Tainted Gold (Providence Gold 3)

“They’re not always that big,” Lily snapped, seeing exactly what we were looking at. Well, you just couldn’t miss them. How the hell did he move so quickly with balls that size?

“Was he throwing his actual nuts at them?” I asked, nodding my head downwards to show what I meant.

“There are female squirrels around just now who are ready to mate,” she huffed, rolling her eyes. “That’s why they’re like that. Normally you can hardly see them.”

Another look at the nuts and I called bullshit. There’s no way those things went down unless someone let the air out of them, or he had surgery.

“Why don’t you have normal pets?”

I mean, what was wrong with a dog or a cat? I wasn’t a cat person per se, but I could see the merits of having one over the pets that Lily had.

Spinning around and glaring at me, she was about to blast me when a brown pellet went flying past us. “Did he just take a crap and throw it?” Rich wheezed, ducking behind Beau this time.

As another pellet flew past, followed by another, it became clear that it hadn’t just been his nuts he’d been throwing at the chickens. No wonder they’d lost their shit with him throwing his at them.SixLilyNever work with kids or animals, wasn’t that what they said?

“Any other pets I need to know about?” Tate asked still laughing.

May as well get it all out.

“Mom has a friend who owns a rescue shelter,” I explained slowly. “Last week a truck was pulled over for something, and inside it they found a shipment with a variety of animals in it, including a tiny red fox cub.” His eyebrows shot up at that before lowering into a confused frown. “Come to find out, they were smuggling it for a guy whose kid wanted a pet fox. She took the cub and Mom asked me if I’d be interested in going into the sanctuary and helping out with it. I can’t bring it home because it’s against the law in Texas, but I can help them with looking after it. They also want to talk to me about some of the other animals that were in the van, and Mom said ok.”

Tate blinked a couple of times before asking, “Why would she do that?”

Time to divulge a weird fact about me to the father of the baby I was carrying, something which my parents still didn’t know about.

“I have a habit of collecting pets.”

“No shit,” he shot back, not missing a beat. “You’ve got a horse-sized chicken, another one whose species is a sick joke, and a squirrel who has massive balls and throws shit at people.”

Well, when he put it like that…

Not giving him the satisfaction of agreeing with his summary of my animals, I forged on. “So, I need to go and see them today.”

“You’re fostering a fox cub? Or one of the other animals found with it?” he questioned slowly. “And what exactly were those other animals?”

“Like I said, it’s against the law for the fox, but the shelter specializes in animals like that, so that’s where it’ll stay. I’m not quite sure what else was found, but it’s likely I’ll be looking after something.” What the hell did he think I was going to do after telling him the story of where I was going and why? I could come out with random shit, but to just tell him that and there not to be a point to it would be random even for me.

“An unknown animal?”

“Yes.”

Tilting his head, he frowned. “Can you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Foster any animal.”

Had he not been listening? “Yes, you can do that depending on what area you’re in, their laws, and what animal it is. Some people accidentally have pet foxes because they become tame and kind of move in, but to actually own one here is a no. That said, if one of the other animals needs a home I’m open to it.”

He didn’t say a word as he digested this. I figured I’d wait it out and let him get his head around it all when his eyes moved to the corner of the room and became unfocused. People helped to rehabilitate unusual animals all over the world every day. Sometimes they were assholes who’d smuggled the animal or bought it from smugglers, sometimes they were animal enthusiasts who wanted to protect a vulnerable creature from harm. Other times they were there to help get it to peak health so it could be released back into the wild – there were a lot of examples, but regardless, it wasn’t unusual.

“How long will you have it for?” he eventually asked.

Shrugging, I flicked a piece of fluff off the couch with my finger. “Depends on the species… and other things.”

“Like what?”

“If I keep it.”