Tainted Gold (Providence Gold 3)

How the hell did she wipe after she went to the bathroom? Wasn’t she afraid that one of them would tear through the paper and pierce her ass hole? What about picking her nose?

Then, proving I was a mother-to-be, something else occurred to me – how much bacteria gathered under them? It’s not like she’d be spraying antibacterial stuff under them every hour, and with the amount of shit bacteria gathered on, surely they would be breeding and multiplying under them?

This made me pull my arms away from where her cell was now resting. No way in hell did I want to touch anything of hers.

When she pushed it further toward me, I saw the screen and the name on it - Tate T – and what it said.

Tate T: Gonna say this now so you know. Iluvu. Luvluvluvluvluvluvluvyou.

Then the next one.

Tate T: 1 day am will marry u.

Clee-fuckin-shay!

She was a clee-ho. A clichéd ho! I could say worse, but I wasn’t going to. Instead, I was going to be the bigger, better, pregnant-by-Tate-Townsend person, and… ah fuck it.

“Girl, you need to take your…” Beau started, reaching out to grab her, but I held my hand up to stop her.

This was all mine.

“Babe,” I started sweetly, giving her a grin and enjoying her shock immensely. “I know there’s nothing original about you, but you could at least try at some point. See, Tate told me he’d tried sending me a couple text messages which I’d never received. Right after that, he told me he loved me.” Looking her up and down, I shook my head. “I don’t know what’s made you a bitter Betty, but something has. You’re a walking, talking, clee-ho…”

“What’s that?” Beau asked, her eyes sparkling with amusement.

“A clichéd ho,” I told her, then looked back at Carly. “I feel sorry for you, girl,” I said softly, leaning closer to her. “You won’t ever find someone who’ll take you on if you keep acting like this.” I really did feel sorry for her. Sorry that she’d chosen to take this sort of reputation on for life, sorry that she felt life could be achieved by being a manipulative bitch, and sorry for her she believed what Tate had sent to her. I didn’t know how it came to be, but no one would be that smug if they didn’t believe it even a little. “Go and take a look at yourself in the mirror and you’ll see that underneath all of this is a woman who has a man in the world for her, instead of going after another woman’s.”

I thought that in light of things I was being nice, however she thought otherwise. “Fuck you, you cunt,” she hissed, leaning down until there was only an inch between us. “I hope you burn in hell.”

Flinching back from the hatred in her eyes, I watched as she leaned over to pick up Chris’s bottle of beer, but a hand stopped her before she could even get her fingers around it. Following the arm they were attached to, I breathed a sigh of relief that Tate had turned up.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he growled, snatching it away from her.

“Hey, that’s my beer,” Chris objected, finally speaking up. The big fat pussy!

When he went to stand up, another hand landed on his shoulder holding him in place. This one was attached to none other than Tate’s brother Archer, the quietest of the family. “Sit your pretty little butt down, dude,” he advised, the tips of his fingers going white when he increased the pressure he was using. “My little brother over there has a nice little story to tell.”

What was he talking about?

Nodding, Tate handed the bottle across to me with a wink, and then looked back at Chris and Carly, crossing his arms over his chest. “True story, I do. See, I couldn’t remember much about the other night. I knew I’d sent some texts, but that was about it.”

“Diablo with a sombrero,” Levi grunted, alerting me to the fact that the rest of the Townsend family had turned up.

“Yeah, we can thank the tequila too,” Tate agreed, swallowing awkwardly at the memory. “Now, I got to talking to my friend who does tattoos, and he told me y’all had turned up after the first bottle of Diablo with the sombrero. None of us could figure out where that tequila had even come from, except the first which had been given as a ‘gift’ when he’d gone up to the bar. Do you know who served him?” It was a rhetorical question because the yes was plain to see on both their faces. “That would be your cousin, Carly.”

Jerking her chin up, she glared at him. “And? That’s not a crime, is it?”

Shaking his head, Tate lifted a hand and looked at her thoughtfully as he rubbed it over his beard, the raspy noise audible over the sounds in the bar. “Nope, it’s not.”