Mad Gold (Providence Gold 2)

“Not yet, we’ve got time,” he muttered, before he leaned down and took my mouth again.

No arguments from me!I was relieved, beyond relieved, as we rode across the Townsends property on an ATV instead of the horses that Madix had originally steered me toward. I didn’t do horseback riding. I’d once had a dream I’d been standing on a wooden fence, using it to help me get onto a big white horse. As I’d gotten my right leg over and was almost settled on the saddle, the horse had spooked and galloped off through really tall grass. In my dream it felt like we’d ridden for days, but really it would have been maybe thirty minutes, and nothing had stopped that big bastard from heading off into the sunset.

Until that was, for some reason, a talking teddy bear called Mr. Ricketts had jumped out of nowhere and flashed the horse his fuzzy bits (which I did not see, thank God), making it rear up so quickly, that it head-butted me in the face. I’d woken up in a cave surrounded by Mr. Ricketts and his fuzzy friends who were preparing a big pot over a fire and kept winking at me. I wasn’t crazy enough to think that Mr. Ricketts existed, but it had worried me it was possibly an omen, putting me off horseback riding for life.

I also couldn’t watch the movie Ted, for obvious reasons.

Did I voice this out loud to Madix? Did I hell! He probably already thought I was crazy enough as it was. I’d made the mistake of telling Bonnie’s brother, Foxe, about it once though and he’d bought me a talking Ted. In fact, he’d probably sent me most of the merchandise available for the movies since then – the asshole.

Now, I was sitting on my own ATV behind Madix’s, with Harambe and Bing riding on the little seat thing on the back of mine, and he had Baileys in the pocket of the flannel shirt he’d put on as we’d gotten out of his car at the barn. I was going to get a photo of that on my phone as soon as he got us to our destination. It was too stinking cute!

Being careful not to hit anything and knock the dogs off the back, who were now sitting with their paws on the bar separating us with their heads tilted back into the wind, I sped up slightly on a smooth patch of grass before we got to a thick cluster of trees. I think the best way to describe how I felt throughout the journey was tense as fuck, so I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Madix pulling to a stop ahead.

Braking beside his vehicle, I looked around and saw a crystal-clear pool with the sun glinting off it. In all my years living in Gonzales County, I’d never once heard of its existence. Not surprisingly actually, it was on Townsend land, but still.

“Awesome,” Madix muttered, walking over to a cooler that was under one of the trees. “They managed to do it.”

“Do what?” I asked, carefully getting off my vehicle and walking over to him on legs that were only slightly shaky. The vibrations in those ATV’s was no joke. If Madix ever dumped me and my vibrator didn’t do the job, I’d totally be buying one of those things – a girl needed to have plans after all.

And that’s when I discovered that Madix also had plans, fucking awesome ones in fact, as he pulled out containers that I recognized immediately – Mexican! What girl in their right mind said no to Mexican? Not this one.

And then he pulled out the key to my heart – a huge pot of salsa Verde with a massive bag of chips to go with it.

Sweet Jesus. Who was I kidding? If he ever dumped me, I’d need more than an ATV to get over him.

Madix

“How did you know about my addiction to salsa Verde?” she asked, after inhaling the first pot of the stuff and two chicken tacos. I had another two pots still in the cooler, but I had it on good authority that she would eat the stuff until she was sick, so I kept them hidden.

Snorting, I combed through her hair with my fingers while I explained.

“When I got up to put the dogs in the kitchen, there were a couple of texts from your best friend on my phone. One was a closeup of a pen that had ‘uni-ball’ written on it,” she stiffened hearing that. Wait until she heard the rest. “The other was a link to an article on how the first testicle prosthesis was made of metal during the war.” That one had made me wince at the mental image of how heavy that would be. “And the last was a link to a company who made them now and a photo on their website of one being inserted.”