Tainted Gold (Providence Gold 3)

And now they were giving me the kick up the ass that I needed to walk inside The Bar and lay it all out for Lily. After I’d begged for forgiveness, obviously. And I wasn’t above falling to my knees to do that either. I just hoped she didn’t go for the crotch, that was never a good thing and no amount of lace rubbing would get me through it.

LilyThe morning after my night with Tate Townsend, I’d woken up thinking I was dying. It hadn’t just been my head that had been hurting, I’d hurt in every muscle of my body, and my vagina had felt like it was broken. That’s when I’d rolled over and seen the muscled chest of the man lying beside me, and for a second I thought I’d done something truly awful like have sex with my vile ex.

The relief I’d felt when I’d seen that it was Tate instead had been crazy, but then I’d freaked out and called a cab while I pulled my clothes on and then ran out the door.

Truth be told, I’d expected him to walk through the door of the bar that night, or even the next day. When he hadn’t, I’d expected him to walk through it at some point at least.

Five weeks later, I wasn’t expecting a damn thing, except a baby.

I’d been working my ass off to keep the business going while Dad recovered from his heart attack, but then I’d caught a stomach flu that had been going around. It hadn’t been so bad because Mom had been home, taking a break from shooting a movie to look after Dad and make sure he was ok, and she’d managed the bar for us. Then she’d had to go back, leaving me to keep her updated and make sure he did as he was told… whilst feeling like a doggy poop on the road that’d been driven over by a thousand cars, then hammered because someone decided it sounded like fun.

Fucking awesome! And yeah, I was swearing. Sue me! I. Felt. Like. Hammered. Shit. Picture what that would look like in your mind, then have some sympathy for someone feeling like it’d look.

This so wasn’t a fun time.

When it hadn’t cleared, I’d gone to the doctor, but he’d just told me to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Asshole, asshole, asshole! You try staying hydrated when even blinking makes all the fluid in your body converge in your throat and come flying out of your mouth. When every breath in smells like the world had become one big shit pool.

Saltines were the food of the Gods, and Pedialyte saved my life, because nothing else was consumable.

After a week of this, I’d realized that my period was late, as in oh-my-mother-fucking-God-I’m-so-late-it’s-almost-Christmas, type of late. Well, not quite, but in the world of unplanned single motherhood pregnancies, even two days late felt like a decade.

So, I’d gone to the store and picked up a box of tests. There’d been a deal on a limited edition economy sized pack of the things which had confused me. Were they aimed at people who were trying for a baby, or at sluts who regularly forgot to use contraception? And yes, I could call them a slut, because although I was sure we had used one, obviously we hadn’t because I was now late and possibly pregnant. I was a possibly pregnant Slutty Von Slutterson from Slutsville who could call my fellow sisters who were panicking for the same reasons a slut. I wouldn’t mind them calling me one, that was the perks of the Slutty Von Slutterson from Slutsville Sisterhood – SVSFSS for short.

Turns out, the eight in that pack weren’t enough for me because they were all broken. So, I went back and bought a pack of each brand available, totaling another fourteen tests which gave the results in different ways. The ones I found most offensive were the fucking smiley faces. They should have done it the other way around so that the smiley face celebrated the fact that you weren’t pregnant. You could have one box for women who were trying and wanted that smiley face, and another for the SVSFSS with hysterical tears on them.

And, as if twenty-two tests wasn’t enough, I drove to a different store and bought a further four from there, hoping that the first store had something in the air that ruined the tests on its premises.

Twenty-six tests with purple pluses, blue lines, pink lines, smiley faces, the word pregnant and my favorite out of the lot (not) the big pink thumbs up all screaming at me – Hey, girl. You pregnant AF!

That had been followed by testing my urine, three times at my request, at the doctors and a blood test, all which then screamed – told you so!