Tainted Gold (Providence Gold 3)

What I didn’t know was that when a Townsend said them, it meant they were going to start helping you out in your place of business while they got to know you. Sometimes individually, sometimes as one big hoard. I also didn’t appreciate the fact that a hoard of Townsends was like a hoard of locusts – all-encompassing, and leaving behind a trail of destruction. Although, it had to be said locusts meant to leave destruction, a Townsend didn’t, it was just what happened. I’d definitely find that out in the future though.

For now, it was late and we all had sleep we needed to get. Then, I was going to have to check to make sure that the team I’d text to clear up the destruction from the fight in The Bar had done the job so that Annie could open it up again tonight.

Before we left and went our separate ways though, Tate pulled me toward him and gave me a gentle kiss on the lips, shocking the hell out of me.

“I need to go home and discuss something with my parents,” he told me, looking like he wanted to do anything but that, something that he then confirmed. “I would much rather be with you, but your ex threw some threats around back there, so I need to get the lawyer involved. He’ll only deal with us through our parents after the last time we needed him,” he explained, ignoring the expression on my face blatantly curious about that last part. Pushing on and suddenly looking uncertain, he asked warily, “But, would it be okay to pick you up first thing in the morning? I want to spend time with you, just the two of us.”

Tate on any given day made your lady garden bloom like the daisies in my garden, but looking like he was bracing for me to scream no? I about melted at his feet. Pregnancy hormones, we’ll blame those for it.

“Absolutely,” I rasped, and then cleared my throat. “Whenever suits you best.”

After an apology from Levi, where he got on his knees on the dirty police station floor and apologized until I yelled at him to get up, another kiss from Tate, and hugs from the rest of the family which surprised both of us, Beau and I drove back to mine and had an unplanned sleep over – her in the spare room, me in my own room. It only took seconds for me to pass out and go into a deep sleep.

I was used to having bizarre dreams that made no sense, but one where I gave birth to a puppy that had Tate’s face, in a cell at the police station was weird even for me. Added onto it, there was a rotating mobile over my head in the cell with Chris singing Yellow Submarine, by the Beetles. That was a whole new realm of bizarre, one which I’d probably be better off labelling as a nightmare.

That said, when I was woken up by my bed shaking at five o’clock in the freaking morning – or a time I’d rather call ‘you’re dead o’clock’ – and saw Beau standing at the door to my room shaking her head, I lost my shit.

“God invented sleep because the apple needed to get away from sheep and dancing pigs,” I shrieked, and pulled the cover over my head.

It only took seconds for me to overheat though, which meant because I was already asleep again, I threw the cover back off me, not bothering to look where my hand went.

It also meant I wasn’t even aware that I wasn’t alone, so how was I to know that I hadn’t hit one of my pillows?

I didn’t hear the groan of pain followed by the coughs and the word ‘balls’ being repeated right next to my head. Instead, I dreamt of a mobile over a big green garden, with rose bushes being painted red by a pretty sheep with yellow bows in her hair, with dancing balls skipping around us.FourTateAfter I’d had a talk with my family and our lawyer, who’d been on speakerphone the whole time, I’d left them at four in the morning and driven to Lily’s. I hadn’t expected her to be awake, but as soon as I killed the engine, her front door had opened and I recognized her best friend Beau standing in it.

“You gonna sit out here and play with yourself, or are you coming in?”

Holy shit, she was a spitfire.

I’d ended up crawling into bed with Lily, and just as I’d gotten comfortable after she’d yelled at Beau, she’d twitched and my nuts ricocheted around my asshole. Women really have no idea how sore it is when they’re hit. It feels like a bomb’s exploded in your crotch, and then this sharp piercing pain takes over. If you survive it, you can look forward to roughly forty minutes of the same feeling until you cough them back into their sacks.