Until Fools Find Gold (Providence Gold 1)

At that moment Doc arrived, a good friend of Dad’s who knew Luna and her story well.

He’d treated some of her injuries over the years we found out, but she’d always had a convincing story and she hadn’t visited him often enough for him to worry that it was her father who was causing them. In hindsight, he should have been suspicious, but then we all should have.

I don’t know how long I paced for, ignoring my family as they chatted amongst themselves, but a tap to the shoulder snapped me out of my seething.

“Car,” my brother Tate murmured, pointing at the headlights just visible in the dark.

It felt like hours, but would really only be a matter of seconds, as I waited for them to reach us. We all had our hands on the guns in the waistbands of our pants - just in case Rick really was that big of a deluded dick - and moved them away at the same time once we saw Levi behind the wheel.

Pulling up in front of us, his face was grim as he got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side.

Initially, it looked like a bundle of clothes until you saw the long dark curls on top of it and realized that there was a person under it.

Opening the door, he reached in and the click of the seatbelt being released was followed by him gently lifting the bundle out and walking toward us.

“Doc’s in the back room,” Archer informed him.

Stopping in front of me, I saw the conflict going on in Levi’s mind before he passed Luna over to me.

“Don’t drop her or bump into anything and make sure you place her gently onto the bed,” he ordered, trusting me to keep her safe while he did whatever he had to do. “I need to talk to the others and then I’ll take over.”

Spinning on my foot, I held her close to my chest and walked carefully in the direction of the room that Doc was waiting for us in.

“Take your time,” I muttered, not taking my eyes off the door of the room I needed to go to as I walked. “I’ve got her.”

Ironically, my initial reaction to fly off the handle died down, replaced by a deeper anger and the desire to make her father pay painfully.

To do that, I needed to plan and make sure I got her justice.

When we started to remove the layers around her and saw how skinny she was and the bruising to her body, both Doc and I sucked in our breaths and looked at each other in horror.

I thought I’d felt violent before, but actually seeing the damage and her appearance inspired a level of violence in me that should scare her father.

LunaThree months later…

This was torture. It wasn’t as bad as the last almost four years had been, but it was a different kind of torture all in itself. I was so tired of constantly having to tell people where I was going, although I knew why and was beyond grateful to the Townsends for caring so much about me.

But still!

And my brother Madix’s constant phone calls or lectures when I hadn’t called him back were driving me nuts.

What made it even worse was who was up my ass a majority of the time when Levi wasn’t around– Noah.

When I’d first woken up after Levi had collected me, I’d almost had a panic attack when I didn’t recognize the room or the man leaning over me. Almost immediately Noah had picked me up and placed me gently on his lap.

It had been quite dark, and I hadn’t recognized him with the beard he had now, so I’d been about to scream my ass off. The instant I smelled his familiar scent, I calmed down enough to see that the other man in the room had been the doctor who had treated me for so many years when I was growing up.

Then I remembered being collected by Levi and falling asleep after he’d given me some painkillers– it’s amazing how the mind works when you’re under stress. I still didn’t know why I hadn’t remembered the incident with Levi first or realized that I was at the Townsends, instead recognizing Noah’s scent.

Bizarre but true!

I was like a sniffer dog. Or maybe he was a scratch and sniff– one of those ones you keep scratching because it smells so good.

Actually, that was kind of gross. Scratching someone and then sticking your nose in them and taking a deep breath. Ew!

Once the doctor had checked me over, he’d asked that I go in the next day to have x-rays done of my body. When we’d protested, he’d said he could keep it all on the down low and that he’d put them under a different name too. The man had a plan and wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer.