Mad Gold (Providence Gold 2)

For years I’d been paranoid that I wasn’t loveable. Then, after both of my ex’s, the last one especially, I’d been adamant that my initial feelings had been correct, and that I hadn’t one thing about me that anyone would ever love, and I was better off just living life as I was. I was happy, I had a good life, and I didn’t get my heart broken and then shat on.

Then I’d met a giant who had wooed me, made me believe he was a good guy who genuinely cared about me, made me believe that I had been wrong about being loveable, and had let me ride his big beanstalk.

Except, he was a humper and dumper and I felt like shit because of it. That was made worse by the fact that I’d made the photo of my leg the background and lock screen on my phone and I couldn’t bring myself to change it, so I saw it constantly.

As if that wasn’t confusing enough, I’d swing from that thought to worrying something had happened. Then I’d move onto being certain he was such a great guy that something definitely had happened, and back again. It was a torturous circle made worse because I hadn’t seen Luna, and when I spent time with Levi, it was because he wanted to apologize, and I could see he needed that closure on it all. Madix was never brought up once, so it left me going around in the circle of ‘what the fuck’? I also wasn’t sure I had the right to question Madix’s whereabouts because we hadn’t made anything official or even broached the conversation about our relationship.

Talk about a head fuck, and yes I would call it that. A big dicked, brain-ramming head fuck!

There was only one thing for it – tequila. And rum. And my best friend who matched me drink for drink throughout it all, held my hair out of my face when I tossed my rum and tequila cookies up with a force that felt like it came from my toes, all the while seething and swearing she’d make him pay in her head.TwelveMadix“T he next time you need to send me away, do me a god-damned favor and tell me how long,” I snapped, glaring at Noah and Levi.

Granted they looked apologetic, but it wasn’t their women they had to leave at the ass crack of dawn. To make matters worse, I couldn’t even get in touch with Dahlia. All thanks to the bastard who had set small explosive devices on the signal masts around site four of the Townsend Oil operations and who had then downed three of the largest trees in the area so they fell across the only road out.

Then, someone had also lost the satellite phone for the site. Just to top off the shit-tastic situation, because the ground hadn’t been assessed by a GPR, ground-penetrating radar, following some issues with areas dipping inward days earlier, we could only drive on the already approved areas. This was something only someone who worked on the site would know. This also meant that we were stuck on the site until we could get the trees off the road. A team of detectives had attended and gathered evidence, but the only answers we had so far were that the person had used a small amount of explosives on the trees and had packed them in a little hole that had been drilled. Cutting out a chunk on the opposite side to make it fall in the road's direction, they’d attached a receptor to the explosives that would have been attached to an old-style flip-phone. Once they had it all in position, they hit the switch on their 1990’s cell, and boom. Fucker! And no matter how hard we looked, we couldn’t find anyone who carried a cell like that, well apart from Vanilla Ice.

Oh, and someone had lost the satellite phone for the site too, meaning we were totally stuck as we only had our radios to communicate. The police had come in with helicopters, but we’d had to stay on the site to sort shit out. Fucking awesome!

Why would anyone be doing this? We’d looked at the issues that the Townsend cousins were having, but none of it fit. This seemed aimed at these Townsends specifically.

As if that wasn’t one big fabulous shit sandwich, on the drive to the site with Archer and his ass-breathed dog, a bee had flown in the car and he’d waved his arms around, knocking my cell out of my hand and shattering it on the road. So, I wouldn’t have been able to get in touch with Dahlia even if we’d had signal masts available. I never would have left Dahlia without shaking her awake and enduring the pain of a fist to the face if I’d known. Especially not only hours after we’d had sex for the first time.