metal cart barely miss car after car, she cursed her grandfather for his manipulative ways and prayed that the cart landed safely in a snow bank.

But, of course that’s not the way it happened, mostly because she was a walking disaster. She watched in horror as the cart raced down the end of the driveway and-

“Mother fucker!” she heard the painfully familiar voice shout just as her foot caught on another patch of black ice and sent her stumbling forward. She tried to regain her footing, but it was too late. Before she could stop herself, and she really wished that she’d been able to stop herself, the pavement was rushing forward and-

Oh, God, that really hurt, was her first coherent thought after she hit the ground, slid down the icy pavement for what seemed like hours, scraping her hands, arms, legs, stomach and somehow managing to whack her chin before she was finally able to come to a stop. Unfortunately for her, the stop probably did more damage than her lovely trip down the driveway had.

“Ouch,” she whispered weakly as she managed to roll over away from the back tire of what appeared to be a really large pickup truck.

When the snow chains stopped her escape attempt, she closed her eyes, winced, whimpered and gasped in pain even as she had to admit that it would probably be a good idea to get snow chains put on the delivery van, especially with all this snow that they’d been getting.

It would certainly make it easier to take delivery orders when the weather turned sour, she absently agreed as she tried to roll away from the back of the truck, realized that her sweatshirt, part of her bra and possibly some of her boob was being pinched and held hostage by the snow chains. She tried to move away from the wheel again, this time more slowly and, yup, the chain definitely had some of her boob pinched beneath it, making it impossible to go anywhere.

Slowly exhaling, mostly because she was trying not to move and find out just how much it hurt to have part of her boob ripped off, she laid there, shivering as she contemplated her options. Reach into her back pocket and grab her phone and call for help? A slight wiggle of her ass let her know that probably wasn’t going to happen since she couldn’t feel the comforting weight of her cellphone in her pocket.

So, calling for help was definitely out.

She could yell for help from her grandfather, but that would result in him laughing his ass off at her as he took pictures of her on his phone since she’d foolishly taught him how to do that last month, or worse, he’d go break out the old camcorder and make a video to upload to Youtube, again, something else that she’d regretted showing him. There was also the possibility that he would fall and hurt himself, but she immediately dismissed that idea since it didn’t seem as though she’d inherited her klutz gene from him.

Still…

She really rather not make another appearance on YouTube, so that left her with little choice but to lie there and freeze to death. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but really? What choice did she have?

The long, heavy, seriously annoyed sigh that she was unfortunately all too familiar with, let her know that she not only didn’t have a choice in the matter, but she’d just given the man that she was in love with another reason to hate her.