Mad Gold (Providence Gold 2)

We’d gotten a call from one of the workers on the site who had used the satellite phone before it went missing to tell us about some problems with machinery and the fact that the signal masts were now out of order. They had found sugar in the gas tanks of six vehicles that had blocked the filters, as well as cut lines and debris in the hydraulics of a lot of machinery. When we were just about to arrive, we’d heard a loud bang followed by a small plume of smoke rising into the air. As everyone had pulled out their radios to check in with people around the site and get a report on any damage so we could get the necessary emergency services out, there had been a series of bangs from the distance that we’d just travelled up minutes previously. That was when we’d discovered the trees were down and had seen the damage to the trunks.

It was one big fucking mess.

I’d been away from Dahlia for too long. I hadn’t heard her voice, seen her smile or any of the other mushy shit I could list, and I missed it all. I’d also been sleeping in a bed made for a normal-sized man, so I’d hardly slept the whole time I’d been here. The site was now closed until further notice and there was a team of engineers and mechanics with security fixing what had been fucked.

On the way back, Archer had stopped so I could pick up my new cell, but for some reason my contacts weren’t pulling through, so the store was going to drop it off later once they’d figured out what the issue was.

It was tempting to go home and pass out for seventy-two hours, but I’d left Harambe with Luna, who was almost at the end of her pregnancy. If I’d known I would be gone for that long, I’d have asked Dahlia to keep him, but we’d only intended on being at the site for a maximum of twenty-four hours.

Now, I needed to check on my sister and my soon-to-be niece or nephew, then get my dog and get to my woman.

Christ, she’d looked so cute the morning I’d left. She might be a savage sleep addict with a mean left hook when you tried to wake her, but she at least looked sweet while she did it. I hoped when I’d sent her the text that it stressed how much I hadn’t want to leave her, and if it hadn’t, that my note on her leg had. I’d seen the Sharpie after my last attempt at waking her and had decided that it would be an awesome idea to write a message on her leg. Now I wished I’d written a damn essay.

Once I’d done what I’d needed to do at home, I went and saw Luna and her ever expanding stomach. After hugs and belly rubs, I got kicked by the baby and picked up my oversized puppy, then dragged my ass into my truck and drove to Dahlia’s.

Pulling up in front of her house, I cut the engine and tiredly got out, whistling at Harambe to follow. I swear the dog had tripled in size during the short space of time I’d been away. Either that or my sister was getting me back for worrying her and had swapped it with a different dog. I was too tired to even care if that was the case right now.

Knocking on her door, I felt my lips twitch when I heard Bing bark followed by a strange yowling growl. Baileys might be the size of a muffin, but he was a savage in the making… if you were scared of muffins that was.

When the door opened, I blinked a couple times at the beautiful African-American woman with hazel eyes who was glaring at me, before I dropped to my knees on the ground in front of her as my balls ricocheted around my torso, ending up where the tonsils I’d had removed when I was thirteen had once been. She’d actually hit my thigh right underneath them first, but when I’d bent over, she’d struck again – something which I didn’t realize until my balls stopped using my insides as a pinball machine, and I felt the pain in my leg and pieced it together.

“Why?” I gasped, my hands automatically coming down to my broken balls before I curled my body over them protectively.

“Oh, you know why,” she sneered. “You might have a horse ding-dong in those pants, but no one makes my best friend feel like shit. So, take your equine schlong back the way you came in and your….” she broke off and gasped. “Oh, aren’t you the cutest baby puppy? Yes, you are, yes you are! What’s that? You want muffles?” This was all followed by the sound that adults make when they pretend to eat a baby’s stomach, that weird mwaw-mwaw noise. “What’s that you’re saying now? You want your Bon-Bon to feed you snozzies? I don’t know if there are any, but I did see Dahly-Wally buy a nice big, fat, juicy steak.”