Mad Gold (Providence Gold 2)

That had been a week ago, and I hadn’t even bumped into him. Not that I had before, but if this was a movie, wouldn’t we now be seeing each other everywhere we went?

I might not have seen him but I’d seen his sister, and in the most bizarre places.

The first time, I’d been in the store looking at the new types of tampons when she’d walked up to me saying, “Fancy seeing you here!” Considering she was heavily pregnant, yes, yes, it was as strange as she’d made out with the tone she’d used when she’d said it.

The second time, I’d been taking my dog to the vet for his vaccinations. As we left, I’d heard someone yelling in a foreign language accompanied by the strangest shrieking noises. I’d looked up as Luna walked toward me along with her huge dog called Vlad, and a small Dachshund called Banshee, who had been the one making the weird noises. Just as we’d said hello, my dog, a Labrador called Bing, made the strangest honking noise and had projectile vomited over both of hers. I’d been horrified and had gone to open my purse to get out the travel pack of Kleenex I always had in there, when a truck had driven past at high speed, hitting the puddle beside us. I’d squelched back to my car with Bing while Luna had taken hers into the vets, not caring one bit about the fact she was soaking. Then again, my body had acted as a wall for the water seeing as how I was standing between the puddle and her when the truck had hit it, so she hadn’t received the tsunami to her ass that I had.

There had been four other meetings, all even more bizarre, but fortunately less disgusting than the second.

But I hadn’t even had a brief glimpse of Madix Blue.

I loved saying his full name, it reminded me of a superhero. Or a porn star! He looked like he had the body of a porn star too.

I wonder if it’s true about a man’s feet and the size of his…

“Dahlia!” A voice yelled behind me, making me squeal and jump.

Turning around, I saw my dad’s best friend, Jones.

The swelling in my tongue had almost gone down, so I’d gone back to communicating like a normal person instead of on a small whiteboard.

Doing my best to clear my head of where my thoughts had been headed, I put on a smile and prayed that my face wasn’t as red as a Twizzler.

“Hey, Jones!”

His eyes narrowed as he took in my face. “What have you been up to?”

Shrugging, I turned back to my desk to pick up a random piece of paper and then waved it in the air between us. “Just working.”

I caught sight of the words at the top of the piece of paper and moved my prayers to hoping that he didn’t see the name of my OB-GYN, followed by the freaking massive letters that said OB-GYN after it. Why, oh why, had I opened my mail while I was at work? Why couldn’t I have opened it at home, where it was frigging delivered, like a normal person?

And why in the ever-loving hell do they ‘invite’ you to go for a pap smear? It’s not like you hit a piñata and get cake after it.

“Uh huh,” Jones muttered, assessing me even closer. “So why’s your face the color of a strawberry?”

“Sunburn.”

“Sunburn?” he snorted. “You spend every day in this office, and I know for a fact you haven’t been out of it all day. So how in the hell did you get ‘sunburn’?”

I wasn’t pro-lying for any reason. Own up to your shit! But at this moment, I decided to break my no-lying morals and let rip with the biggest pile of bullshit in the history of mankind.

“Glare off the bonnet of one of the trucks outside,” I explained, using my thumb to gesture over my shoulder at the area behind me.

Here’s why lying shouldn’t ever be a go-to tactic for anyone – you always get found out. Or you forget the lie you’ve told. But regardless, you always get found out. And if you had my luck, you got found out immediately.

I watched him look over my shoulder. When he raised his eyebrow, crossed his arms and straightened to his full height, I tried to avoid his eyes by looking over his shoulder instead – and immediately saw the window behind him.

This meant that I’d been pointing at a wall.

Shit!

I’d also forgotten that the window showed an empty parking lot because we weren’t that busy today. Even if I’d gotten the direction right, he’d have seen through my lie.

Double shit!

“Start talking,” he ordered as he pulled his cellphone out his back pocket. “Or I’m calling your dad.”