Tainted Gold (Providence Gold 3)

This had led to another argument over the sex of the baby which we still didn’t know seeing as how it was a prude and kept its legs together every time we had a scan now. We could have found out another way, but in the end, we placed our bets in with the family’s and let it be a surprise.

I was buying girl stuff though, and Tate was buying boy stuff.

That’s how life went with us. We’d been together for almost nine months now, and I didn’t want to tempt fate, but it was just so easy. Carly was in prison and her trial was coming up soon, so we didn’t have to worry about her. Initially, her lawyers had gone down the insanity angle, but it quickly became clear she was just a psycho with a bunny boiling type crush on Archer, so she was being tried the old-fashioned way. Chris was nowhere to be seen either which I knew worried Tate, but I preferred to just not think about him at all.

So, to sum it up, aside from my blood pressure being a smidge high, my ankles now being the size of my thighs, my thighs being the size of Chewy’s body, my stomach looking like I’d swallowed Shamu… it was all going fantastically.

Washing my face in the sink in the bathroom that was attached to the office, I got rid of the remainder of the tears that I’d cried over fake titty woman. Maybe she should look in a book and find a new nose, the one she’d chosen last time was five sizes too small.

Jesus Christ, these hormones!

Smelling something burning just then, I turned around to see if I could see anything that would cause a weird smell in here. Lifting up one arm and then the other, I ruled out the possibility of it being some weird pregnancy body odor, and opened the door of the bathroom.

Nothing looked like it was burning in the office, and I couldn’t see any smoke? But the smell was getting stronger.

Walking through the office to the door, I opened it and saw thick black smoke building in the hallway.

The panic was instant, not just for me and the baby, but for my dad too.

“Dad!” I screamed, sticking my head out quickly and seeing flames across the end of the hallway that led to the bar area. “Dad!”

Slamming the door shut, I spun around and tried to think. I needed to call someone. Who?

Running over to the phone on the desk, I picked it up and not hearing a dial tone slammed it back down again. Remembering I had my cell in the top drawer of the desk, I pulled it all the way out, and snatched my phone up as the rest of it fell to the floor.

I could do this. Come on, Lily, you’ve got this.

If you’ve ever watched a true crime episode, you’ll be familiar with the fact that we think we know fucking everything. We say we wouldn’t have done what they did, and we’d have done this or that.

I’m telling you this – that is the biggest pile of bullshit in the world.

Unlocking my screen, I almost dropped it twice as I tried to dial the number for the emergency services. Then, my finger slipped, and I dialed 9-1-5 instead. On the fourth attempt, I got the right numbers and hit the green button, then put it on speakerphone because my hands were shaking too hard for me to hold it.

I heard once that relief was a measurable emotion. You could measure the scale of relief you felt each time you felt it. Until now, I’d only felt relief on a handful of occasions – when my dad survived his heart attack, when Tate came back after helping his cousins and wanted the baby, when his family believed it was his baby I was carrying, when we found out the baby was healthy, when I met Hurst properly and got to truly appreciate him surviving his own heart attack, when Tate told me he loved me…

Hearing that voice say, “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” though, that had to top the list.

Just as I was trying to give her the address and tell her what was happening, something exploded in the bar, and the force of it knocked the door off its hinges.

“They’re on their way, Lily,” the woman’s voice said as I tried to breathe. “Stay with me, ok?”

Tate“You can’t go in there,” Levi yelled in my face, tears running down his own as he held me back. “Tate, use your fucking head. You’ll get burned if you go in.”

Gulping in mouthfuls of oxygen, I put my hand over the pain in my chest and bent over. “My entire world’s in there,” I gasped. “She’s… the baby…”